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Flat-panel iMacs in Apple's Future?
WinkyN writes: "A story on Yahoo! is claiming Apple might release a flat-panel iMac for release in early 2002. Analysts for Morgan Stanley who cover Apple say the computer manufacturer has placed orders for component parts to build such a machine (in fact, build about 100,000 of them a month). Perhaps Steve Jobs will announce this at Macworld Expo in January?"
After all, they *DID* stop selling any monitors but flat screens...
And hell, they can make them smaller, and in new shapes, they could do a lot of things with the shape, since they aren't limited by the size of the CRT and the heat problems inherent with monitors in close proximity with other computer pieces...
Besides, If the release another "flower power" imac, and you were stuck using it, wouldn't *YOU* want it smaller/easier to hide?
Ex
..it's called an iBook.
But seriously, why would Apple sell such a thing? It would have to be comparable in cost to an iBook, the LCD being the most expensive part.
It would probably be a snazzy box, but would the price be right for a low-end machine?
Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
You could upgrade the imac's monitor the same as any other computer; buy a new monitor and plug it in.
How long before MacCentral, MacRumor, MacAttack, or whoever releases a "secret" pick of this new flat-panel iMac. I'm eager to claim that the picture is a fake Photoshop job, and that there's no way this will ever exist, only to be proven wrong a month later.
This has got to be the most common Apple rumor in recent years. The flat-panel iMac is always predicted at every major MacWorld Expo, and so far it hasn't materialized. Maybe it will this time, but Mac rumors have been so far off in the past that a lot of people don't pay attention to them anymore.
Oh yeah, I think I read that the new iMac would be completely solar powered and hovers weightless whereever you want it totally negating the need for a desk. And it reads your mind, all thanks to the new G6 processor. ;)
today is spelling optional day.
http://www.acorncreative.tv/imac2.html
I'll take any of them.
Apple can both save on shipping costs and bill their new iMac's as semi-portable...
hell, they're small enough now that with a retracting power cord and wireless mouse/keyboard that they might as well be.
With some depthwise space savings from the removal of the CRT, and the removal of the weight from the glass, they could throw a cord retractor and keyboard/mouse dock on the back of the thing...
Anyhow, it's about time, I think that's going to be a killer machine. (As long as I don't buy an iMac and get a dead friggin pixel in the center of my screen)
Think about what they've done in the past couple years:
Nice hardware, growing in leaps and bounds as the market for those things matures (pc133, yes it was late, and yes, it's slower than DDR, but hey, better than pc100), nice processors, removing all relic hardware as necessary (USB instead of ADB, etc). Apple has always done this. Making the powerbook g4 was the next step, making a laptop just slightly less powerful than a desktop, *AND* has a battery life to speak of.
Nice software: OS X. BSD core. No need for them to figure out how to reinvent the wheel with their crappy old OS's--Simply change a few widgets, and call it Darwin, then add a GUI, and Voila! instant OS. With a *LOT* of software available, not to mention the 20 billion BSD hackers, the people that'll keep the Darwin OS up to snuff.
Totally reengineered interface--Finally a command line that doesn't suck! And for that matter, a GUI that doesn't suck! And multitasking! And all sorts of neat widgets that make techies and non-techies alike scream out "I WANT ONE!"
Giving computers to schools, making great leaps in hardware, standardizing their video system. I see this as a incredibly brilliant move for Jobs.
All in all, more power to them... They may live, they may struggle, or they may die. They are pushing the user's into a whole new realm; DVD-R's in affordable systems, laptops that don't suck, and keeping up with technology a lot better than they used to.
Ex.
So, with the price of LCD panels dropping, it's the obvious next step... but it just isn't a breakthrough (except getting it done at a price suitable for iMac).
While the reported component order gives the rumor slightly stronger legs, don't forget that Apple already buys lots of 15" LCDs for their 15" Studio Display. It would be very interesting to know how many of these monitors Apple currently sells per month. Perhaps the additional 100kmonitors/month is simply forecasting additional demand?
When the iMac was unveiled it was considered by many to be nearly revolutionary. Whether you agree with this sentiment or not is another issue. However that was (I believe) in 1998, and it's nearly 2002 and the iMac of today is visually almost identical to the 1998 firstborn Bondi Blue iMac. Yeah, there have been color changes, hard drive upgrades, speed bumps, memory increases, and now even a slot-loading cd/dvd/whatever drive, but the external appearance is pretty much unchanged. Normally this wouldn't matter for a computer, but the iMac was a hit because of its style.
So it's time for something "revolutionary" again. I've heard rumors of the flat panel iMac from lame sites like Mac OS Rumors since at least the end of 1998. Actually this particular rumor (and its failure to materialize) was one reason I stopped reading MOSR and its ilk and realized what garbage they were.
So if Steve Jobs unveils a flat panel iMac, it won't be a big surprise. The difference now will be if he doesn't, analysts will be disappointed and Apple's stock price will probably take a minor hit.
rooooar
Right. They'll announce it between the new Apple PDA and the Disney buyout.
And then Hitler will build a snowman.
--saint
Granted, Gateway, HP, etc have come out with flat panel consumer PCs, so the fact that Apple can stir up a bunch of rumor news with a flat panel product may leave some scratching their heads wondering what the big hoopla is. Think about the iPod. Yeah, there are plenty of mp3 players out there, but it took the design team at Apple to create the best one. Apple took their time, and GOT IT RIGHT. The same can be said for the next iMac. It may have the same specs as some other machines out there now, but it'll make everything else look like junk when it comes out. Obviously I haven't seen it, but knowing Apple's track record I'm sure it'll be amazing.
The trouble with LCD iMacs is the education market. Schools don't buy iMacs just because they are cheaper than iBooks, they buy them because they are more durable.
The abuse that a computer takes in a school setting is enough to make me cringe.
Still, I like the idea of having a LCD iMac. It would be cool for me, I'm just not sure that it will work in the education market. (Yeah, I know. Maine just bought 38,600 iBooks. Still, most schools buy iMacs.)
That which does not kill me only makes me whinier
Shipping even more flat screens has definitly interesting side effects. This means that Apple wants to lower the prize (for themselves) and it means all flat screens will be cheaper, and I am hoping it will be cheaper faster. This implies that I could, the next time I want a new computer, two at least 19", LCDs together with my brand new nVidia GF++.
So, everybody who doesn't care, or are mac maniacs, go buy one of these;)
Apple will award you with a large cash bonus after you become their premiere PR agency.
...in bed.
Apple's chips simply run too slow
don't be so foolish. the correct term would be a lower frequency (as denoted by the unit of measure, MHz/GHz)
this is not an indication of speed, it is an indication of how many cycles per second it has.
speed comes from how many operations can be performed per second or even howmany can be performed per cycle. Athlons perform more operations per cycle that P4s do, and G4s perform more operations per cycle than either of the two.
now when you multiply how many operations per cycle by the number of cycles, you get the number of operations per second, you can then make statments about speed.
if a P4 executes 1 operations per cycle and has 2 billion cycles per second, that is 2 billion operations per second.
if a G4 does 3 operations per cycle and operates at 667 Mhz, that is also 2 billion operations per cycle. both chips operate at the same speed, one however has a higher frequency that the other.
the speed of applications is irrelivent to the most part because each chip has their own optimizations that a program can take advantage of. I say for the most part, because you can compile an application with no optimizations for the architecture and then it would be possable to get a fel for each chips speed, however, the instruction sets are diffrent and one instruction set could be more efficient that the other, in which case you do not get an actual feel for raw speed of the architecture.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Apple Insider has a story on this, as well.
It's true that this has been rumored for quite some time, and nothing has come of the rumors. The key reason that Apple Insider seems inclined to believe it this time is essentially that:
It's no surprise that a major change to the iMac is coming. What has been difficult to nail down is exactly what will be changed, and when these changes will occur. What has precluded this product from being introduced is component availability and prices: AppleInsider sources have revealed, however, that the prices of key components has reached an acceptable level at which Apple can sell the new iMac at a price palatable to consumers and still retain profitability on its most popular line.
We'll see...
* * *
It is a dada story -- it has no moral.
Why does the Slashdot community automatically tear apart everything Apple does? Would it be so hard to admit that they got it right with Firewire, got it right by popularizing USB, got it right by deleting the useless floppy drive, got it right with Quicktime, got it right with the (new) iBook and Powerbook g4, and got it DAMN right with OS X? Seriously folks, look back at all your knee-jerk reactionary posts over everything Apple and do some thinking. Point me to major innovations that have not been driven by Apple and then try using a new Mac. Have you ever USED OS X on a new Titanium? Have you ever tried to copy even 64MB over USB to a Rio, and then copied 2 GB to a firewire drive in the same time? Try using Final Cut Pro, iMovie, DVD Studio Pro... This site has become a bunch of first-post, bash-everything, small-minded jerkoffs.
They're going to have to redesign the whole thing if they want flat screens, because the box isn't flat on the front. Either than, or they'll have to make curved-panel displays.
Of course, an iMac box would look really weird without the CRT, because it would be mostly empty, and they probably can't just make the box smaller, because they need vent space. So they'll probably have to come up with a special new shape.
Unfortunately it's not that simple. P4's and G4's both have lots of optimizations that allow them to detect low-level parallelism and thus execute instructions in parallel. The G4 is arguably a bit better at this, in part because it has a RISC instruction set and thus has more flexibility in the ordering of instructions, compared with the Godawful x86 instruction set which often takes several cycles to execute.
The other major advantage that a G4 has is altivec, but I would argue that this isn't as great an advantage as Apple claims. True, it's cleaner and faster than MMX or KNI in the Intel line, but the difference isn't *that* great, and more to the point many developers aren't taking advantage of it. So while you can get a 6x speed boost on seti@home or photoshop, it's not going to do much for your run-of-the-mill applcation.
Finally, in terms of overall speed, I think it's ludicrous to claim that Macs are 2-3 times faster at the same clock rate. True, it's somewhat faster at the same clock rate due to a simpler instruction set, shallower pipeline, and other reasons, but I simply don't buy a 3-fold performance advantage. On average, a 866 G4 is probably equivalent to a 1 GHz or maybe 1.2 GHz P4. That's still substantially slower than Intel's top-of-the-line 2 Ghz P4's.
Apple has been very successful at selling the idea of a "megahertz myth," and to a certain extent they may be right. But honestly, better architectures can only push you so far. If the chip is doing fewer cycles per second, that *has* to be a handicap.
So I would say Macs at the moment are slower than their PC counterparts. They also happen to be less power-hungry, have better industrial design, run a better OS, be easier to use, etc. That's why I bought one. But I don't think we should be doing Apple's PR job for them. The G4 is a fast chip, but it's not *that* fast.
That certainly used to be the case. Interestingly, however, Apple has gone out of their way to make the iMac and the iBook almost completely trivial to upgrade, at least if you're doing the most common upgrades (RAM and an Airport card). In other words, now that hard drives are getting to the point of being "big enough" (many fewer people are getting to the point of being squeezed for hard disk space even in the age of mp3s) and video cards are "fast enough", if you build everything else in, you really can make all reasonable upgrades possible for a person armed only with simple instructions and a US quarter.
In essence, people are empowered but not hassled, which could basically be Apple's new slogan.
Babar
There are big wins in switching when you make the whole machine. The box size goes down. Shipping cost goes down. Shelf space at retail goes down. Power supply size goes down. It's a bigger win for Apple than for the Wintel crowd.
I'm just surprised that Apple didn't do this before the holiday shopping season.
The problem with USING all that cool Mac stuff is that it costs MONEY. Sure you could grab the software somewhere, but the hardware is so overpriced compared to PC hardware.
Apple has a different business model than somebody like Dell. Apple has an entire platform to develop. They provide free, ad-free internet services to their customers. They provide quite a bit of free software. They host open source projects. These things cost money to create and maintain. This money comes from the margins. Basically, you pay more so Apple can develop a better experience.
A company like Dell, however, is primarily an assembly service. They don't have product development in the same sense that Apple does. Dell's products are defined largely by Intel, Microsoft, NVIDIA, IBM and component manufacturers. The actual machines and experience end up being very similar to that of other manufacturers, so Dell effectively competes on the sale rather than the product. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with this -- it's just a different business model.
The fact that Apple and Dell have different approaches to selling computers is good. It means we have choice.
Apple is profitable and has well over $4 billion in cash, but if you look at their actual profit on per-quarter basis, they aren't raping customers and just watching the money pour in. They're doing constructive things with it.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Apple's failure was not allowing clones of its hardware
:)
I can't think of a worse time in the platform or company's history than during the point that clones were available. It was an absolute mess. Part of the problem was that none of the manufacturers had any interest in actually expanding the market. They just took Apple's best customers while Apple was left to foot the bill for platform development. Clones elminated a lot of the core value of the Mac.
Cloning was in direct conflict with the Mac experience, philosophy and culture. It may have seemed like a good idea on paper (largely people assumed if it worked for x86, it would work for the Mac), but in practice, it just didn't flow right. The platform is undoubtably in a more stable position today.
and they had a fully operational 486 booting Mac OS, complete with desktop and even Quicktime movies with sound
Welcome Mac users, to the wonderful work of IRQ conflicts and COM2.
Controlling hardward and software helps integrate, but not innovate
Actually, just the opposite. Things like iDVD, iMovie and AirPort worked immediately upon introduction (and therefore added value) due specifically to the fact that Apple controlled both the hardware and software.
The fact that Apple owns and maintains its own platform is at the core of its value proposition and ability to differentiate from other manufacturers. It provides choice in the industry.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Given the additional cost of an LCD screen, a flat-panel iMac would cost about the same as an iBook. And performance-wise they're almost the same. I don't see much of a market for a flat-panel iMac as long as it doesn't provide better performance than the iBook.
--Bud
It evidently needs to be said again.
The G4 is the G3 with Altivec and SMP. They're the same chip otherwise. The G4 runs Altivec-enabled programs faster than the G3 does. This includes mostly Photoshop.
If you're not running Altivec programs, and you only have the one processor, a 500MHz G3 runs as fast as a G4.
However, FWIW... I have a 400MHz G3. It runs about six times as fast as my P133 on most tasks; that suggests a rough speed equivalent of 800MHz. (For example, it encodes MP3s using BladeEnc at almost precisely six times the speed. Other tasks are similar.)
Working the math, that would suggest a 500MHz G3 should be about a gigahertz or so.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Except that it wasn't remotely this easy, or this simple. They actually updated the display language from display postscript to display pdf, which I know is a minor change since one is much like the other, but then they reimplemented all widgets under the new system. They also developed an Old-MacOS-API-in-a-box for NeXTStep on Mac, and the resulting bundle of everything is called MacOSX.
You know, I hate to have to be the one to point this out, but Luna doesn't suck either. Oh, sure, it looks like someone in fisher-price's art department developed a theme for windows, but you can change themes all day, even to some fairly convincing aqua themes. With GlassXP and a geforce or radeon card, you can have arbitrarily hardware-alpha'd windows (though some things don't work like you might like, like transparent video windows or transparent windows OVER video windows) and you can, quite frankly, make windows look like anything you want in much the same fashion as using windowmaker or some other highly-configurable window manager, using StyleBuilder and StyleXP. My windows Theme is a work in progress that's looking better and better all the time. Heck, you can even use PNG images with the alpha channel utilized in your themes.
Let's not forget the feature set of windows' GUI, either, besides silly alpha features (which I am nonetheless quite fond of) - It's based on motif, more or less, (note the popdown menu on the left, which in Win 3/NT 3 even looked like Motif) so it provides an interface familiar to windows users and CDE users alike. It supports all the usual operations for windows, the taskbar has grown up quite a bit and now supports grouping, there's a virtual desktop manager included with Power Tools for XP, and so on.
That's true, but their price point still seems a bit high to me in most cases. Comparing the iMac to a PC doesn't seem to do the PC justice just because of the PC's basic modular, expandable nature, which you are paying for; If the PC were as unexpandable as the iMac, it would be cheaper. However, it's built to be expanded (at least slightly) and it's made with off the shelf parts which means that, unlike most mac hardware which has "graced" our desktops over the years, the hardware is all pretty much the same these days, which is also a nice feature.
With all this said, I do think that the current Mac hardware is fairly sexy. I do however think I'll stick with PCs. You can build a dual athlon XP pretty cheaply now...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
> Comparing the iMac to a PC doesn't seem to
> do the PC justice just because of the PC's basic
> modular, expandable nature, which you are paying
> for; If the PC were as unexpandable as the iMac,
> it would be cheaper.
I think people also buy iMacs for their expandability, but what they appreciate about the expandability is that it already has great "add-on" software and hardware in it from the start, and adding more software and hardware is easy (drag-and-drop software installs, plug-and-play hardware installs, easy-access expansion doors in the cases). I mean, all of the ports are right there on the side, attractively presented to the user. People who never looked at the back of their PC are looking at the FireWire port on their Mac and going "that's where you plug-in a camcorder or hard drive" because when they do that, it just works. It's already been set up for that before they get the machine.
For example, a non-technical friend of mine gave up trying to add software and hardware to his PC because he didn't enjoy all the work involved, and he was generally always suffering from one problem or another with Windows, anyway, and "didn't want to make it worse". He got an iMac and added a printer and scanner himself, no problem. He adds software all the time. So he actually told me that the iMac's "great expandability" was one of the things he liked about it over the PC, second only to the fact that it crashed less than his PC. Also, I got one "help desk" call from him in the past two years with his iMac, versus one a week when he had his PC.
So to say an iMac is "not expandable" is really looking at it from a PCI board / geek hacker perspective. For many people, it's the most expandable system they've ever used. That's part of why they're still selling more than a million iMacs a year, even in this economy, even with CRT displays in them, even with all the empty MHz you get on the PC side. It really serves the needs of the users who buy them.
Want a real revolution?
Stop producing desktop machines cause the laptops are just as good, ramp up production to drop costs.
Make a range of 'digital hub' servers for home and small office - file-sharing, internet gateway type things. Or maybe multi-user servers and ibook-like thin clients that connect to them. Schools would love that and so would families with 2+ kids.
'Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson...'