Apple Q3 Conference Call Results

[appleface]

Enter the G5 iMac. Will the new G5 iMac be usable with a 23 inch Cinema HD Display? (1920 x 1200) Will Tiger OSX allow ElGato to use an iMac G5 to present full frame rate full resolution HDTV? (1920 x 1080)

That is what I am watching for.

I seriously doubt a G5 iMac would have any built in TV capability.

it does seem very unapple to allow a mac to be used to watch television, and i would also be surprised if the imac would have built in TV capabilities. at the same time, it seems like that is the way apple's technology is headed: wireless speakers, displays capable of HD, new quicktime.

what if tiger had a little tv icon in the dock. then i could check my email during commercials. (all of you tivo peeps can reply with comments like "what commercials?" now)

 

[iomar]

I can't wait for the new G5 iMacs!

 

[aswitcher]

eMac - discontinued

Then again - maybe not. Guess we'll just have to see what happens in Paris.

eMac will not be discontinued. Sales are too good and the new iMac is quite a different machine in a very different price range.

 

[dongmin]

iMac G5 1.6MHz
Aluminum case
15" lcd
256MB RAM
60G hdd
Combo drive
Standard w/BT and Airport Extreme, Standard w/wireless mouse and keyboard
$999

Sorry but that is wishful thinking. The low-end Power Mac goes for $1999, sans monitor. The 970fx chip itself may be cheaper than a G4 (which I actually doubt considering the poor yield) but a G5 machine has a lot more going into it than just the chip. The bus, memory, new PCI, Hypertransport, digital audio, all those extra fans and sensors--these are just a few of the things that puts the G5 system in a different price bracket than a G4 machine.

The current low-end G4 iMac (now discontinued) has the worst specs of any Apple desktop and yet it still goes for $1299. Follow? Good styling and small form-factors cost money. And so do nice LCDs. I'd be shocked if the G5 iMac started at anything lower than $1499. I just hope that Apple's reading another new desktop machine to fill the low-end.

 

[Windowlicker]

So, they leave money around for possible aquisitions. Who do you think (other than google) would Apple be interested in aquiring? That's a LOT of money to spend. What do you all think?

Adobe? "No more future Photoshop versions for Windows." That would be hilarious.. first logic, then adobe, then what? they don't need much more because they already have FCP.

not sure if this wouldbe any good though. and adobe is worth a lot more than 5 billion I believe. correct me if i'm wrong.

 

[Windowlicker]

A song is a poor unit of measurement. How many "songs" are there in Beethoven or Mahler's 9th Symphony?

I know that pop music is iTunes' best seller, but it's not the only thing they sell. I buy audiobooks, opera, and symphonies, which tend to be more expensive and less easily divided into neat three minute Clear-Channel chunks.

at last someone sees it like I do! i'm so glad! people tend to ask me "how many songs do you have on your computer"? well, I have to answer "around 2000". But the fact is that in the song length that those people are mostly talking about I would have around 6000-7000 songs on my computer, because the average length of my tracks are around 10 minutes.

 

[Mord]

Obviously this is why no laptop has hard drives or optical drives - if you sat in a chair and it wasn't exactly flat it would destroy the drives.

I guess it's also why there aren't any portable CD players - no way of keeping the portable player exactly horizontal or vertical.

And it's certainly why *nobody* would *ever* make a portable music player with a hard drive - it would destroy itself if the player was tilted.


In truth:

1. hard drives can function at any angle and orientation

2. CDs can run at any angle as well - a simple magnetic clamp is commonly used to hold the disc in place (for example, the Sony DNS707F "Sports CD Walkman" http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INT...SwfRMo54u6HRzOacg8Wt-Dk4I=?ProductSKU=DNS707F)

those hard drives are portable hard drives there is a big difference in schock tollerences and angled operation even in portable drived it's not a good idea to change the oriantation of the thing when useing a cd my ibook makes a horrible noise as it changes oriantation with a cd i.

that cd player is desighned to be able to be moved around allot and the same for 1.8' HD's but not desktop components like a 5.25" optical drive and a standard 3.5" HD sure they would work but there lifetime is sevearly shortened, apple could use non standard parts but then we could never upgrade the hard drive or the optical drive without spending a small fourtune steve said it himself when explianing the design of the old imac a componets behind the screen imac could not work because of the fact that optical drives and Hard drives need to be at 90 degree angles, and beside that it would wrek havok with the thermal dynamics.

 

[CmdrLaForge]

This is all great news for Apple!



Speaking of flavors, since
• we now know there will be iMac G5s, and
• the new "regular" iPods are reportedly going to have different colors, according to Think Secret

can we expect flavors to come back to iMacs? I think a lot of people liked being able to choose their computer's color.

Yep, I think we will see the colors back in the consumer line. I guess we see colors on both iMac and iBook. I think it would be great. And I assume the same colors as current iPod mini

 

[CmdrLaForge]

If you assume the form factor will be similar in space to the now old iMac then the only issue left to solve will be power. The other big problem Heat disipation will have been taken care of. You can think of an iMac as a laptop with a really odd formfactor with one exception. It will always be plugged in! No need to worry about battery life. The new powerbooks I am sure are in the works, but if they change the imac form to a bigger box for cooling you can bet powerbooks are still quite a while off. Power/Battery life issues will need to be addressed and might be significant, but if Dell can get a 3GHZ crapium with 2 hrs battery life apple will better them and be the first 64 bit usable laptop. (there have been a few attemps to put Athlon 64 into a "laptop", but turned into a desktop with a flat screen welded on and a battery life of about 5 mins.)

The iMac with a Pizza box design will be like a notebook, just bigger with 20" screens and not portable.

I wish they would bring back the cube.

 

[Windowlicker]

pretty off topic, but concerning my last post:

WOOT! I JUST REALIZED THEY HAVE LONDON ELEKTRICITY ON iTMS!!

 

[Mord]

(which I actually doubt considering the poor yield)

the yeilds are not bad considering a change in prosess size and belive me they are allot better than motorola's yeilds

 

[AidenShaw]

but not desktop components like a 5.25" optical drive and a standard 3.5" HD sure they would work but there lifetime is sevearly shortened.

Please support this conjecture with some facts.... Statements by Steve Jobs do not count as "facts".

A quote from a disk drive installation guide warning about not mounting the drive at an angle would be good.... (Hint - don't bother looking at Maxtor and Western Digital installation guides, they have no mention of orientation.)

Did you know that a Sun Ultra 10 workstation mounts the drive upside-down (circuit board on top)?

Of course you would not be able to use a standard tray-loading CD drive on a tilting panel IFF the panel could swing through the vertical plane. (The old clear plastic displays would work, they can't tilt forward through the vertical plane.)

The point about the CD is that there's proven technology out there for securing the disc - it doesn't need to be fixed in a horizontal or vertical plane.

Another tilted CD:

 

[Wardofsky]

If I can recall back to when the latest iMac was introduced Steve talked about how most people would presume to make an iMac with an LCD screen would just "chop off the back" and so put most of the drives vertically.

I think he said the performance of the drives would be reduced. I'm not that technical but I suppose verticle drives pose some problems.

 

[Trekkie]

Sorry but that is wishful thinking. The low-end Power Mac goes for $1999, sans monitor. The 970fx chip itself may be cheaper than a G4 (which I actually doubt considering the poor yield)

One comment. On the doubting of the lower price than G4. Yield rates would have nothing to do with IBM's price to Apple, because that would have been negotiated up front via a contract. IBM would have presented prices over time and would be held to that if Apple's purchasers are worth their job at all. If Apple's guys were really good IBM would be paying 'penalties' in discounts now if they aren't at their committed ship levels.

Just my $0.02. I could be wrong, but if I ran the business that's how I would have approached it.

 

[AidenShaw]

Right, big mistake to mount drives vertically

I think he said the performance of the drives would be reduced. I'm not that technical but I suppose verticle drives pose some problems.

 

[Wardofsky]

xRAID[img][/QUOTE]

Optically [IMG]http://dave.thefotokid.com/forums/images/smiles/icon_surprised.gif

 

[AidenShaw]

Optically

o 24X Combo DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive
o mount horizontally or vertically
o 3 year warranty

o $596

Dell GX270 SFF
________________

o up to 12X DVD+RW (20 different optical options)
o mount tower (vertical) or desktop (horizontal)
o dual 64-bit Xeon processors (EM64T) (up to 3.6 GHz, 1 MiB L2, 800 MHz FSB)
o DDR2 ECC memory (up to 16 GiB)
o PCI Express x16 bus (up to 4X faster than AGP 8x)
o nVidia Quadro PCI Express graphics
o 3 year warranty

o $1753

 

[Frobozz]

Fantastic News

This really is about the best financial news Apple has had in years. For the 3Q it's the best in 8 years. What makes me so hopeful that Apple will be increasing market share is that they sold so briskly. I think they're really gaining some ground and that we are seeing the wavefront of people giving Apple a look when they buy a new computer.

And hoorah for the iPod sales. I only know 1 person in my grup of friends with an mp3 player that is not an iPod. Almost all the others have a mini or a regular iPod... we're talking like 80% of my friends. And these people are 20 somethings and 30 somethings, not kids.

I'd also like to thank Apple for the outrageous amount of profit I've made on their stock. Bought in the 16's almost 2 years ago now and sold off prior to hitting $30. Wish I held it now!

 

[roadwarrior]

I've yet to figure out why people do based on my experiences. I've yet to have one last over a year and it's not like I wing it around my head like a bolo every day.

My Microsoft trackball lasted about 6 months before it simply stopped paying attention to which way you rolled the ball. The lights still respond to movement, and the buttons still work, but no cursor movement at all.

edit: I won't buy any trackball but a Logitech anymore, but I do love Microsoft's Natural keyboards, especially the Pro.

 

[Master Windu]

Price to low!

iMac G5 1.6MHz
Aluminum case
15" lcd
256MB RAM
60G hdd
Combo drive
Standard w/BT and Airport Extreme, Standard w/wireless mouse and keyboard
$999

iMac G5 1.8MHz
Same as above plus:
20" lcd
512 MB RAM
160G hdd
$1799

eMac - discontinued

Then again - maybe not. Guess we'll just have to see what happens in Paris.

No way the new iMac will do more for less than the current price line. I think your computer specs will be close to the mark although maybe 200 Mhz low accross the board. I think prices will be 300 - 400 more than you listed. Not that I would be unhappy with a lower price!

 

[~Shard~]

No way the new iMac will do more for less than the current price line. I think your computer specs will be close to the mark although maybe 200 Mhz low accross the board. I think prices will be 300 - 400 more than you listed. Not that I would be unhappy with a lower price!

I agree. This is the thing I’m afraid lots of people are going to be complaining about when the G5 iMacs come out. They’ve been complaining and whining that the iMac needs a G5, (not that it doesn't of course), yet when it is finally announced, and at a higher price, the same people are going to complain and whine about the price being increased. I’m not saying that it will happen for sure, but I definitely would not be surprised, (and I somewhat expect), the new iMacs to be a little more pricey than the current ones. It makes sense due to the G5 and all the hardware modifications/upgrades that are required. I see the iMac moving into more of a mid-level solution, with the eMac becoming the only true consumer model and the PowerMac of course being the high end pro model. The G5 iMac will fit nicely between the 2, however this will come at a greater cost, which I don’t think some people realize. You can't have your cake and eat it too. I can just hear the complaints coming in already...

 

[Doctor Q]

They’ve been complaining and whining that the iMac needs a G5, (not that it doesn't of course), yet when it is finally announced, and at a higher price, the same people are going to complain and whine about the price being increased.

Yes, I'm a whiner about the iMac. But instead of a complaint that the iMac was lacking a G5, my whine has been that the G4 iMac was overpriced for its position in the Mac product line. If, instead of replacing G4 iMacs with G5 iMacs for the same or higher prices, Apple kept the G4 iMacs too and dropped their prices, it would be better for me personally. But I realize it won't happen. I'm in the market for a low-end Mac with an LCD monitor as a second home system. My previous iMac choice was overpriced. My new iMac choices may be too expensive for me. Maybe we need LCD eMacs?

 

[joeboy_45101]

I think Apple needs to do something to save itself for the back to school sales. Introducing the iMac G5 at the end of August and shipping in September is too late for most of the new school year sales. They should put a lot of backing into their eMac line, this could help their sales in the upcoming months until the arrival of the iMac G5. The eMac is a capable little machine but they are not marketing it enough to most suitable audience, college students.

I think Apple needs to pump up the eMac line with a 1.5Ghz G4 and upgraded Graphics plus offer a discount of something like a choice between a free RAM upgrade, free Airport Extreme Card upgrade, or money back when you purchase an iPod with the system. They also need to be pushing their portable lines like crazy, also with an included special offer.

 

[jackieonasses]

I think Apple needs to do something to save itself for the back to school sales. Introducing the iMac G5 at the end of August and shipping in September is too late for most of the new school year sales. They should put a lot of backing into their eMac line, this could help their sales in the upcoming months until the arrival of the iMac G5. The eMac is a capable little machine but they are not marketing it enough to most suitable audience, college students.

I think Apple needs to pump up the eMac line with a 1.5Ghz G4 and upgraded Graphics plus offer a discount of something like a choice between a free RAM upgrade, free Airport Extreme Card upgrade, or money back when you purchase an iPod with the system. They also need to be pushing their portable lines like crazy, also with an included special offer.

it doesnt matter what they put in an emac. kids like design. and the emac looks horriable.

 

[joeboy_45101]

I think that if Apple did make an aluminum iMac G5 with the logic board and drives mounted behind the display it would be ugly, it would just look like Apple's version of the Profile 4. This design is ugly. I would rather they kept the current body style but replacing the plastice body parts with brushed aluminum. They don't have to completely redesign the damn thing everytime they upgrade it. Look at the PowerMac it still has the same outlined body that the old B/W G3's had: tower, with side access, and the handle bars. You could break the iMac design down into: dome base, adjustable neck, and flatscreen(removable, maybe)