Next-Generation iMacs to See Price Cuts?

[NintendoFan]

I was thinking we'd see a minor update in the next 1-2 months (and the price drop) then a switch to Arrandale early in 2010.

Sound plausible?

edit: I'm busy trying to figure out when to buy. Can't you tell?

That is probably what will occur, as that is what would be the cheapest solution for Apple.

 

[gregorsamsa]

Here's a problem with playing back DVD's: they don't have upconversion in the and/or like you have console Blu-ray players and newer DVD players connected to the appropriate display using the HDMI connection. As such, it doesn't try to "upscale" the resolution to take advantage of the sharpness available with 20" or later widescreen monitors that have HDCP, and even on a well-mastered DVD like the Extended Editions of the Lord of the Rings movies you can see the very distinct "fuzziness" in the background details. Meanwhile in the setup I mentioned originally, when you play back a real Blu-ray disc you get the full resolution of the disc, and on a movie like Disney/Pixar's Cars (my "reference" disc to demonstrate the amazing sharpness of Blu-ray format) looks totally amazing even on a 20" widescreen computer monitor.

As for Apple not supporting Blu-ray, up until very recently getting a license for the technology was a complicated, expensive process. But now that you can get a simplified, "single-point" license for this technology, it also means dramatically lower licensing costs, and that could point the way for Apple to support Blu-ray technology on the iMac, Pro and higher-end .

Thanks for the links & I can appreciate the visual distinction between desktops & more dedicated Blu-ray viewing technology. I think that Apple ought to strike a balance here by offering the latest Blu-ray technology on at least their 2 highest-priced 24" iMacs. However, I wouldn't want it included across the Mac range just yet due to Apple's relatively high pricing on newer technology.

Remember that, as well engineered as Macs generally are (with some inevitable exceptions), Apple only dropped DVD-ROM drives from certain Macs fairly recently. With Apple reluctant to compromise their (roughly) 30% profit margins, adding Blu-ray without also an extortionate price increase seems rather unlikely.

 

[AidenShaw]

Motherboards aren't expensive to design

Wouldn't make sense to have iMacs with vastly different boards. For example bottom two on Core Duo and upper two on i7/i3 designs. Not going to get maximum scale on parts.

Look at mobo companies like Asus, Gigabyte and the others. They offer lots of different models with minor parts variations.

Asus has 9 different Core i7 models, Newegg has 46 models of Asus motherboards for Core 2 CPUs.

Since we hear that desktops are "dead" and that nobody does DIY anymore - one has to assume that Asus sales volumes per board are tiny compared to any model of Apple.

So, if one is trying to argue that Apple couldn't afford two motherboards - how does one explain the huge number of motherboard models that are available for the niche desktop DIY market?

Answer: mobos are designed and manufactured by computers, the fixed design cost for a mobo is really quite small. You don't need a huge production run to hit a low price - the per unit manufacturing cost is the major part of a mobo's price.

 

[deconstruct60]

I was thinking we'd see a minor update in the next 1-2 months (and the price drop) then a switch to Arrandale early in 2010.

Sound plausible?

edit: I'm busy trying to figure out when to buy. Can't you tell?

Plausible. Depends a bit on how quickly Intel wants to kill off the Core Duo 2 Peryns (e.g, scale back volume discounts). Doubtful Apple is going to get something faster than 3.06 GHz out of Intel to "move" the line down driven primarily by speed bumps to the processor package.

Apple could do something like put eSATA ( or some kind of "power user" differential ) on the top 1 or 2 units and leave that off for the ones farther down the line. ( akin to when they had the iMacs split with 400 vs. 800 firewire). Other power user options are something like a small PCI-e flash drive so that the high end version got two storage drives instead of one. Or an early stab at USB 3.0. [ Historically though, Apple has tried out things like this on the Mac Pro and/or Xserve first. The only one above done so far is something similar to the flash drive on PCI-e. If iMacs got USB 3.0 first that would be interesting different move. ]

There seems to be a set of power users at the top end of the iMac scale that could use faster I/O (need small RAID on 3.0GBs bus set up) than what can get out of the iMac right now, but don't really need the horsepower of the Mac Pro. (that would shutdown a portion of the "I need a mini tower" crowd. ). Those folks wouldn't see any faster CPU, perhaps move the 3.06 to the top two slots instead of just the top, and would use "more I/O" to justify the price.

That way Apple could coast till May-June for a switch to Arrandale. If Apple were to switch to Arrandale in the March-April time frame then the Oct-Nov iMac intro I'd expect it to be will be extremely minor (like same stuff , maybe bigger hard drives, and cheaper prices). Only have a fixed set of iMac engineers probably not enough to pipeline two different efforts.

 

[deconstruct60]

Look at mobo companies like Asus, Gigabyte and the others. They offer lots of different models with minor parts variations.

Asus has 9 different Core i7 models, Newegg has 46 models of Asus motherboards for Core 2 CPUs.

And zero of those companies have the margins that Apple has.
Even though there are 40+ of them, many of those Asus boards will see run rates higher than that of the iMac.

It isn't just the motherboard designs. It is the more complicated inventory/contracting, variations on cases (which may feed back into inventory also), testing/qualification , long term maintenance/support costs, etc. It is total system costs.


The only way a split line up would work is if the top level boards were the pre-cursors to the mainstream line of the next year. (e.g., top line gets USB 3.0 on next bump. That spreads to the entire line over next 18 months. ) I don't think Apple wants to go to a mainstream iMac with a Clarksfield thermal envelope issues. I think they want to stay in the sub 36 W window. Going to be hard to sell slower clock speed but got more cores when have been using clock speed to move this line along for so long. How many iMac uses are chomping at the bit being short on cores?

While Arrandale says Q4 2009... that is likely latter in 2009 rather than sooner. Second Intel is being aggressive here ( pulled in the timeline) in part to compete with AMD. That's is a risk for Apple if Intel ends up with a quirk.

Apple hasn't used an i7 class part. No reason to see why they'd start to know. Just isn't likely to happen.

The DIY custom built market is probably just as big as Apple's whole Personal Computer market share. The major players in the PC market are those who crack 10%. They are mega gaints if can creep on 20%. It is a highly fragmented market. That's says nothing major about Apple as a whole system and service delivery vendor total lifecycle costs.

 

[macjiro]

Thanks for all the great details about chips, dates, etc.
So, i feel pretty good that now is a good time to buy an Imac
then wait cause its only going to be a nominal gain. My beef with
the current models is the 9400M. But there's no way i'm gonna
spend over 2K for any comp even though i dig the Pro.

 

[elgrecomac]

I don't think so....

Apple is gaining market share by dollars and units in US and internationally. Their dollars are also up year over year. The one measure that is not up year over year is desktop units. But it fell less then their competitors.

Sorry to disagree with you. Your position has been Apple's mantra for 15 years where they grew from 2% to 8% market share. Apple has brand loyalty at the individual level but major corporations have not jumped all over Apple for one big reason: price. Mac loyalists will argue that Macs are cheaper in the long run but USA and international corporation are just not willing to toss out their existing installed base.

Win 7 is good not great. It is not OSX but it is stable, fast and feature rich. I easily installed it on a 3 year old sony Vaio with 1gb of ram...and it runs almost as fast as OSX on my MPB with 4gb of ram. The irony of it is that Win 7 will run on a tremendous number of older PCs. Can the same be said for OSX 10.6?

And another issue Apple has to address-- Netbooks. They are cheap, fast and can run any OS they choose...including OSX, albeit illegally.

 

[elgrecomac]

x

x

 

[albusseverus]

The irony of it is that Win 7 will run on a tremendous number of older PCs. Can the same be said for OSX 10.6?

Considering Vista didn't run on those machines, even though some were sold with Vista, Microsoft needs to make up for how badly they let their customer down over the last 3 years. Apple on the other hand has always served its customers exceptionally well and while VERY old machines can't move much further forward, Leopard eats even Vista 2.0 (tell the truth, MS) for lunch on so many levels.

Back on topic - Lower prices ≠ quad cores (or better) + Blu-ray. I wish it did, but it seems Apple will be stringing the C2Ds along at least until the new year. Good news for current iMac owners (our machines stay 'current' longer), but bad news for Apple. Quad cores are quite common now in the Windows world. I doubt they perform better than a Mac with C2D and properly designed guts, but most of us were hoping iMac would get quad cores in January this year, not next year.

 

[badNameErr]

Thanks deconstruct60, and all the other contributors.

This is a great thread.

 

[Anuba]

I think the problem is in the imprecision in talking about market scope.
For the overall "Personal Computer" market, laptops form factors will become the dominating category.

Maybe, but I don't think laptops will ever take over completely even in the consumer segment because they will always be the wrong form factor for some people.

Not everyone needs or wants a portable computer because [mobility + computing] simply isn't part of their lives. They consider the computer a home appliance. They don't want a mobile computer any more than they want a mobile TV, a mobile fridge or a mobile dishwasher. As pieces of interior decoration, laptops suck. Not even a MacBook Pro can make a desk look half as good as an alu iMac can. A laptop isn't living room-ish, it belongs in a messy student dorm.

If you never use your computer on the road, a laptop is so many kinds of wrong it's ridiculous. Even the biggest ones have tiny screens. The keyboards are cramped. I've seen so many examples where people absolutely shouldn't have bought a laptop. It never leaves their desk, and when they work on it they sit in an uncomfortable hunched up position, vulture-necked, frowning and peering at the microscopic text. Fail. Get an iMac.

 

[deconstruct60]

Maybe, but I don't think laptops will ever take over completely even in the consumer segment because they will always be the wrong form factor for some people.

The iMac is almost the laptop form factor. It is hardly any different than those 9-11 lbs "desktop replacement" laptops which are almost never transported either. Some folks get those when have limited space and want to be able to "put away" the computer when want to do other things with that deskspace.


Other than a detached keyboard (and the associated clam shell effect for transport when it is attached), the monitor and computer are all in one device. Between All-in-ones and laptops... that will be the major formats. Especially as things shrink down to 2-4 major chips packages being practically the whole computer and the thermal problems come more under control. Couple that with screen implementions getting thinner and there is fixed, irreplaceable backlight and priced in the commodity zone.


Even if not going to take it on the road, fewer and fewer folks want the computer to suck up living space. Should take "less" space. That is a very similar major design constraint that laptops take on. Less space and vertical orientation certainly allows for 20+ inch screens much better than the classic laptop (clam shell) approach does.

Sure there are going to be people who need slots , massive heat sinks, and/or stuff that requires a box.

 

[Anuba]

The iMac is almost the laptop form factor. It is hardly any different than those 9-11 lbs "desktop replacement" laptops which are almost never transported either.

Well, the iMac 24" has about 94 pixels per inch while the MBP 17" has 133. I have both, and while I'm no stranger to tiny pixels I really wouldn't recommend the MBP 17" to anyone with less than 20/20 vision. A laptop is a huge compromise in terms of ergonomics, screen real estate, performance, speakers, connectivity and expandability, and the bang for buck is abysmal. You can get a 3.06 GHz iMac 24" w/ 1 TB HDD and NVidia GT130 512 MB for $2199 -- a MacBook Pro 17" 3.06 GHz is $2799. The only advantage it has is portability, and if you don't need that, the iMac is clearly the way to go.

All-in-ones would probably be outselling headless desktops among consumers right now if the price was right, but Apple sticks with their premium pricing and PC manufacturers like Dell and HP who both offer iMac ripoff models (OK, the HP has a touchscreen, but still) didn't make them inexpensive, they wanted a piece of that premium pie. If iMac and its PC clones were competing with entry-level headless desktop in terms of price, consumers wouldn't be buying as many laptops as they do, and they wouldn't be buying headless minitowers at all.

 

[froggyhenry]

1st off for my 1st post, a big THANKS to everyone that's contributed to this thread. It's came timely for me as I've been debating when to buy my first iMac. We just bought the wife a 15" MBP at the end of May and promptly got stung 15 days later when Apple decided to lower the price and then on top of that I recently read that folks that have bought on/after 8 Jun 09 get an upgrade to Snow Leopard for next to nothing.....so we got blasted on this front as well. In short, I've been gun-shy about getting stung again.

As life-long PC users (we're nearing 40yrs old now) we've been totally amazed with how cool Apple stuff is and are kicking ourselves in the butt for not switching over long ago. We credit some friends that are an Apple freak household to finally pushing us over the edge/showing us the light. We started with iPods, moved to more/bigger iPods and now it's growing from there.

Upon buying the Mrs her MBP I started wondering if I should buy a laptop as well, but the more time I spend on it I've realized I'm a desktop type of user so it's iMac for me. Anuba, your post below sums up exactly how I am/see the issue....great post.

Not everyone needs or wants a portable computer because [mobility + computing] simply isn't part of their lives. They consider the computer a home appliance. They don't want a mobile computer any more than they want a mobile TV, a mobile fridge or a mobile dishwasher. As pieces of interior decoration, laptops suck. Not even a MacBook Pro can make a desk look half as good as an alu iMac can. A laptop isn't living room-ish, it belongs in a messy student dorm.

If you never use your computer on the road, a laptop is so many kinds of wrong it's ridiculous. Even the biggest ones have tiny screens. The keyboards are cramped. I've seen so many examples where people absolutely shouldn't have bought a laptop. It never leaves their desk, and when they work on it they sit in an uncomfortable hunched up position, vulture-necked, frowning and peering at the microscopic text. Fail. Get an iMac.

 

[iAlexG]

That would be good since I spent a lot on my Macbook Pro a few weeks ago because I really want a iMac

 

[chrisdee]

I just don't se imac with quad core. I ranted about quad core imacs back in october 2008. Now, 3 months short of a year after they still cant get their finger out. Anything other than a Core I7 inside IMAC would be an insult for the next imminent update.

But I dont expect it. Apple is a company thats more occupied with making products based on apperance than content, but thats just my ranting uneducated opinion.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Just in time for University next year? Please, Macs are ridiculously expensive and the last time you gave "cuts" you raised our prices!!!

www.apple.com/nz to see for yourself. After conversion we have a European Country Premium of about $200-$1K for MacBooks. About $500-2K for Desktops. That goes for the UK too.

 

[jb1280]

Just in time for University next year? Please, Macs are ridiculously expensive and the last time you gave "cuts" you raised our prices!!!

www.apple.com/nz to see for yourself. After conversion we have a European Country Premium of about $500-$1K for MacBooks non Mac-Pros. About $2K for Mac-Pros. That goes for the UK too.

Can we say exaggeration?

Base 13" Macbook Pro in the United States is $1199 (excluding sales tax).
Base 13" Macbook Pro in New Zealand is $1344 (excluding GST)
Base 13" Macbook Pro in Finland is $1316 (excluding VAT)
Base 13" Macbook Pro in the United Kingdom is $1275 (excluding VAT).

So for that machine, in New Zealand you are paying a USD145 Difference.

 

[MattInOz]

Just in time for University next year? Please, Macs are ridiculously expensive and the last time you gave "cuts" you raised our prices!!!

www.apple.com/nz to see for yourself. After conversion we have a European Country Premium of about $500-$1K for MacBooks non Mac-Pros. About $2K for Mac-Pros. That goes for the UK too.

Same here in Oz but both our dollars did have a rather rapid fall against the green as the all U.S. investors in markets pulled out to shore up the homeland.

so that update price in here where priced and 60c in the dollar plus gst, compared to the update before running at 85c in the dollar plus gst. So all the price drop was eaten plus some in currency moves.

Good news is the most recent laptop revision was back above 70c and our currencies have been gain strength. So if Apple can do a revision with U.S. price cuts then it's looking good for that price drop plus some to be passed on here and there.

We are hanging out for something to trigger a repricing of the iMacs to current conditions and update would be nice to go with it.

 

[zw-gator]

I just don't se imac with quad core. I ranted about quad core imacs back in october 2008. Now, 3 months short of a year after they still cant get their finger out. Anything other than a Core I7 inside IMAC would be an insult for the next imminent update.

But I dont expect it. Apple is a company thats more occupied with making products based on apperance than content, but thats just my ranting uneducated opinion.

Exactly. Intel's Q series is dying.

i3/i5/i7 is what Apple should be focusing on.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Can we say exaggeration?

Base 13" Macbook Pro in the United States is $1199 (excluding sales tax).
Base 13" Macbook Pro in New Zealand is $1344 (excluding GST)
Base 13" Macbook Pro in Finland is $1316 (excluding VAT)
Base 13" Macbook Pro in the United Kingdom is $1275 (excluding VAT).

So for that machine, in New Zealand you are paying a USD145 Difference.

I was talking in NZD price difference. Apple sells more than MacBooks.

(Excluding Taxes)
Base 8-Core Mac Pro:
3,299.00 USD, Should be 5,230.73 NZD. Really it's 6,488.00. Thats a difference of $1257.27.

Base 24" iMac:
1,499.00 USD, Should Be 2,376.74 NZD. Really it's 2,932.44. Thats a difference of $555.70.

The 24" iMac I want to get: (2.93, GT130, 640GB, 4GB, Remote)
1,949.00 USD, Should be 3,090.24 NZD. Really it's 3,900.45. Thats a difference of $810.21.

Can you say Mhur?

 

[MorphingDragon]

Same here in Oz but both our dollars did have a rather rapid fall against the green as the all U.S. investors in markets pulled out to shore up the homeland.

so that update price in here where priced and 60c in the dollar plus gst, compared to the update before running at 85c in the dollar plus gst. So all the price drop was eaten plus some in currency moves.

Good news is the most recent laptop revision was back above 70c and our currencies have been gain strength. So if Apple can do a revision with U.S. price cuts then it's looking good for that price drop plus some to be passed on here and there.

We are hanging out for something to trigger a repricing of the iMacs to current conditions and update would be nice to go with it.

But we still have a European Tax. It doesn't cost $100 ship a computer and it's even less in bulk.

 

[jb1280]

$145 US equals $229 New Zealand - a number far less than the artificially high price discrepancy of $500-$1000 that you stated.

You stated:

fter conversion we have a European Country Premium of about $500-$1K for MacBooks non Mac-Pros

This statement is categorically false.

 

[MorphingDragon]

$145 US equals $229 New Zealand - a number far less than the artificially high price discrepancy of $500-$1000 that you stated.

You stated:



This statement is categorically false.

Read the Edit(s).

And yes I still hold my statements. Maybe you would like it if Apple charged you an extra 10%-30% extra for no reason hmm!?

 

[Drag'nGT]

Read the Edit(s).

And yes I still hold my statements. Maybe you would like it if Apple charged you an extra 10%-30% extra for no reason hmm!?

So what... you think they just said "Hey! Screw New Zealand! Let's charge more!!!" There's something factored in that you nor I see/know about.