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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!
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.
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
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.
Hmmm, that would explain that quote from Steve Jobs about wanting to reach out an touch it.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
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.
Steve Jobs is a genius.
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 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.
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!
To tell you the truth--I don't think that the consumer price point is sub-$1000 right now unless that consumer is willing to buy an Emachine or something similar (cheap hardware, off-brand.) After Xmas, we went shopping with my father-in-law for his new computer. Outside of processor speeds (which can't be compared on a one-to-one basis between Intel and Apple, anyhow) the machines we were looking at were very similar to the low-end iMac/Lamp. We could have picked up an open item for under $1000, but nothing from a name brand, even Dell (every time you clicked through the front page "deals" the price jumped!) The price range everywhere we looked (online, offline) was about $1099-$1399 for the system/hardware he wanted. This iMac, if it had been out (and if he was willing to go with an Mac, which would have been the bigger struggle ;) could have easily been in the running. And that's what really surprised me, out of everything announced today. $1,299 is pretty close to what is on the market right now. And it's a lot slicker-looking ...
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.
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 = =.
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
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
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.