Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

$499 Headless iMac?

I can only speak for myself as a potential buyer and why this Headless Mac would be for me.

- I'm in my mid 20's
- I have a fairly high end Home Theater setup
- My current PC is a 1.1 GHz Athlon (2-3 years old)
- I don't play games, I mainly surf the net / email
- I have a 20GB 4G iPod
- I have a 19" Dell LCD

I have debated in getting a Mac for years but could never justify the entry price. The eMac is it stands is UGLY. I haven't used a CRT in years. I type this at work on two 20" Dell LCDs in a Dual Head display. I've always liked the look and feel of OSX but it all comes down to price. At approx $500 for the machine (I would likely go with a model just above the baseline for an extra $100-200) I would love to try the MAC. If I really like the platform I may just get two (one for my desk, the other for the TV).

If Steve wants my money for a Duelie G5 down the road, he'll need to give me a taste for $500.
 
ender78 said:
I can only speak for myself as a potential buyer and why this Headless Mac would be for me.

- I'm in my mid 20's
- I have a fairly high end Home Theater setup
- My current PC is a 1.1 GHz Athlon (2-3 years old)
- I don't play games, I mainly surf the net / email
- I have a 20GB 4G iPod
- I have a 19" Dell LCD

I have debated in getting a Mac for years but could never justify the entry price. The eMac is it stands is UGLY. I haven't used a CRT in years. I type this at work on two 20" Dell LCDs in a Dual Head display. I've always liked the look and feel of OSX but it all comes down to price. At approx $500 for the machine (I would likely go with a model just above the baseline for an extra $100-200) I would love to try the MAC. If I really like the platform I may just get two (one for my desk, the other for the TV).

If Steve wants my money for a Duelie G5 down the road, he'll need to give me a taste for $500.
Click to expand...

Ender78, your last sentence is an apt metaphor.

I'm sure SJ is very interested in serving tantalizing appetizers now in hopes of becoming your main sauteuse chef in the future.
 
asif786 said:
I hope the sub-$500 mac doesn't lower the tone of the whole mac platform..

..I dont mean to sound snobby or anything, but as a Mac user, I've generally come to believe that my fellow mac users and other people that i meet on forums such as these are generally nice, good people. we dont see any major spamming, or flaming or any other silly behaviour on here.

if i was to go to one of the large windows forums though, they're full off people doing the above mentioned things - i'm not trying to stereotype people, i just hope that MR and the mac community in general does not turn into a standard/non-caring type of thing.

i happen to like the cult of mac ;) :)
Click to expand...

Something cozy about being part of [1] the underdog, and [2] as you say, the "cult" 02.5% of computers users that are Macintosh.

BTW, I agree whole-heartedly about the politeness of this forum and Mac users in general. Again, I think when you are defined as just a speck of sand in a desert, humility comes before arrogance.
 

Attachments

  • imac_headless.jpg
    imac_headless.jpg
    42.1 KB · Views: 208
Chomolungma said:
I can't stress this problem enough. The slowness of OSX is a major problem. It is a tiny problem, but has a profound and magnify end result. Although, I've read a lot of comments in the site to suggest otherwise, my response to those who says OSX is fast, check the Kool Aid that you've been drinking
Click to expand...
ON THE OTHER PAW.... my girlfriend and I retired to the bedroom the other night and each of us fired up our laptops. My G3 iBook was up, running, had mail, Safari, newsreader and iTunes all open by the time her WinXP box got to the login page. Then we still hadda wait for the wireless card to initialize, and XP's new firewall, and wait for Norton Antivirus to do its thing... then we had to deactivate the popup killer in her web browser so she'd be able to read her webmail.

I really think she should get an iBook.
 
Hi.
Getting excited here now. Can anyone tell me what time the keynote is held GMT? Will probably be tuesday evening at some point i guess
 
yoak said:
Hi.
Getting excited here now. Can anyone tell me what time the keynote is held GMT? Will probably be tuesday evening at some point i guess
Click to expand...

Bummer is that I start in my new position with the company tomorrow. And being just a "regular" worker I won't be able to check the web from time to time. :(
 
wowser said:
Are these pics genuine?
Click to expand...

Short and long answer... no and no.

• Manuals have custom cut holders in the styrofoam.
• You can see taped on images on the boxing in other shots (laughably bad).
• Apple tends to use Americanized spellings, in one shot you see it spelled "centre," which would be highly inconsistant.
• By crumpled corners of "unit" it appears to be made partly of cardboard.
• On one of the RGB layers the word "fake" is inscribed.
and on and on...

Please visit this thread https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?s=&goto=lastpost&threadid=103880
 
They´ve been posted earlier in this thread, and are not real. look a few pages back and someone explained why (sorry, can´t remember whom)

Guess I was a bit slow there, server was busy. Thanks Photorun
 
yoak said:
Hi.
Getting excited here now. Can anyone tell me what time the keynote is held GMT? Will probably be tuesday evening at some point i guess
Click to expand...


5pm GMT.
Will I be able to follow the event on the web?
 
The Kenynote is going to go online at 2am UK time. (so thats tues night, weds morning)

have a look at macworld.co.uk if you dont believe me ;)
 
Imagine them releasing this thing with a not-so-snappy 1.25 ghz G4... Think of all the former windows-users complaining over Safari not being equally responsive as Internet Explorer on an 733 Mhz Pentium...

Because hey, it's not... Love my mac and all, but stability and no virus-hazzle is not a good argument on people who used their Pentiums for web and email. On musicians stability is tha bomb, on emailers its not.
 
ender78 said:
I can only speak for myself as a potential buyer and why this Headless Mac would be for me.

- I'm in my mid 20's
- I have a fairly high end Home Theater setup
- My current PC is a 1.1 GHz Athlon (2-3 years old)
- I don't play games, I mainly surf the net / email
- I have a 20GB 4G iPod
- I have a 19" Dell LCD

I have debated in getting a Mac for years but could never justify the entry price. The eMac is it stands is UGLY. I haven't used a CRT in years. I type this at work on two 20" Dell LCDs in a Dual Head display. I've always liked the look and feel of OSX but it all comes down to price. At approx $500 for the machine (I would likely go with a model just above the baseline for an extra $100-200) I would love to try the MAC. If I really like the platform I may just get two (one for my desk, the other for the TV).

If Steve wants my money for a Duelie G5 down the road, he'll need to give me a taste for $500.
Click to expand...

If Apple doesn't come out with this $499 Mac, I would recommend you buy a used Mac on EBay to check out OSX. You can buy something older for very little money, and resell it later if you decide to upgrade.

That's what I did, and haven't looked back since (even bought an iBook as well.) I ain't using Windows again-
 
garethslee said:
5pm GMT.
Will I be able to follow the event on the web?
Click to expand...

There should be plenty of opportunity to be receive updates about the event. There are always leaks.
 
The only question left, is do I wait for the video, or read the forms first? I don't want to ruin the suprise, buut I really want the details.
 
Macrumors said:
Based on "highly reliable sources", Think Secret reports that Apple is expected to announce a $499 G4 iMac at Macworld Expo, probably 1.25GHz, with 256MB of RAM, a 40GB to 80GB hard drive, a Combo optical drive, USB 2.0, Firewire 400, 10/100Base-T Ethernet, a modem, and support for Airport Extreme, VGA, and DVI, packaged with Appleworks and a special version of iLife without iDVD.
Click to expand...

This would be a Windows killer for me:

* The new "low-end Mac" would plug into a HD TV monitor and provide:

+ Gaming capabilities on your TV for existing Mac games.

+ Digital video recording capability.

+ A place to synch to iTunes.

+ A place to view your photo collection on your TV.

+ Video conferencing on your TV set.

+ Connect to your stereo to play your iTunes collection throughout your home.

+ Web surfing on your TV set.

If they did this, who would want Bill Gates' Media Center PC that gives you the blue screen of death?
 
danr_97070 said:
This would be a Windows killer for me:

* The new "low-end Mac" would plug into a HD TV monitor and provide:

+ Gaming capabilities on your TV for existing Mac games.

+ Digital video recording capability.

+ A place to synch to iTunes.

+ A place to view your photo collection on your TV.

+ Video conferencing on your TV set.

+ Connect to your stereo to play your iTunes collection throughout your home.

+ Web surfing on your TV set.

If they did this, who would want Bill Gates' Media Center PC that gives you the blue screen of death?
Click to expand...
That is a tall order to fill. I would be happy with a low cost mac w/o a screen
:)
 
Chomolungma said:
I'm laughing with you and at me :D

May be I truly have ADD :D

-chomo
Click to expand...
Just to toss my hat into this whole Windows XP vs OS X in the Snappy™ department thing, I'll say this: in my experience, OS X is very close to XP once you hit the high end machines (dual G5s with at least a GB of RAM). That's when OS X becomes Snappy™, because let's face it, Quartz, even with the help of Quartz Extreme, is taxing. OS X is doing things now that Longhorn will do in a year (two? three?). On the low end, even with more RAM, OS X can't match XP for Snappy™.

HOWEVER (here's the other shoe), OS X is far more graceful under load than XP, especially when both are run on low-end hardware. Whereas switching out of a game on XP will cause my desktop to re-draw itself achingly slow on my Athlon 2000+ box with 512MB of RAM, my PowerBook (even before I upped its RAM) will pause for a second, hit black, and then fade to my desktop, which is all there. I can then immediately do other things. Windows XP will open a window before it draws it—OS X draws and then sizes up its windows. So it's a different design philosophy. Windows seeks to get SOMETHING (anything) on the screen as fast as possible. OS X tries to get things set before they get to the user. Under load, OS X scales much more gracefully than XP.

Just my 2 cents.
 
Cless said:
Just to toss my hat into this whole Windows XP vs OS X in the Snappy™ department thing, I'll say this: in my experience, OS X is very close to XP once you hit the high end machines (dual G5s with at least a GB of RAM). That's when OS X becomes Snappy™, because let's face it, Quartz, even with the help of Quartz Extreme, is taxing. OS X is doing things now that Longhorn will do in a year (two? three?). On the low end, even with more RAM, OS X can't match XP for Snappy™.

HOWEVER (here's the other shoe), OS X is far more graceful under load than XP, especially when both are run on low-end hardware. Whereas switching out of a game on XP will cause my desktop to re-draw itself achingly slow on my Athlon 2000+ box with 512MB of RAM, my PowerBook (even before I upped its RAM) will pause for a second, hit black, and then fade to my desktop, which is all there. I can then immediately do other things. Windows XP will open a window before it draws it—OS X draws and then sizes up its windows. So it's a different design philosophy. Windows seeks to get SOMETHING (anything) on the screen as fast as possible. OS X tries to get things set before they get to the user. Under load, OS X scales much more gracefully than XP.

Just my 2 cents.
Click to expand...

Exactly. True to my experiences too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back