The Worst Time to Buy a Mac

[tech4all]

Has the Macrumors buyers guide been threatened with legal action or something?

They used to have DON'T BUY - updates soon next to the powermac now it just says buy only if you need to buy.

David

Doubt it,

Disclaimer: This page is based on rumors and speculation and we provide no guarantee to its accuracy. We take no responsibility for purchase decisions made based on this information.

 

[vtprinz]

Has the Macrumors buyers guide been threatened with legal action or something?

They used to have DON'T BUY - updates soon next to the powermac now it just says buy only if you need to buy.

David

I think they changed it because no one has any clue when they'll be updated and how long it will be before they're available once they are updated. Since they're already 3 months behind the average update cycle with no viable rumors to suggest that will change, it didn't make a lot of sense to keep telling people updates were imminent and not to buy. For all we (and macrumors, for that matter) know, it could be june before the PMs see an update (but I really hope that doesn't happen, I've already been waiting for months!)

 

[Trout74]

Well I was waiting for the iMac to be updated, and today I cracked!

I went to the apple store nad bought a 1.42 Mini, and then stopped on the way home and bought 512Meg's of RAM and now I have officialy switched!

Just getting it all set up and migrating my addresses and then getting ready to migrate my photes and videos and files, should be an ardjuous task but im actually looking forward to it!

Going to pop in the 512Meg RAM tonight after i spend some time reading about it.

Go Get a Mac, I am sooo excited right now I can hardly contain myself!

trout

 

[zimtheinvader]

Yes, but the problem with only buying a new mac when you need it is that they last forever. My poor modded G4 is still plugging along for most school-related things just fine, probably will for another 2-6 years...so when does it become"too old" or out-dated enough to merit being replaced? When a hdd dies (happend,) when it stalls w/ safari (happens) when it freezes w/ daw apps...?
Here step in the theorists with the "buy it as soon as you have the cash!!"
Personally though I'd rather buy something more timeless like a guitar, books, car (relatively timeless... though a mac might well last as long... 😛 )

personally I vote the worst time to buy is after the quality/efficiency of one's work has already declined as a result of using an out-dated machine; truly slow/problematic computers are a serious waste of time!! That will be the day I finally decide to plunk down the cash, no matter what updates are rumored...

 

[adamjay]

its a great time to buy a mac. there will always be models in Apple's line that are approaching an update months away...
now is a great time to buy a powerbook, and i did. why? well, price cuts on 12"'s, ram increases, hd speed increases, scrolling trackpads, and i still don't think G5 PB's are going to happen any time before fall. Sonnet and Gigadesigns are able to push the G4 to 1.8ghz, so i'm sure apple will too in the powerbooks late this summer. G5 PB's probably wont show up till 2006, anything early will be a surprise to me.

and even though the iMac could use an update, its still an incredibly good deal. Refurbs are incredibly good deals too. 20" iMac for $1649???!! nows as good a time as any!

now last year when the iMac G4's were out of stock and there was no inkling of an iMac G5... and everything else was kinda old... now THAT was not the best time to buy. But today, you have alot of great choices. so bite the bullet and buy one, no matter what you get it will blow your sawtooth out of the water, and all you'd get if you waited till the next update is a 15% performance boost over current models - and thats a conservative guesstimate. So what are you waiting for?
at the worst you could get a mini to hold you over if you truley do want to wait to drop a large some of cash on a PowerMac.

 

[PhantomVI]

Yet another to chime in: Buy one when you need to.
I was running my 450 Sawtooth G4 until I hit a wall with Photoshop...Right around then the Dual 2.5 G5s were announced and I bit. Even if 3 Ghz G5s were announced tomorrow I wouldn't mind because right now I have the machine to do what I need it to do, and its a machine that will last me a good long while.

 

[sausages]

Shacklebolt, you're paranoid

you're complaining now about every product 'reaching the end of their life cycle'...but when there's a new generation of macs, you'll complain that you're waiting for 'rev b'

now is a good time to buy, because the current line up of macs have been refined so much!

the problem here more your mind set, rather than the product line up

just 'bite the bullet' and get a new machine.

 

[Chappers]

You obviously don't need the machine too much otherwise you would have bought one. I run a 17 inch iMac with salad bowl attachment, its 2.5 years old and I love it.
Sure a new G5 iMac would be great too but right now I don't need it.

We have loads of Macs at work and the G5's are great but do you need one.

I'm at work on an old G4 400 running macos9 - it won't play Halo but v.soon I'll upgrade it to Panther,it still won't play Halo , but it will have a better quality of life.

My new switcher pal is using a G3 iMac DV 400 with Panther - and always with a big smile on his face.

If it doesn't do what you want, get a new one.

 

[mac-er]

I honestly can't see any reason to make a major investment in an Apple right now. And I love my Mac; but I can't in good conscience spend 2000 dollars on a computer when all of them are dated.

Anyone else feel the same way?

I used to have this same feeling, but I realized I'll never have anything new. The second you buy a car, the model will be updated.

If you wait for 3 GHz, and but it....3.2Ghz will come out. So what is the point?

Bite the bullet, buy what you want..and enjoy it.

 

[GFLPraxis]

Is it just me, or is now, March 2005, the worst possible time to buy a macintosh computer of any configuration (save, perhaps, the mini)? I only mention this because I've had my G4 Sawtooth (oh yeah, it's pretty bad) for the past 5 years, and I keep telling myself that I'm going to wait until something great came out. When the G5s came out, I was going to wait for the 980 generation, but it's STILL not here. Anyway, as one who's computer is rapidly crapping out, I'm still so frustrated that I don't feel comfortible buying any Apple computer right now.

The Powermacs - it's been almost 2 years since the introduction of the G5, and, with no rumors of the 3ghz that Steve promised by the summer of 2004. The current configurations are 9 months old. The iBooks are at the end of their cycle. The eMacs are way, way past the end of their cycle. The powerbooks - this is the end of the line for the Al-Books as we know them. Everyone expects G5/Dual-core models by the WWDC, and, as frustrated as I am with Apple's update speed, I think they can make it by then. I don't want to drop 2 grand on a powerbook now. And the iMacs also are near update.

I honestly can't see any reason to make a major investment in an Apple right now. And I love my Mac; but I can't in good conscience spend 2000 dollars on a computer when all of them are dated.

Anyone else feel the same way?

Well, the iMac will probably be updated soon, and the eMac is disappearing from stores, so we'll probably be seeing updates there.

No PowerMacs till June, methinks.

And PowerBooks *just* got updated. So you can buy those.

 

[jefhatfield]

No. What exactly are you waiting for? People (like you) should buy when they can afford to, enjoy what they get, and not fret over what "could have been." Enjoy life, don't watch it pass you by. My 2 cents 🙂

definitely get what you want now

because the computer world, pc side and apple inc, will always have something around the corner a month, or six, from now and it's all just relative and it's not worth trying to torture oneself over if you just missed the next greatest thing

apple got stuck with 500 mhz g4s for 18 months a few years back and it could happen again with g5s being under the 3 ghz mark

 

[benbondu]

I wouldn't say this is the worst time to buy a Mac, though there is such a thing. My first Mac purchase actually wasn't a Mac at all. It was a Power Computing clone that I bought RIGHT before Apple bought them out. It was a decent machine but the timing of it all meant I got virtually no support for my $2000 computer. Apple wasn't taking tech support issues for the clones and Power Computing couldn't have cared less if they resolved anyone's problems. They also said right after the buyout that PCC customers would not be getting free upgrades to OS8, then after I bought the upgrade Apple sent out a letter saying they would in fact honor the free upgrades. That was a bad time to buy a clone. It was also a bad time to buy a Mac since they were all overpriced and inferior in most ways to the clones. The G3s also came out a couple months later. (Huge price/performance leap)

Buying a B&W G3 a week before the G4s were released was a bad time to buy a Mac. (I knew someone who did that - He still liked his G3 but the G4 was a supercomputer for goodness sake) I didn't think G4 to G5 was as big a step for some reason. Maybe it was the OS9 bootability that kept the G4s alive for a while. It also could have been that the G4 was the best desktop computer design Apple has ever made. The G5 kind of had to take a step backward in some respects to deal with the cooling issue.

I don't really think there's a bad time to buy a PowerBook. You generally don't need as much power with a notebook computer, so it doesn't hurt as much if a spiffier one comes out next week. The prices generally stay the same. Having said that though, I held out a month for the 12" PB rev. B to come out and I'm glad I did. Something about an even 1 GHz just made it much more sexy.

The iBooks aren't going to move from G4s for a long while. (Even if they did, see above paragraph for why that wouldn't matter)

The next PowerMacs probably won't be a great leap from the current 2.5 GHz. 2.5 GHz DP is a lot of computer as it is. It's also not like the 2.0's have become obsolite.

The iMac already has a G5. Can't improve too much on that.

The eMac I'd probably hold off on. An affordable G5 with built-in CRT would be a beautiful thing. The current Mac Mini is a better value than the eMac I think. You can usually get a monitor and keyboard for very cheap.

This is my longest post ever. Still working on upgrading my status.

 

[Lacero]

The only worst time is not buying as soon as you need it. Because you'll be keeping your mac for 3-4 years, and in that time, macs will get upgraded about 5-8 times, losing out on one upgrade cycle is not the cataclysmic event you have in your head. You might lose out on $100-$200 in upgrades but over the life of your Mac, it is of little consequence. The ideal time to buy a Mac is about a month after initial introduction.

 

[jayb2000]

Tiger

I have a G3 iMac that is still pluggin along. Until tiger comes out, I am not buying.
I figure by then (summer?) there may be an iMac bump/rev B. Then I will buy.

Not too sure what yours is used for, but if you have held out this long, then save the $129 on the Tiger upgrade and buy your computer in 3-4 months.

Or, if you are desperate, get the $599 mini, then use it as a music/web/ftp server after you get a dual 3gig PowerMac 😀

 

[zelmo]

I have to echo what many have already said - you'll make yourself crazy playing the waiting game. If you can be pretty sure there are upgrades right around the corner, and you can afford to wait a few weeks, then it makes sense to do so. Beyond that, you can easily get yourself to the point of not buying a computer for months waiting for the G5 PB, then waiting some more for rev B, and then the PowerMacs go dual core, and you just know they're working on a dual G5 PB, so why not wait for that? Meanwhile, 2 years go by and you still plug away on your Sawtooth.
I have an iMac G4 800 at home, and I'd love to upgrade to either a G5 iMac or a mini/23" Cinema Display combo, but I don't really need to. That iLamp does everything I need it to, and is still plenty quick enough for 95% of my computing needs. When it starts costing me time, I'll look in earnest to upgrade, and I won't torture myself with 2nd guessing for months on end before making a purchase.

buybuybuybuybuybuybuybuybuybuybuybuybuybuybuybuybuybuy 🙂

 

[FootFun]

My Advice: Buy a Mini to last you to the next Major upgrade.
Once you get your new fatty (Dual 3ghz G5 or whatever) Sell your mini or use it as a household media center.

 

[ddtlm]

zimtheinvader:

and I would be assured of having technology that was literally *just* innovated. (vs. the senescent G4.)

Ewww, bad use of "innovated", makes you sound like a manager or something. 😉 Perhaps you meant "invented".

While PCs continue to advance linearly, Apple has wierd scemes like lowering or boosting the cache, fsb, ect. to purposefully cripple some NEWER machines simply to drive up the value of more costly ones...

Heh, don't you think "linear" is a bit generous? Anyway, manipulating FSB and cache sizes is a time-honoured method of marketing in the PC world too, witness Celerons and such. 90%+ the same thing as the high-end Pentium (or even Xeon) of their time, offered at a tiny fraction of the price. AMD offers all sorts of combinations of cache size, memory interface and clock speed in the Athlon and Athlon64 lines, and you can bet that 400mhz FSB Athlon didn't cost significantly more to make than the similar model with 333mhz FSB... but you'll pay more anyway. And consider what AMD does with the Opterons... the 1xx 2xx and 8xx series are identical except for deliberate crippling of the low end models. You probably pay twice the price to get one uncrippled.

So anyway, Apple has company.

cubist:

Come on, almost nobody changes motherboards or CPUs in PCs anymore. It's just too time-consuming and difficult.

Eh? If you think its difficult you haven't done it enough. I wish Apple made a new product line... ATX mobos! 🙂

 

[Mav451]

Eh? If you think its difficult you haven't done it enough. I wish Apple made a new product line... ATX mobos! 🙂

Haha I agree. You do it once, just ONCE, it is infinitely easier.

Scared of installing memory? Do it once (correctly obviously) and it is immensely less daunting the next time around. Installing a new PSU? Ah, now that's a whole other level for the novice.

Installing a CPU or mobo? Mobo installations inherently require a CPU installation as well, I can guarantee you the scariest part is ALWAYS the CPU installation. The IHS's on every chip, nowadays, has made this much simpler. Overheating protection/throttling (since '01 for P4's and '02 for AMD) has also kept bad CPU installations from destroying itself.

I have to say, building a PC these days has never been easier. Seriously.

 

[aranhamo]

Upgrading and waiting for my iMac

Regardless of how easy it is to upgrade different components on your computer, most people never do. Both businesses and consumers typically buy whole systems to replace older machines. I think businesses probably do it this way because they want the warranty and support from Dell or whoever on their new machine. I know my company only buys whole systems for this reason. Consumers probably want the warranty, but they probably also are a lot like my mom who calls me up to ask which button she should click on for every window that pops on her screen.

I'm planning on buying an iMac, but I'm waiting for the next revision because it's been six months since the last change in the iMac so there probably will be an update any time now. I don't want to spend all that money on an iMac and then have a better, cheaper machine come out a week later. I'm not waiting for any specific feature though, like a 3GHz G5 or anything. Just whatever the iMac is after the next revision (which will hopefully come along soon). Meanwhile, my old Bondi Blue iMac is chugging along just fine.