New iMac In September

[x86isslow]

Not to toot my own horn, but since I was up late last night working to bring this message to you MacForums people, has anyone looked at post #657?

Mike

Hey! Saw that last night and completely missed the photoshop!
seeing it the second time- ha! love the ticker... most excellent work! 🙂

 

[Nicky G]

Aldo, PowerPC chips are not significantly more expensive than x86 chips, if you look at the upper end of x86. In fact, many of the most advanced x86 chips are quite a bit more expensive. Your argument is simply not based in reality.

As someone just said, why is Apple compared to every other computer maker lumped together? Sure, Apple is BETTER than every other computer maker put together, but still, when analyzing their overall success it does not make much sense.

Also, why compare Macs to EVERY PC made, including all the ones that sit behind cash registers and every other piece of crap PC that costs nothing and has a very limited purpose. Let's look at the situation more honestly.

Audio industry: Macs are the majority
Graphics/print industry: Macs are the majority
Video industry: Macs are the majority
EDU: Macs are something like 20%, certainly respectable
Medical imaging: Macs have a respectable chunk of that market

I could go on and on.

It seems like in many of the more interesting markets where people actually do interesting things with their computers, Macs are either in the majority, or have a respectable chunk of the market.

Let's not forget that half the computers Apple now sells are laptops, and they have something like 7% of that market. Room to improve, sure, but still not bad at all when compared with other _individual_ computer makers.

Would I loooove to see a less expensive, headless consumer-grade Mac? You bet I would. Does the fact that Apple hasn't had such a machine in a while mean they are UTTERLY FAILING to the degree some people make out? I don't think so.

 

[MikeTheC]

It seems like in many of the more interesting markets where people actually do interesting things with their computers, Macs are either in the majority, or have a respectable chunk of the market.

Bravo, sir!

Let's not forget that half the computers Apple now sells are laptops, and they have something like 7% of that market. Room to improve, sure, but still not bad at all when compared with other _individual_ computer makers.

Ditto, ditto. I wish more people (and more companies) would recognize the virtue in not trying to have every last person on the planet as their customer.

 

[maddav]

Umm is this the thread about the iMac? 😛

 

[MacFan25]

The new iMacs are Shipping in September and they're "probably not quite done yet"?!? No way! If there is anything that's being fine-tuned right now, it's the Ad Campaign,... but the computers have been finalized and are most likely in production.

Yes, you are probably right about that. Hopefully by now they are done with them, and any problems that they encountered are solved. And hopefully they have started production, as it says on Apple's site that the iMacs will be "announced and available in September".

I guarantee you that the reason they weren't announced at WWDC was so that the Displays would be the ONLY hardware announced and get all the press. By announcing the the displays and the imacs separately, they get TWICE the free publicity. They get all of the announcements in the news and websites about the displays now and then when the iMacs are announced officially, they get a second wave of publicity -- free. Plus, at that time, most of the press will reiterate about the new Displays.

I agree that Apple does probably want as most press and publicity about the displays and Tiger as possible. But I think that they must have encountered some type of problem when designing the iMac and building it (most likely heat problems with the G5), so they may have thought WWDC was too early to announce them. Another reason that they may not have announced them at WWDC is just because Apple may want to keep WWDC reserved for announcements to the professional line, such as the G5 last year, and now the displays.

 

[rtdunham]

school sales

I would be cool if they could be available in August, when more of the education sales are. Oh well, September's not bad. .,...

Well, i don't know about you, but my daughters' schools (one college, one high school) resume classes in August, and I'd assume most purchases for that school year would need to be made sometime in July. Surely the students who are required to have 'puters have to actually have them in their possession for the start of school as early as August. I think the consequences for education sales are far more extreme than you're acknowledging. As a shareholder, that sucks.

peace
terry

 

[rtdunham]

on the other hand

...This is a total disaster. The whole year has been and Apple must be thanking Steve for investing so much in iPod and ITMS otherwise this would of been an absolutely disastrous year for them.

on the other hand, maybe the G5 disappointments and iMac disappointments and PB disappointments wouldn't have happened if the company had remained focused on 'puters and not on peripherals. Maybe Apple should be complaining to steve about his investing so much in iPod and ITMS.

Not a complaint, just an observation. Sometimes it's hard to do EVERYTHING well, sometimes SOMETHING falls to the back burner.

peace
terry

 

[MikeTheC]

Umm is this the thread about the iMac? 😛

iWhat? Did you say iMac? What's that? 🙂

 

[rtdunham]

i've got this bridge to sell...

... I'm sure that if you ASKED Apple employees about the iMac now, they'd tell you about the upcoming iMacs...

whoa, JG, for a regular--and i've seen some interesting insights in some of your other posts (the dual G4 iMac speculation, for example) THIS comment is extremely naive. imho.

terry

 

[chasepgh]

who knows what it will be, but i bet it looks sexy

I think Apple needs to focus on Ipods and other devices. It adds money to their bottom line and funds development.

It is fun to speculate on what the new Imac will or won't be like, but it really sounds like a supply issue. What company would invenst in inventory of a soon to be discontinued product? Though they might loose sales, on an accounting standpoint they will probably make more money by not having old inventory laying around that needs to be discounted.

As for the new i-mac ... no one ever promised a G5, but I would think it the most likely choice. Though, I'm betting on a lower end G5 chip as used in older models of the G5 because of the cooling issues and the imacs compact space.

As much as I LOVE the new cinema displays, I hope the new I-mac doesn't follow the wrapped in metal design of those and the powerbooks. Should be fun to see what it does look like!

Apple has always been creative (thinking the mac cube, imacs, ibooks) with their design. Nothing in the windows PC market has ever been a machine that I walked by and said, damn, that machine is SEXY! The sexy look of the imac is what drew me into the wonderful world of Macintosh.

 

[blorp]

Reading the posts of some X86-happy people makes me quite angry.

I'm not going to argue with anyone about who has more marketshare or what kind of car company sells the most cars in Germany, because I know that I will not change their mind and eventually I will get so worked up that I'll start posting in daemonic rage and end up getting banned from MacRumours forums 🙂

I will say this, though: Apple makes great machines. They are innovative, fast, efficient, and beautiful. PCs make for great computers as well. I own a custom built AMD machine which works great (not AS well as my Mac, of course). Sure, they may be more expensive than a crappy, $400 Gateway or Dell, but you can't compare the two because they aren't aimed towards the same market.

Sure, you may not be able to have every single app made for a PC on a Mac, but who cares? Mac apps are so much better. Look at iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie, and Garageband. Tell me the programs for a PC that are better than iLife, free, AND work seamlessly together. I have every program that I need for my Mac, and I never have to worry about getting viruses.

Apple laptops are the best. There is no argument for this. Every single PC laptop I have seen is next to horrible. A PC laptop is 7+ lbs, 1.5" + thick, uglier than my rear-end, slow, and $2000 +. Mac laptops are 1.35", 1.18", 1.1", and 1" thin, less than 6.9lbs, incredibly good looking and sleek, and while they may be more expensive, you get what you pay for.

So...uhh...(Quick, think of something smart to say to summarize your points!)...42 + 2 = 44!

 

[takao]

I will say this, though: Apple makes great machines. They are innovative, fast, efficient, and beautiful. PCs make for great computers as well. I own a custom built AMD machine which works great (not AS well as my Mac, of course). Sure, they may be more expensive than a crappy, $400 Gateway or Dell, but you can't compare the two because they aren't aimed towards the same market.

i can agree with you the problem with some people in here is still that they are "overmistifiy" apple IMHO...i really like their machines and i'm going to switch in 2005...but after all they are a business and not some religious cult who does everything right...they made and still make mistakes.period. (especially in marketing)

if they want to make money they have to offer...

 

[Xtremehkr]

Lucky Me

When I bought my first iMac, a few months later the new generation of iMac were released. I was mildly annoyed but was happy all the same having moved to Apple.

I was contemplating getting a new iMac but was firmly waiting for the G5 models to come out. If the rumors are true it is happening sooner than expected. Good times.

 

[vouder17]

Ok this is my take on why apple have done this. Apple obviously only wanted iMac inventories to run out in say two or three weeks, but have already, and it would cost too much to start producing new iMac G4's. So what they did is just told people look just wait and you will get the new iMacs. But the reason why they haven't officially released them, is because stuff like releasing a BIG new product takes alot of time, web pages, advertising, building the computer etc. So they just resorted to giving a simple note on the website.

Just my 2 euro cents

 

[thatwendigo]

This thread has grown enormously while I've been swamped with work, but I keep seeing the allegation that a shift to AMD would make Apple so much cheaper.

Once more, I present the rebuttal to the claim that moving to x86 would at all reduce Apple's overhead on their systems:

Tyan Thunder K8W AMD-8000 Chipset

Dual Socket 940
8x PC3200 DIMM (with ECC)
2x ATA-133
1x AGP 8x, 2x PCI-Xa, 2x PCI-Xb, 1x PCI
2x PS2, 1x COM, 1x LPT, 1x LAN, 5X USB 1.1, 2x FireWire, SPDIF out
Gigabit Ethernet
4x SATA​

Cost: $436

2x AMD Opteron 248

Socket 940
2.2ghz core clock​

Cost: $1378

ATI Radeon 9600XT 128MB

AGP 8x​

Cost: $219

Enermax Noisetaker 600w PSU
Cost: $168

Pioneer DVR-A07XLA

8x DVD+/-R, 4x DVD+/-RW, 24x CD-R, 24x CD-RW​

Cost: $119

Seagate 160GB 7200RPM SATA
Cost: $117

2x Crucial 256MB PC3200 OEM RAM
Cost: $104

Total cost: $2,541

 

[paxtonandrew]

Amazing

Hey BornAgainMac

How's about this...

I almost thought that the screencapture was off the real site!

Anawayz, back to the iMac. I have a Revesion D G3 iMac(333mhz),and it works amazingly well. It will do Panther, and dual boot 9.22 etc. I also have a Dual 2 Ghz (old Model) G5 with 4 Gb ram, and even though it is BLISTERINGLY faster than my trusty iMac, it never feels lacking. The New iMac WILL be G5, Will NOT have a sepeate screen, and WILL be an AIO, as that is what the iMac stands for.

Does anybody know whether the new Freescale chip will be released soon. I think that the 32Bit chips will still (in the near future) run better, cooler and faster(Intel Benchmarks) for the type of iMac/eMac/iBook market😱. The G5 should stay in the 'Power Range" PB, PM. Yes, Moto have been slack with their processor upgrades, but that means nothing. Look at the G4's, they are fast enough for the average joe. If Moto can get the G4 to about 2.5 ghz, then the NeXt Step will be to get a G5.

My $.02

 

[crees!]

Ok this is my take on why apple have done this. Apple obviously only wanted iMac inventories to run out in say two or three weeks, but have already, and it would cost too much to start producing new iMac G4's. So what they did is just told people look just wait and you will get the new iMacs. But the reason why they haven't officially released them, is because stuff like releasing a BIG new product takes alot of time, web pages, advertising, building the computer etc. So they just resorted to giving a simple note on the website.

Just my 2 euro cents

Maybe, but you would think that the advertising, webpages, etc.. would be already completed in time for the expected release. Say if there is a manufacturing problem of the product. That shouldn't hinder the promotional side of things.

 

[daveg5]

I almost thought that the screencapture was off the real site!

Anawayz, back to the iMac. I have a Revesion D G3 iMac(333mhz),and it works amazingly well. It will do Panther, and dual boot 9.22 etc. I also have a Dual 2 Ghz (old Model) G5 with 4 Gb ram, and even though it is BLISTERINGLY faster than my trusty iMac, it never feels lacking. The New iMac WILL be G5, Will NOT have a sepeate screen, and WILL be an AIO, as that is what the iMac stands for.

Does anybody know whether the new Freescale chip will be released soon. I think that the 32Bit chips will still (in the near future) run better, cooler and faster(Intel Benchmarks) for the type of iMac/eMac/iBook market😱. The G5 should stay in the 'Power Range" PB, PM. Yes, Moto have been slack with their processor upgrades, but that means nothing. Look at the G4's, they are fast enough for the average joe. If Moto can get the G4 to about 2.5 ghz, then the NeXt Step will be to get a G5.

My $.02

Thanks for giving us the facts.

 

[ChrisH3677]

Umm is this the thread about the iMac? 😛

Heheh. after near 700 posts you gotta expect some chinese whispers! 😀

 

[thatwendigo]

Does anybody know whether the new Freescale chip will be released soon. I think that the 32Bit chips will still (in the near future) run better, cooler and faster(Intel Benchmarks) for the type of iMac/eMac/iBook market😱. The G5 should stay in the 'Power Range" PB, PM. Yes, Moto have been slack with their processor upgrades, but that means nothing. Look at the G4's, they are fast enough for the average joe. If Moto can get the G4 to about 2.5 ghz, then the NeXt Step will be to get a G5.

The FreeScale fab at the Crolles2 plant is rolling out the new e300 and e500 chips as we speak, shipping them to embedded manufacturers as promised. While the first in the line isn't necessarily all that huge a manufacturing feat (it's a modified 603e, as I recall), the e500 core is brand new and represents a part of the future generation they're aiming at. The ones we should be drooling over, though, are the e600 and e700 cores. The first is a G4e core that's ramped up and modified - on die memory control, 400mhz bus, larger L2, dual-core and single-core implementation - with full instruction set compatibility with the older chip. I've even seen some statements that it might be pin-compatible with the current sockets, even though it will require some motherboard reconfiguration to cut out the external memory controller and shorten the pipe to main memory.

Oh, and it's supposed to run 13 watts typical for single core at 2.0ghz, and a mere 22 watts typical for dual-core. Assuming that there's even a fractional increase in performance over normal SMP from the lack of latency (both on-die memory control and the dual-core bridging rather than dual-processor), we might see the equivalent of a 3.0-3.5ghz processor in the PowerBooks without nearly the issues that a single G5 would have. This would also help the iMacs, for similar reasons.

 

[pkkrusty]

i want to see retro

You know what would make all the old Mac users like me happy? Seeing Apple re-introduce the LCIII case. Jam it full of high end components, much like they do with the current iMac, and call it the LCIV. Just a pizza box looking for a monitor. That'd be awesome. Maybe one PCI slot would fit in the back.

But since we all know that'll never happen because of profit margins, I'll keep dreaming.

 

[~Shard~]

You know what would make all the old Mac users like me happy? Seeing Apple re-introduce the LCIII case. Jam it full of high end components, much like they do with the current iMac, and call it the LCIV. Just a pizza box looking for a monitor. That'd be awesome. Maybe one PCI slot would fit in the back.

But since we all know that'll never happen because of profit margins, I'll keep dreaming.

I think Apple should house the new iMac in an Apple //e case. That would be sweet... It should come with a 5-1/4 floppy disk drive as well... 😉 😛

 

[rdowns]

I think Apple should house the new iMac in an Apple //e case. That would be sweet... It should come with a 5-1/4 floppy disk drive as well... 😉 😛

That would be so cool. I'd finally have a use for that extended 80 column card I have lying around.

 

[thatwendigo]

You know what would make all the old Mac users like me happy? Seeing Apple re-introduce the LCIII case. Jam it full of high end components, much like they do with the current iMac, and call it the LCIV. Just a pizza box looking for a monitor. That'd be awesome. Maybe one PCI slot would fit in the back.

But since we all know that'll never happen because of profit margins, I'll keep dreaming.

Actually, as an "old mac user" that's been on the platform since 1986, I think that would be terrible and completely inimical to the direction that Steve's taken the company thus far. Commoditization of the architecture and cases kills half the mystique of the brand, and you can argue all you like about what pushes sales, but half of what makes people walk in the front of an Apple store is going to be the sleek, well-designed machines that are on display.

The people who whine about how Apple is overpriced are the ones who I sincerely doubt would buy anyways. It's the same phenomenon as all the supposed "buyers" for PowerMacs who went silent right after the G5 was introduced.

To paraphrase the Bard:

Posters are but walking shadows, poor players
That strut and fret their agony across the boards
And then are heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.​

 

[~Shard~]

That would be so cool. I'd finally have a use for that extended 80 column card I have lying around.

The scary thing is, I bet you there are a lot of people on this site who don't even know what that is.... 😉