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New iMac Announced
Steve Jobs is terrific at just that, Creating Desire. This is no surprise to us, for sure, but nothing drives it home as much as sitting in the audience and watching him speak. I could tell you how wonderful an orator he is, and how groovy his products are, but I really want to hear what the Slashdot user communtiy has to say about that. I want to talk about what Apple is doing technically.
First: The new iMac is very attractive. It's cool, it's neat. It will be a very popular machine. It's got a good price/feature spectrum and it looks like a pretty decent machine for the consumer. It isn't, in the end, a machine for the linux die-hard, but that's okay. It's slick, it ships with a bunch of very decent apps to manage your digital media. I want one, it's a cool machine. I don't know what I'd do with it (which is the problem), but it's cool looking. It's not particularly a good deal, I mean, you can pick up 200$ 15" tft displays at Fry's and lets get real, the G4 (Excepting the velocity engine stuff) isn't that fast of a chip at any available speed compared to the x86 world. But boy, this is one slick machine. But we know that already from the previous story. I do worry about it overheating, as I did flash back to the cube's cracking problems a bit.
Second: Photoshop for OS X will be coming out "soon". That was the big news. They had a very impressive working demo, I hope to learn more tomorrow on the expo floor.
Third: iPhoto is a decent cataloging program, and one designed to be used easily and generate more revenue streams for apple in the form of booklets and print costs. But it looks very polished and useful.
Superdrive: You'll see the superdrive in the new imac finally, which is nice. Note that this is not the superdrive that everyone remembers from the 80s' :-)
That's about all. The keynote was terrific, but in the end, not so outstanding. I'll post pictures soon. I'm sure a lot of /. regulars will be doing the same. More Tomorrow!
that's all i needs to say.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Here's hoping that with all the R&D and user testing involved, this one will finally come with a decent mouse...
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Today's Top Deals
There where times when the Keynote really blue me away. After it was over I did feel a little cheated though. iPhoto looks like a great application. I downloaded it allready, but didn't have a chance to try it out yet. You can get it here. Download size is 13.4 MB.
The new iMac looks amazing and has great specs. It is "Flat out cool". A bigger screen iBook is another great addition to the apple product line. What worries me, is that there have been no changes to the professional line. The PowerBooks got a Combo drive just a couple of weeks ago so that is okay. But having PowerMacs and iMacs with the same processor and more or less identical clock speeds seems like a strange move to me.
This is beyond the rumour sites. All of them that I looked at swore that the gigahertz barrier was to be broken. At this Keynote it wasn't. And I don't think that Apple would just put faster PowerMacs in stores without having at least one Photoshop shootout on stage first.
It was an okay keynote I suppose. But after all that hype some people seem to have expected iTransporter, iEndofworldhunger with iWorldpeace thrown in. And all that running 3 ghz.
sebi
Hank! White!
http://sakots.pekori.jp/imgboard/imgs/img200201071 62803.jpg
I wonder if Apple will start selling wall mounting kits. Then you would take up zero desk space.
I keep expecting it to start hopping around like the Pixer desk lamp! ;)
Note that on apple's purchasing site (store.apple.com) the lower end new iMacs aren't available until March. The only one available in January is the top of the line $1800 one with the Superdrive (DVD writer & CD-RW). The other new item which I saw (didn't see the Keynote, so don't know how much attention was paid to it) is the 14.1" screen on the new top end iBook.
A 700 MHz G3 is okay.
Now a 700 MHz G4, now that's fast! (All of the new iMacs have G4 processors.)
Apple also announced other new products like a 14' display on some iBooks
Wow! a 14' display, and my laptop only has a 14" display. Just imagine playing your favorite video game on a 14 ft display.
While many business application users will not enjoy having a 14 ft screen, I think this will be great for gamers.
I wonder what the max resolution on that will be... 1,280,000 x 1,024,000 pixels?
I Heart Sorting Networks
How are they cooling this new one? It's got a G4, a SuperDrive, a GeForce2 MX, and the power supply, all inside that base, and there's no airflow from the bottom to the top? (There's a cover over the bottom, where the ram chips and Airport card go.) I can't believe this thing isn't going to get toasty-hot. The Cube didn't have a fan, but it had an external power supply, so they were kinda cheating.
I'll be watching the whole deal just to see how they pull that off. If they can cool that thing without a fan, I'll be impressed.
What's your damage, Heather?
The comments about the lack change to the PowerMac desktop line are spot on...Apple has a real problem here.
The iMac now has a G4 at comparable speeds, a Superdrive, more expandable RAM capability, and OH YEAH it comes with a 15" LCD display. The PowerMac has the same thing, for $600 more, and without the display (so throw in another $500 if you want to be able to actually see the output of your computer). It is more than just disappointing...it is totally illogical.
I will grant that the PowerMac is more expandable in terms of PCI slots, but...I can no longer think of a single good reason anyone would want to buy a PowerMac, which means unless Apple updates them before the iMacs ship in January, their high-end desktop sales are pretty much going down the crapper.
sean
The only problems that I could see with a feature such as this is that you might be able to change the center of gravity of the machine enough to tip it over and it might be difficult to design a mechanism that would be both lightweight and durable.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Are they gonna update OSX so the display could be easily rotated 90 deg. for long web pages and the like? That'd be cool.
I don't ever expect an Apple and non-Apple machine to cost the same, but the more Apple can cut down that difference, the better off they are.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Until Apple makes a 1.5Ghz G5, they won't get me as part of thier market share.
You're going to be waiting a while, since Apple doesn't make CPUs of any speed -- that's Motorola and IBM's job.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Here are the official specs on the new iMacs from Apple's page:
The two bottom models have a 700 MHz G4, with the top one having an 800 MHz chip. All feature 256K processor speed L2 cache, but all have a 100 MHz bus, slightly slower than the towers. Bottom model has 128 MB RAM, all others 256; lower two models have 40 GB drives, top model has 60; bottom model has CD-RW, top two have DVD-R/CD-RWs, and finally the top two come with a set of Apple Pro Speakers.
All models have: GeForce 2MX/32MB DDR, 2 FireWire ports, 3 USB 1.1 ports on the machine and two on the keyboard, Mini-VGA output port, 56K modem, 10/100 ethernet, and a typical software bundle with all the iApps, Quicken 2002, Otto Matic, World Book Encyclopedia, AppleWorks, and a bunch of free browsers and readers preinstalled.
The screen is a 15" viewable TFT at 1024x768 at millions of colors.
Apple will continue to sell CRT iMacs starting at $799; the new models cost $1299, $1499, and $1799, respectively.
The new iBooks received more of a speed bump than a revolutionary upgrade like the iMac, but are still a great deal in consumer portables. They now stand like this:
500 MHz G3 in the bottom model, 600MHz in the others; bottom two have 128MB RAM, top has 256; 66MHz bus in the bottom, 100 in the top two; CD- ROM in the bottom, DVD-R/CD-RW in the top two; 15 GB disk in the bottom, 20 in the top two; and of course a 12.1" display in the bottom two and a 14" in the top one.
All the iBooks have 1 FireWire port and 2 USB 1.1 ports, a VGA out and a composite video out (w/ adapter), 56K modem, 10/100 ethernet, the small white power adapter, and the same bundle as the iMac.
The dimensions are 11.2x9.06x1.35" and 4.9 lbs. on the 12.1" models, and 12.7x10.2x1.35 and 5.99 lbs. on the 14" model, and the 12.1" models have a 42 watt-hour battery for an advertised 5 hours of power, with the 14" model having a 55 watt-hour battery with an advertised 6 hours of power.
Apple has done it again, offering the flat screen iMac starting at $1299 with a G4, even as many were doubting they could offer any flat screen desktop below $1499!
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
As much as people will probably bash it here, it's groundbreaking in a lot of ways.
The industrial design proves that you don't have to put a computer in a box. As consumers get used to having their electronics packaged their way, this type of talent will become more and more important.
Witness the 'shabby chic' home decoration that's become the rage among new boomers. They want things familiar and comfortable, not boxy.
the 14" model is 1024x768. They seem to expect people to buy a computer just so it will take up more room in their briefcase/backback.
I was hoping the 14" would be at least 1280x1024 or something: it's really not out of the question.
OK - I love the new iMac. It's great-looking, finally a G4 is included, the screen looks real nice, and the drive combinations are right on. This is probably the Mac that the Cube should have been. The price is about $100 higher than I'd like, but I expect to see the price points all adjusted once the new Pro machines _finally_ ship. Even though they still have old iMacs around for now, they need to get the new one to the sub $1000 point ASAP.
iPhoto is a compelling new application, and I'm going to download it and play with it tonight - it supports my Olympus 3000 so I'll try it directly instead of just using the reader like I normally do.
The new reconfiguration of the iBook line is nice, too - and the 14.1" screen on the high-end model will be a plus.
But - what about the Pro line? Apple's margins are fattest on the tower Macs, and they're not announcing anything today. Unless they do something soon, expect a bad quarter. I don't know about Motorola's yields, but Apple must be pretty pissed at them since they obviously can't get enough G5 (or fast G4 - whatever) processors to announce anything yet.
So, they'll sell a ton of iMacs, but I was hoping for a little more this time around.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Is the fact that it, based on the pictures, it doesn't seem to require any form of input! No more clunky keyboards or mice.
:)
I'm guessing all that futuristic talk from Jobs was about the new telepathic interface.
Brian Ellenberger
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Is it just me...?
(1) these things won't stack very well on the "bring out yer dead" carts wheeled about during downsizing...
(2) I afraid of the ($0.32 cost) $199.95 monitor arm after a few months and it gets a *little* loose, and *slowly* drifts down...slowly...like a glacier...
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Drivers may not be that necessary. I borrowed a digital camera from my folks a couple of weeks ago, a Panasonic PDR M5 or something. Thought, just for the heck of it, I'd plug it into the USB port on my iMac DV without installing any drivers. Up pops the OS X Image Capture utility asking me what I want to do with these pictures from the camera. So cool.
Laugh while you can, monkey boy!
The "SuperDrive" is not an Authoring burner, no. Those still cost, last I checked, at least $1,000 more than a General class drive, and probably wouldn't be appropriate for a consumer machine anyway. Their primary market is the professional video production industry.
As far as I can tell, the only thing you're really criticizing the DVD-R drive for is that it doesn't let you use CSS encryption on your own discs. If you're against industry copy protection to begin with, then why on earth do you see that as a problem?
And BTW, yes -- if you use DeCSS-derived software on a Mac, you can make copies of commercial DVDs. The only constraint is that the data contained on the original disc must fit within the capacity of DVD-R media, which is not yet as sophisticated as pressed DVDs. Both Authoring and General DVD-R media can only hold 4.7GB of data, which is half the size of a mass-produced, double-layer DVD disc -- the format that most commercial DVDs seem to be shipping on these days.
Breakfast served all day!
So if you gather three of these on a store shelf and select a box, then the clerk opens one of the other two and shows you that it does NOT have a burner, should you buy the one you're holding or take the final box to the register?
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
The REAL use for this baby would be to mount it upside down from the top of the shelf on my cubicle. Combined with a wireless keyboard and mouse, and my desk will be so incredibly CLEAN!
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
The iMac isn't for people that care about fsb.
The iMac is for the consumer, it's been 3 and a half years but alot of Slashdotters don't understand this.
The iMac is for people that want a computer they doesn't take knowledge of computers to use.
College kids that arn't in CS, Grandmas, Mothers, cousins, aunts. The Art kids or the math kids at my work, they don't give a shit about a front-side bus speed or a clock multiple. It's an iMac. It can connect to your digital camera without drivers or installing anything and it works. It'll burn CDs and DVDs too if you want it.
It's an iMac, it just works. That's why it's got a 100 MHz fbs. Because it's market doesn't care about 100 vs. 133 fbs or what kind of RAM is in it.
Architosh has some interesting info about the PowerPC roadmap.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Well, given that the "designs" -- if you want to call them -- of Dell et al are very 10 years ago, I guess that means that Apple is 7 years ahead of the pack!
Not significantly. My 600mHz iBook torches my 600mHz Pentium 3 workstation when crunching numbers (SETI@home), or ripping AC3 from DVDs. A 800mHz G4 processor can probably hold its own with a 1.6gHz Pentium 4 and will beat it on apps that use Altivec.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Hmm Apple went public around what 1980? That's about 22 years or so and they were first formed in 1977? So I supposed they can last AT LEAST that long. And just to make you look extra retarded, Microsoft bought 150 million bucks worth of common stock which as you may or may not know has no voting power, 150 mil is pretty insignifigant for a company with an 8.2 billion dollar market cap in 2001. About a whole .01% of the cap or so. You, out of the gene pool!
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Can video be sent wirelessly?
Just imagine if this were possible! We could just put the screens in our living rooms, and people could broadcast all kinds of entertainment to us! It would be a sort of Radio but with moving pictures!
Ah, we can but dream of a time when such marvels might be possible!
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
You bought a camera by trading your girlfriend??? /. people that actually has one you should know that they are worth a heck of a lot more than just $300.
Dude, if you are one of the
______
Once: you're a philosopher. Twice: a pervert.
Almost every Apple event gets mucho hype by the rumor community now. People speculate like mad, heck, I know 2 guys who actually made bets on what was going to be announced.
Then, after each show, a large number of people are disappointed and a few are wildly happy. A couple of in between the 2. But mostly people are just disappointed in Apple for not living up to their expectations! Granted, this time Apple _did_ beat their own drum way too loudly, but I can't think of any other computer hardware company that gets this kind of press, rumor mongering, and vast discussion after the event.
Just wondering if anyone has a good idea why Apple inspires all this? Is it Steve-o and his RDF? Because Apple is the underdog? Apple's penchant for always pushing the boundry on HW design (like, love, or hate it)? Personally I think it's because Apple keeps innovating, whether it's a success like the original iMac or a failure like the Cube, keeps people wondering "Just what the hell are they gonna pull next?!"
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
I always hear people on /. complaining that the G4's are slow compared to the latest Intel/AMD chips, but I wonder how many of you have actually used both systems in production.
For the past 6 mos. I've been using a 733Mhz G4 (OS9.x) and a dual-1Ghz Dell Dimension (Win2KPro) for AfterEffects work, and during renders the single-chip G4 beats the pants off the Dell. Almost twice as fast. So, like Steve is always trying to remind us, all Mhz are clearly not created = =.
I think that it's the Monte Hall paradox.
For those who don't know, Monte Hall was the host of a gameshow in which the prize was hidden behind one of three doors. They picked one door, another was opened to reveal nothing, and then they were given the option of staying with their pick or switching to the remaining unopened door. It turns out that in a fair contest you should choose to switch; the chance of the first chosen door being right is 1/3 and the remaining door is 2/3 (hence the paradox).
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
According to Steve Jobs the top 3 things we asked for were put into this new design. 1. Flat Panel screen 2. G4 processor 3. Superdrive (DVD burner on one of 3 models)
they forgot #4, and i think the loudest of the reactions to the old design: a 17'' screen.
they can very easily upgrade the new line with a 17'' option - and i think it will be the first thing they do when they revamp the line in a few months (along with dropping the price). look at it: just lengthen the swing arm a bit and put a larger display at the end of it; hell, it's almost something a user could do on his own...
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
Yeah, but what this misses is the whole Digital Hub philosophy. And no, that's not just the latest marketing catch-phrase. Apple seems to have remembered that the idea behind computers is to make all our lives easier and more enjoyable. They're trying to do it by streamlining things that we already do (or would like to do but didn't feel like dealing with the hastle). And I think they do a fantastic job of it with their Digital Hub software/hardware. I have an iPod and I think it's great. Jobs wasn't just blowing smoke when he quoted all the reviews saying it's the best digital music player ever. And the integration with iTunes is not a small part of that. iTunes is an extremely easy to use, yet flexible app. The integration with iPod is seamless. The iMovie tutorial I did was pretty cool, and I can't wait to play with it when I actually have some video I want to mess with. I haven't used iDVD yet (probably won't happen until I make my iMovies). I can't wait to use iPhoto. One of the reasons I don't use my digital camera much is that it's just so much of a hastle actually making anything of the images I take. Sure, I can drag and drop them onto my Wintel machine and then I can edit them with some other utility. But iPhoto appears to share one of the greatest features of iTunes...its library function. Sure, functionally it's not a whole lot different from what you can normally get from the filesystem. But it does add a LOT more convenience and accessibility.
Right now Apple's concentrating more on useability and convenience than sheer power. And at the moment, that's most of what I'm looking for. Yeah, I'll probably always keep a Wintel machine to play games on. But to an increasing degree, that's ALL i'm doing on Wintel. The user experience on the Macs is hard to leave behind. And that's really where Apple's adding the value. Not simply in the basic power of the hardware. Though the hardware isn't all that bad either (especially when "Velocity Engine" comes into play).
-Perrin.
Now I want you to go in that bag and find my lightsaber. It's the one that says bad mother-fscker on it.
I forget how long it takes to decrypt a DVD
EfDTT by Charles Hannum, whose source code fits under half a kilobyte, can descramble CSS data in real-time using only 10% of a G4 Cube's CPU power. Think of what an implementation that uses more tables can do.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Which is why the iMac line is the consumer one (doi!)
Apple has 4 main lines:
- iMac - Intro/consumer line. All-in-one design with quality components & limited expandability ('cause most home folks never change anything and lots was built in anyway) at a low price.
- Tower models - really the professional desktop line which does cross over into home users with specific needs. Opens easy, slots for cards, customizable.
- iBook - Laptops for the masses at a great price/product point. Lotsa built-in goodies in a durable case with long batter life.
- PowerBook - Take-no-prisoners complete desktop replacement offering performance and features at a high but competitive price.
As for Mac's vs x86 boxes - the prices aren't all that far off. Yes one can throw together a Frankenstein PC at lower cost but for a warranteed product from a major manufacturer with quality components (and Apple does use quality displays & such) with the OS included they're generally a good deal, certainly when one considers the integration.No, they're not to everyone's taste but MacOS X is a great unix and coupled with this hardware it's damn enticing. Besides - it's getting more unix out to more folks then anyone else ever has.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
The reason why people like you can never appreciate the G4, or apple hardware, or pretty much anything apple ever does for that matter, is that you never actually use your computer to *do* much of anything. Quake? Please. Quit playing your little games and grow up. Photoshop is a real world application used by untold legions of graphics designers in professional situations. The software that is G4 optimized on the Mac platform is heaviliy optimized, and many are creative applications. So I think that the Photoshop benchmark is a fantastic one, because coming from the position of an artist:
I don't give a flying fuck how fast it compiles the linux kernel.
Conclusion? When I'm using a measly 667 MHZ G4 with my custom designed Audio DSP/Video processing patch in Max/MSP/Nato
I fly, I've got an assload of CPU power to spare, and you've just fragged your millionth bot. Good for you. Buy an Xbox, loser.
Boring people use boring computers.
is that it doesn't look like a computer. Love it or hate it, you have to admit that Apple is the one computer company that is doing anything original with case design and form factor. Sony has the most stylish x86 boxes out there, but they still look like... boxes. We've hit the point where we don't HAVE to build computers that look like bricks, but you wouldn't know it by looking at PCs these days.
Kudos to Apple for daring to do something a little different, even if it does make us think of a desk lamp. ;)
This
A Mac OS machine, not for the Linux die-hard. Who knew?
sulli
RTFJ.
Matching a digital screen w/ an analog input is a bastardization that best belongs on the Island of Doctor Moreau. Having end-to-end digital costs a couple hundred bucks (generally) but makes all the difference in the world.
----- Refactoring is the reason why man does not mistake himself for a god.
Yes, for $1300 you can do that. However, people who would do that are not part of Apple's target market. People keep forgetting that Apple is a premium brand. They aren't competing with people who would order their own parts and build a box. With a $1300 entry price they aren't even competing with Compaq etc in the bargain market. Your same argument can be used to take a knock at Sony's PCs as well. Point is, for a premium brand like Apple, you pay a premium price.
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
No the IBM doesn't. Watch the videos on the Apple site. The IBM doesn't have the "mobility" of the neck in moving the monitor around. And the IBM doesn't ship with iDVD, iTunes, iPhoto, and iMovie, nor does it have OS X with Darwin under the hood and Apache ready to be launched. This new iMac will add the best of both worlds, the *nix and the GUI/Applications needs. Too many Linux users live in their own little world. Have a good friend who bought a TiBook and runs nothing but Mandrake on it, getting ready to add OS X. Name of the game is partitions. Run Mac OS 9, OS X, the Darwin *nix (including X Windows), and your favorite flavor of Linux. The drive in these new puppies is big enough for all four. And say goodbye to Microsoft forever. :-)
From http://n0cgi.distributed.net/speed/
PowerPC G4 @ 800 MHz: 8.2 million RC5 keys/sec
AMD Athlon @ 1600 MHz: 5.7 million RC5 keys/sec
Intel Pentim 4 @ 2000 MHz: 2.9 million RC5 keys/sec
Now let's talk again about how clunky the G4 is.
Well, we have it. It's done. Consumer oriented flat-panel computers are here. CRTs will be relegated to pre-press shops and collectors.
If you look at LCD monitors in the light of Apple's success with pushing USB, expect to see imitators abounding in a few months.
To those who pooh-pooh the price, I ask to you show me a comparable machine by any competitor that fulfills the same criteria:
And do all this for $1300. Show me the comparables, please. And, consider the inevitability of production ramp-up. LCDs are cheaper now than a year ago. With Apple's push towards commoditizing the LCD market, imagine what the economies of scale can bring!
Will this significantly alter Apple's market share? Not likely. There are too many people who look at a problem and readily come to the wrong solution, i.e. "Let's go buy a computer based solely on the price, rather than what we want to accomplish with it". This is not Apple's market, just as they are not GNU/Linux's market. Apple is selling to a group of people who want the computer to be a part of their lifestyle, not as a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses consumerism.
Bravo, Apple. I look forward to the future devices you have in store.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
just so it will take up more room in their briefcase/backback
That's not the only reason... some people will actually want their monitor to have that pixel depth, but cause less eyestrain trying to squint at the smaller display.
I hate to admit it, but as I get older, I'll probably want the same sort of things myself.
That's the real secret of this device, is that it was designed with mounting brackets to attach on top of the Ginger aka Segway scooter. Just think about what you want to compute, and it'll go do that, as well as displaying the output of your digital video camera so you can see where you're going on the screen.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
That is 100% it. Apple has realized, (and hopefully the consumers are realizing too) that a 2+ Ghz processor with a 60 Gig harddrive and whatever is of no use to the average person if the software running on it is too complex. Another 400 mhz of clock speed might enable the computer to encode mp3's twice as fast, but that advantage is wasted if crummy software requires me to spend twice as long organizing my songs and setting up the CD.
iMovie isn't full featured by any means, but it's incredibly easy to use. I can do things with iMovie on an ibook faster than can be done with something like premier on any type of hardware you care to throw at it. And hey, it's free as well. Hard to beat that.
The new iMac is about more than itself. It's more about creating a home for the software. It's about creating a new interaction between people and computers. This interaction won't mean that much to powerusers, at least not in the beginning, but that's why it's targeted at the everyday consumer. I think it's quite brilliant.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
does the product's pic at apple.com remind anyone else of the south park episode, 'cartman gets an anal probe?' in particular, the scene in which a satellite portrudes from cartman's ass.
"cartman, there's a 15-inch active matrix lcd screen sticking out of your ass!"
"sure, you guys, whatever."
*You* can build a box from scratch with commodity parts. My mother can't. You don't care if your computer matches the furniture. My mother might. You can figure out how to use cumbersome GPL-ed tools to manipulate images, video, audio, etc. My mother would never even try such a thing.
The iApps aren't targeted at you. They are targeted at average consumers who aren't tech-savvy. And for many non-tech-savvy users, paying an extra $200 for a machine that's tightly integrated with software, includes simple plug-and-play apps, and requires a minimum of behind-the-scenes tinkering is a great deal. For many consumers, paying an extra $50 so their computer can be a conversation piece rather than an eye-sore is money well spent.
Perhaps you're not one of them, but that doesn't make it wrong. And slashdot's motto isn't "News for mascochistic nerds with no aesthetic taste." Not all nerds like to spend their weekends wrestling with their souped up, built-from scratch athlon box. Some of us value our time and are happy to pay a premium for quality, superb industrial design, good aesthetics, and an OS that blows both XP and Linux out of the water.