$499 Headless iMac?

[mrgreen4242]

Though I would chime in here with a couple of opinions...

1) I think this is an eMac replacement. SJ has decalred the CRT dead, and they are removing it from the product line. Purring G5's into the eMac/CRT casing would hurt iMac sales, and as it's doing so well, I can't see them going that route.

2) Apple is going to have to bring back 15" and 17" LCDs. Either buy some cheap generic ones and put an Apple logo on them, or partener up with some manufacturer to sell displays in retail stores. Maybe only offer them with the purchase of a headless eMac... $200 for a 15", $250 for a 17", again, with eMac system purchase only.

3) They need to have a good edu discount on these and small LCDs. If they can get a 15" LCD + eMac G4 student combo for $650 they will take a huge cut of Dells sales to broke college students... that would really be quite a steal!

4) Apple's warranty kinda sucks. 90 days of support and 1 year warranty is pretty weak, compared to it's competitors. (Dell, for example, will give you 1 year warranty, support AND in home service for under $20, or free, on some models). Apple's are supposed to be known for quality hardware, so they should stand behind it. Make the standard warranty/support BOTH 1yr. They should also offer a less expensive AppleCare exchange package for these new machines. For $99 you can get a 3 year exchange plan allowing you to take a broken machine into a retail store (or authorized dealer) and if they can't fix in house in under 5 business days, they just give you a new one. Send the old ones back to be refurbed and resold. Would be a big selling and marketing point.

And an aside... It's too bad that Apple doesn't offer a "pro-sumer" line... the eMac is an entry-level/education machine, the iMac is a consumer grade system, the PowerMac is a professional level device, but there should be something between the iMac and the PM. A headless G5 would fill that perfectly...

offer single CPU's only, maybe in 1.6, 1.8 and a 2.0, 1 each 3.5" and 5.25" drive bays, RAM up to 2 GBs, 1 PCI(-X?) slot, 1 AGP 8x slot, USB2.0, Firewire 400 (800?), in a small quiet cube type system. (Maybe even bring back the "desktop" configuration... where your monitor sits atop the computer, remember that? A little riser board for the 2 expansion slots, and the two drive bays side by side). Sell them at about $900-1500 depending on CPU speed, optical drive choice, GPU, etc.

Rob

 

[SeRgIo_42]

This DOES NOT happen on my machine. Finder is Instant. Everything is Instant - PERIOD. I wait for nothing.

Of course you do not have this problem.
how much does your machine cost ?
"PowerMac G5 Liquid Cooled 2.5"

 

[jcroft]

Yep. To compare WindowsXP's graphical architecture against MacOSX's is plain silly.

No it's not, becuase people do it when they shop. People that don't know **** about technology. People that don't care. People that are stupid, and are simply trying to decide which machines to buy compare this stuff. They don't even know that is IS a "graphical architecture." All they know is that one feels faster than the other -- and they'll make a purchase based on that.

This is marketing, folks. It's how the real world works. Come out from behind your cinema display once in a while, put your pants on, and you'll see.

 

[Sir_Giggles]

100K people didn't die in Florida.

I think you might need a bit of perspective.

Hey, perhaps we can rebuff his statements again, later in this thread, when the death count jumps to 150,000.

 

[Monkeyman1]

This is the computer we've all been waiting for. This little gem will be the first steps toward Apple regaining a little bit o market share.

 

[Monkeyman1]

Hey, perhaps we can rebuff his statements again, later in this thread, when the death count jumps to 150,000.

We should. People need to get some perspective. Sure people died in Florida and it was tragic... but what is happening in Asia is catostrophic. Up to 5 million people are in danger of dying and 114,000 are dead already. The US has NEVER suffered from anything remotely like this so we have a very skewed view of what a tragedy is in this country.

 

[mr.steevo]

As a PC user, I would love to see this happen. For those with
some memory, Amiga systems were unbelievable good. Instant
boot, nice graphics interface, efficient hd use, etcetcetc.
this machine did not have top notch hardware but were able
to do the job.

I am about to get over and give the Ibook G4 1.25Ghz a shot.
Unfortunately, everytime I go to an Apple Store I feel
that the system is not that "responsiveness" (it did not mean
that it is slow, please note). The OS may be multitask but
it looks that it is not using the dedicated video card as a pc user expects.
That's what is holding me...

I set an example for the responsiveness :
I have an old HP omnibook 6000 (pentium III, 600MHz, 8Mb ati video card).
Just as an example, if I access something like
http://www.miniclip.com and play "Nordic Chill", it is quite playable.
When I went to the Apple Store, I tried to see how amazing
the G4 1.25Ghz would be and....it was very, very slow.
Is this normal ? I am not up to answer that. Maybe it was
the settings from that ibook.

Well, let's see what Steve will offer to the rest of us.

Hi,

I just tried out the "Nordic Chill" game on my 1Ghz ibook. Aside from me asking myself "why would I play this?", I found the game to load quickly and perform as I would expect it to. Now, I haven't tried it on a pc but I didn't notice it being sluggish or unplayable.

I think if a gamer is looking at a Mac then he/she would be best off staying with the PC, but for everything else I think the Mac is just fine. Sure the Mac doesn't "scream" or react as "snappy" as a PC, but this isn't the point for me. I want a tool that won't break from virus's when I go online, and that is easy to use. The only "scream" I got from PC's was when the damn thing died when I was finishing a project.

s.

 

[B_Gates]

Won't happen, since to do that would mean having to up the lower limit on everything; this is the budget machine, after all.

You were comparing it with a Dell earlier.

Either put forward a cohesive argument, or quit trolling and leave.

My Dell comparison was only made because I could quickly go to the dell web site & get a current price of a pc that was around $500.00 dollars.

My brought up my pc because it is a IBM clone & it is the one I have experience with. Which you were bashing the quality of IBM clones pc which are not as bad as you say they are.

I think some of you guys are misunderstanding me & taking my comment personally. I do think apple is a good pc, they just don't market a pc to the masses well & I think the specs on this headless mac are kind of outdated. If they want to win people over from the windows family Apple should put in at least the slowest G5 processor, since they have marketed the processor so much lately. The fact that Apple dropped the G4 from the iMac line signals that the G4 is on the way out & people don’t want a PC with parts in it that are on the way out.

Does this make sense?

 

[Monkeyman1]

Hi,

I just tried out the "Nordic Chill" game on my 1Ghz ibook. Aside from me asking myself "why would I play this?", I found the game to load quickly and perform as I would expect it to. Now, I haven't tried it on a pc but I didn't notice it being sluggish or unplayable.

I think if a gamer is looking at a Mac then he/she would be best off staying with the PC, but for everything else I think the Mac is just fine. Sure the Mac doesn't "scream" or react as "snappy" as a PC, but this isn't the point for me. I want a tool that won't break from virus's when I go online, and that is easy to use. The only "scream" I got from PC's was when the damn thing died when I was finishing a project.

s.

Well OS 10.4 should solve your GPU responsiveness issues. It runs the majority of graphical functions through the GPU, alot more so then Panther does.

 

[jcroft]

If they want to win people over from the windows family Apple should put in at least the slowest G5 processor, since they have marketed the processor so much lately. The fact that Apple dropped the G5 from the iMac line signals that the G4 is on the way out & people don’t want a PC with parts in it that are on the way out.

Does this make sense?

No. The iMac does have a G%, so I don't think "Apple dropped the G5 form the iMac line." And I'd hardly say Apple has "marketed the G% processor so much latley." In fact, I can't remember the last time Apple REALLY market anything other than the iPod.

 

[SeRgIo_42]

Hi,

I just tried out the "Nordic Chill" game on my 1Ghz ibook. Aside from me asking myself "why would I play this?", I found the game to load quickly and perform as I would expect it to. Now, I haven't tried it on a pc but I didn't notice it being sluggish or unplayable.

I think if a gamer is looking at a Mac then he/she would be best off staying with the PC, but for everything else I think the Mac is just fine. Sure the Mac doesn't "scream" or react as "snappy" as a PC, but this isn't the point for me. I want a tool that won't break from virus's when I go online, and that is easy to use. The only "scream" I got from PC's was when the damn thing died when I was finishing a project.

s.

Thanks !

I do not play anything. That's what I would call "wife factor".
She likes to play these solitaire style games.
We went to a Apple Store and we could not test the games she likes.
When we were able to start Nordic Chill, it looked sluggish. Then
we did not whether this is something related to that particular
ibook or not.

Since it was Xmas days, I did not have enough time to play more...

 

[slffl]

OMG, this is AWESOME! I hope these rumors are true! I've been wanting to replace my carpc with a carmac and this seems like it would be PERFECT!

 

[B_Gates]

No. The iMac does have a G%, so I don't think "Apple dropped the G5 form the iMac line." And I'd hardly say Apple has "marketed the G% processor so much latley." In fact, I can't remember the last time Apple REALLY market anything other than the iPod.

Correction, what I meant to say was:
The fact that Apple dropped the G4 from the iMac line signals that the G4 is on the way out & people don’t want a PC with parts in it that are on the way out.

 

[Sir_Giggles]

No it's not, becuase people do it when they shop. People that don't know **** about technology. People that don't care. People that are stupid, and are simply trying to decide which machines to buy compare this stuff. They don't even know that is IS a "graphical architecture." All they know is that one feels faster than the other -- and they'll make a purchase based on that.

This is marketing, folks. It's how the real world works. Come out from behind your cinema display once in a while, put your pants on, and you'll see.

Oh I've put on my pants and visited local PC shops test driving WinXP. I know how fast and smooth you can scroll and move windows in XP. But that doesn't mean companies should stop innovating because older vector-based UIs are faster. Even Microsoft sees the limits of their technology, thus they are slowly moving towards Longhorn.

MacOSX is still in a teething process. It's interface is slower. Each successive OSX release has made Finder snappier and snappier, but also more full featured. Tiger will be no different, and if the WWDC sessions on Quicktime Performance and CoreImage are concerned, you'll likely see it just as snappy as WindowsXP.

 

[jcroft]

Oh I've put on my pants and visited local PC shops test driving WinXP. I know how fast and smooth you can scroll and move windows in XP. But that doesn't mean companies should stop innovating because older vector-based UIs are faster. Even Microsoft sees the limits of their technology, thus they are slowly moving towards Longhorn.

I agree 100%.

MacOSX is still in a teething process. It's interface is slower. Each successive OSX release has made Finder snappier and snappier, but also more full featured. Tiger will be no different, and if the WWDC sessions on Quicktime Performance and CoreImage are concerned, you'll likely see it just as snappy as WindowsXP.

I hope you're right. Certainly, the OS has gotten more responsive with each release. That's great. In fact, it proves that Apple agrees with me. The fact that they've taken the time to make the Finder more and more responsive shows that they, too, believe this is a problem.

But, my point still remains: people will make buying decisions based on percieved speed. Until OS X is as snappy as Windows, some people will choose Windows. On the other hand, until Windows is as pretty as OS X, some people will choose OS X.

Thanks for manning up and admiting that the interface is slower. Too bad a lot of the others here can't do the same. It's as if admiting that something about their computer is inferior is a personal attack on the size of their penis, or something.

 

[budugu]

Stop being frogs in the well!

Yep. To compare WindowsXP's graphical architecture against MacOSX's is plain silly. You really have to compare Microsoft's upcoming Avalon rendering framework to Apple's Quartz/Quicktime technology. MacOSX is already 5 years ahead, and it's running on TODAY's technology.

The projected specs Microsoft recommends for running Longhorn with Avalon is a dual-core 4-6 GHz CPU, a minimum of 2GB RAM, 1 TB harddrive, and a graphics chip 3x faster than today's GEforce 6800.

Well folks, you can run MacOSX Quartz-interface today on a 400Mhz G4, with 256MB RAM acceptably.

In WinXP, you can't even do expose-like windowing without a horrible lag time, or have multiple video clips playing at the same overlapped and resized. With Tiger's release, you see a maturing of the Quartz framework, and innovations like Dashboard will run circles around WinXP.

Picked up a few little tricks from th apple magician? it is the same thing which was haunting intel vs AMD ...but they have matured to look beyond 'my d**k is larger than yours' arguments... Apple is behind MSFT in data stuff by about 5 years too...CoreData that stupid implientation of OLE DB/ADO/.net from 4-5 years ago .... 'oh we have turned the graphic model by 90 degrees and the new graphics model will feature hardware abstraction layer!-from Tiger tech preview' , where were you when it was in win2k? HAL manages all the different sets of APIs that interact with the same internal functions; oh writing to and from the framebuffer is old and time consuming so apple team came up with coreimage.... PCIe has dual bandwith and can write and read at the same time at full speed... and also allows you to use the system memory at the maximun speed just as a fall back! (there are atleast 6 cards that are already using it)... and the list can go on! who does not like RDC (remote desktop)? why doe apple not allow it... their architecture kills the systems like VNC not the graphics load mind you!
Intel GMA(integratedgraphics) can beat the crap out of all low end graphic cards inc 5200, X300 etc...! BTW did you hear about 'managed' code? that is apple's verions of CLR (.Net) from windows which surprisinly is also called Managed Extensions 2-3 years ago!

Apple is well known for designing stupid complex solutions for simple problems that they have and taunt them as some design achievements! I bought into all the hype ... but now that i write macosx programs i see why people are not that interested in developing for mac!

ok now that i reignited the flame let it burn!

PS: What is the largest number of responses in a thread .. my be we get a world record for that if not nothing else!

 

[SeRgIo_42]

Thanks for manning up and admiting that the interface is slower. Too bad a lot of the others here can't do the same. It's as if admiting that something about their computer is inferior is a personal attack on the size of their penis, or something.

I must say that despite the fact this is a discussion list from a
rumours page, I am surprised by the lack of stupidity you always
find around.

 

[budugu]

Size really does not matter!

Thanks for manning up and admiting that the interface is slower. Too bad a lot of the others here can't do the same. It's as if admiting that something about their computer is inferior is a personal attack on the size of their penis, or something.

Even when scientific tests do seem to say that the actual size really does not matter that much!

oh wait but this has to be told by the Apple marketing team to make these believe!

 

[Chip NoVaMac]

There is probably some truth to this. But, I still think that in general, a long-time Windows user's first impression of Mac OS X, and especially the Finder, is that it's a bit less responsive.

In the end, all the reasons WHY don't matter. They're interesting for geeks to talk about, but people aren't going to make purchasing decisions based on them. They don't care WHY. They only care that this one SEEMS faster than that one, and therefore I'll that THIS one.

If Windows user's first impressions of Mac OS X is that it's unresponsive in comparisson to Windows, that's a problem. It might not be the end of the world, but it's a problem, and one Apple ought to try to address.

Puzzled by this. Being a recent re-switcher back to the Mac, I don't see your comments on this. My last WinPC was an XP Pentium III 2.2ghz, and I see no lack of responsiveness in the finder.

The only response issue I have had is when I had way to many large files open with too little HDD space. What I can say in that case is at least OSX did not crash, like it would have under XP.

When users don't have to take and do a complete reinstall because of spyware and the such, any other issues will pale in comparison.

 

[jcroft]

When users don't have to take and do a complete reinstall because of spyware and the such, any other issues will pale in comparison.

I concur. Unfortantley, this usually isn't part of the demo the sales rep at Best Buy gives a potential PC buyer.

 

[edesignuk]

Pentium III 2.2ghz

That's impossible. Doesn't exist

 

[Chip NoVaMac]

4) Apple's warranty kinda sucks. 90 days of support and 1 year warranty is pretty weak, compared to it's competitors. (Dell, for example, will give you 1 year warranty, support AND in home service for under $20, or free, on some models). Apple's are supposed to be known for quality hardware, so they should stand behind it. Make the standard warranty/support BOTH 1yr. They should also offer a less expensive AppleCare exchange package for these new machines. For $99 you can get a 3 year exchange plan allowing you to take a broken machine into a retail store (or authorized dealer) and if they can't fix in house in under 5 business days, they just give you a new one. Send the old ones back to be refurbed and resold. Would be a big selling and marketing point.

While the Apple warranty is less than the rest of the competitive market, it has not seemed to have hurt them. Sort of like the old Sony warranties of 90 days parts and 1 year labor.

As long a Apple is able to give the support levels that I have experienced, with and without Applecare, they have a chance to beat Dell. Have you tried to deal with Dell support? Out of 7 to 8 calls in the last month, I could only comprehend maybe two or three. In home service is nice, but there was a thread here on MR from a PC maven that found it hard to get the in-home service.

Actually you may have an idea on the Applecare for the iMac mini. Though the price may be a bit low. And that is to allow Applecare members to swap out dead units for new or refurbed units.

 

[TheInevitable]

How about the iMac mini?

I don't know. How important do you think that having firewire, USB, and headphone jacks of the front are? Do you think it would have speakers?

 

[devwild]

No it's not, becuase people do it when they shop. People that don't know **** about technology. People that don't care. People that are stupid, and are simply trying to decide which machines to buy compare this stuff.

There are also those who don't care how it looks and only care about how in works. 90% of aqua is about looks, not performance or added usability when compared to Windows or even OS9. The only truly useful feature that depends on the opengl features of OSX, which makes resizing a browser window lag even on a dual G5 and so painful I would avoid doing so on a G3, didn't come around till the latest generation -- Expose. Geniefied windows and bouncing, zooming icons aren't particularly utilitarian.

Sun has been spending the last couple years trying to justify performance vs. coolness vs. usability with Looking Glass' development, and quite frankly what they have done is a still a bloated useless interface no better than CDE was. In the meantime many people in the *nix world are moving to minimalist, efficient-for-them desktop environments like fluxbox or in extreme cases ratpoison. Microsoft is carrying out the same debates now with Longhorn. Cooler, fancier, more high tech doesn't always mean better for the end users, whether or not they are smart or dumb.

OSX, particularly on G4s and single proc G5s, is right on that borderline of whether or not utilizing the graphics card and opengl to make a cool *and* useful environment actually is worth the costs and perceived as acceptible to the user. The proof is in the fact that so many people here debate the responsiveness of the OS. Some people find it acceptible and some people don't. When Apple finally manages to get faster G5s and better video cards in their machines, the debate will fade. I bet the same debate will happen in the PC world when Longhorn comes out.

I guess I'm just trying to state that I agree that macs and pcs aren't really apples and oranges. Everything about them affects how people will receive them, and regardless of how advanced, or cool, or even how secure one is over the other, the end question for most people is just will it do the everyday tasks someone wants in the way they want to do them. And how much will it cost. No one thing about a Mac, Windows, or Linux box currently blocks it absolutely from becoming somebody's desktop box. Some people can live with the drawbacks of one but not the other. Personally, being a geek, I'm surprised I don't see more linux x86/linux ppc/osx debates. I know a couple of people who hate OSX, but use powerbooks with linux ppc because they like the hardware/architecture/appearance better.

It's still about choice, no one is simply "better", and a new headless box at a good price is awesome because it adds a choice many, many people have been asking for.

 

[CaptainCaveMann]

There is probably some truth to this. But, I still think that in general, a long-time Windows user's first impression of Mac OS X, and especially the Finder, is that it's a bit less responsive.

In the end, all the reasons WHY don't matter. They're interesting for geeks to talk about, but people aren't going to make purchasing decisions based on them. They don't care WHY. They only care that this one SEEMS faster than that one, and therefore I'll that THIS one.

If Windows user's first impressions of Mac OS X is that it's unresponsive in comparisson to Windows, that's a problem. It might not be the end of the world, but it's a problem, and one Apple ought to try to address.

I agree, ive noticed the same thing. But i frankly dont care. I like osx and thats all there is to it. Thats just my standpoint as a consumer.