Slashdot Mirror
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 was waiting for someone to outdo the 22" Cinema Display, funny it was Apple that ended up doing it themselves.
Contacts: The way this works is that when you upgrade to 1.1, you get a top-level folder on the iPod named "Contacts". Drop .vcf files in there, and you're off. Cute, but since I have my Palm all the time, it's less useful to me.
Equalizer: Can't comment since I haven't set it for any songs.
Now Playing: Pressing the center button when playing a song no longer switches between elapsed time and time remaining. The normal display now shows both. If you press the button, you get the diamond-in-the-rectangle of iTunes, and you can use the dial to shuttle backwards and forwards. Trés cool.
Shuffle: You can now choose between shuffling between songs or between albums. I'm not quite sure what that means.
Bugs fixed: The bug where pausing and then unpausing would land you somewhere totally else appears to be fixed. Another bug where the iPod would cut songs off at the end is also fixed. Alas, the one that prevents "Dvorak" (with the accent over the r) from displaying properly is still present.
Easter Egg: It's still there, in the Legal section off the Settings main item.
And of course, more languages that I don't understand.
Avi
More importantly, who is buying these things?!?
Wouldn't a more rational plan be to drop the iPod to $299 and sell this new version for $399? (which is what it's going for now)
$500 seems like an AWFUL lot of money for a product with a 90 day warranty.
iTunes 2.04 was also (quietly) released, nothing new here except better stability.
Also, the Bluetooth update won't be avaliable for download till April (this from Apple's site).
-- Your local friendly mad scientist-in-training
It's good to see that Apple's embracing the technology, giving it a greater chance of widespread adoption. Remember what Apple did for us with USB and Firewire?
:)
Now if only they had bluetooth support for the iPod, I'd be happy about not having to connect it up to the PC every time I wanted to transfer a file.
Having played with an iPod before and found that the sound is a bit try, the EQ is a welcome addition and was the one thing that didn't convince me to buy one over a NetMD-based walkman. Contact management is just damn cool, evidence that Apple listens to the community out there (remember that iPod contact hack?). Good work, Apple
Microsoft Office AND Appleworks on the same iPod!t ml
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,50688,00.h
"Which iPod is yours?"
"It's the one that says 'Bad Mother Fucker'"
You're going to look awfully silly with that big ol' 40GB Maxtor hard drive on your hip as you go jogging. And I'll bet you'll feel silly, too, when you realize that the Maxtor can't play music on its own.
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
Any other manufacturor might not have done such a foolish thing as integrating the display. Seriously, I am not trolling here - just look at the attempted consolidation in the ram market right now. I think every area of the it industry had hardware surplus based on skyrocking demand for 5 straight years, and then stopped. Apple probably viewed the cheap lcd prices as a natural parallel to the hard drive and cpu performance inc. vs price metrics, whereas the lcd prices were probably very depressed by massive overproduction.
Having to raise prices is truly ridiculous. It just hurts apple even more in the last 9 months of this year as the x86 folks keep pushing the mhz gap higher, and thus the apple/x86 price comparison keep getting worse for apple.
Well considering neither your standard MP3 player or USB 2.0 hard drive have a master bus controller or software, they can't talk to one another. You could carry both the MP3 player and hard drive around until you were blue in the face but you couldn't transfer any of the songs without a host system.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I'd just love to see you fit your Maxtor USB 2.0 HDD in your pocket, myself.
A little tidbit for those college students/those with parents/friends in the education industry. Try going to the Education Apple Store, things are cheaper for 'ya.
Example: 5 GB iPod: $369 (Normally $399)
10 GB iPod: $469. (Normally $499)
Hey, $30 off isn't too bad. Just trying to get the word out.
This is big. If Apple is on the blue tooth train, then it means that the standard will be back from the dead when M$ put it by not supporting it in XP, and will become successfull (see USB for some background.) Apple is obviously working on new desktop and laptop systems with bluetooth integrated. It's not rumors but very certain that BT is what Apple need for their digital hub strategy. I wonder how they are going to cop with interference between BT and 802.11b. And it will be really funny to see how other vendors are playing catch up with Apple when they realize that bluetooth is a really neat solution to connect devices. In M$ interest not to connect easily with Palm, this is the only reason why the beast of Redmond killed the technology by not releasing drivers last summer. However, all the devices like PDAs (ex: iPaq, Loox, etc...) are released in Japan with BlueTooth in standard. Again, US is lagging big time behind Japan when it comes to wireless (3G, and now BlueTooth.)
PPA, the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
yeah, being one of 2 PC makers in the Black this year,having 60 million in the bank and having no debt can realy Hurt, it hurts realy realy realy bad.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
While I agree that the high end computers are more fun and interesting (from a marketing/sales perspective). The lower cost machines are what is going to make money.
Not sure I agree with you. While I may be wrong, the G4 towers probably make more money for Apple (per unit) than anything. I doubt if they make much of anything on the iMac. It's probably just more of a maintaining market share thing, keeping it a viable platform so software gets released for Macs.
I could be totally wrong, I haven't looked at any numbers, but my gut tells me that the $3500 dual processor G4 tower and the Cinema Display carries a much larger margin for Apple. Not sure how the total sales of these units factors in.
Oh well... I can't afford any of it. I wish I could.
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
Traditionally 'Alan Smithee' is the moniker taken on by a movie director when he is so ashamed of his work that he will not be associated with it by name.
So it's a little worrying to see who they reference (via graphic) as the iPod project manager on the story link.
:)
I'm curious as to how Apple got their brand new "Contacts feature" seen here. It seems to me that two other people beat apple to the punch. iPod Organizer and ipoAddress.
I'm curious as to whether Apple went to the developers, and bought the idea/software. I know they did this for SoundJam, in order to get iTunes. They literally bought out every SoundJam developer, and took the software.
I also know this is how the "time in the title bar" idea got started. 3rd party software, bought by Apple. Any facts surrounding this acquisition?
"Although no one believes that the iMac price increase is due to manufacturing costs..."
I do. The LCD production has not kept up with the demand (because people love the iMac, you see), so the manufacturer raised the cost of the LCDs. Ergo, price of iMac went up.
It's not exactly a secret.
The price will go down eventually, when supply meets demand. It happened with LCD displays for cell phones a few years back.
Offtopic, I know, but I would really like to see SHN (shorten) file support. Sure, you could transfer them on there, but I would like to see the iPod actually play them.
Mp3s are just too lossy for my liking. I could still fit a few losslessly compressed albums on a 5 or 10 gig iPod, which is fine by me! Anything to keep from bringing a battery-draining CD player and loads of discs.
Anyone know if that kind of hack is even possible? If it was, I'd buy one in a second.
The lower cost machines are what is going to make money. Something that I believe Apple is still desprately in need of.
Exactly what aapl are you looking at. Apple may not hold the record for market share but when it comes to making a profit Apple holds her own. One of the great things about Apple is they have so much in the bank that they can afford to take a risk here and there. The reason the price went up: their research suggests people will pay more. This is not a desperate act. And I doubt anybody in the market will interpret this as a desperate act either.
http://seminars.apple.com/tradeshows/index.html
Actually, the margin on the iMac is 20%, and the margin on the high-end Tower is 30%. They all have to sell pretty well for Apple to make its profit targets.
I think these price increases was so they could maintain the 20% margin. Otherwise their shareholders get pretty upset.
I'm not sure what the margin on the new Cinema Display is, but the only people who will buy it are seriously rich hobbyists and seriously professional graphic artists and motion graphics/video editing people. That's a rich audience, but the whole market for that thing is a few thousand people.
At least they undercut Sun, who is charging $4,500 (versus $3,500) for what looks like almost the same thing.
Sun beat them to market, though.
D
Actually, exactly the same thing has happened in the Mac world over the last few months. For instance, the high end PowerMac G4/dual 800 was $3,499, while its dual 1ghz replacement is $2,999. The PowerBook G4/667 was $ 3,500 when it was first released; now it's $2,999.
The new iMac is only a little more expensive than previous iMac price points, but you're getting tons more for your money.
D
5GB iPod (refurbished) for $339 from store.apple.com (Click on "Special Deals"). Comes with the same 90 day warranty as a new iPod.
--
The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
Things have changed. Micron (Boise, Idaho) is taking over the industry. They bought Toshiba's DRAM business, they bought TI's business, they bought KMT's business, and are negotiating to buy Hynex, which is in trouble. They and Samsung are in a race for the #1 spot now; if the the Hynex deal goes through, Micron will be far bigger than Samsung in DRAM.
In 2001, there was a huge DRAM glut, which pushed prices down. Micron, instead of cutting back, used its advantage as the lowest-cost producer to squeeze out the weaker players. Here's an overview of the industry.
It looks like that when the dust settles, Micron will have about 40% market share, Samsung (S. Korea) about 22%, Elpdata (Japan) somewhere under 20%, and minor players the rest. The era of brutal competition in DRAM may be ending. The number of players is much smaller now. We may see more "stability" in DRAM pricing.
Wouldn't be easier just to redesign Unix users?
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
No lossless compression, but you can still store several 600MB CDs of audio.
iPod specs
-pmb
$2,000 got you the machine you could afford -the one that you could use Office and Quicken on, play most middle-of the road games, and if you were willing to wait a long time, dabble in graphic design and multimedia.
Now the machine you really want still costs $4,000, but the machine you can afford is down to $1,500, and it does far more than even the best home computers did just two or three years ago.
The fact that there are $500 commodity PC boxes available is nice, but does that mean that the $1,500 iMac no longer has value to the person who purchases it?
It seems to me that rather than comparing the prices of PC and Mac CPUs and peripherals, we ought to be comparing overall value to the consumer - i.e., is this machine doing everything I want it to do, for a price that I find worthwhile?
If you love your Mac, but you don't love PCs, there must be more perceived value in the Mac for you. If that's the case, isn't it intrinsically worth more to you than a less expensive PC?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
An AC wrote:
> I love you apple zealots. Apple addicts is the closest thing to a secular
> cult I have ever seen.
>
> Um wait I take that back, apple addicts think Steve Jobs is god.
The beautiful, protecting, heroic, wonder-working deity Mothra is the great Goddess that resurrected Apple from the dead (and parted the Pacific for good measure).
Toho is her prophet.
Steve Jobs is her servant and messenger.
Apple is her champion to put right the wrongs of Microsoft, the RIAA, and the MPAA.
Homage to King Shisa (mistranslated as Seesar or Caesar),
Guardian of Okinawa and Friend of the Mac,
on the occasion of his 38th birthday.
("Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla" 1974, "Mothra 2" 1997)
Before you Apple fans begin to flame me: I once had an apple. It was my favorite computer of all time. I miss it. I just can't afford a Mac.
And how much do you value your time?
I'm amazed at how many people will "save" themselves a few hundred bucks when buying a PC, only to waste months of their own time and effort on keeping it working.
But then again, those $400 MSN "rebates" were a bit hit too. Suckers.
-pmb
My fiancee is studying music in school, and she has to listen to a rediculous amount of music. One of the reasons she got a laptop was to be able to rip the CDs in the library so she wouldn't have to fight for access to them with others in the classes.
Now when she gets new listening assignments, she hops into the library, rips the CDs, syncs the iPod, and she's set. If she really likes the music, she makes a copy of the CD to go in the CD Jukebox in our apartment so she can listen to the higher quality recording.
Now she doesn't mind the 30-45 minute subway rides that she does getting around town because she just turns on her iPod and the music is waitting for her.
Could this be done with non-Apple equipment, sure. However, the two hours of helping her adjust from being a Windows user to a Mac user made up for it from reduced tech support on my end... As I type away on my Windows machine whose copy of Internet Explorer couldn't use view source last week...
Alex
Newer ipods and bigger cinema displays are great, but MacOS X is vastly more important. Guess the transition period needs to be lengthened now.
Seems to have been alot of really positive (overall) articles on apple and their products lately.
I used to be a Mac slammer. Nothing made me quite as happy as slamming indignant Mac die hards, unless it was slamming brainless Microsoft Bots. That was before Steve Jobs came back to apple. Then I started watching them with interest.
Now, after all these good stories lately, about the ipod, imovies, OS X and its unix environment, I have to say someone slipped me some of the Mac coolaide.
I want one! I want one now! Damn! And I'm happy about it too!
Gimme a mac!
Build a Mac yourself for $500...
Build a PC yourself for $500...
See the difference now?
I'm in the black. And I didn't raise the barrier to entry on my product more than the cost of a new computer.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Check the back of your iPod. Under the edched logo you'll find your iPod's serial number etched in as well, and it matches the serila # you'll find in 'settings'.
Kinda cool, kinda unnoticed.
Kevin Fox
the difference is, I own a Mitsubishi 22" DP2040u. The SGI sucks 27 watts, the DP2040u sucks 155 watts. Used 16 hours a day, 31 days a month, results in a 12 dollar electric bill. Including the $75 recycle fee, I can run my monitor for 10 years before my total cost of ownership exceeds the SGI. $1500 invested instead of spent on a flat panel makes the CRT pay for itself relative to the flat panel in the same timeframe. I still have an 8 year old 21" HM-4520-D. I know the life expectancy of a CRT. The apple cinema display has a life expectancy of 15000 hours. That is less than TWO YEARS. 6 years peak with conservative use.
So, with 1/3 the life expectancy, Buying THREE for every one CRT, Where are your cost of ownership numbers now?
You do not own a cinema display. You have absolutly no idea what it costs to own one.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
So, with Apple leading the renaissance in wireless networking (it was their introduction of the AirPort that kicked of this current wave of activity) how will they reconcile this with Bluetooth? All of their computers ship with wireless card slots and built-in antennas; they all also ship with USB ports (also popularized by Apple.) Which is to drown out the other? While it's true that they can co-exist it is at the expense of greatly reduced data rates, already an issue for folks used to 100 Mbps or 1,000 Mbps (standard on many Mac models) Ethernet.
My own bet is that before or along-with any USB-BlueTooth product introduction Apple will ship a revised AirPort, or at least a software tweak with a built in Bluetooth-friendly autonegotiation. Or, failing that we'll see the release of an AirPort II featuring 802.11a (at 5 GHz and capable of 54 Mbps) thus safely different from cordless phones, microwave ovens, baby monitors, 802.11b, 802.11g, Bluetooth, HomeRF, and a half dozen other wireless applications.
As to microwave ovens - well 2.4 Ghz is the resonant frequency of water so no change possible there. However it is something to think about as you hold these various new wireless devices up next to your body.
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.
Pulp iPod
I wouldn't hire you to work help desk phones.
This may come as a bit of a surprise, but Apple hardware just isn't that expensive for what you get. It's just that you tend to get a really well-balanced, complete system. Most "bargain-box" PC's are crippled by poor system design. In terms of day-to-day performance, it's hard for me to tell my Dell Optiplex GX240 (1.7 GHz P4) from my custom-built 800MHz P3 at home. Our department got the Dell really cheaply, though, so I can't complain about the relatively poor performance.
To fairly evaluate the price Apple is charging, why not compare more equivalent hardware? I priced out a IBM ThinkPad T23 vs. an Apple PowerBook a few days ago. The high end T23 sports a 1.2 GHz Pentium THREE processor, 256MB RAM, 60GB HDD, 14.1 inch display,10/100 Mb networking, and 16MB video RAM. The cost on IBM's web store is $3,599.00
The high end Apple PowerBook "ultimate" model has a 667 MHz G4 processor, 1 GB of RAM, 48 GB HDD, 16 MB video RAM, Gigabit networking, wireless networking and a 15.2 inch display). It retails for $3,699.00.
Feature-wise, my personal opinion is that the PowerBook is more "loaded" than the ThinkPad. However, the cost difference between the two is less than 3%.
Looks to me like the Apple price is very competitive.
Likewise, if you look at the extra $100 Apple announced as an increase in the price of iMacs, you still get a great system for the cost. Sure, you can find "cheapo" PC boxes for less, but you get less computer as well. Apple doesn't market "discount" computers. Just because the iMac is the lowest end system Apple makes you shouldn't compare it to the lowest end PC available. The two are in different classes. Compare the iMac to a comparably-built PC and I think you'll find that Apple's prices remain quite attractive.
Life is short: void the warranty.
Consoles have better specifications. Apples are toys.
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Numbers do not tell the whole story.
I am a Java developer who has been looking for years for the perfect development environment from which to work on. Since I got my G4 I have without a doubt never been happier. I don't have to fuck with endless config files like I did on Linux, and yet I can use all the *nix tools I got used to. Windows made me want to choke: it was functional, but I prefer not to deal with Microsoft products if I can help it. Compared to OS X it is *Windows* that is the toy.
My G4 has helped me to do my job better. I can assure you it is *not* a toy, at least no more or less so than any other general purpose PC.
If I could mount a railgun to a toaster, you can bet I would. You can't have too many railguns.