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eMac and iMac EOL'd?
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Dont Hurt Me said:
I agree with you that speed is the primary factor, but I think there's one other factor that not many people have mentionned. A big difference between the CRT iMacs and the newer stuff is the transition from CRT to LCD. Consider that the price difference in the store between standalone 17" CRTs and LCDs is several hundred dollars. That's money that could have gone into better video cards, CPUs, or even price cuts.
~Shard~ said:This is a good point. It seems like every time a new version of Windows is released, the minimum system requiremenets is increased as well, the size of code increases enormously, and the OS overall runs slower. A PC which could run Win95 in the day perfectly fine could not handle WinXP. However, you look at OSX, especially Panther, and what do you get? An OS that runs on older hardware just fine, is not bloatware, and it actually makes your system FASTER. Wow, what a novel concept for an OS...
While partly true, this gets blown out of proportion sometimes on these forums. Going from Windows 95 to Windows XP is a similar jump as from going Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X. Windows XP is built around the NT kernel, which is a much more modern and robust core...and that kind of robustness comes at a cost. We all experienced exactly the same thing with the Classic->OS X transition. Machines which ran OS 9 perfectly were suddenly slow when faced with the extra services, security and robustness of OS X. I would have to dispute your claim that OS X makes Mac systems run faster. Certainly, Panther was faster than Jaguar, and Apple is doing an excellent job of continuing to improve OS X. But OS X requires heavier system overheads to achieve the same level of performance. Install OS X on a 64MB G3/233 system (if you can, you might need to use something like XPostFacto), and compare performance to OS 9. It's gonna be slow. Yet the G3/233 was a perfectly acceptable system under OS 9.
There's nothing wrong with that...it's progress. Moden operating systems are more complex, responsible for more tasks, are bundled with more services, and allow you to be more productive than older OSes. It all comes at a hardware cost, and this is true for both Windows XP and Mac OS X.
One other thing...yes, Windows XP does have a lot of gratuitous eye-candy which can slow down a marginal system (sound like another OS we all know and love?). However, with a simple click of a preference, Windows XP can revert to the old Windows 2000 GUI style, which is simpler and runs faster. This is something which is not easily achieved with OS X without resorting to 3rd party hacks. How do I turn of window resize animations? How can I use outline-dragging for resizing windows?
Remember that it's just as easy for a PC owner to max their 5-year old system out with RAM, just like a G3 or G4 owner can. Lots of RAM makes Windows XP and Windows 2000 run well, just like it makes OS X run well. A 5 year old PC (say a Pentium II 400MHz, for argument's sake) will be capable of being expanded to probably to 1.5GB RAM (average PC motherboard having 3 DIMM slots). Chuck in an extra 512MB of cheap RAM, and that PII/400MHz will cope just as well with Windows XP as a 5-year old Mac will cope with OS X, when appropriately loaded up with RAM.
And don't forget that the PC owner has a wide range of cheap AGP graphics cards, motherboard swaps, and CPU upgrades at their disposal, for relatively small amounts of money. The Mac upgrade market is still expensive.
Be careful about making these types of "OS X runs great on my 5 year old Mac, WinXP sucks on my 5 year old PC" comparison...it's flawed.
Please note that I am not disputing that your older Mac will run OS X at an acceptable level...I had a PowerMac 7600 upgraded with a 500MHz G3 CPU card and 384MB RAM...and it ran OS X 10.2 and MS Office v.X at an acceptable pace...not shockingly fast of course, but enough to get serious Excel and Word work done. And that's a base system which was released in 1995/1996. Just don't discount the x86 world of being capable of the same thing.
~Shard~ said:I dunno - because of people like you?
W00t! Nice reply there, Shard.
Perhaps a more accurate reason why sales are tumbling down is because people put an incorrect, inappropriate and misguided importance and weighting into speed. But alas, this is the way the majority of the population thinks - hmm, 95% I suppose, the equivalent of PC marketshare? Nah, less than that, there are intelligent PC users on these forums as well...
It's the same mentality that leads people to buy a big block Ford over, say, a car that would do everything they needed it to do, while also being better built, less prone to maintenance problems, and with better long-term economy. Oh, look at the pretty numbers! 250 horsepower means that this car is better than that one, no matter that the other car is rated safer, has a better anti-theft and navigation system, and doesn't drop pistons as often.
Yes, car analogies suck, but I think that one actually works.
oingoboingo said:
But it actually takes a lot more upgrades on your 5-year-old windows box to run xp than it does your 5 year old mac.
Mac: add more ram, maybe upgrade hard drive
PC: add more ram, upgrade hard drive, get new processor, and the x-factor: will all of my legacy hardware work with XP?
A lot more complicated with a PC. Microsoft only guarenteed compatibility with machines buit for ME. On my 5 year old pcs with RAM and processor upgrades, we had problems with our USB card and had to reinstall the network cards and sound cards to work under XP. It is pretty comforting for a mac user to know that if you have the required RAM and hard drive space you will be able to upgrade to this OS with no problem.
Whether or not the speed is acceptable to you is another ballgame. A PC with 800mhz AMD, 384 RAM and Windows XP runs it pretty slowly to me, but a 900Mhx AMD 768 RAM feels the same as it did under win98.
So from my personal experience, the 5-year hardware support of OS X is far superior than legacy hardware support in windows.
And that is why your mac last longer, less work to get the new stuff to work out. Of course most people don't bother to upgrade their OS until they get a new computer...except for apple users.
jade said:
Agreed. I jumped my 4.5-year-old G3 PB from OS9 to 10.3.3 in an hour - which was all CD installation time (only a few minutes worth of my personal time in terms of interaction). No upgrades. It runs fine. Fast? No. But it all works. No "where's that driver diskette", etc. On a 6GB disk.
Last month, while on vacation, I upgraded my parent's 4.75-year-old Dell from Windows 98 to Windows 2K (because I had a licensed version of that, and not of XP). It took me forever, and I'm still not sure all their peripherals (printer, scanner, mouse, etc.) work correctly, and I needed to buy them more RAM, and the disk isn't really big enough at 10GB.
Exactly, Windows is a huge task to upgrade from Win98 to Win2000 on older hardware. It takes hours and then downloading drivers. Plus hours of patch downloading. It is worthwhile to just purchase a new machine if the hardware is over 3 years old. My 4 year Mac only took an hour and I didn't have to purchase a new network card, memory, etc. The non upgradable iMac could handle the O/S upgrade.
You know, ethically, I need to retract something I said before. I'm turning into a Mac fanatic, blind to its flaws. I wrote "jumped my 4.5-year-old G3 PB from OS9 to 10.3.3" and made it sound like it was so easy to do so automatically. Like I just put in a CD and "poof" there was 10.3.3. I apologize for these misleading statements which come across as so anti-Windows. In all truth and fairness, I did need to run Software Update a couple of times, which did add perhaps as many as 12 mouse clicks. I hope no Windows fans were offended by my obvious omission.
BornAgainMac said:
This is one reason that PCs are treated the way they are, and looked at as something that ought to be bought so frequently. It benefits Microsoft and the hardware vendors, both, because you have to at least buy parts in many cases, or a whole new machine. For the vast segment of the market that can't or doesn't build its own, they're also buying up the licensed copies of Windows that are sold to OEMs... It's a giant funnel, and they're holding the jar underneath, catching all the cash that keeps pouring through.
jade said:
I generally agree with what you're saying. However to keep things balanced, I would have to point out that Apple does not officially support the beige G3/233 and G3/266 machines under OS X 10.3...and these machines were on sale up until the 1st of January 1999, making them less than 5 years old when 10.3 was available.
I know that's nit-picking, but so many x86 vs. Mac discussions get way too one-sided in these forums. Apple is guilty of the some of the same sins of the x86/Microsoft world from time to time.
The reason Pcs were bought frequently is because the technology grew by leaps and bounds while we had G4 that went from 500 mhz 5 years ago the to the 1.33 ghz they are still selling today. in other words why bother if there isnt no progress. in the Pc world cpu's went from 500 to 3 gigs. Pcs had advancement in hardware we didnt.oingoboingo said:
Dont Hurt Me said:
Part of that advancement was the need for it, though. If you don't need new hardware to run the next version of the OS, then you're not going to be buying as much without having some kind of complex driving you. The other side is, of course, the fact that MS did make some better business decision that Apple in the early days of Windows. Technologically, it's pretty clear to most people around here that the mac is the superior product, but that the x86 world has a greater choice in hardware.
No matter how many times I explain it, you don't understand why Apple doesn't have 9800 XTs. I keep doing it, so that people aren't swayed by your poorly worded and poorly reasoned arguments, and so that there's always a voice opposing the misunderstanding that you're spreading. You, DHM, are the avatar of FUD.
Apple needs a default RAM of 512 in all models. No PC comes with 128MB. XP would gag.BillyBunter said:
paulsecic said:
I agree. Such a move should allow Apple to supply ram a bit cheaper because they are not buying the smaller sticks (no 128s, and maybe even minimal 256s). This will be doubly true for G5s with their twin ram arrangements. All but the lowest G5 should come stock with a gig
thatwendigo said:
Don't be so hard on him. DHM just wants Apple to have a top-of-the-line consumer machine.
When the G3 iMac first came out, it was performance-competitive with the top-of-the-line PowerMac. Sure, it had little upgradability or expandability. Upgradability and expandability are reasons people buy a tower.
IMHO, the current situation is only a temporary aberration. G5 iMacs are coming out. We just need to be a little more patient. In the meantime, there's little point in making excuses for the current iMacs. It is a point of fact that they are not selling well. It is also a point of fact that many people are happy with them.
aswitcher said:
Yeah, because they're doing such a good job of giving us the best deal they can on RAM now...
paulsecic said:
While I agree, I would add that OS X does run on 128MB - poorly, but it runs. XP either won't or chokes more at that level.
jsw said:
I agree on the XP statement, but no matter what the OS you're using is, the more RAM the better performance you'll see. As a result, there is no reason in "this day and age" for Macs to ship with 128 MB RAM - no matter who you are, what Mac you buy, and what you're going to be using it for, you're most likely going to upgrade it to at least 256 MB if not 512 MB right off the bat. Me, I bought my 1.25 GHz G4 17" iMac from the Apple store, customized it to ship with 1 512MB stick and then added another stick of 512 after I received it - it was a no-brainer for me.
cubist said:
No, DHM wants Apple to make a top-of-the-line gaming machine, and then sell it to him for something that would make buying your own parts and building the box look ridiculous. Have you not been reading his arguments? He wants a G5, Radeon 9800XT, the whole Apple ASIC and motherboard (which are still more advanced than just about anything on the PC's desktop market), and all kinds of other things for a price point of $1200. That's, to put it mildly, insane.
Product lines changes, and so do form factors. The original iMac was made out of laptop parts, using a chip that was cooler that what he have now, that is less bus-dependent for speed (more heat), less memory dependent for speed (also more heat), and less bound to I/O speeds (guess what?). I keep slamming this point home, but you don't see top of the line gaming machines in a half-foot hemisphere... How is that "defending the iMac" as anything other than an engineering feat that isn't really matched on the other side?
Excuses? I make explanations. The G5 and its subsystems take nine fans to cool quietly in a tower case that's larger than the G4, yet you people think it's going to be simple to shoehorn it into a form factor that is something like an eight the size. When it comes to being reasonable, I'll side with physics and economics, rather than the demands of someone who doesn't even bother to look up and comprehend information, like the already-labeled avatar of FUD.
thatwendigo said:
I agree but I think there is a general expectation that the G5 iMac will have a new likely larger form factor, running a single lower clocked smaller and cooler G5. If that is the case then I still think they can get something out this year that will be a decent jump up from the 1.33 G4...better bus, better ram, better graphics card... but will it cut it as a half decent games machine...I dont know
aswitcher said:
I'm willing to concede that a larger form factor could probably hold a G5 well enough to create a lower clocked, sincgle-processor machine. However, for what DHM wants, he's better off going ahead and buying that Athlon he keeps ranting about. Single G5s are better than x86 chips at some things, but gaming isn't one of them, for the variety of factors that I and others have gone on about.
I'm sorry, but there is basically no chance that a $1200 mac is going to do what he wants. The parts just don't exist, and even if they did, Apple needs the margins to survive.
thatwendigo said:
Well I defer to your understanding of the chip/game issues. My loose understanding is that 1 chip is almost as good as 2 for gaming, so it really comes down to clock speed and graphics card, and ram of course.
For me cost is an issue but I think a higher performance more costly iMac in there new line at least try and close some middle ground to the G5PMs would be a smart move. Sure its going to be expensive, but still smaller and cheaper than forking out for a real G5PM and screen. An iMac set up like the single 1.6s first were, 4 ram slots, good bus, graphics card options etc could work. A semi-pro machine for games, heavy graphics, longevity etc
Even nicer if it was a real cut down 1.6, with user access and with a PCI card or two for the semi-pros with their desires. The mini-G5PM
aswitcher said:
It has more to do with graphics cards, APIs for the programming of the games (we don't have DirectX, and most PC games only do a pittance job on OpenGL), the inefficient ports that we usually get (through little fault of the programmers, it's hard coming across with games), and the way that the chips have been tuned.
The machine already exists, sans monitor, as the lowen PowerMac. You're not going to see a G5 that costs much less than that, and especially not with a built-in LCD like the iMac has. Really, is $1,845 all that much to pay, for the machine that you're talking about? That's what a 1.6 with 1 GB of RAM and a Radeon 9600 costs, if you cut out the modem and downgrade to a combo drive. When the revisions come, I'm fully expecting the bottom end machine to be somewhere between 2.0 and 2.4, and quite possibly a dualie.
Maybe then, with the prices on componenets most likely sliding down some as IBM picks up production of higher-rate parts, we might see an iMac that starts to be what DHM wants. My guess, when we see them, is that the iMacs will spec something like this:
15" LCD
1.6 970FX @ 800FSB with PowerTune active
256MB PC3200
GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
80 GB SATA
SuperDrive
AE and Bluetooth ready
$1499
17" LCD
1.8 970FX @ 900FSB with PowerTune active
256MB PC3200
GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
120 GB SATA
SuperDrive
AE and Bluetooth ready
$1899
20" LCD
2.0 970FX @ 1000FSB with PowerTune active
512MB PC3200
Radeon 9600
120 GB SATA
SuperDrive
AE and Bluetooth ready
$2299
Even nicer if it was a real cut down 1.6, with user access and with a PCI card or two for the semi-pros with their desires. The mini-G5PM
No, I think that would be a terrible dip into Apple's past, where the product line grew too much. If you need expandability, the towers are a very viable option. If you don't need it, then you don't need a tower.
I'm still waiting for someone to show how, compared to the iMacs, a low-end tower is a bad buy for anything other than space reasons.
thatwendigo said:
Can't be done. Assuming current models and prices, the low-end tower is a better deal. Teamed with a CRT, it's cheaper than the 20" iMac.
jsw said:
I agree with that one - pretty much a no-brainer.
So here's something wild and "out there" for you to ponder over. What if the G5 iMac IS released soon, however Apple changes it's platform/product line-up such that eMacs become the new low-end consumer model, the PowerMacs stay as the high-end pro model, but the iMac shifts into a mid-user model, more of a digital hub? They could sport most of what's in a 1.6 G5 PM right now, with of course limited upgradeablility, and end up being more expensive, as a new "mid-range" model - let's say over $2000 for arguement's sake. What about that?
Just some wild, crazy speculation, I doubt it will happen myself - just always like thinking a little bit outside of the box and stirring up the pot...