eMac Discontinued?

[bigandy]

people should stop bashing something because they don't like it.

my university still uses a lot of these and the students love them as a stepping stone from owning a PC to getting a Mac. not only that but they're better than what they usually get- buy it, keep it until it dies, get a new one. they're more robust than a hummer. whereas the equivalent PC - get it, replace the bits that break in the first few weeks, keep re-imaging the OS with all the new updates, etc etc. what a load of work.

apart from me and my friends working in the computing department, who've got nice shiny 20" iMac G5s to play with when we're not using our PowerBooks, all the students (even the mac bashing ones) are genuinely impressed by the eMac.

i say long live it!

 

[AP_piano295]

and by that you mean that some 60 people not percent, had problems with their crt's. And of course, the only reason that apple ever made it available to non edu customers in the first place is because there was a grey market for emacs. ie, the demand for emacs was so great that apple needed to respond and make it available for the masses.

some failure.

and before it gets said again that the mini's HD is as good as the eMacs...

emac: 7200RPM

I've said it before (in about every emac bashing thread that I've posted in), and I'll say it again: the only people I know who bash the emacs are people who have never used it. These people will say it was slow and ugly, while happily scooping up mac mini's.

Oh, and BTW, it may not look drop dead gorgeous sitting on a stand suspended in mid-air, but when put in a proper desk corner, it looks quite nice. I get compliments from just about all of my windows using friends when they see my emac. It may not have the standard apple panache, but it looks worlds better than a dell...

Exactly
emacs look sweet especially from the front. Its like a single flat pannel floating mid air and I really like it. My sister has hers sitting on a glass desk and I say it looks sweet every bit as nice as an imac just different like in the above post big does not mean ugly and I hope apple fixes their mistake soon.

 

[nagromme]

My eMac gets lots of compliments. Mostly they say "wow, awsome monitor! where's the computer?" 😛

Not bad for $799. Or... $999 since I bought one of the first ones 🙂

 

[LucasLand]

emac was underrated!

i owned two emacs and i loved them. I never had any problems and truly enjoyed them. Eventually I was really impressed with the new iMac G5 and was contemplating getting one, then the mac mini came out. I hated the mac mini. The specs weren't as good and i hated having to buy a monitor and keyboards. None of the items matched and it looked ugly. I hated all the extra wires around it too. After about a week of the mac mini, I went out and bought a 20 inch iMac G5 and haven't looked back since.

The emac was excellent, but for a few hundred dollars more I got an awesome iMac G5.

Besides let's face it, CRT is dead. I'm surprised the emac lasted as long as it did.

 

[zap2]

they need a new all in one to take it place!!


Come one iMac G4 come back as 1.6 ghz G5 eMac


Or a G5 cube!!

 

[ezekielrage_99]

Too bad really, the eMac was a fairly decent sort of an entry level Mac for people who were just geting into the whole Mac OSX thing. Plus for a CRT display the picture quality wasn't too bad either. I know most students would be sad with this departure because the final eMac was great value and feature packed.

Well that looks like it squashes the rumours of a eMac update.

Who knows Apple might re-invent the eMac (like they did with the Cube) when they get the first batch of Intel chips, we might be seeing an eMac with a cheaper intel chip in it next June.

 

[berkleeboy210]

We had a room full of eMacs at my High School. and we actually have a Mac Support Team as well.

I'm not in High School Anymore, But I'd love them to snag up the new iMacs.... 1,199 for a 1.9ghz G5 and 1GB Ram, can't beat that.

 

[JohnEZ]

Nevermind 🙂

 

[scratchy]

if that turns out to be true, i can't express how glad I am having bought one of the last non-institutional emacs three weeks ago! i wanted to have the "tank" of apples low priced product lines since i expect it to survive 'til the end of the decade. i didn't trust the overall engineering of the imacs (g5-heating/vulnerable flatscreens) enough to spend the extra money for speed i don't need. (didn't the bulky soviet t-34s wipe out the the elegant & sophisticated german panzers in ww2? - durability's the key!)

with an additional 512mb-stick it's more than fast enough for my "killer"-app, recording lots of live-instruments in garageband (has anybody mentioned the emacs audio-in yet?) and 'til now i haven't found a single thing to complain about. ok, it should have come with 512MB right from the start, but well...

in my opinion apple is discontinuing a great product, but it won't hurt them, because the stores - in my country at least - didn't seem to promote them anyway. i had a hard time to convince the guy from the store to keep his minis and imacs and to order me the heavyweight. i'm sure they- and apple- don't like to carry these things around for the "little money", what's understandable from their viewpoint 😉

the emac is dead - long live the existing emacs!

 

[Mechcozmo]

(didn't the bulky soviet t-34s wipe out the the elegant & sophisticated german panzers in ww2? - durability's the key!)

Well, there were also more T-34s to each Panzer, the Panzers were running out of gas, and the Germans were fast running out of good crews to man their tanks. Aircraft helped too.

But yes, the eMac is very durable. 🙂

 

[Evangelion]

I think you may be right. I mean, I'm not sure why they have them up at all anymore. I CAN'T believe that they are selling many, AS they havn't been upgraded since we had a man on the moon (or so it seems)

I don't know what you are smoking. PowerBook is a fine machine. Yes it is. Some of the specs might be getting a bit old, but there's more to computers than mere specs. I fiddled with few laptops last week at a local computer-retailer. They had x86-laptops, an iBook and a 12" PowerBook there. Yes, the x86-laptops outspecced the PowerBook. But when I actually handled each of them, the PowerBook felt SO nice. It just felt.... right. If I were buying a laptop, I would choose the PowerBook over ANY x86-laptop, no questions asked!

Would it be nice if they upgraded the specs? Sure! Better specs are always welcome 🙂. But many people seem to think that PowerBooks are crap. But after comparing them with x86-laptops, I think the x86-laptops are crap.

 

[GroundLoop]

It's about time that this thing died. I can't think of anyone (besides elementary education) who would want something so slow and bulky. Looking and the economics of the situation, it is much better to buy a nice flat-panel monitor and continuously upgrade a Mac Mini than it would be to keep upgrading eMacs.

Elementary school would keep these as they can take the daily punishment that kids throw at a computer.

Hickman

 

[fixyourthinking]

Good Riddance...

You got the mini that does as much or more now, get a monitor for $120 and you got something better than the emac now.

Actually - the Mini is so much less than an eMac:

Notebook Hard Drive vs Desktop Hard Drive

Notebook Optical Drive vs Desktop Optical Drive

One RAM slot that is inaccessable vs 2 easily accessable RAM slots

Airport extreme hard to add vs eMac's easy to add slot

The CRT on eMac were some of the best displays I have ever seen.

There are now no all in ones under $1299.99

Personally, I think Apple could get away with a $799.99 LCD version of the eMac

Maybe we will see it again around "Intel inside" time.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

Apple could allways release a bare bones iMac. Now that Emac is gone they can bump up that mini a lil more. Only thing it really needs is a better video chip then the 9200. Anyone notice that apple is swinging back with ATi video? they must have kissed and made up a long time ago. ATi is in almost every product.

 

[snowmoon]

The eMac serves a very VERY sensitive market... schools. Anyone who doesn't understand this should talk to a talk guy at a mac school. Cost, durability, and form factor are all important issues to these people and the eMac meets all three. They take a beating and are easy to repair. Remeber that even a $50 price increase will lead to defecting schools that can no longer afford the "mac premuim" ( I know I know, we all know it's baloney, but try explaing that to the board of directors who just got new dells for 300-400 dollars each ) on base hardware.

An 8 pack is $625/each, and I don't care how you slice it there is little or no way for the mini to meet the same demands at the same price. Who knows though, maybe one the mini is up-to-snuff ( slow HD, underpowered video ) Apple will release a LCD screen/locking chassy that makes the mini into an eMac... that would be neat and might work for that market once the total price has come down.

I think once the intel transition completes the mini will be ( as is basicly now ) a iBook without the screen. The increase in commodity parts and demand will hopefully bring down the prince and increase the features of the mini to the point where they no longer suck too bad. At this point I could see it replacing the eMac, but not before that time.

Hell I would have snapped up a mini months ago .... if it had just one more feature... the ability to decode h.264 at 720p. I would have replaced my DVD player with it on my projection system. Until it can read and decode the format that apple is pushing as next gen I won't touch it and I have no need for the added cost of a screen in this senario.

 

[aidanpendragon]

RIP

Gee, glad I got my LAST-gen eMac at the end of July!!! I've been thrilled with it, and continually find the size smaller, the fan quieter, and the screen larger than one would expect. The stand is sweet. Also enjoyed buying additional RAM & installing it myself, with a minimum of fuss.

The Mini-vs.-eMac thing has been done to death here (I'm always amazed by the number of eMac fans), so I'll make a few different points:

- Still don't like the iMac aesthetics, though that may change with the new models. However, the whole G5-is-too-hot-incredible-melting-insides thing is something I'd rather avoid; or at least it makes buying one an above-average risk.

- The Mini still hasn't surpassed the eMac specs. And since Apple still hasn't officially announced the bumped-up model, you're still stuck in the grab-bag crapshoot. Interesting that this has now gone on for weeks more than those confidently defending Apple's tactics had predicted. The upshot is that anyone in the market for eMac-style specs (as I was) is now thrust into the grab bag madness.

- Lots of people here have been saying, "sales must have been bad, that's why they EOL'd it." If so, be worried. All of the Mini "revisions" have pointed to struggling sales on that product; the faux July "upgrade," the latest grab bag, clearly have been designed to move big stocks of old, unsold inventory. With no eMac, and a sputtering Mini, then where does the sub-$1000 customer go?

(unless the eMac is taking the blame for cannibalizing Mini sales, as it did with me...)

 

[Rowen]

Well.........it looks like the eMac has finally been discontinued 😱

Farewell to the eMac. It's buggy USB connection, the sad ability to over clock a 800mhz to a 1.3ghz at times. Wait, this was a pretty simple machine with a lot of cool features, but the Mac Mini has taken its place. The Days of CRT have come to an end. All hail Paper thin Monitors!

 

[Pipian]

Yeah, even on an institutional level, it's no longer available at store.apple.com. So it looks like it's gone for good.

 

[FadeToBlack]

Sad to see it go. My eMac is my first Mac and I love it.

 

[matticus008]

that's funny, I thought this was a thread about the emac?

pretty much everything I feel has been stated already: 7200RPM drives, 2 gigs of ram, radeon 9600. Blows the mini out of the water, and the price was better to boot.

Also, what people seem to be failing to notice is that the mini is more expensive than the eMac if you have to buy a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, for which you get a computer that is slower and less expandable.

No way that a base mini is more expensive than a $799 eMac, even with everything add. Toss in an Apple keyboard and mouse - $60 and a better 17" CRT than the eMac ever had ($100), and you still have $140 free to upgrade the mini (add some RAM and you've got at least a matching machine to the eMac for the same price). The video card is an important distinction, and the hard drive a little less so (most people don't know about it), and the RAM is mostly irrelevant. Who would want to max out an eMac with 2GB of RAM? Seems like a lot of money to spend on an old bottom feeder that's heavy and awkward and costs a lot of money to store and to ship (and to build, since it's the only reason Apple needs to buy CRT units).

No doubt it's served the education market well, but its days are over.

 

[illegalprelude]

I would wonder if apple has a new unit in mind to have 4 desktop lineups again.

regardless, I dont think the school market is as important for apple anymore. Their now in the main spot light and people are coming to them, they dont need the snitch of schools to draw in people.

 

[DavidLeblond]

I would wonder if apple has a new unit in mind to have 4 desktop lineups again.

I doubt it. You have budget, consumer, and pro. I think 4 was too many, and the eMac going away doesn't surprise me in the least.

 

[Mechcozmo]

I would wonder if apple has a new unit in mind to have 4 desktop lineups again.

regardless, I dont think the school market is as important for apple anymore. Their now in the main spot light and people are coming to them, they dont need the snitch of schools to draw in people.

The educational market always has been (since Apple //) and always will be important to Apple. Use a Mac at school, like it, use it at home. Free advertising. Schools use the Macs for years (My aunt's classroom has an LC 575 still running in it) and after when it comes time to upgrade they stick with Macs.

 

[illegalprelude]

The educational market always has been (since Apple //) and always will be important to Apple. Use a Mac at school, like it, use it at home. Free advertising. Schools use the Macs for years (My aunt's classroom has an LC 575 still running in it) and after when it comes time to upgrade they stick with Macs.

Yes but Apple is a company that wants to profit and not so much profit in schools.

Most people i talk to who never owned a Mac but used them in schools HATE the Macs. "they crash all the time" "their buggy" etc. Problem is, school computers are a million years old and Macs have the name of less error but people use them and are superbly desapointed.

Plus, like I said, it dosent matter what Apples about. their a company that will change, even if it means going back on their words

 

[iHavenolife]

it was big and bulky
iMac much better