Any chance of cheaper Powermacs?

[Eidorian]

Honestly in my opinion Willy S just got stuck in a bad revision with his iMac G5. I've had a long discussion with him in another thread. The biggest complain was the lack of Aperture/Core Image support that Apple gave on the FX5200 GPU and the LCD panel quality.

 

[Keebler]

Ok I think apple laptop are great.

I talking about the huge gap in power and upgradiblity bettween the Power mac and the iMac. the iMac has very little ablity to be upgraded (ram being the only real upgrade to it.) I think the best way to look at is take the iMac and put it in side a tower no monitor. That way you have the ability to add more internal hard drives, Upgrade the graphic card, Add PCI add on as needed.

And you are right the huge jump in price is also an issue. It almost a 1k jump to go from a 20in iMac to a cheapest power mac (after you add in a 20 in wide screen monitor of same quility was the one on the 20in) 1k is way to large of a jump. The power jump and the price jump is way to large.

Apple is leaving the entire area bettween Consumer and Pro out in the cold with there desktop. That is what I talking about middle ground. Right now Apple computer go from Low end to about middle (little short of it) and then up to very High end.
The are leaving the entire area from middle to very high end in the cold.



But to answer the person above me that killing the iMac in my book. Lock in middle of the road at best graphic card, No ablilty to add in PCI cards if something new comes out. No way to really add more hard drive space minus going to external drives which are aways slower than internal drives. Simplest answer is the CPU is a good middle ground. But the lack of everything else takes it down a lot. Start trueless headless iMac and give it the ability to be upgraded like a tower with add on cards and hard drives. That is the middle ground that is just lacking. It would of saved people who got screwed over by the orginal cards in the g5 not supporing core imanage if they could just upgrade them or a lot of other software. The lack of upgrading cuts heavily into a lifespan of a computer. For lets say 200 bucks a computer life span can go from 3 years to 5 years and still be just as funitional.

Thanks for clarifying timepass. I think the problem, and it's not your fault, is that you have seen the pc world so much and seen how it has been mostly a 'build-to' market. ie. most everyone builds their own machine and pcs have the ability to upgraded pretty much anything. that i get and understand. the issue is that apple, to my knowledge, has NEVER worked this way. they've always had just a few new machines each year specifically created.

That would be why it seems they don't cover this elusive middle ground of being able to upgrade the imac. It's just not apple's philosophy to create consumer machines for which you can upgrade the heck out of.

you can sure upgraded the powermac tenfold.

does that make sense? i don't think they'll ever chg.

 

[dr_lha]

Honestly in my opinion Willy S just got stuck in a bad revision with his iMac G5. I've had a long discussion with him in another thread. The biggest complain was the lack of Aperture/Core Image support that Apple gave on the FX5200 GPU and the LCD panel quality.

FX 5200 supports CoreImage, I know because my G5 has one of those in it. I guess the problem with Aperture is that the FX52000 only has 64Mb VRAM.

 

[Timepass]

Thanks for clarifying timepass. I think the problem, and it's not your fault, is that you have seen the pc world so much and seen how it has been mostly a 'build-to' market. ie. most everyone builds their own machine and pcs have the ability to upgraded pretty much anything. that i get and understand. the issue is that apple, to my knowledge, has NEVER worked this way. they've always had just a few new machines each year specifically created.

That would be why it seems they don't cover this elusive middle ground of being able to upgrade the imac. It's just not apple's philosophy to create consumer machines for which you can upgrade the heck out of.

you can sure upgraded the powermac tenfold.

does that make sense? i don't think they'll ever chg.

Yeah neither do I which is the reason you will never see me owning an apple desktop. I enjoy home building so that going to kill the Power mac off the bat since I can make a better one for quite a bit cheaper (500-1k or more). Laptops have never been able to upgraded so I am fine with that. Now if the iMac was put into a tower of some type it would be a much better value. That issue is a huge turn off for a lot of people like me. We like apple laptops and are willing to get them and do buy them. But we will not buy there desktops because they are so badly gimped and limited.
Orginally apple currently way was good. It only been in more recent times that the move has gone from not really having much way to upgraded to adding a lot of add on is common place. Apple I think seem to fail at making that transition.

But then again apple doesnt seem to target these people. Apple cares about looking pretty and all that. We are the ones that care about funitionally first, looks 2nd so apple looks get very few if any points from there looks. A good example is when people here bash a PC case because it looks plan. I look at it and see hmm it has quite a bit of room it for me to add stuff on and to work in. It looks very funitional to me and that all that matters. (Power mac Case inside looks good. I dont like the lack of extrnal 5.25 inch and 3.5in bays but besides that I think it is a great case)

2nd I hate all in one designs a lot because that what a laptop is. If something goes wrong on it I cannt just replace that part and keep most of it causing my replacement cost to go higher. (like computer needs to be replaced but the monitor still good. I am out the monitor because I can not reuse it same way the other way). I like having basic upgrades to my desktops.

Lastly I am part of the growing number of people who homebuilt there towers and you will be admazed at how much you learn just by building your own computer. I enjoy that a lot more than buying from dell. I like choosing which areas I can cut cost and which areas to increase cost in. And as an added bonus I once the thing is booted and has everything installed they general have better reliablity than all other OEMs out there (including apple). Since most of the problems that I ran into in building computers came in up in stuff that would of been noticed during the stress test back at manufactoring of lets say a Dell so that is the only time I had to replace hardware. Once the system up and running I tend to trust them a lot more. Better parts in general. (which is the reason I love apple laptops they general have better parts than other makers)

 

[generik]

Thanks for clarifying timepass. I think the problem, and it's not your fault, is that you have seen the pc world so much and seen how it has been mostly a 'build-to' market. ie. most everyone builds their own machine and pcs have the ability to upgraded pretty much anything. that i get and understand. the issue is that apple, to my knowledge, has NEVER worked this way. they've always had just a few new machines each year specifically created.

That would be why it seems they don't cover this elusive middle ground of being able to upgrade the imac. It's just not apple's philosophy to create consumer machines for which you can upgrade the heck out of.

you can sure upgraded the powermac tenfold.

does that make sense? i don't think they'll ever chg.

Apple's Philosophy is not a religion.

Charging a premium to use discrete components that can be had easily like graphics cards? Please!

 

[THX1139]

...They are missing the entire part bettween mid and high end. The jump bettween the iMac to the Power mac is huge. The jump bettween the mac mini and the iMac is not that large...

I think you are missing something. You forget about the Laptop line. When you consider that, if fills up the niche quite nicely. I don't think there is a huge market (Apple) for low-cost, mid-power desktops. Most folks who need decent power go with a laptop solution instead of being chained to the desktop. The only reason I would buy a desktop is to high-end work and for that, I would need a PowerMac. The middle ground is always going to be filled with the laptop line. Why buy a mid-powered desktop if you can get the same thing with a laptop and have portablity?

 

[MacTruck]

Computers always get cheaper, but not by much. My titanium powerbook was $3000 new. Now you can get alot better config for $2000.

 

[Eidorian]

FX 5200 supports CoreImage, I know because my G5 has one of those in it. I guess the problem with Aperture is that the FX52000 only has 64Mb VRAM.

The FX5200 barely supports Core Image and some Radeon 9600's out there have only 64 MB of VRAM.

Aperture is heavily dependent on Core Image for it's editing and the FX5200 doesn't cut it. I was surprised to see it being supported normally under OS X.

 

[Timepass]

I think you are missing something. You forget about the Laptop line. When you consider that, if fills up the niche quite nicely. I don't think there is a huge market (Apple) for low-cost, mid-power desktops. Most folks who need decent power go with a laptop solution instead of being chained to the desktop. The only reason I would buy a desktop is to high-end work and for that, I would need a PowerMac. The middle ground is always going to be filled with the laptop line. Why buy a mid-powered desktop if you can get the same thing with a laptop and have portablity?

no I am not. Laptop line again lacks upgradiblitily of a desktop or the hard drive space of a desktop. I am only looking at the desktop line. Apple laptops are great. It the desktops that have problems

 

[localghost]

most of the desktop market is about sub 1500 boxes and apple ignores it completely.

and it's NOT good versus cheap - just because they put slower components doesn't mean the whole design suddenly becomes crap. they already had the old single core G5 mobos, just keep selling them ... .

they did have a 1500 PM btw (last G4 revision i think).

and while we are at it when the design the new intel mobos give the PM a f***ing 3d HDD. putting the digital lifestyle on your agenda and making the customer pay >2 grand for everything with more than one HDD is ridiculous!

 

[Willy S]

I think I´ll build a fast and cheap PC for my power hungry apps, but still use iMac for iLife and other stuff that is not available for PC.

Then when Apple comes with a powerful but not very expensive headless Mac, I´ll upgrade to it, at least the rev B.....don´t want to buy more rev A.

 

[dr_lha]

most of the desktop market is about sub 1500 boxes and apple ignores it completely.

Funny, last time I looked the Mac Mini was a sub 1500 desktop box. Hell it even comes with an upgradeable Dual Core CPU.

Yeah, I know, the Mini has a crap GFX chip. *sigh*

 

[Willy S]

Funny, last time I looked the Mac Mini was a sub 1500 desktop box. Hell it even comes with an upgradeable Dual Core CPU.

Yeah, I know, the Mini has a crap GFX chip. *sigh*

Yeah!

The hard drive can be upgraded to 7200RPM..and laptop ram can be found cheaply as Canadaram pointed out....but...just the damn graphics.....soooo close!