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$499 Headless iMac?
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Amazing
LOL. I've only read a portion of the thread but all this talk about detailed specs is moot. Take this to heart about the hardware:
1. Whatever specs you can bet that it will run Tiger along with Core Image flawlessly. Apple isn't going to release a half baked solution within months or ON Tiger's release. And you can bet that its not going to be putzy. That would not create a good first impression for a switcher which, who I might add, is the core audience of this device. Yes education and enterprise are also potential candidates, the former being more important then the latter, of this device but by large its Average Joe Windows user who is pissed the hell off with viruses, adware, and the like.
2. Its not going to compete head to head with ANY other Apple hardware other then maybe the iBook and PowerBook which is a sad testament to the state of Apple's mobile solutions.
3. This is going to be a closed system. Period. If we are lucky RAM and hard drive can be upgrade. Any other upgrades would keep a user from upgrading to a newer iMac or PowerMac. Its in Apples best interest to get people who upgrade to these devices to think about further upgrading in a couple years time. A better upgrade path will NOT in any way shape or form accomplish this and at 499 599, depending on who you talk to, its not really a system that was intended to have a flexible upgrade path. This thing really is a throw-away computer. In the generic term of course.
Honestly folks this is what it is: A low end Apple solution. You guys are making too much out of it. This thread really should never have gotten to the 1.5 thousand posts it currently sits at.
With that being said if I get one the first thing Im going to do is see if it can be hacked to a higher CPU chip. 1.5Ghz anyone?
LOL. I've only read a portion of the thread but all this talk about detailed specs is moot. Take this to heart about the hardware:
1. Whatever specs you can bet that it will run Tiger along with Core Image flawlessly. Apple isn't going to release a half baked solution within months or ON Tiger's release. And you can bet that its not going to be putzy. That would not create a good first impression for a switcher which, who I might add, is the core audience of this device. Yes education and enterprise are also potential candidates, the former being more important then the latter, of this device but by large its Average Joe Windows user who is pissed the hell off with viruses, adware, and the like.
2. Its not going to compete head to head with ANY other Apple hardware other then maybe the iBook and PowerBook which is a sad testament to the state of Apple's mobile solutions.
3. This is going to be a closed system. Period. If we are lucky RAM and hard drive can be upgrade. Any other upgrades would keep a user from upgrading to a newer iMac or PowerMac. Its in Apples best interest to get people who upgrade to these devices to think about further upgrading in a couple years time. A better upgrade path will NOT in any way shape or form accomplish this and at 499 599, depending on who you talk to, its not really a system that was intended to have a flexible upgrade path. This thing really is a throw-away computer. In the generic term of course.
Honestly folks this is what it is: A low end Apple solution. You guys are making too much out of it. This thread really should never have gotten to the 1.5 thousand posts it currently sits at.
With that being said if I get one the first thing Im going to do is see if it can be hacked to a higher CPU chip. 1.5Ghz anyone?
Yvan256 said:
Sorry but I take exception to such a comment. Clock speed can measure speed but only to a certain extent and within a certain range. So by and large a 1.5Ghz system is NOT going to outperform a 3Ghz system. But it becomes more foggy when you compare a 1.5Ghz system to a 2Ghz system or a 1.5Ghz system to a 1.75Ghz system.
Its another variable you need to keep in mind when you are looking at system speeds but its not the end all be all measurement of speed.
SiliconAddict said:
Clock speed hardly matters at all. For example, last years model of 2.5 GHz Pentium 4 will run slower than this years, since this years has an 800 mhz bus speed and HT. The current 3 GHz Pentium 4 has more cache than the previous one, and that has HT over the one before that.
And of course, a 1.6 GHz Pentium 4 is vastly more powerful than a 1.5 GHz Pentium 3. A 2.5 GHz Celeron is VASTLY inferior to a 2.5 GHz Pentium 4- heck, it's inferior to a 2 GHz P4.
So even in the same basic families the clock speed is irrelevent. It's only good for a general benchmark.
But still being in the x86 range, the Athlons are completely set apart from P4's in clock speed. Yet people don't realize it. One guy told me, "I'm going to be building a computer, I think I'll use a P4." "Have you considered Athlon 64?" "Yeah, but my dad has one, and it's really slow." "Slow? An A64?" "Yeah, it's only 2.4 GHz!"
You can imagine the look on my face. And this guy isn't a noob.
Most people don't realize that a 2 GHz machine isn't ALWAYS slower than a 2.5.
doogle said:
I'm surprised they quoted £260 as a base price - there is no way that the headless mac will be sold in the UK at the straight conversion rate. As someone already mentioned previously in this thread - if it costs $500 in the US it will likely be around £360 in the UK. There is always a higher markup here.
Platform said:
i predict that whatever number the total thread count is at will be the clock speed of the new headless imac/emac in khz
here it is, it's more than just a rumor now
iPod creator unveils the £260 computer
By Hugh Davies
(Filed: 03/01/2005)
With two million Britons now owning iPod digital music players, Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, was last night preparing to unveil his next project, a computer costing £260.
Jobs, 49, was reported to be planning to show a prototype of the Q88, a bare-bones device with 256 megabytes of memory, aimed at enhancing the lives of people keen to navigate both the music scene and the web, but anxious to keep costs down. With an income last year of £41 million, flamboyant Jobs was lauded for his success with the iPod, and is said to be thinking of showing the new computer at his next trade show on Jan 11.
The Mac development is understood to be much smaller than the current eMac model that sells for £699.
Packed into a 1.7in-thick box, it is designed to attract sales in the low-cost PC market that Apple has hitherto ignored.
iPod creator unveils the £260 computer
By Hugh Davies
(Filed: 03/01/2005)
With two million Britons now owning iPod digital music players, Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, was last night preparing to unveil his next project, a computer costing £260.
Jobs, 49, was reported to be planning to show a prototype of the Q88, a bare-bones device with 256 megabytes of memory, aimed at enhancing the lives of people keen to navigate both the music scene and the web, but anxious to keep costs down. With an income last year of £41 million, flamboyant Jobs was lauded for his success with the iPod, and is said to be thinking of showing the new computer at his next trade show on Jan 11.
The Mac development is understood to be much smaller than the current eMac model that sells for £699.
Packed into a 1.7in-thick box, it is designed to attract sales in the low-cost PC market that Apple has hitherto ignored.
At 1.7 inches thick, those guessing it was essentially a notebook w/out screen and keyboard would appear to have guessed correctly. Where's the sign up sheet, I'll take two of them.
AAPL_to_$100 said:
I'm sorry but this doesn't prove anything. The author just copied Think Secret.
GFLPraxis said:
actually the p3 was a fair bit faster than the p4 clock for clock because of the pipelining
oh and to that guy that said a mx 440 was faster http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031229/vga-charts-07.html the 9200 comes out on top most of the time.
i'd have to say now that it will defiantly have a 5200 ultra, there is no way it cannot, it needs a core image card and that is the only card that will do it.
Well I hope the rumor is true. The more I think about it the more I hope that Apple allow people a lot of upgrade options with this box to make it more attractive. I for one really hope they offer a 160gig HDD option so it makes an attractive home media storage/server as I am accumulating allow of DV. But alas I dont imagine an s-video out exists...
hanselmann said:
If it were real , it would probably look something like that with one big exception, in order to keep costs down, they would rather use a standard (shuttle) optical drive than a slot loaded one.
aswitcher said:
Since all Macs have the capability to put out a S-Video signal (via a dongle), a headless Mac would probably get this feature, too.
21st Century home computer
With apple's obsession for integrating stuff, I can't see them releasing a separate box, keyboard and mouse. Probably more likely to be a computer integrated into the keyboard. Just like the home computers of yore! With more and more people buying flat panel TVs you will even be able to sit in the lounge and plug it into the DVI socket. Hopefully they'll include an S video output as well (like the ipod photo). It will be like having a Vic 20 again- and just about as powerful (just kidding!!).
With apple's obsession for integrating stuff, I can't see them releasing a separate box, keyboard and mouse. Probably more likely to be a computer integrated into the keyboard. Just like the home computers of yore! With more and more people buying flat panel TVs you will even be able to sit in the lounge and plug it into the DVI socket. Hopefully they'll include an S video output as well (like the ipod photo). It will be like having a Vic 20 again- and just about as powerful (just kidding!!).
Yvan256 said:
Actually, it means that one day, no Macs will be fast enough to run the newest version of Office..
I still think the iRemote is key
That's not really my point. I meant more conceptually where it can go. If I stuck a cheapo PC under the TV and plugged into my stereo, people would say - why did you do that? But if this has a DVD form factor, can play DVDs out the TV, allows me to use iTunes _easily_ for my stereo (via an iRemote), and allows me to show slideshows of pictures (via iPhoto) on my TV, then it's a DLD as long as it's simple and doesn't appear to avg joe as just a PC stuck in there. My point was really that the iRemote would go a long way to making this difference, because I wouldn't have to pull out a keyboard and mouse to use the music features.
I agree that having tuner (and, ideally, PVR) features are desirable in a DLD, but I think that's a pretty limited definition.
GFLPraxis said:
That's not really my point. I meant more conceptually where it can go. If I stuck a cheapo PC under the TV and plugged into my stereo, people would say - why did you do that? But if this has a DVD form factor, can play DVDs out the TV, allows me to use iTunes _easily_ for my stereo (via an iRemote), and allows me to show slideshows of pictures (via iPhoto) on my TV, then it's a DLD as long as it's simple and doesn't appear to avg joe as just a PC stuck in there. My point was really that the iRemote would go a long way to making this difference, because I wouldn't have to pull out a keyboard and mouse to use the music features.
I agree that having tuner (and, ideally, PVR) features are desirable in a DLD, but I think that's a pretty limited definition.
AAPL_to_$100 said:
Add £100 to allow for VAT and UK rip -off pricing policies and at £360 that will still absolutely destroy any cost barriers to owning a Mac in the UK market. (Of course Apple still have to get over the software myths, but they have at least 2 million base customers - aka iPod owners - who have a good idea that a Mac of any sort would just work.)
Im a teacher, and even on my wages, that £400-ish price is nothing. I often wonder if the standard of living in the States is really as high as it is made out to be, what with people here saying, Well for $499 (£260) that would be cool, but $599 (£310) that is pushing it a bit.
Platform said:I like that site a lot but iam defenetly not anti mac
Hehe.. me neither.. but a lot of people over there are. It seems every piece of Apple-news has to end up like a flamefest!