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selective "new" signs

wordmunger said:
Pretty much everything has "new" next to it. Even the powerbooks, which haven't been updated for almost as long. Even the xServes, now almost a year old, spout "all new features". Just typical adspeak, I think.

If you switch to other Apple stores than the US one, the same specification emacs are not flagged "new". Does this mean that cheap marketing works better in the US than elsewhere? :D
 
Spock said:
Hey I made that pic.

Althought i spent the 10 minutes to do this one rather than track another one down, Im sure a billion of these things have been made, it's definately not an original idea of mine.

Cheers to the non-existant headless eMac.
 
While I find nothing wrong with the current eMac design, it could sure loose some depth and some weight if possible.

I feel making it about $50 USD cheaper will be great.

Yes, the GPU need a boost to 64 once that happens the iMac G5 will look like a worse deal. a G5 chip, better FSB, and an LCD. Great. :rolleyes:


The only thing stopping me from buying a eMac is the GPU, once it has the 64 in, I know Core Image will take use of it. Even though Tiger is 64-bit I guess I can live with that running on a 32-bit G4.

The eMac is Perfect as it is, at a good price.

-------------------------------------

By The Way when will we be seeing the death of the combo and super drives, I really like the iPod and USB flash drive.

Think of it this way buy Tiger as Retail and when you open it you find a USB flash drive to install from. Well just dreaming here since until we reach 4 Gig flash drives at a low price we will see the death of optical drives and Thinner PowerBooks. :D

I am just dreaming of the day when Audio CD's are no longer needed, and going to the local HMV and buying a Flash Audio Album. :)

Talk about having a key chain with Flash Audio Albums. :D
 
Mr. Anderson said:
what I don't understand is the 'New' flag is next to the eMacs on the Apple store, yet they're no different....anyone have an idea what's going on?
They were billing the iLamp as "The New iMac" even after it was discontinued.
 
Kinda' off topic but...

..I was thinking, prompted by this thread, what upgrade Apple would make to the eMac.
Although the 'e' was originally for education it now seems that the eMac is just the entry level Mac.

I wouldn't be surprised by a speed increase as the iMac is now G5 it's desirable for that and it's design now, and will no doubt creep ever faster as the eMac's G4 creeps faster too keeping it's desirability for die hard speed freaks.

What else could they do I thought?
A flat panel would bump the cost up too much for too little improvment in features and would risk taking iMac sales.
What about a widescreen CRT?
Then I thought about enlarging the screen size but thought again as go much bigger with a CRT and it's gonna get too big for most desks.
(This is where it hit me and I fell off-topic)
28" or 32" CRT TVeeMac sat in the corner of every living room with a built in Superdrive/DVD Recorder and the the new Apple iLife Media Centre (no Pro Apps required by target audience) and Bluetooth keyboard/trackpad/remote contol.
The G4 TVeeMac can be sold for years before it seems outdated unlike most computers.

Too much to drink maybe?
 
I'm skeptical as to weather or not Apple is going to do an update tomorrow. I say that because if they raised the speed of the eMac to 1.33 or 1.5GHz there would be a huge outrage from PowerBook owners, complaining that a bottom dollar machine is as fast/faster than the Pro line of computers. I wouldn't mind if they kept the proc speed the same, and put in a little better video card and more HD space, or at least make it cheaper if they don't change anything.

I highly doubt Apple will do this, though I hope to heaven that they will. :)
 
"......an anonymous submission from Spain reports that resellers are expecting revised versions of the eMac tomorrow."

Oh well.....it looks like it was a hoax or a practicle joke.
 
musicpyrite said:
I'm skeptical as to weather or not Apple is going to do an update tomorrow. I say that because if they raised the speed of the eMac to 1.33 or 1.5GHz there would be a huge outrage from PowerBook owners, complaining that a bottom dollar machine is as fast/faster than the Pro line of computers. I wouldn't mind if they kept the proc speed the same, and put in a little better video card and more HD space, or at least make it cheaper if they don't change anything.

I highly doubt Apple will do this, though I hope to heaven that they will. :)

Ive made that point several times too. There would be alot of VERY unhappy Powerbook owners if the eMac was made more powerful than their Powerbooks.

And that's the problem, if the Powerbook can't be upgraded with better processors than neither can the computers below them in spec either -even if the hardware to do so is avaiable. I think people need to start forgetting about the G5 Powerbook too.
 
MacSA said:
...And that's the problem, if the Powerbook can't be upgraded with better processors than neither can the computers below them in spec either -even if the hardware to do so is avaiable...

Yeah, this is true, absolutely. I don't really know about the PC community, and there are of course lots of different manufacturers, but do people complain on the PC side if their pro laptop is slower than a consumer desktop machine. Well probably not because they're used to it or their pro laptops are not the thin sleek type that powerBooks are but 2" monsters with 45 minute batteries. You can never accurately compare Apple and the Wintel side. And I'd better have a look at something like HPs site about price/speed comparison between laptop and desktop.

EDIT: Okay, so I visited hp's site (that sucks) and I see that their "better" laptops are quite cheap compared to their consumer desktops. The thing is, if I choose a Pentium M laptop, these things smoke the P4's. But for a rough comparison, a desktop 3.4 GHz P4 17" LCD, DVD-+RW, 512 MB, 160 GB for 1500$ against a laptop same 3.4 GHz P4 17" Combo drive, 256 MB, 60 GB for like 2000+$. Got sick of the hp site (made Safari have the beachball for a long time) but anyway, the price difference is bigger on the Apple side because, c'mon, PB's are NEATO, 1" thick. Making one of them costs a bit more than eMacs, and you can't put a too hot proc inside a 1" case.
 
CRT is dead.

Apple only sells LCD displays (and fine ones at that) so why WHY are they still bundling CRTs (and poor ones at that) with their eMacs? Does anyone know how much of a price difference an LCD would make in an eMac? I doubt it would be much.

Better yet, Apple could stop bundling the LCD with the eMac, and maybe reincarnate it as a cube.

My one HUGE request is that Apple starts shipping them with 512Mb of RAM.

I made a presentation on GarageBand to a sophomore music class on the school's eMacs (baseline 1.25's w 128 Mb RAM). As would be expected, I played about five seconds of the song, and got a "system overload" message. Someone in the back said "hahaha macs suck," and, suddenly, I realized how much the 128Mb RAM bottlenecks the performance of an otherwise solid machine, and how bad this bottleneck makes the Mac look to these students, to many of whom the eMacs are their only exposure to non-wintel technology.

This (shipping comps with far too little RAM to educational institutions) gives Apple a bad name.
 
The headless eMac

Think of the marketing possibilities for a headless eMac.

The current iMac has "Where's the computer?"

The eMac could have "Where's the monitor?"

If you're really going to gear this thing for the classroom, encase it in a rugged suitcase-like case, allowing it to be closed when not in use (to protect the screen and to provide more table space) and to be easily transported (though not small enough to fit into a book bag or backpack.) Kind of like an old, old laptop that's built to last (at a low price.)

As fer advertising with "new" - yup - us United Statesers do fall for that kind of thing. Just like we fall for the same store having a "once a year" sale every weekend. ;)
 
I don't see why PB owners should be upset if Apple updated the eMac tomorrow. Remeber last April? The eMac was updated on 4/13 while the PBs were updated 4/19. So, in theory, for one week, the then current 12" and low-end 15" were 25% slower in CPU clockspeed. I don't remember reading a lot of complaints b/c everyone knew the PBs would be updated soon. Secondly, the eMac and the PBs are different lines targeted towards different users. I've said it before I'm saying it again: Notebooks will always be slower than desktops, at aleast as longs as the current disction between portables and desktops exists.
 
They need to give Emac that fx5200 so they can move powermac and imac up with better video cards/chips, take your pick i could rattle off a half dozen that are better but we have ran that subject into the ground more then once. Give it the traditional moto bump-1.4 maybe 1.5 and you have a nice entry machine. In fact with some help from family we are getting my son a machine for christmas and a emac would be perfect.
 
Zaty said:
I don't see why PB owners should be upset if Apple updated the eMac tomorrow. Remeber last April? The eMac was updated on 4/13 while the PBs were updated 4/19. So, in theory, for one week, the then current 12" and low-end 15" were 25% slower in CPU clockspeed. I don't remember reading a lot of complaints b/c everyone knew the PBs would be updated soon. Secondly, the eMac and the PBs are different lines targeted towards different users. I've said it before I'm saying it again: Notebooks will always be slower than desktops, at aleast as longs as the current disction between portables and desktops exists.

Yeah, this is what exactly I was thinking. If you want to keep the small form factor and portability (which no longer exists on some Wintel laptops) you've got to sacrifice some speed.
 
JonMaker said:
Apple only sells LCD displays (and fine ones at that) so why WHY are they still bundling CRTs (and poor ones at that) with their eMacs?

I wouldn't say poor. 1280*960 resolution on a 17" (16" viewable)CRT at 75 Hz is pretty good. And getting that good monitors at low cost is good. A good enough LCD would be significantly more $$$. Not that I wouldn't want the CRT to be dead, I can't stand CRT flickering anymore (I know, more Hz, less flickering) when I use school machine's or our old PowerMac 6100. I'm so used to a LCD. But on 75 Hz, I don't think the eMac screen flickers too much. And at 1280*960 it's pretty sharp.
 
I agree, if iam not mistaken its a tuned down 17" studio display and my now 4 year old display is doing great. Crts you dont have much to worry about and they last for years and years.......
 
I had another reason to look at the eMac specs today and wonder if they are about to be upgraded. Because I'm about to get a free eMac! Well, sort of.

At school, we have one CRT iMac in our computer classroom that appears to be a lemon. It's been repaired by Apple numerous times for numerous problems (crashes, won't boot, won't wake from sleep, can't change startup disk, etc.). Today they told us they are finally going to replace it instead of trying to fix it anymore. But they said we'll get an eMac instead of an iMac, since they presumably don't keep a closetful of CRT iMacs around for schools to use any more. But it's going to look a little odd having a computer classroom with one eMac and all the rest iMacs.
 
Dont Hurt Me said:
They need to give Emac that fx5200 so they can move powermac and imac up with better video cards/chips, take your pick i could rattle off a half dozen that are better but we have ran that subject into the ground more then once. Give it the traditional moto bump-1.4 maybe 1.5 and you have a nice entry machine. In fact with some help from family we are getting my son a machine for christmas and a emac would be perfect.
For once I agree with you Dont Hurt Me. That GPU would not only help push the eMac forward, but would pave the way for improvements in the iMac and PowerMac GPUs (and less so the PowerBook). The iBook is due for an update soon anyway, so it matters less. Only problem is that the iMac isn't due for an update anytime soon, so it'll be a while before it gets a new GPU. However, the PowerMac will likely be updated before the iMac is, clearing the way for an iMac update. So in the end it makes absolutely no difference to the update cycle.
 
I wouldn't be surprised to see the emac updated past the powerbooks, at least in some regards. Remember that the emac was the first to see an 8x superdrive...

The emac is a really great machine, and totally underrated. My family has a 1 Ghz model from summer 2003 and it still runs flawlessly. Never had a single problem.

I'm just hoping that they put in a 64 MB video card. That's really the minimum these days, even though the emac is clearly not a gaming machine.
 
Dont Hurt Me said:
They need to give Emac that fx5200 so they can move powermac and imac up with better video cards/chips, take your pick i could rattle off a half dozen that are better but we have ran that subject into the ground more then once. Give it the traditional moto bump-1.4 maybe 1.5 and you have a nice entry machine. In fact with some help from family we are getting my son a machine for christmas and a emac would be perfect.

I agree with putting the fx5200 with 64MB vram into the eMac (to run Core Image) along with 1.5GHz. It doesn't really need any other changes as a low-end mac.

The 15" and 17" Powerbooks have better graphics already, but there will likely be complaints anyway until they get updated. Maybe they will update the eMac to 1.4GHz or the Powerbooks will get a faster processor in the near future (a faster 7447?) to make everyone happy.

That would put the same graphics card in both eMac and iMac, which shouldn't be a problem with the iMac having a G5. I don't understand why the iMac doesn't have better graphics.
 
uh yeah .... even though this is try, i wouldn't be that excited unless the new emac changed from CRT to LCD.
 
An option for an internal digital TV tuner would be nice for the eMac (and iMac) so that students could be an all in one cheap machine. Such an addition would probably have to wait for Tiger so that it could be part of the OS and maybe with tweak or additions to iLife apps. For a few hundred bucks this would be a killer addition I think...
 
You'd Think

aswitcher said:
An option for an internal digital TV tuner would be nice for the eMac (and iMac) so that students could be an all in one cheap machine. Such an addition would probably have to wait for Tiger so that it could be part of the OS and maybe with tweak or additions to iLife apps. For a few hundred bucks this would be a killer addition I think...

You would think that the addition of a TV tuner would make the eMac into an awesome all-in-one: moderately powerful computer, moderately sized TV, DVD player/recorder, and with the addition of an iSub, a moderately decent sounding stereo. Of course, media center PCs haven't taken off, so I doubt that an eMac with TV tuner would. And yes, a combination TV/DVD/VCR/Stereo would be awesome for a dorm room or small apartment, especially if the unit *looked* like a TV, as the eMac most assuredly does.
 
kettle said:
I don't think a LCD eMac will happen, maybe a sharper edged version of the current eMac so there is more continuity with the iPod.

:)

Now this is a curious point... I have a 3G iPod and a brand-new iMac G5; I never held a 1G or 2G iPod in my hands, but I've seen some photos of those, and I noticed that my iMac G5 looks a lot like those. Curiously, the eMac looks a lot like my 3G iPod/the new 4G iPod. Are you noticing the same design incoherence as I am?

First, the iPod had sharp edges, with that protruding clear plastic white on the inside;
at the same time, you had the old white iBook G3, with rounded edges, but made of that same white coated clear plastic;
and the first G4 iMac whith that white plastic monitor frame with clear plastic border.
Then, the iMac's monitor frame became double-layered, clear on the outside, white on the inside, and the iBook G4 was made of all-white plastic; the eMac was clear plastic white on the inside, with rounded edges.
And the iPod's edges becomes rounded in its 3rd generation...
Now, the iMac G5 mimicks the 1G iPod's looks... Should this mean that older iPods are cooler than the new ones (lol) ?
Now, MHO: Products get updated in their own timings, so it's understandable that the whole Apple product line isn't aesthetically coherent at any given moment. As for that curious difference/similarity between the iMac/eMac/iBook/iPod lines, let it be (no Beatles pun intended :p). Laptops and mp3 players are supposed to be carried around. It was actually wise to sacrifice a little bit of coolness, I guess those sharp edges on the iPod would get easily damaged over the years. Desktop computers, on the other hand, don't have to face such violent treatment as laptops and iPods... They can, and will look cool for many, many years, especially with those delightful sharp and clear edges (think of the Cube) ;) [edit: oops, I was forgetting the fact that eMacs are educational products, and are supposed to be sturdy... whatever....]
(now that I tkink of it, the original iPod was inspired by the Cube... This all-clear-and-white look started with the Cube. Praised be the Cube! LOL)
 
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