G5 iMac Specs?

[macker]

Tried to post a new thread with this, but couldn't.

This looks MUCH more exciting, and has the added benefit of being a real patent:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/13/apple_tablet_mac/

 

[Frobozz]

Umm, no optical drives on the low-end model? I mean, I understood why Apple stopped installing floppy drives in their machines, but I think it's a little to early to call optical drives obsolete.

I for one hope these rumors are untrue. Besides the processor and sata drives, these new iMacs would not be much of an improvement over the previous models.

My god, what were you hoping for? Let's see what we have:

1) First 64bit consumer desktop (not pro like PowerMac)
2) fast: 1.6 to 1.8 GHz, which is a standard incremental speed bump.
3) 17 or 20 inch widesdcreens for the same price as today's iMacs. That's amazing. A 20 inch LCD alone is 800 to 1400.
4) SATA hard drives
5) DDR SDRAM up to 2 GB. Most resellers will easily up the RAM to 768 or 1GB for *free.

Apparently the optical drive was removed at the request of education buyers for the educational unit-- security purposes.

The only thing that is sucky are the graphics cards. To me, however, you're NEVER EVER going to have a high end GPU on a consumer oriented machine. It just won't happen. It's not like Macs are the only ones, here... this is PC's too. If you want to play the latest games at the best frame rates you simply can't have the consumer level machine. Sad but true.

 

[outerspaceapple]

you people have no life



It's 10am (CST) the day of an announcement and there are already 11 pages. omg

Ok, new imacs are kewl since it means G5 powerbooks are even closer, YEY

 

[macker]

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/13/apple_tablet_mac/

 

[Frobozz]

Tried to post a new thread with this, but couldn't.

This looks MUCH more exciting, and has the added benefit of being a real patent:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/13/apple_tablet_mac/

... except that research indicates most people aren't interested in tablet PC's, and that the Register has never been right about a Mac announcement. 🙂

 

[macker]

... except that research indicates most people aren't interested in tablet PC's, and that the Register has never been right about a Mac announcement. 🙂

All they have done is get access to the patent filing:

The filing, made in May this year but only published this week, covers a "handheld computer" and contains sketches of what look like an iBook screen minus the body of the computer. The paperwork was handled by Leeds, UK-based patent and trademark attorneys Urquhart-Dykes and Lord.

The filing lists Apple CEO Steve Jobs and the company's industrial design chief, Jonathan Ive. It also refers to Daniele De Iuliis, Richard Howarth, Eugene Whang, Matthew Rohrbach, Bart Andre, Calvin Seid and Christopher Stringer all of key members of Apple's industrial design team

It doesn't look like speculation or rumour. It looks like a patent filing.

 

[OziMac]

... except that research indicates most people aren't interested in tablet PC's, and that the Register has never been right about a Mac announcement. 🙂

...except that this isn't an announcement or a rumour like the subject of this thread, it's publicly available information on a patent filing.

Very interesting. Good find, macker. Apple do tend to have a lot of patents that don't necessarily see commercial light of day - the spiralling, twistable LCD screen arm being one of them. Again, will be interesting to see how this pans out...

 

[Hattig]

My god, what were you hoping for? Let's see what we have:

1) First 64bit consumer desktop (not pro like PowerMac)

because AMD never released the Athlon 64 eh?

When Tiger is out and running natively in 64-bit mode I will let you say "but Windows XP is only 32-bit".

2) fast: 1.6 to 1.8 GHz, which is a standard incremental speed bump.

Fast, yes. However the A64 is faster, and it isn't like the P4 that has terrible per-clock performance, it easily competes with the 970 on a clock for clock basis.

3) 17 or 20 inch widesdcreens for the same price as today's iMacs. That's amazing. A 20 inch LCD alone is 800 to 1400.

17" LCDs have been dropping in price massively recently. I hope the iMac has a TV card inside it (or as a Firewire/USB option), the 20" widescreen would make a nice TV display for whoever buys one - handy for students especially.

The complete package is still more expensive than other manufacturers complete packages. Hopefully it looks better, because style is all that Apple have going for them with this product right now.

If you want to play the latest games at the best frame rates you simply can't have the consumer level machine. Sad but true.

At least you have the option of adding a decent graphics card to most consumer PCs however crap the on-board graphics is. Unless this iMac has the graphics on a daughter-board you'll never be able to upgrade.

 

[SiliconAddict]

1) you're buying an apple, not a pc (doesn't matter what make, a pc is a pc.) you can't compare a low cost dell to a low cost mac- there will never be a price competitive macintosh; that would be like asking for a bmw that has a price competitive with a ford. it's not going to happen.

So what color is Mac cool-aid?

You are delusional if you think that statement is true. Once again Apple is making you pay a premium for over the counter hardware. Don’t kid yourself. Prob 70-80% of the parts in a Mac can be found in the PC and frankly watching the quality of Macs drop over the last few years I not all that impressed by Apple’s build quality as of late. Esp with 15” PowerBook issues, fans on first gen G5 PowerMacs, iBook mobo problems, apparent rusting on first gen AL books, iPod issues up the ying yang (I know 7 people who have iPods. 3 of them have had to have them replaced under warrantee because of faulty hardware. Two in the first half of the year.) Then you have patches that have broken systems. Issues with 10.2.8 killing systems, filevault issues, external firewire hard drives being trashed because of issues in Panther, patches released then inexplicitly pulled. I can continue with the list but the fact remains Apple may very well have a higher quality then everyone else but it isn’t THAT much higher and sure as heck isn’t worth the premium you are seeing here. Make NO mistake you are paying a premium for three things. logo, style, and OS. That’s it. IMHO quality stopped becoming a factor awhile ago.

 

[Frobozz]

Steve Said with the debut of the last iMac model that mounting an optical drive vertically is very unefficient. There are limits to how fast a drive can operate when in the vertical postion.🙂

This is a very good point. I wonder how they resolved this issue. The specs listed in this article _assumed_ the drive would also be vertically mounted. It seems it won't be vertically mounted or it will be vertically mounted but not run super fast.

Hmmmm.

 

[Frobozz]

So what color is Mac cool-aid?

You are delusional if you think that statement is true. Once again Apple is making you pay a premium for over the counter hardware. Don’t kid yourself. Prob 70-80% of the parts in a Mac can be found in the PC and frankly watching the quality of Macs drop over the last few years I not all that impressed by Apple’s build quality as of late. Esp with 15” PowerBook issues, fans on first gen G5 PowerMacs, iBook mobo problems, apparent rusting on first gen AL books, iPod issues up the ying yang (I know 7 people who have iPods. 3 of them have had to have them replaced under warrantee because of faulty hardware. Two in the first half of the year.) Then you have patches that have broken systems. Issues with 10.2.8 killing systems, filevault issues, external firewire hard drives being trashed because of issues in Panther, patches released then inexplicitly pulled. I can continue with the list but the fact remains Apple may very well have a higher quality then everyone else but it isn’t THAT much higher and sure as heck isn’t worth the premium you are seeing here. Make NO mistake you are paying a premium for three things. Because of the logo, because of the style, and because of the OS. That’s it. IMHO quality stopped becoming a factor awhile ago.

Did someone wake up with a case of the crankies this morning? 🙂

I agree that we can't make excuses for Apple. They could certainly drop the price on their machines... but it's never been proven that dropping the price a couple hundred (all that they could anyway) would spur more sales. If they can't spur more sales to make up for the drastically reduced gross margin then the investors run away. Apple is profitable at it's market share because of gross margins. This is why they are trying to increase their market share without reducing their gross profit right now. That will give them wiggle room in the future.

I feel your pain, but I don't think the iMac is a bad deal. In fact, it's an AMAZING deal. No kool-aid required to see that.

 

[dragonslive]

Lose the "Apple parts are "special" quality rubbish" excuses...

Apple does not make computers.......it gets the chinese to do it for them now.......same as Dell, HP, IBM etc.

THIS is why the asking price is getting spastic for the yesterdays bits they are flogging off from some chinese PC firesale and hiding it is white plastic with a piece of fruit on it...........Geforce 5200!! PLEASE!!!

 

[Converted2Truth]

3) video card. i just don't get this one. the mac is not a gaming platform- how is this not obvious? hint: all of the latest/greatest games never even make it to the mac, or are released several months (or even years) after the pc version hits. save a few bucks and by a dell for this. i think whatever card they throw in the imac will be suitable for 99% of consumer mac users.

then again, i could be wrong.

Dude! ALOT more games are coming to the mac. More than ever before. And FASTER than ever before. And people who want to play games usually don't have 3k to drop into a new powermac G5. THE iMac should be the gaming platform. It is the single processor line-up that should have gaming capability. Why should we have to buy a 'server' grade G5 to play games? Pull your head out of your ****** dude. You suck. if you don't play games -fine. but don't be dancin around saying that's not what iMacs are for. BS! That's what they should be for! Kids use imacs, kids play games. College students are poor...buy an iMac, and they sure as Hell play games. WE ALL PLAY GAMES EXCEPT FOR THE GEEZERS THAT THINK SUCH ENTERTAINMENT IS BELOW THEM.

Damn apple if these vcard specs are right. Nobody is going to buy these. Sales are going to suck.

 

[titaniumducky]

Man... that doesn't sound so great... I have three major complaints.

1. If they are going to replace the eMac, the price needs to be way below $1300. Otherwise, keep the eMac. How is a $1300 machine supposed to compete with a $799 machine!? The eMac is an excellent machine for it's price. Many schools/entry-level consumers don't need a G5 or LCD. Sure, they might like it, but they don't want to pay a premium for it.

2. Those video cards! They absolutely suck! Seriously, if I've got a G5 machine, I want to be able to play games once in a while. Sure, there's a nice processor; what good is it, though, if they put that video card in there. At least, give us the option to add a 9600 BTO.

3. No optical drive in the education version. This HAS to be false info. Even the cheapest education eMac has a CD-ROM drive.

Other than than that, it doesn't sound bad. I seriously think ThinkSecret screwed up in intelligence gathering. There's absolutely NO WAY Apple would commit suicide on a 1500+ machine (for mid config somewhere) by skimping on a CD-Drive and video card (maybe $100 combined addition to cost considering Apple buys in mass amounts).

 

[SiliconAddict]

Did someone wake up with a case of the crankies this morning? 🙂

No no I’m good. I’m just in purgatory here. I want to love Apple. The Apple of old. Somewhere along the lines something changed at that company and I don’t know what.

But that isn't the reason I’m in purgatory. I’m in a state between heaven and hell. I like the PC and I like the Mac. I defend the PC so Mac users call me a PC zealot. But I also defend the Mac on some fronts so PC users call me a Mac zealot. I just had someone call me that yesterday and I pointed out that the only Mac I've ever owned, well beyond a ][e, is a Newton and that I have 5 PCs. Made him sputter for about 2 minutes thinking on that one. 🙂

Really I want to love Apple. But they really need to get their act together IMHO of course.

 

[dragonslive]

. They could certainly drop the price on their machines... but it's never been proven that dropping the price a couple hundred (all that they could anyway) would spur more sales.

IMO, how about INCREASING the price 50 bucks and giving us that middle of the range graphics card? Perhaps even up the RAM and HD for another 50?

The point is.......it is not the price or the parts which make this rumor a deal breaker for the objective mac fan.....it is the unsavory combination of both.

I would gladly pay an extra $100 for these little extras that should be there in the first instance. The HD and graphics are not upgradable so I would prefer to pay the extra 100 now and make the computer last that extra 6 months to a year before having to buy an external HD or upgrade to a new box.

 

[Frobozz]

because AMD never released the Athlon 64 eh?

In a consumer machine? Pass me the crack pipe. 🙂 The Athlon64 and the Opteron compete with the PowerMac. I'm sure there are pro-sumer Athlon64 systems, but we're talking about consumer machines. Most consumer machines (nearly all?) come with a P4 2.8 GHz or lower CPU.

Fast, yes. However the A64 is faster...

At best 10% faster, and that depends on the particular process type. Real world performance gains in a consumer level machine won't be noticed unless there's a 25% speed increase. That's fact. They wouldn't perceive the difference because they are doing shorter tasks, UI tasks, etc. Educational buyers for iMacs arent running rendering farms were 10% will amount to a half hour of processing time in a day. Their goals are different. If we were talking about PowerMacs I would certainly give you the nod on certain aspects of the Athlon64... it is a great chip afterall.

17" LCDs have been dropping in price massively recently. I hope the iMac has a TV card inside it (or as a Firewire/USB option), the 20" widescreen would make a nice TV display for whoever buys one - handy for students especially.

Agreed. 17" LCD are cheap these days, unless you go widescreen. Personally, this is how I suspect Apple commands a premium for it's displays. 20" widescreen is a whole different subject but at least we can say Apple's LCD are industry leaders. Ask Consumer Reports.

The complete package is still more expensive than other manufacturers complete packages. Hopefully it looks better, because style is all that Apple have going for them with this product right now.

Well, produce some comparable PC systems with a 17" or 20" LCD (even 4:3 ratio) and I will believe you on price. Until then I will withold judgement. As far as aesthetics... yes, Apple wins easily. But you're forgetting the real reasons to buy a Mac in this equation: reliability, ease of use, and lack of virii. These are paramount concerns to a consumer.

At least you have the option of adding a decent graphics card to most consumer PCs however crap the on-board graphics is. Unless this iMac has the graphics on a daughter-board you'll never be able to upgrade.

It's statistically proven that consumers don't upgrade their machines. If they ever go into their box to upgrade, it will be for memory. Next possible upgrade is a hard drive. Either way, it's very rare. These people aren't the audience of this forum. 🙂 A graphics card upgrade is something that a gamer would do. a gamer would never buy an off the shelf consumer grade PC.

I think a lot of Mac heads (myself included) are lured by the lower price of an iMac but are frustrated that it isn't expandable like the PowerMac. I hear you loud and clear... but for better or worse the iMac is consumer level and basically unexpandable. People yell all day long about consumer machines not being expandable but survey after survey clearly states that purchases and expansions for computers are done externally: mice, keyboards, etc. If they ever go inside it's for a memory upgrade. Sad but true... and Apple knows it!

 

[Jovian9]

I don't know about everyone else, but I will surely miss the current iMac if the nnewer version takes a step backwards design-wise.

I agree. I've had 2 of these (G4 iMacs) and they are by far the best computers I've ever had. I have a 17" 1.33GHz PowerBook with more RAM and the same size HD but it doesn't even come close to touching the iMac. The specs are better than the iMac all around but my wife and I enjoy using the iMac a lot more. Forget about specs...the iMac does what my wife and I use it for: iApps, Web development, FCP, DVD SP, music (listening & creating), games, watching movies, web use, etc. The G4 iMac has led my wife and I into the careers we are pursuing: my wife became interested in web development, data-base development, and information structures after we got our 800MHz G4 iMac and she then went back to school and got her Masters of Information Sciences based on this. I will be going to film school in NY next year d/t iMovie and the G4 iMac (and FCP, iDVD, DVD SP).
Hopefully they do not take away the floating versatile display structure b/c this is a great feature that helps us be able to sit at the iMac for hours on end while working. The G4 iMac is a great computer for all of us who do not rely on the highest specs to make us happy.

 

[mariner77]

underwhelming

The tech specs are underwhelming to say the least. The G5 is expected. The graphic chipset definitely could be better. I'd expect at least 128 MB of VRAM. The standard RAM amount is (sadly) expected from Apple, but the max RAM is a joke! A G5 with a maximum of 2GB of RAM? Ridiculous! I use up 2 GB of RAM daily with not so intense usage. I can't imagine being stuck with 2GB of RAM 2 years from now. 80 GB HDD is a joke as well. 120 GB should be standard and a drive with 250 GB should be offered as option. My 60 GB internal and a 160 GB external are already full. This is light usage for me. Apple please correct the specs before you ship the new iMac!

 

[iJon]

i think these machines are great and will sell just fine. these specs are more than likely right simply cause think secret has an excellent track record.

you are getting an excellent machine for the price. customers love the beautiful display, they love the look, the ease of everything, it's a dream to most people. the specs are fine in my opinion. if the hard disk space isn't enough, then comes a great oppurtunity to sell a scratch drive seperate from the main OS drive. These specs will accomodate the average user. yes we have the few gamers on here but in reality the majority do not play games. they either have no time or have a console for that solution.

i feel the people who browse this site who claim this computer will be worthless and not sell well are in a "very" small minority and will not hurt current sales.

iJon

 

[Frobozz]

IMO, how about INCREASING the price 50 bucks and giving us that middle of the range graphics card? Perhaps even up the RAM and HD for another 50?

The point is.......it is not the price or the parts which make this rumor a deal breaker for the objective mac fan.....it is the unsavory combination of both.

I would gladly pay an extra $100 for these little extras that should be there in the first instance. The HD and graphics are not upgradable so I would prefer to pay the extra 100 now and make the computer last that extra 6 months to a year before having to buy an external HD or upgrade to a new box.

Touche'

I think it would be great to offer a BTO option to upgrade, even if it costs a little extra. But I think that means having 2 physical machines for Apple. One with GPU A and one with GPU B. Either way I don't think an after-the-fact upgrade is usually possible. But I think you and I agree that getting a better card out of the gate would be a great option.

 

[Frobozz]

No no I’m good. I’m just in purgatory here. I want to love Apple. The Apple of old. Somewhere along the lines something changed at that company and I don’t know what.

But that isn't the reason I’m in purgatory. I’m in a state between heaven and hell. I like the PC and I like the Mac. I defend the PC so Mac users call me a PC zealot. But I also defend the Mac on some fronts so PC users call me a Mac zealot. I just had someone call me that yesterday and I pointed out that the only Mac I've ever owned, well beyond a ][e, is a Newton and that I have 5 PCs. Made him sputter for about 2 minutes thinking on that one. 🙂

Really I want to love Apple. But they really need to get their act together IMHO of course.

You're just level headed. Nothing wrong with that!

PC's do some things well. I'm just too ideallistic to give my money to Bill Gates and I think Apple represents my values better. Aside from that, I love the OS and see all the software-level advantages.

 

[Frump]

Apple does not make computers.......it gets the chinese to do it for them now.......same as Dell, HP, IBM etc.

THIS is why the asking price is getting spastic for the yesterdays bits they are flogging off from some chinese PC firesale and hiding it is white plastic with a piece of fruit on it...........Geforce 5200!! PLEASE!!!

What the hell are you talking about! Wait......! you're right. Standard PC fair in a white shell. If it was not for the great OS Apple would not be doing so well. The OS made me switch and I bought my first Mac. I don't think I will switch back to soon but they are pulling the wool over the consumers eyes. Their latest range of products have been plagued with problems but nobody seems to want to blame Apple for producing cheap made in china overpriced products. All you need to do is read apples own forums and you can find people complaining about problems with their new Apple products.
The Dual G5 freeze problem has affected our computer at work and no explanation from Apple. If Apple gave me the product for free I would not complain but that is not the case. What happened to the customer been right. In Apples case it is the other way around "Apple is King". What a privilege we pay for.

Not saying Dell are any better but please lets take off the rose tinted glasses.

Frump.

 

[jocknerd]

Apple doesn't get it

Apple is the greatest computer mfr. out there, but they still don't know how to sell them. So they want me to buy a consumer level PC for $2200? Well guess what Apple? I bought a PowerMac Dual G5 for a couple hundred more. Oh sure, some of you will say, well throw in the price of a monitor and they price difference is bigger. I say NO. I didn't purchase a new monitor. I already had a 19" and a 17" from my old PC. Apple needs to realize that many people are switching and already have monitors.

Get a clue Apple or just get out of the consumer market all together. Then your hardware wouldn't be considered expensive.

I hope Apple surprises us and provides a G5 in a minitower or something like that without a monitor. I've got a neighbor looking to get a new computer. I could easily get her into an Apple for around $1000 to $1200. Please Apple, provide a computer for her thats not crippled (i.e really bad video card, no dvd write support. Hell everybody now has dvd writers). Give her enough memory to run OS X comfortably and you will have a new customer for life.

 

[Hattig]

In a consumer machine? Pass me the crack pipe. 🙂 The Athlon64 and the Opteron compete with the PowerMac. I'm sure there are pro-sumer Athlon64 systems, but we're talking about consumer machines. Most consumer machines (nearly all?) come with a P4 2.8 GHz or lower CPU.

Yes, in consumer machines.

The Opteron competes with the dual processor PowerMac 970's.

The A64 FX is the single processor pro-sumer processor.

The A64 is the consumer processor, and is available from 2800+ ratings for a reasonable price (2700+ for low-power mobile variants). Yeah, the 3800+ might be expensive, but then again, the iMac isn't using 2.5GHz 970's is it?

This iMac is not a budget computer system at the prices listed, so why compare against cheap 2.4GHz Celeron systems from Dell that cost 1/4 of the price? AMD also have budget processors - Sempron and Athlon for that market.