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

eMacs Changing?

Originally posted by thatwendigo

Apple eMac/iMac lineup, circa Spring-Summer 2004:

eMac
17-inch LCD (glass fronted)
1.33ghz/1.42ghz
256/512MB PC2800 RAM
60/80GB UltraATA
ATI Radeon 8500
Combo/Superdrive
Airport Extreme Ready
2 Firewire, 3 USB
10/100 Ethernet
$799/$1199
Click to expand...

The only problem with the idea I see is Apple currently charges $699 for a 17 inch LCD, so unless these prices are going to come down dramatically you are basically paying $100 for a 1.33 GHz G4, 256 MB of RAM, etc. I don't think there is any money for Apple in such a computer. (Not that I wouldn't gladly buy that config headless for $300 if Apple wanted to offer it).
Also, I hope that we are seeing the last of the Motorola G4 speedbumps. Apple needs to know that the future is in the IBM 750VX chips (whatever they are branded) and G5's. By the summer the PowerMac should be at least dual 2.6 GHz, it is going to be very hard to get excited about a 33 MHz speed bump in the eMac line.
 
Originally posted by thatwendigo

Apple eMac/iMac lineup, circa Spring-Summer 2004:

eMac
17-inch LCD (glass fronted)
1.33ghz/1.42ghz
256/512MB PC2800 RAM
60/80GB UltraATA
ATI Radeon 8500
Combo/Superdrive
Airport Extreme Ready
2 Firewire, 3 USB
10/100 Ethernet
$799/$1199
Click to expand...

I hope to god it doesn't jump that quickly. I only bought this thing a few months ago, and I knew it wouldn't great for long...but I was hoping for a good 6 months of use before it became COMPLETELY overshadowed.

It's also going to make me look real stupid..."if I had only waited a few more months..."
 
Originally posted by pjkelnhofer
The only problem with the idea I see is Apple currently charges $699 for a 17 inch LCD, so unless these prices are going to come down dramatically you are basically paying $100 for a 1.33 GHz G4, 256 MB of RAM, etc. I don't think there is any money for Apple in such a computer. (Not that I wouldn't gladly buy that config headless for $300 if Apple wanted to offer it).
Also, I hope that we are seeing the last of the Motorola G4 speedbumps. Apple needs to know that the future is in the IBM 750VX chips (whatever they are branded) and G5's. By the summer the PowerMac should be at least dual 2.6 GHz, it is going to be very hard to get excited about a 33 MHz speed bump in the eMac line.
Click to expand...

I did mention that I'd love to see the VX replace the G4, didn't I? *goes back and checks* Yeah, sure did...

I threw that together this afternoon, and the prices were a little forced at the low end. It wouldn't surprise me to see them $200-300 higher, at the least, if Apple were to replace the CRT with an LCD. I'd be all for the change, in both senses. Hopefully, with Fishkill fabbing the 750VX, it'll be cheaper and available in quantity, too. I'd imagine that the eMac and iBook would keep the 750VX as their chip for a while, and then iMac and Powermac would get G5s. I'm still undecided on the Powerbook, but I'm not expecting the G5 to appear for a while, for heat concerns that have more to do with the other components than the processor.
 
Originally posted by thatwendigo
I'd imagine that the eMac and iBook would keep the 750VX as their chip for a while, and then iMac and Powermac would get G5s. I'm still undecided on the Powerbook, but I'm not expecting the G5 to appear for a while, for heat concerns that have more to do with the other components than the processor.
Click to expand...

I guess we actually agree then.:)
I hope that the 750VX running at speeds much greater the current Moto G4's, is the future of the low end Mac.
I just hope that Apple doesn't speed bump eMacs and iBooks with the old ones for another year in an attempt to use up inventory.
More importantly, I hope that Apple finally realizes there are a lot of people out here who would jump at sub $1000 "headless" Mac. Essentially an iMac without the built-in monitor. It may even encourage switchers who already have $500+ invested in a monitor they would like to keep.
 
a headless amc would be good for business sales

I would assume that the architectural firm I work for is similar to a number of business that don't replace their entire desktop computers with new monitors.
Whenever a new computer is purchased, the existing 19" crt is connected to it. Why? because back when 14" LCD's were mighty pricey, they bought new computers with flat screen 19" monitors. Sure they draw more poer, and sure they take up more space, but they also cost alot less. And they already have them.
If Apple wants to make more inroads into businesses, it would be a fetaher in their had to have a small headless desktop with a standard VGA port, regardless of whatever kind of "all-in-one" mantra they may have had in place at some time.

And for those of you that say professionals should buy powermacs, i would be willing to bet that most companies do not buy top-end equipment for the bulk of their staff. If that were the case, I'd be sitting in a room full of Xeons, and that's not the case.
 
If you were to include the cost of electricity in the TCO, an LCD could eventually beat out a CRT in cost. Compare the expected yearly power draw based on usage for each and multiply the difference by the cost of electricity in your area. You might be surprised at how quickly it adds up, especially if the monitor is used 24/7/365.
 
Re: a headless amc would be good for business sales

Originally posted by dieselg4


And for those of you that say professionals should buy powermacs,...
Click to expand...

Even non-professionals, or semi-professionals may want their own say in monitors.

Apple's failure to introduce a low/mid range headless has driven more people away than anything else they've done. I've got a beige G3 with a nice LCD monitor. There's no way I can afford a $1300 tower and there's no way I'm blowing $600 on a 3 year old machine on ebay. I don't care about the cost of upgrading my software at this point. I'll spite Apple and find PC versions of all my paid-for versions of Mac software for free. My conscience is fine with that.

Apple plays dirty politics. They're friggin' bastartds when it comes to customer service. Eff 'em...
 
Here Apple this is what I want.
 

Attachments

  • headless.jpg
    headless.jpg
    4.3 KB · Views: 700
Perfect, I would buy one of those in a second it is exactly what apple needs a nice $599 headless mac. As for the emac what if they went with a 15" LCD and discontinued the 15" LCD iMac so if you wanted a bigger display than 15" you need to go with a iMac if not a emac is for you.
 
I have one of the first emacs with a 700 mhz processor and not even a combo drive, but I just have to say I love my emac.Certainly adding ram and a external dvd burner has helped, but I've done everything on this machine from 3d design to video editing and it just doesnt quit. I don't see a g5 in the emac future but if they could at least update the video card and bus speed and put in the fastest g4 possible then I would be sold on a new one. It was the emac that made me switch in thefirst place
 
Originally posted by marano
Perfect, I would buy one of those in a second it is exactly what apple needs a nice $599 headless mac. As for the emac what if they went with a 15" LCD and discontinued the 15" LCD iMac so if you wanted a bigger display than 15" you need to go with a iMac if not a emac is for you.
Click to expand...

Or how about this...
 

Attachments

  • g5 cube.jpg
    g5 cube.jpg
    23.9 KB · Views: 659
Apple could get away with bringing back the original cube design, I think it's very classy and wouldn't look outdated at all. As for specs I'd say go for broke and put a zippy G3, say 1.2GHz in it. That way you could price it at $499 at the max and sell a zillion. You could even use the same form factor for several models, the 1.2 G3 in the low end, 1.5 G4 mid-range, and 2.0 G5 in the top. It would require different motherboards in each model but if priced well, I think they could sell enough in each category.
 
Originally posted by CMillerERAU
Apple could get away with bringing back the original cube design, I think it's very classy and wouldn't look outdated at all. As for specs I'd say go for broke and put a zippy G3, say 1.2GHz in it. That way you could price it at $499 at the max and sell a zillion. You could even use the same form factor for several models, the 1.2 G3 in the low end, 1.5 G4 mid-range, and 2.0 G5 in the top. It would require different motherboards in each model but if priced well, I think they could sell enough in each category.
Click to expand...

I don't think Apple would ever segment a product using G3s, G4s and G5s in the line-up - just me though.

I definitely think a headless Mac (besides the PowerMac!) would be a great idea though - it would give consumers who already have monitors a nice option, if they don't want to spend the money on the PowerMac...
 
Originally posted by ~Shard~
I don't think Apple would ever segment a product using G3s, G4s and G5s in the line-up - just me though.
Click to expand...

Yeah I suppose you're right, I just think a headless mac would be a hit in any segment. If I had to pick any slot for it, I'd put it waaayyy down at the bottom. Slap in a 1.2 GHz G3 and a modest graphics accelerator and sell it as cheap as possible. A $399 Macintosh? I think it's possible, and performance be darned! People buy eMachines all the time knowing full well they're piles. Just think how far Apple could go with a super-cheap PC killer like this?
 
Originally posted by CMillerERAU
Yeah I suppose you're right, I just think a headless mac would be a hit in any segment. If I had to pick any slot for it, I'd put it waaayyy down at the bottom. Slap in a 1.2 GHz G3 and a modest graphics accelerator and sell it as cheap as possible. A $399 Macintosh? I think it's possible, and performance be darned! People buy eMachines all the time knowing full well they're piles. Just think how far Apple could go with a super-cheap PC killer like this?
Click to expand...

The other thing with this though, is that I doubt Apple would release a "snazzy brand new awesome product", and then announce it has a G3 in it. What else in the Apple product line currrently has a G3, now that the iBooks have been upgraded? The G3 is looked at as old technology now, even though it is, all things considered, a decent chip. I think you would at least have to put a G4 in it, otherwise the iBook and eMac would look far superior to this "new" product. Many people would question why Apple is releasing a NEW product with OLD technology.

But I see what you're saying about putting it at the low end of things, to keep it cheap - but I think you could still make it fairly cheap with a G4 in it, since G5s are now where it's at, if that is indeed the way you want to work things.
 
from another realist...

Apple doesn't want to sell a boatload of super cheap headless Macintoshes. They would rather sell fewer Macs at a higher profit margin. It costs more to provide warranty services and tech support to 800,000 Macs than it does for 500,000 Macs, and if the profit margin it set correctly they make the same money off the deal.

Apple isn't going to (ever) experience a *sudden* surge in market share. Introducing a super cheap machine will not change that. Many of the people who would buy Macs anyway would buy the cheaper machines instead of forking out extra for an iMac or Powermac. This canibalizes Apple's profits on the more expensive machines. Sound familiar (clones?) The eMac may be saddled with the heavy built-in CRT for a reason; to keep it from becoming too perfect an alternative to the other models.

For those of you asking for a headless G5 eMac with a swappable graphics card, why not just ask for a $599 Powermac model? It sounds less feasible in those terms.

For the more realistic ones asking for a G3 at 1.2Ghz in a headless form factor, I say that Apple is just protecting profit margins, and R&D money, and I don't think such a machine is going to happen.

They do a lot to keep us happy (by existing as an alternative) so we can't really expect them to capitulate on every front and charge us practically nothing for something that costs them a lot to develop.
 
i went to compusa 2 weeks ago, and they still had emacs on display, and in the stock-room that was right behind the "store-in-store".

i went to the same store yesterday and they had all the apple products on display, except for the emac. a quick check of the stock-room showed no emac boxes, just a lot of powerbooks, and powermacs.
 
they would not get rid of the emac because of the new iMac. It is much harder to steal an emac weighing in at a hefty 22kg and easier to clean and no moving parts
 
Over the past 5 years, I have done extensive consultant work for the IT needs for a k-12 school district. For years, my esteemed colugees have shut down my plans to buy macs, because you can get cheaper, and faster dell's. What apple needs is to put a G5 in all lines and an LCD screen in the eMac for the same price. If they did this they would beat dell in value hands down.

First of all, the eMac shouldn't be discoutinued:
1. Durable
2. Speakers are in the machine
3. Ultra Cheep
4. Hard to steel

Why the LCD screen in eMacs:
1. Smaller overall body of the machine
2. There will be less of a need to replace them in a few years when there are no such thing as CRT's
3. Price can be the same if apple produces enough in mass quanitity

Why Apple should go all G5
1. Less R&D for the OS since all the computers run on the same chip
2. Cheeper to mass produce tons of G5's, thus the price wouldn't go up to put a 1.6G5 rather then a 1GHz G4 in an eMac
3. Get rid of moto finally
4. With IBM churnning out processor updates more frequently, the high end G5 PowerMac will easily be much faster then the comsumer line even though they run on the same processor
5. Less consumer confusion
6. People won't feel they are buying a clearly outdated product on the low end machines
7. Apple would sell much more in the edu market in terms of desktops and laptops, and thus more districts will buy xserves, and increase xserve sales.
8. All computers will have all the new IO ports, and new standards like SATA, PCI-X, etc

January/Feburary 2005:
PowerMac: Dual 3.5GHz G5
PowerBook: Dual 3GHz G5

iMac: 2.5GHz G5
iBook: 2.5GHz G5
eMac: 2GHz G5

Basically, our district has gone dell every year for the last 5 years I've been working there because the macs that are in our price range are crippled in performance. I would love to go into a budget meeting, present my plan to go mac, and have it approved. Can apple switch to G5 by the end of MWSF 2005?

--Waluigi
 
Chip Migrations and Gaming

I think people are assuming that the G4 is going to hang on as long as the G3 did, which is probably a false assumption. The G3 hung on for so long because the same company was making the G4, so it made good business sense to maximize the application of the older CPU. Now that IBM has become the supplier, we will not likely see the G4 stick around for any longer than it takes to use up Apple's current stock of the chip; they may even cut their losses and ditch whatever G4s they have left in favor of the new 750VX from IBM. I don't have a lot of patience for hardcore gamers that demand this and that from their macintosh; Apple makes computers that are the best at doing ALMOST everything. They're not the best at gaming. You can't always get what you want. Isn't a computer that isn't constantly crippled with security/reliability issues worth 15 frames per second and one step down on the resolution of a game that was designed with a Radeon 9600 in mind? Waah, waah, Halo won't run at 1024. Cry me a river.
 
Originally posted by Waluigi
Over the past 5 years, I have done extensive consultant work for the IT needs for a k-12 school district. For years, my esteemed colugees have shut down my plans to buy macs, because you can get cheaper, and faster dell's. What apple needs is to put a G5 in all lines and an LCD screen in the eMac for the same price. If they did this they would beat dell in value hands down.

First of all, the eMac shouldn't be discoutinued:
1. Durable
2. Speakers are in the machine
3. Ultra Cheep
4. Hard to steel

Why the LCD screen in eMacs:
1. Smaller overall body of the machine
2. There will be less of a need to replace them in a few years when there are no such thing as CRT's
3. Price can be the same if apple produces enough in mass quanitity

Why Apple should go all G5
1. Less R&D for the OS since all the computers run on the same chip
2. Cheeper to mass produce tons of G5's, thus the price wouldn't go up to put a 1.6G5 rather then a 1GHz G4 in an eMac
3. Get rid of moto finally
4. With IBM churnning out processor updates more frequently, the high end G5 PowerMac will easily be much faster then the comsumer line even though they run on the same processor
5. Less consumer confusion
6. People won't feel they are buying a clearly outdated product on the low end machines
7. Apple would sell much more in the edu market in terms of desktops and laptops, and thus more districts will buy xserves, and increase xserve sales.
8. All computers will have all the new IO ports, and new standards like SATA, PCI-X, etc

January/Feburary 2005:
PowerMac: Dual 3.5GHz G5
PowerBook: Dual 3GHz G5

iMac: 2.5GHz G5
iBook: 2.5GHz G5
eMac: 2GHz G5

Basically, our district has gone dell every year for the last 5 years I've been working there because the macs that are in our price range are crippled in performance. I would love to go into a budget meeting, present my plan to go mac, and have it approved. Can apple switch to G5 by the end of MWSF 2005?

--Waluigi
Click to expand...

That is perhaps the most logical post in the whole danged topic.
 
Originally posted by neoelectronaut
Though it's fake, it still looks pretty neat.
Click to expand...

That is exactly what I had in mind (but with a little more flare in its design from Mr. Ive). Thanks for the link.

--Waluigi
 
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