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Apple @ MacWorld Tokyo
rschroeder writes "Apple updated several products at MacWorld Tokyo tonight (or tomorrow morning). A $499 10-gig iPod, with, get this, custom laser engraving on the back, ($49 extra) and vCard support. They also announced a $49 USB bluetooth module, shipping in April, with beta drivers availble today. Among other tricks, Jobs synced a Clie with a mac via bluetooth. Also a new 23" (1920x1200 )Cinema Display. Jobs also said they're raising the price of the iMac due to LCD and RAM cost increases. All this courtesy MacMinute.com's live coverage." Maccentral has several stories about Jobs' keynote at the convention.
I guess one good side of being a PC user is that price goes down while the performance goes up. Although no one believes that the iMac price increase is due to manufacturing costs. If people will line up to pay $1800, why not charge them $1900 or more. It's nice to have a strong following especially if you can make them pay for it.
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22 inch DP2040u max resolution 2048 by 1536. Perfect flat CRT. Less than $1000. You sir, are a fool. You paid 3 times too much for a product with inferior visual quality.
Flat panels have not yet surpassed CRTs for visual quality. The best of them have pixel response times of 25ms. At 45ms, The SGI 1600SW display is not in that category. Ghosting while playing video is noticable and distracting. The SGI is a Thin Film Transistor (TFT) Active Matrix Liquid Crystal Display (AMLCD). An inferior technology they used because it is cheaper and has better yields when producing larger displays. Max Gamma is 7000 kelvin so the picture washes out at daylight brightness. Additionally, the display can only produce 24 bit color. So, despite SGI's marketing bullshit, this is one of the worst displays for video editing.
The new apple display has the same drawbacks only it is bigger and costs more.
For now a CRT is the best way to go unless you have no desktop space (get a bigger desk) or, like most apple owners, prefer style over substance (get a life).
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
The price of memory is back down. Flat panels have never been cheaper. The barrier to entry for Apple is up $600 from the CRT iMac.
Have they got any idea what their competition is doing? PCs have twice the power for half the cost. $1400 will buy one hell of a fast PC with firewire, USB 2.0, Geforce 4 graphics, all the speed and features of the dual G4 1Ghz for the price of an iMac. God it kills me what fools mac zealots are. Begging to be robbed. Pretty shiny slick glowing throbbing easy slow expensive fragile.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Why the added vCard support to the iPod? It's kind of like mounting a railgun to a toaster.
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They do run huge margins on their hardware. They get $300 for 512 megs of ram. Last time I checked, that costs about $120 for name brand memory. That is over %100 markup.
That is because Apple markets their products to fools. A mac zealot and thier money are soon parted. Preettty shiiinny gloossssy slick new compuuterr.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Exactly. You can not build a Mac from parts. You have to pay Apple's premium price for inferior hardware.
Apple is "in the black" on the backs of their sucker die hard fanboys.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
See one in a store? No. Going to see one in a store? No.
First off Apple generally uses pretty high quality components. Their LCD is a sight nicer then your $300 closeout special. Apple also integrates everything a hell of a lot better. Of course that's a lot easier when the OS comes from the same vendor (where's yours?) Indeed right there is half of the value of the machine, it runs MacOS X. And of course the included applications, not shovelware but good stuff that works with the hardware and works intuitively.
Of course there's also the point of the screen being on a pedestal. That's unique in the industry and totally rocks - it's amazing how seductive it is to have a display one can casually reach out & reposition, tilt, angle. It really does change the experience and some panel-on-pegs is not the same at all.
Then there's that whole service & support thing. You may disdain it but the iMac is the intro level computer and ask any real vendor - it costs, it costs a lot to support folks. Phones, websites, repairs, parts, trained folks, etc. You may be willing to spend half a day getting your CD burner to work; most folks just want one that works and if it doesn't a number to call and a quick & easy resolution path.
Am I a Macolyte? No. I have a few, and yeah the mac.com address (free, stable, fast, offers POP, IMAP, SMTP, WebDAV, HTTP, no adverts, can't beat that) but I've also a room full of PCs. Which do I recommend to folks? Depends on what they want to do and how they like to work.
For some things Macs are spot on, for others PCs are a better choice. Macs are price competitive (your apples-to-oranges comparison notwithstanding) as one long as one avoids the Apple memory. The iMac is a great intro or home machine, trivial to set up and fast enough. I also find the laptops to be good deals with rugged cases & long battery life. The G4s are fine machines though they do cost the dickens but if ya need them there they are. Depending on your business a Mac might or might not be appropriate, certainly in some fields a Wintel box is a much better choice, others a Mac fits the bill.
But you, you seem to have a chip on your shoulder. Fine. But don't go making stupid statements and not expect to get called on them. Nor come looking for an argument or to act out your frustrations at whatever. We've both had our say and at this point any further discussion would be almost like baiting those foamers one sometimes finds on streetcorners - just inane & embarrassing for all around.
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.
Big mp3 collectors like me are waiting for the elusive 100 gig portable or always-on wireless music streamer. 2000 songs or about 130 albums is nice, but what I really want is to be able to go anywhere with every single album i own/illegally downloaded.