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Apple Releases New PowerBook and the eMac
Martin Kallisti writes "Apple has released new PowerBook models whose improvements include faster processors (up to 800MHz), better resolution, 1MB of L3 cache and 32MB of video memory. Also, a new computer looking much like the old iMacs, called the eMac, has seen the light of day. It's primarily targeted at the education market, and boasts a 700MHz G4 processor and a flat 17" monitor. " As Troc pointed out in another submission, the eMac will be available only to profs/teachers, students and higher education institutions.
Can someone explain what the point of an "education only" product is? Is that market really so different that it warrants restricting a product specifically to that market? Is this some kind of weird strategy to reduce support staff since most educational institutions have their own IT people? I'm baffled. Someone please explain it to me.
This too shall pass.
And suddenly I'm lucky that I couldn't get my hands on the 667 Powerbook for the past month since it was out stock everywhere here in .de. I just hope that the new one will start shipping right away, can't wait to get my dirty little hands on it.
--[Nothing important]--
I entered in my college's info, and it was $1249! Why wouldn't I go with a cheaper, yet less powerful, old-school iMac, for $749? When thinking about buying thousands of these, wouldn't it be more cost-effective?
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Random, useless fact: I type in startx entirely with my left hand.
Steve is the master of wizardry, he managed to keep this one under his belt untill release. This is major difference in PR since the Imac was released. Shine on you crazy diamond
I'm already tired of explaining to enquiring non-nerds that my nerd-friends are Emacs developers, not iMac's developers.
I guess the problem just got worse.
Which is better, eMacs or vi?
;)
The GNU people are gonna be pissed.
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Random, useless fact: I type in startx entirely with my left hand.
I can't wait. This is really going to be great for me. I've wanted a Mac ever since OSX came out. Unfortunately as a student, I can't really afford a new iMac, and I didn't really want to buy an old iMac with a G3 (I think it won't be supported much longer). I bet this will be a bit less expensive. I like the bigger screen as well.
Business News and Resources: www.usasource.net
Well there are still plenty more letters left in the alphabet. Personally, I look forward to jMac, wMac, fMac, and 21 other fine computers.
Then, perhaps they will have to use characters from other alphabets. Wonder how you would pronounce ßMac? "Smack?"
-Evan
My PowerBook 667 is now obsolete :(
A significant hike in features, but also a significant hike in price.
Still want one though - anyone want to buy me iBook ?
'Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.' - George Gordon
Did any graphic designers out there note that the eMac has a different font for its name? Sans-serif instead of the Garamond-derived Apple font. Check out the main Apple home page to see what I mean.
Interesting... I wonder why the change?
-Russ
Me
This may be blaringly obvious to everyone else, but this seems like a good solution to the problems apple has been having getting its hands on LCD parts.
Business News and Resources: www.usasource.net
Good to see a they've finally put a DVI connector on the Powerbook. What's the point of having a sleek Titanium laptop if you can only plug it into clunky CRTs to get your wrap around multi display configuration?
It seems like Apple not only came up with a new PowerBook, but they also came up with their own brand-spanking new PowerLanguage (tm). With words like:
..., mega-wide
screamingly fast
mind-boggling 60 Gb drive
a tremendous wallop
wicked-fast performance
stunning, dazzling, sleek, blows past
What audience are they targetting with language like that?
I really hope noone excpect to use exactly the same computer _model_ when they leave school.
Job interview:
You write you have experience from school with Dell, was it their Optiplex line?
Yes, the Optiplex GX.
That old stuff? Too bad, we use Optiplex GXpro here, so your experience is worthless. But thanks for considering us. Bye.
" the eMac will be availible only to profs/teachers, students and higher education institutions."
Great going: limit availability of your product just for the hell of it. Great way to remain a mere "niche" player! Reminds me of the days when you could get PC's from a bazillion mail order places, but you could only get Apples from rare overpriced rude "authorized dealers".
As someone who was very tempted to buy a Powerbook shortly, the new prices are a bit of a hike. IIRC, yesterday the base model was around £1200. Now the base model is a somewhat heftier £2,149.00. Doh.
Does anyone know the price?
Xix.
(awaiting domain name disputes)
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
better featers then the Imac + biger screen - 100$ in price = cool!
I noticed that Apple added DVI out to the back of the machine. But that port is pretty big.. so what did they take out to fit it in? It looks like it's near the vent on the back.
Ok, I'll have to clean the puddle of saliva off the floor now.....Then run out and get one.
Does it come with a box of black candles and a Rams-head logo?
So, now we can use some friendly eMacs
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
the specs say it weighs 50 lbs! Hey Jobs, is it made out of sand? Is that so they won't hvae theives carrying it off? I can see it now, "hellos this is the school, your little Johnny had his foot borken when a eMac fell off the desk and SMASHED through the floor."
Isn't the Mac a limited enough market already? What's next the Left Handed, Brown Eyed, Blonde Haired, Colorblind, Education only Mac?
an iMac with a 17" screen...wasn't this the thing that people have been clamouring for, and rumours flying over ever since the original iMac was launched? this is what a hell of a lot of people have been waiting for, and apple decides to release it for the educational market only? i don't get it...it uses a CRT, so there should be a lot fewer problems with supply, and it has to be cheaper to produce than the new flat-panel iMac with moving parts, so you can flood the consumer market with it. steve moves in mysterious ways...
You see Apple has large Education Dept & university/tech/college contracts.
This is for them.
But once supplies get into gear, & the price for that spec starts to decrease, they'll open sales for them to the general public, you watch.
The way it will work is that large contracts with Education Dept & universities/techs/colleges will get 1st go.
Then Education staff will be able to by them from the collage Apple shop or through college book & supply shops.
Then it will be anyone with a student card buying from the collage Apple shop or through college book & supply shops.
Then they'l be sold in public stores but only to Education institions, education staff & people with student cards.
Finally when they have gone through all this routine over about 6 months & if supplies stock up a bit, then they'll be released for general sale.
That's the way its occured here where I am, in the past when Apple has released 'education only' products.
but i'd like to know how much it costs?
will this product be shipped outside of U.S. too?
all your datasheets are belong to us
Can anybody tell me why the hell they didn't stick with VESA timings for that CRT. With only 72 Hz for the highest resolution I could not stand to work on that thing for more than 30 minutes.
--Ulrich
On no accounts allow a Vogon to read poetry at you
...available only to black transsexual members of the Reform Party on leap years that occur during occlusion of Mars that happen to fall within 7 months of a "Star Wars" film release.
I had to make sure it wasn't April 1...
Probably the coolest thing about the eMac is that it's one of the much-discussed "rumor" topics that I never expected to be productized.
Kudos, Apple... I think...
Heck, I don't know what to think.... what's the mob party line on this? L33t or Lame?
This is insightful? Just how stupid do you have to be to get moderation points?
There's a feature that's been on almost every Mac, from low end to high end, since Steve Jobs decided to give the company's products their first image makeover. It's strangely absent from the eMac, and now I wonder why it lacks-- --the handles. Oh yeah, scoff if you must, but think about it -- nearly every non-laptop machine in Apple's post-beige era has had handles of some sort, either on the corners (blue G3 and G4 towers) or set in the top (iMacs from the get-go). Even the old iBooks had the plastic carrying handle. And if you think back, remember the very very original 128K Macintosh with the big square mouse? It had a handle too. SE/030? Handle. The eMac represents a departure from the standard design for a number of reasons as stated by other posters, and now there's this too. Yeah, I know, the handle isn't quite as nice as, say, the BSD-compatible core, but it's something I'd grown to rely on. I begin to wonder what's going through the designers' minds.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Are the keys made of real ivory? Is there an option to get a "Case flavor" of pachyderm skin grey pattern?
My theory on the weight is that they had to move all the unsold Macintosh Cubes for some sort of tax write-off reason. Since no one would buy them knowing what they were, they merely turned on the Cubes, let them run for a week, at which point they got hot enough to melt down into a heavy metal brick. These bricks are then hidden inside the emacs.
How long before the special "Ice Age" tie-in Ray Romano brown shaggy mammoth case?
wouldn't you love to run emacs on an eMac? It runs OS X; who knows, it might already be part of the default install.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
A long time ago, our school (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne) built its own computer, it was called smacky...
Now people might confuse the eMac as being an abreviated eMachine. I can just hear their response now: "It's the same thing right?"
...reach for hammer...
Apple sales and profits are picking up.. Last Quarter Apple beat Gateway in units sold and beat gateway in profits.
Apple had a profit, Gateway did not.
The fact that good ANSI C rigorous comp sci benchmarks (such as ByteMark 2.2 source code) perform about 2 times faster on PowerPCs than AMD mean that this 700 Mhz box is like a 1.4 Mhz AMD.
And their dual 1Ghz box (only $2999 with dvd-ram recorder and dual monotor support) is like having a dual AMD 2000+MP
I am glad to see apple doing well, despite many large institutional work offices only using Windows and MS office alone on their dektops.
But those do not represent a lot of the uncompressed video editing market. That market is still on the mac heavily (120 MegaBYTES per second is needed for the most exotic large rez editing).
Apple dropped its 35 millimeter non-linear film editing system addon to only 1000 dollars on their web site.
You probably want their 1900 pixel wide 23 inch ultr bright monitor.
Pretty cool. Now anyone can edit Star Wars negatives. (Well not that movie its 70mm, but you get the idea) cheap cheap cheap robotic-film-cutting file output from a prosumer software package.
2002 is a strange revolutionary year.
Those emachines were great! It was called the eOne. It cost a lot less than the iMac at the time, yet it had more ports, more storage devices, more memory, more everything, and ran a lot more software.
I guess it sort of embarassed Apple that someone else could easily build a much better machine in the same sort of case, so they filed a frivolous lawsuit and shut down the eOne. When you can't compete, sue.
June/July are big edu/k12 purchasing months. Apple wants to be ready for the market. Smart move and smart timing on this one...
There seems to be a lot of confusion about Apple's pricing schema. It would seem that the you can only get the $999 modemless one if you're shopping for a k-12 instituion, with the other emacs going for $1199 and $1456. If you're a personal shoppeer, going shopping for higher ed, you're only two choices are the combo drive ones, for $1249 and $1516. Very to give a higher discount to the K-12 market...
Mod point free since 2001
Apple generally is on the cutting edge of most hardware, but their screen resolution is lacking. While the 15.2" diagonal screen is nice, it is only at 1280x854. My Dell (please no flames, I'm just making an observation) has a 14" screen with 1600x1200. Apple should be able to crank out 1800x1500 on the larger screen.
I must admit to being confused here. While the left side of my brain (rational) understands some of what is going on here, the right side (creative) which Apple usually caters to is highly confused about these two new additions to Apple's line-up -- especially the eMac.
800 MHz TiBook:
What I *DO* get:
1. It is faster. Always good.
2. It is new. That will jump-start sales.
3. It has a new graphics chipset. Good for the graphics pros who use TiBooks.
What I *DO*NOT* get:
1. This is NOT fast enough. 800 MHz is better, but why not 1 GHz? The Wintel portables are up there and Apple is too far behind the P.R. curve on this one. I know, I know: Heat and Supplies. But this is simply not enough of a speed increase.
2. When can we see a new form factor? Removable bays are sorely missed, for one. In my ever-so-humble opinion, the Pismo form was superior in most ways to this one. Course, a form factor change is probably better held off until July.
3. Was the enhanced graphics really for the graphics pros or the hard-core gamers???
eMac:
What I *DO* get:
1. Education needs a cheap base Mac for their labs. This fits with the sub-$1000 price.
2. LCDs are expensive and hard-to-find right now. This alleviates the shortage in the education market.
3. This uses a form already known and accepted in education. Adding this to an existing iMac lab will not make it stand out too much.
4. Apple needs the education market happy in order to maintain its base.
What I *DO*NOT* get:
1. Why the "eMac"? iMac for internet, eMac for education. Will the next thing be the oMac for use by IRS agents ("Owe Mac", get it?)? This seems to be diluting the brand and confusing buyers.
2. Why CRT when LCD is the way to go? Apple is pushing LCD (or some form of flatscreen) as the wave of the future. Why backtrack in this area only? If LCD is NOT the way to go, why not make the eMac available to all. If LCD IS the way to go, why not make it available for corporate and home users?
My Two Cents.
- windows: certain to be redundant when they leave school, almost certain to crash, get a virus or some other horror
- linux: certain to confuse most teachers and even more students. certain to distract from the important lessons being taught. certain to be almost unrecognisably different by the time the kid leaves school
- macosx: cheap, unix if they want to grow into it, does all they could need, unobtrusive, easy to admin and likely to be running on 95% of all computers by the time they leave school.
The eMac will be very successful.I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
Most Campus resellers will sell you a mac at educational pricing regadless of who you are. its a great way to save a few hundred dollars.
The only hitch is these resellers cant sell online
i cant wait to see the pricing on theses units, they look amazing feature wise.
Compare Google's cache of Apple's old Powerbook page and Apple's new Powerbook page. They've raised the prices, along with refreshing their product line.
The URL Google gave me has an IP number rather than xxxx.google.com so it looks a little suspicious. If you're worried I'm sending you off to goat sex, do a Google search for "apple store powerbook" and take the second result.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
"FYI, Macs are still only available from "authorized dealers", it's just that CompUSA and Apple are on that list now"
They are still doing the stupid thing of limiting the sales of their machines? I sort of wondered why the machines were still so hard to find!
This reminds me of when I bought my Powerbook 5300. I got it as part of a special deal. They were initially (for the first 2-3 months) going to be selling them only to people affiliated with the University of Michigan. This was why they only had photocopied brochures instead of glossy ones.
A smaller market means less feedback from consumers about design flaws, and it means fewer customers to alienate if things go wrong and Apple decides to pull the plug on support. One might say that Apple knows that the educational market is its most loyal customer base, but the U of M is part of an educational institution and Apple convinced it to push 5300s and not support them or accept returns on defective merchandise.
This comment is not meant to be negative towards Apple in particular. But it is based on an experience that I have had with Apple in the past.
Amazing magic tricks
Ok it's gota happen sometime.
Here's a couple of my trademarks.
For those butter fingered people
IHold and IHeld
One for the copywrite loyers
IWrite and IRate
One for the saylours out there
IEye
And the recycleing board have
IPlannet.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
It's primarily targeted at the education market, and boasts a 700mhz G4 processor and a flat 17" monitor.
I was seriously considering getting one of the new lamp-style iMacs, but I didn't particularly like the smaller screen (or what my cats are likely to do to an LCD panel). This is ideal -- a bigger tube and a G4 processor are the only things really missing from my current 1999 issue iMac.
--saint
I'm one of those people who just can't stand to work on a screen smaller than 1280 or so pix wide. Even 1024x768 feels cramped, and 800x600 is downright claustrophobic.
Now that Apple's packing the new PowerBook with a 15.2" 1280x854 LCD, the ol' 21" CRT on my desk, with it's huge size, godawful heat output and power requirements, isn't looking so appealing anymore.
Oh, it has another nice feature: fully-accelerated DVI output to a second monitor, if ya got it. 1280x854 not enough room when you're doing graphics work? just hook up a second LCD monitor. Sweet.
Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself.
Maybe the font change was to reflect simplicity, ie the eMac is a no bells and whistles computer.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
For college students at least, they start at $1249.
Building an equivalent Powermac system is about 1480 dollars (adding monitor to education "entry" model powermac.) These things would be tempting if I had the money to cough up for it. In a few weeks I'll have the cash, but won't be a college student anymore. The Macs are nice, but not worth that amount of cash to home users. The price/benefit ratio for home users is killed by Windows PCs. For professional graphics work, though, they are great workstations...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Is this another "US only" thing? At least the Apple site didn't list any schools outside US, if I'm not mistaken. So, what about Europe, Japan?
Nice to see tight education budgets being raped by IT losers who decide to buy Macs instead of what students will really have to use later on. Even Linux would be better than another expensively designed table-lamp pretending to be a computer.
I can see people in weathly Mac centric environments prefering a DVI connector, but as someone who takes it to various offices with regular non Apple PC equipment I find the VGA interface more useful and was a little surpised at this.
:-) but as a road warrioring unix/developer (rather than say, a graphic artist) this would actually slightly put me off getting one as it's very rare to find an expensive Apple LCD display going unused - very few places can afford one going spare.
:).
I'm not about to upgrade my 500Mz G4 PB (I can't afford the cost, I'll be paying for this one for another year and half I reckon
Where as in contrast I can usually find at least a 17 inch CRT going unsed in a comapany (and at home
What's the deal with that mini-vga plug on the back of the eMac? Why not just use the standard VGA plug? I wonder how many millions of dollars have been spent by Mac users on adaptors.
Amazing magic tricks
Don't forget the iRaq and the iRan. Part of the new Axis of Evil promotion.
no matter what Apple does, or does not do, you fucking /. elitists will find some crap to get cute about... meanwhile Apple turns a tidy profit and thrills its users. Oh, and it brought UNIX to the desktop with a GUI beyond compare, something no one else has done.
ya swine.
No computer platform has ever been shrouded in so much mystery and voodoo as MacOS. This is because the users never have a clue, the pundits need to protect their emotional investment, and Apple never tells you anything. MacOS X just continues this well established tradition.
The search for "the thing makes MacOS X slow" is a chimera. First of all it's not that slow, considering what it does. If anything is hard, it is to make something look easy. Apple customers are more than happy to pay that price.
Second, forget about the first point. MacOS is slow, and it doesn't make sense to look for a single spot that makes it slow -- the slowness pervades throughout the system. Font rendering is slow, Mach is slow, the CPU is slow, memory is slow, file I/O is slow, Carbon is slow, Classic is slow, applications are slow. It is really no surprise that the system as a whole is slow.
And it won't get better. Mac people like to think that future OS revisions will make OS X run faster on their iMac/iBook. But that's just because Mac people like this idea of the computer becoming gradually, magically, faster; the underdog slowly growing stronger, that kind of thing. It's not true. While future revisions of OS X will undoubtedly incorporate faster code, that does not keep Apple from adding things that make it run slower again. Meanwhile your iMac/iBook hardware keeps aging, until in a couple of years time, the introduction of the G5 or G6 or Gwhatever, Apple finds an excuse to basically drop support for your outdated hardware altogether. And then the cycle starts anew. The promise of an "all-native" system will never actually have been realized for your hardware, but Mac people won't mind, since they are ideologically compelled to look to the future, not whine about the past.
It is rumored that chairman Stalin once said: "The communist ideal is already on the horizon!". When questioned by somebody in the audience as to when the ideal would be reached, he just smiled and said: "Comrade, don't you know you can never reach the horizon?".
Maybe, just maybe, I could get Apple to replace my defective Titanium powerbook with the new model... I hope it doesn't have the paint issues that mine did....
Edmund White
http://flickr.com/ewwhite
"Apple turns a tidy profit and thrills its users."
With goofy ideas like the eMac, Apple will continue to enjoy the profit margin that such a small user base gives them
It's typical, and there is a long history of it: back to the 1984 macs with a disk format that was incompatible with other machines for no other reason that just for the hell of it. Monitors aren't interchangable with PC monitors: just to make things more difficult. Same with mice and keyboards.
Moves designed just to frustrate the users like this are much more rare in the PC world, because with an open market things like "Microchannel" are treated like an obstruction to work around.
Sigh... Does anyone know whether "mb" (millibits) is supposed to mean MB (megabytes) or Mb (megabits)? I'm pretty sure that video RAM is nearly always measured in bytes, but I don't know if the same is true for L3 cache. You'd think that after 12543 stories getting people confused by a factor of 8, they'd learn to abbreviate correctly.
That's a very tough problem. I wonder what you can do about it?
One idea would be to use the included DVI->VGA adaptor.
If you're an EduMac shop now this is a good upgrade. If you are a school that wants to run Mac software this is a good upgrade. If you want machines that are easy and cheap to install and move around the 'media center' (aka library) this is a good deal. Ok the soft screen might not be so good I guess they'll get some screeen shields. If you want to have a bunch of Gateways with a dozen cables out the ass end for kids to screw with and a bunch of OFF buttons that are just going to make your life real interesting then this is a bad deal.
From the education store--
$999.00
700MHz
PowerPC G4
128MB SDRAM
40GB Ultra ATA drive
CD-ROM drive
No Modem
$1,199.00
700MHz
PowerPC G4
128MB SDRAM
40GB Ultra ATA drive
Combo drive (DVD/CD-RW)
56K internal modem
$1,456.00
700MHz
PowerPC G4
512MB SDRAM
40GB Ultra ATA drive
Combo drive (DVD/CD-RW)
56K internal modem
eMac Stand
And this is coming from someone who's used Macs for a long, long time. They should just go back to the Color Classic form factor and forget about all this space-shuttle-nosecone concept.
my wishlist
########
iMac
iBook
iPod
eMac
..are great machines for using the editor called...
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
On some monitors, I can't stand lower than 80Hz refresh. Some I can get by at 75Hz.
"So, will using these computers help people when they get out in the real world?"
"No, they're not even available in the real world."
The real world is a scary place!
Do you really want your children using the same sorta computer that your dentist's scretary uses? You know, over on the corner of her desk... that Compaq running a DOS app from within Windows 98. Don't forget that flithy keyboard with the broken spacebar and the dandy 15" monitor running at 60 Hz.
Or how about that Dell on the factory floor, the one that doesn't even resemble a personal computer anymore? Yikes!
Let the schools buy Macs... do it for the children!
Pretty cool, the 17" CRT eMac is the same depth as the 15" CRT iMac (17.1 inches), and only .8 inches taller and wider. That's pretty impressive.
http://www.apple.com/education/emac/specs.html
http://www.apple.com/imac/g3/specs.html
(For some reason in the marketing description they say it's 8mm shorter, not sure why.)
Newsflash:
Schools have been buying up the new Apple eMacs like hotcakes. One principal was heard saying, "We have a big problem with students stealing computers from the schools, but with the new eMacs there's no handle, so the kids won't be able to carry off the computers." This new breakthrough in physical security was characterised by Apple CEO Steve Jobs as "wicked". "We wanted to give the customer what they asked for, and what we gave them was a wicked fast processor and a wicked, non-handled box. That's so wicked", the CEO and co-founder stated in a press conference. The large Apple after-market manufacturers are already working on a handle add-on that could destroy the new security feature before it really catches on.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
On the laptops 'forward delete' is available, I believe, as 'function-delete. And when running x-on-x, a new xterm window isn't Terminal.app so you might be taken care of there too - I'm not too clear on what you are talking about (as my Unix experience is limited, not through any lack of clarity on your part...).
One of the cool thinks about the iMac is that it had no fan, so it was very quiet. I assume this one does, because it doesn't say one way or the other.
A few years back, when I worked at IBM, there was a fabulous version of AIX that ran on the POWERPC line of systems. There was even a Thinkpad series based on the POWERPC that ran AIX. (I think it was the 8000 series, Man that was a fabulous box). I wonder if the new Apple PowerPC's can run the POWERPC version of AIX? That would sure make for a nice system. AIX, with Netview (which is basically HP Openview), all on a laptop. That would be the ultimate power user box.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
Macs have always been expecially popular in the education market, and Apple has always been targetting it. (Why do you think they picked the name "Apple"?)
Examples: special pricing has always been available for Apple products to schools and students; I'm willing to bet they even pioneered it. Not too long ago they announced Apple Remote Desktop software, and the first paragraph on that page talks about the advantages it offers to a lab/classroom environment. Old articles I'm finding through Google say that, at least recently, Apple's share in the education market is anywhere from 20 to 35 percent, versus 5 to 10 percent in the consumer market.
Partly this is because Apple wants to "convert" people early to their OS, but there's a more straightforward reason: Macs really are easier to use, individually or in groups, right out of the box. And elementary and high-school teachers have better things to do than try to keep up on the software and security issues surrounding computer labs. They just want them to work, and Apple helps them.
the new imac has sold well without the education market. this is a good move, and obviously planned for, since it takes quite a while to design a new machine. one cannot agree with many things that appl does, but you have to admit that they not only design but actually execute well. ideas are a dime a dozen unfortunately. btw, my sons g3 ibook with osx is rather speedy with only a 600/g3 and 256 meg of ram, and i have both a tibook and a dell 8500. there is really negligible difference in most applications, and i tend to get more actual work accomplished on the mac... but i would love a 1600 x 1200 on the tibook! nearly there.
I take my PB Ti with me everywhere. I bought it 1.5 years ago to give presentations, since it was lighter and more powerful than anything on the PC side. I've given presentations at a dozen places countrywide, using the VGA output connected to a dozen different LCD projectors. No problems, and lots of envy.
Recently, a colleague bought an iBook, since he routinely also makes presentations and the iBook is even more portable than the Ti. However, he was greatly shocked to discover that the iBook has a non-standard video out. What the hell is that thing supposed to connect to anyway? He now has to remember to check to make sure his dongle is in the case before he goes anywhere.
I was kind of smug with my Ti, thinking "well, you get what you pay for. If you want everything included, get a Ti." Now Apple has gone and put a DVI (?) adapter in place of the VGA. This means everyone who wants to give presentations with a new PB now has to take their dongle along. I don't get it. Honestly. If I were buying a PB again, I would seriously consider a PC laptop now. Why go to the hassle of having to keep up with some stupid dongle when you could buy a computer with VGA built in? I really don't understand what Apple is doing, going back to the bad old "we're not compatible with any standard peripherals" days.
>Like the PowerBooks, the new eMacs can be attached
>to an external monitor in either Mirror or >dual-monitor mode.
What makes you think that?
I can see a lot of references to video mirroring mode but none to "2 displays showing different things".
I think its much more likely to work like an iMac where you can only have mirrored displays. > 1 display is reserved for the G4 TiBook and the G4 towers, and I'm betting they're not going to change that any time soon?
Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
A little bigger on the inside than out
so in a month we'll git the bMac or Big Mac
wich is the powerusers version of the iMac.
unfortunatly micdonalds claiming DMCA copyright violations on the word big and mac sues apple, apples setles out of court.
news at all
-5 troll
the new stand is quite nifty if you haven't noticed it off on the side. remember the mac classics with 9" black and white screens and a refresh rate of a grandfather clock. talk about tired eyes, after sitting for half the night programming in hyperscript.
why do schools need a flatscreen? I don't even need a flatscreen. When will they learn that they want to keep prices DOWN. This is what they should change for me to buy it: -non flat screen. -dvd drive -make it available in canada. And for fucks sake make it cheaper! Why is it so damn expensive when its designed for schools and students??
"3D games push the graphics processing unit harder than any other application. And of these 3D games, Quake performance has come to be the benchmark against which all graphics processors are measured. So you'll be pleased to hear that when playing the Quake III Arena version 1.30, in millions of colors, at 1024x768 resolution, the 800MHz PowerBook G4 blazes away at a scorching 68 frames per second.*
* Higher frame rates indicate better performance. Tests conducted by Apple."
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
Wasn't it in the movie Boiler Room where they tellt he guy he can only buy so many units of the stock, to insure that he bought that many.
If I tell you something that you already sort of think it desirable is unobtainable, you will go through a lot of effort to obtain one.
Simple, basic consumer psychology.
What audience are they targetting with language like that?
An audience who thinks that 700 MHz is "screamingly fast" I guess...
The coolest voice ever.
Actually, I would really be tickled running vi on eMacs.
But that is cause I am just that twisted.
I really like the ergonomics of the PowerBooks but find the screens really limiting.
It appears that you only get the $999 price if you're shopping for your school. If you're a student or faculty and shopping for yourself (and hence click the other link) you can only get the $1249 combo drive model.
The $999 is for the CD-ROM model. The combo drive model is $1199 for schools, $50 cheaper than the identical student model.
It might look silly and invite lewd comparisons, but it would be handy for handle-free Macs (and heck, a lot of other things) to at least acknowledge that they will be moved occasionally by building in a reinforced slot for inserting a lifting pole, coolie style. Or perhaps a pair of open slots on the base of the machine, so lifting straps could be securely wrapped around it.
My father bought a color laser printer (QMS/minolta) which weighs about 90 lbs; it has pull-out handles (look weaker than they really are) without which it would have been much harder to help him move to his desk. Apple needs to Think Similar.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
oh, but you own a Mac so (Score:+5, Insightful)
I forgot to mention that I own a Mac, so (Score:+5, Insightful) would be more appropriate.
I wish Apple, ATI, and the rest of the industry would get together and work up a standard for video cards in laptops. I'd like to see the video cards be removable and not part of the mobo. As long as you had the support of the video card manufacturers like ATI and the GeForce folks, you could allow your laptops video setup to be upgraded when needed. Let's say that ATI comes out with the 8500 with 64MB in the mobility configuration. I do a little surgery on my laptop and *boom* I have a better video card that extends the useful life of the expensive laptop. I think Apple would be an ideal candidate to do this. They make a lot of inovative moves that are initially seen as risky. Many of the become "the thing" and everyone eventually does the same. Apple would be a good place to start this idea. Please Apple, do this!
Does anyone know whether a G4 700 MHz noticeably smokes a Duron 700 MHz? I am thinking about applications common to both Windows 9x and Mac OS X. I understand that Mac OS X, even the most recent update, is a rather heavy OS. Even if the RISC G4 at 700 MHz seems like a beast, coupled with Mac OS X may show little.
Otherwise, I am open at the possibility of having a Mac at home. I like the 2 firewire ports, and with that combo CD-RW/DVD drive it could be my Video CD creation setup I was looking for. I don't know yet whether the Dazzle USB device will work on Mac OS X, though.
Sigged!
If I can by a Dell for well under $2000 that runs Linux reasonably well according to reports on the Linux Laptop page at 1600x1200 resolution (with the ATI card and Xfree 4.2), I'm a bit disappointed that Apple cannot offer a higher screen resolution to at least match the Intel PC laptop market.
What they really need to offer is 1920x1200 in the existing form factor (or even a bit narrower - I hate having a laptop with extra width over the keyboard - hell if they keyboard fits with extra space, they could have made an ergo one or something (remember the Samsung?).
We're not even close to matching the resolution of paper when held at a normal viewing distance with LCDs. 1920x1200's not there either, but you could use it as an HDTV monitor also and do reasonably well with 2 pages side by side. There's no point in stopping until about 10 megapixels - our eyes are much harder to feed digitally than our ears.
Dara
Got kids? .edu, so I'm smug about being able to get one. Neener-neener.)
An increasing number of technically astute, computer-buying people do -- and we don't want an LCD within reach of toddlers.
I was juuuust about to pick up the phone to order a 600 MHz iMac from MacWh*rehouse (hey, free RAM & free printer) when I saw this story, and now I'm very torn.
One of the reasons to have a computer in the house is to make sure the little ones are comfortable with technology before they head off to school without overwhelming them, and a nice, round iMac is just the thing. However, who wants to have to stick their iMac under the desk and use an aftermarket CRT just because a three year-old snapped the computer's neck?
(And yes, I am at an
Wasn't Jobs just announcing the death of the CRT? You've got to love a guy who stands so firmly by his convictions . . . as long as it's convenient. Hey - wasn't that a naked emperor I just saw walk by?
"The bigger the lie, the more they believe." - Det. Bunk
Selling them with 128 Mb and MacOS X preinstalled is kinda silly. That's just not enough memory to run MacOS X comfortably.
Find free books.
If I could get this for the home, I would get one right now, personally the G4 tower is too expensive, and I am not too fond of the new iMac design. The eMac looks amazing, too bad it is for the very small education market!
I'm not a cyclops! :) But seriously, I can notice flicker at any resolution under 85hz, and 72 is really bad to me. I can always tell, since every computer I seem to go to is set at 75hz, so I end up changing it...never been wrong when I got to the setup, its always shown 75hz or lower.
80hz might be tolerable though, not tried that rate.
Having worked at Apple and experienced their productization methodology, this looks like a failed iMac concept that had too much money dumped into it to just toss. Some smart product manager said "Hey lets refocus it!". The thing is though, back in the dark days, almost any R&D product hit the streets for fear of wasting money. That didn't work too well, but I think this repurposing will do fine.
Presumably, a handle was not one of the features that Apple's education customers asked for. eMac is not a computer that's tailored to YOU, it's a computer that's tailored to the educational market.
Apple had an add some years back that showed what looked like a security video, with thieves breaking into a college computer lab and stealing Macs but leaving the PC's. Theft in computer labs is a big problem, and it doesn't make a lot of sense to build handles into machines that won't be moved much just to make stealing them easier.
Don't mention that Air-port thing; no one bothered with that.
Yeah, no one but Dell, Microsoft,Compaq,
I think you get the picture...
Gotta love it when the AC trolls post drivel...
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
http://www.apple.com/displays/adapter.html
The 17" LCD is not from the same production line and doesn't face any supply constraints. Indeed from word on the street these are pretty much "generic" 17" LCDs that can be bought from a number of manufacturers.
Either Apple has learned their lesson on single-source-components or more likely just didn't have the unusual requirements that led to their use in the latest iMacs.
Whatever the case it's clear ("blazingly obvious" in your parlance) that the two cases are not related. Nice try though; pity you didn't think it through first. "LCD parts" is useless as a category when describing different product lines.
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.
I wonder if the moderator modded this down as troll did so for the main part: "eWorld, eMate, eMac..." or the PS part.
That's pretty nice insightful troll, and if the moderator modded this as troll knowing what those three mean, that's a good moderation, too.
Dell is slowly but surely muscling Apple out of the education market with cheaper/faster machines. And honestly, this is a good thing.
I like the Apple feel/look but feel schools should be focusing on the standard wintel machines and not Apple. If you want to attend an arts school or do graphics design work, then fine, stock up with iMacs. But sticking students with non-standard (Think Different!) Apple machines run the risk of leaving them under-exposed to the wintel machines most of the real world uses. Ideally, students could be exposed to both platforms, but that isn't going to happen.
The PowerPC G4 with Velocity Engine is so fearsomely fast that its performance is measured in gigaflops
My wang is so big it's measured in kilometers: 0.00001564km!
iMac uMac we all Mac for emacs!
(Sorry, couldn't resist)
-- Your local friendly mad scientist-in-training
I think these new laptops actually come with a dvi-vga connector. So you should be able to connect to any monitor with no trouble. Its the Mostly Apple used ADC adapter that is extra ($150). But you can get $150 off when you buy an Apple flat screen, and you get the ADC adapter with it, so the adapter is essentially free!
...was an original Apple Macintosh 13" color display. Cracked the case, stopped working but didn't break the tube.
I've dropped tons of switches and routers since then, but that's expected racking over your head with one hand on the screw gun and other other holding a 36xx chassis.
- Apple just introduced their new iMac a few months ago. It's gotten great reviews everywhere from the New York Times to BusinessWeek to most every major local daily and geek publication.
- Apple isn't going to confuse the market with an iMac that hearkens back to the older design iMac (which they still sell BTW!)
- However the Education market is a big one for Apple and one they've recently been taking a beating in (in spite of a few big wins.) The last education-specific-product they had was the ill-starred eMate (Netwon-based indestructo-laptop) that burnt their customers when it was suddenly dropped.
- Folks have been whining at Apple for a 17" iMac for forever. However Apple made it clear they couldn't do it in the iMac formfactor. Well, this is pretty close but yeah, not the same.
- So here they've solved two problems with one stone, er, Mac. They've satisfied the Edu market with a cheapie low-maint iMac that has scaled up to the 17" world. They've also managed to satisfy that market without detracting from their can't-ship-them-fast-enough new iMac design.
- Will this eMac move into the Consumer market? Probably not as such. Right now the service, support, marketing etc. for this model is nicely contained in the Edu division of Apple and likely to stay there for a while.
- On the other hand businesses have really taken a shine to a iMac line. This is a bit of a quandary for Apple as they'd far prefer their G-series of Macs be the corporate model.
- The eMac might lead the way to a compromise: Here's a cheapie iMac-alike that could be a great client packaged with a MacOS X Server. This could get Apple into the 1,000-cheap-standardized-ruggedized-identical-bui
l t-to-be-centrally-managed desktop model that they've been completely absent from.
- However this would somewhat expand Apple's product line which is something they're leery of after the excesses of the late 80's-90's.
- Right now Apple's product line-up is Consumer with iMac & iBook, Professional with G4 & PowerBook. The Cube was an odd duck to this - a cross between the iMac & G4. However this is almost exactly what the eMac is just cheaper and in a different formfactor.
- So eMac = Cube v.2?
- This is my guess. Not only did Apple listen to what Edus wanted from an iMac but they also learned what didn't work with the Cube. Now they've merged them and I wouldn't be surprised in a rev or two to see Apple start a big public push back onto corporate desktops.
- Just as NT was perceived as a better OS as it came in desktop & server versions (gotta have the same across the enterprise!), it was "friendlier" then Netware and the other competition (can't get nicer then Apple!) and "industrial strength" (MacOS X runs BSD for goodness sakes!) I bet Apple is getting ready for the same assault back.
- A range of hardware, expanding marketshare, an OS that runs the same stuff as "the big boys", easy to develop custom apps for, ease of use, runs MS Office; Apple could regain some serious ground.
All IMHO of course.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.
This is such a modest update that it won't cause a lot of people to upgrade. For under $2000, you already get PC laptops with 1440x1050, and some of the higher end PC laptops have 1600x1200 screens for less money than the PowerBook. I think Apple really needs to come out with a PowerBook that has a 1600x1024 screen and at least a 1GHz processor.
... widely available these days ?
Think about it: the iMac got a G4 processor. The PowerBook now has a 800 MHz G4 processor as well.
The PowerMac "professional" line doesn't look that professional now... Or does St Jobs has another ace in his sleeve ? Mac resellers are reporting that Apple is trying to get rid of the PM G4 stock. It is likely that we see an evolution, the most probable being a design revamp and a speed bump for the processor. Some say a new "high-bandwidth" G4 is on its way.
You can get them now, but they are horrifically expensive :( If there is one thing Apple has yet to learn, it's that more reasonably priced equipment will sell better enough to more than outweigh the price drop.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
It sucked much less than the iMac: faster processor, more expandible. And yes, it was able to run more than ten times as many programs as the iMac, which is threadbare in the software department except for certain niches.
Oh yeah, electronic, as in electronic mail or electronic business. An electronic Mac?! Imagine that!
They don't come pre-installed, but you can get the $666 upgrade at the apple store.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
from the apple site: Incidentally, the body is made of fire-retardant polycarbonate plastic, the same material used to manufacture bulletproof glass. So you can be sure that the eMac is strong enough for student use.
.edu models are for sale to students and teachers, not just for schools. still seems funny.
is that some sort of commentary on schools today? hrmmmmmmm.....
for my next question.... how come the higher model (combo drive) comes with a modem? seems odd to me. then again i guess
Bowwwwwwwph. boooowwwwww! Baoh! Baoh!! baoh, baoh
Why the hell is this news? If we saw a /. announcement every time any time a major computer mfgr launched a new line, slashdot would be flooded with this ad copy...woops too late.
These things are neither innovative, new...or even the fastest things out there. Save some bandwidth and post some actual news.
The fact that good ANSI C rigorous comp sci benchmarks (such as ByteMark 2.2 source code) perform about 2 times faster on PowerPCs than AMD mean that this 700 Mhz box is like a 1.4 Mhz AMD
Eh... that's simply not true. The case is that SOME of the benchmark programs ran twice as fast PER CLOCK on the OLD Powerpc compared to the OLD Athlon architecture when using gcc as a compiler.
The new Athlon (palamino core) is about 20% faster per clock (mainly due to more cache) and you will get another 20-30% or so by using the Intel compiler.
And, if you are talking about "general source code tests" it's ridiculous not to mention SPEC (Bytemark doesn't even test Fortran I think...). From the few SPEC results that have been published the PowerPC is about the same speed PER CLOCK as a Pentium III or Athlon.
Is the PowerPC a nice processor? Sure, and the Altivec extensions are quite useful in some programs.
Is it faster than an Athlon for compiled code (Never mind "per clock", just compare new CPUs)? No way. There is a very good reason why there are hundreds of thousands of linux clusters equipeed with Pentium or Athlon CPUs. We have 250 of them in the next room. Do you really all these people didn't benchmark their programs before shelling out millions of dollars?
I've been worried about Apple's current affinity for those little silver speakers without grilles over them.
Now they're putting them in an "education" PC. I guarantee that within a week of any of those being put in an school, the speakers will be toast.
Ian
Actually, the name "Apple" was selected because some of Jobs' fondest memories as a child were of a summer spent on an apple orchard.
I cant quite understand why Apple is moving back to DVI interface...Is this just for the powerbook or a general change of strategy?
The HP Omnibook on my desk uses 1400x1050 and my colleagues laptop runs at 1600x1200.
Sorry, but 1280x854 isn't even close to high-end today.
Not without the adapter dongle.
:
See
http://www.apple.com/powerbook/specs.html
"3. Was the enhanced graphics really for the graphics pros or the hard-core gamers???"
How can you be a "hard-core gamer" on a Mac without any games? (I know Mac users who own a PC just for games.)
I remember the good old days, too. HyperCard was so much fun. I wish it were still a worthwhile tool, particularly for education.
I was able to immediately test programming theories and create complex user interaction sequences with a few lines of our old friend HyperTalk.
It's a shame that young children are offered premade drop-in functions. Retarding genuine intellect in favor of instant gratification is no way for children to learn.
I am sure there are generous slots underneath it for your fingers just like every large monitor I have ever seen.
Your cluster should consut TOP500.org you fool!
PowerPC are so fast per clock ESPECIALLY fortran benchmarks, that TOP500.org (a listing of the recent top 500 most powerful computer clusters in the WORLD for megaflops) list almost no linux and almost no wintel/amd.
the list is DOMINATED by PowerPc and Power risc.
look up this year last year, year before that and you will see.
The people at your firm are fools indeed. I believe they ignored the benchmarks of a Mac versus their amd boxes ad use religion as their thought process.
comp sci benchmarks with AVAILABLE FREE SOURCE CODE do not lie.
SPEC cost 50,000 dollars and is an IO test and OS test and not a CPU alone test. It also has ALWAYS excluded publicly available source code from it since day one with irrational editorial reasons given.
In 1989 SPEC refused to answer why Dhrystone was not a module test DEPITE it meeting all 10 of their checklist rules for inclusion in SPEC. They refused to answer. They are and were afraid of FREE , less-than-50000 dollar-benchmark suites.
Now we have ByteMark2 and it compiles on anything that has ANSI C.
AMD is 2 times slower than Powerpc at many things at same external clock.
That is why a 1Ghz PowerPC is faster than a 1.67 GHz (2000AMD).
Yep, and from your letter it's quite easy to tell that you do not have experience with AIX compared to *BSD. OS X/BSD is definitely nice but when it comes to "power usage" it doesn't even come close to AIX.
This is why computers, or at least all of apple's computers that i've ever seen, have, in the area of the machine with all the ports, a bar- a bar designed to fit a padlock.. It's so you can chain computers to the desk if you need to.. that should be all the security you need.
Making the thing harder to move may make it harder to steal, yes, but it also makes it harder to move. MUCH harder to move. And the education market is probably the one place where it's most likely that machines will be moved around a lot in a *legitimate* fashion.. (as a college student who moves his G4 around *constantly*, i can vouch for this.) especially for an all-in-one design machine. The absense of a handle *will* cause minorly major problems for a lot of people. I don't know what apple was thinking.
It's possible they maybe thought, well, it's a 17-inch machine and it's big, it doesn't need a handle since you can't carry it with one hand.. but still, it makes a HUGE difference if while carrying it you can just kind of shift all the weight to one hand for a moment while you use the other to open a door. This thing is so big and curvy, i don't see how you could keep it in your arms except by cradling it to your chest constantly..
(For the record, this *is* the FIRST non-laptop machine apple has released since the original imac to come without a handle. Even the G4 Cube, which didn't really need one since it was a 10-inch cube, the little thingy at the bottom where you put in the wires had a place where you could wiggle your fingers in and grasp it quite handily..)
Actually, nobody's seen the bottom of the eMac yet-- it's quite unlikely, but maybe there's a handle there, or maybe the place where you install the monitor-swivel thing has handle-like features? Eh, probably not.
hi mblase
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
LIAR = 1440 is max actual pixel width of a laptop!
Not 1600!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! not to a fft "lcd" flat screen!
Name the model and company!
LIAR!
A dell inspiron from years ago was first to have a 1440 wide screen and weighed 10 pounds. I used one for a year almost. I would never go back to 1400 or even less pixels wide.
But it was and still is the largest size you can get 1440.... not 1600 DISCRETE pixels.
What laptop has 1600 as you claim.
I ask because I would buy one in an instant if it were ever true.
No one will read this, but I had to say something.
;)) and place your other hand under the front of the monitor. Turn it about 45 degrees and its quite convenient I've felt for lugging those things around.
The handle is on TOP of the iMac/eMac. You grasp the top of the iMac on the handle (which is CLEARLY visible to anyone willing to think differently about carrying a monitor
Now someone mod this up so people will know.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
> Too bad, we use Optiplex GXpro here, so your experience is worthless. But thanks for considering us. Bye
Hilarious.
Been using it for 1.5 years. I don't use contacts. I don't use glasses. Everyone thinks I'm crazy, but I like the screen space. At home, I am running 2 monitors side by side at maximum resolution.
Call me moni-mutant-or.
I like it. Unix for the kiddies. :-)
For the last few decades, Micro$oft has CONTINUALLY shafted users with slow and shoddy products. I know a group of people who decompiled some windows apps, and found dozens of huge DELAY functions!
Apples WILL get faster!
THEY ALWAYS HAVE!
Learn some history before you speak of it.
So how is the PowerBook for running Linux, say Mandrake 8.2??
I'd love to carry that laptop instead of my Dell... it has better resolutioin, better graphics, built-in 802.11, yada yada.
Are folks having success running Linux distros on the PowerBook G4s? Is this a good pick for a Linux laptop, or should I stick with my Dell?
Sorry, dude, but the adaptor comes with the eMac. No millions of dollars spent here.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Nah, I'll pass, 'cuz it's not true. Look at the eMac--there's no handle on top.
This is the biggest, rambling, fucking mess of nothing I've seen in a long time. Never forget: you can't put a polish on a turd.
Dell Inspiron series with UXGA display. http://www.dell.com/us/en/bsd/learnmore/learnmore_ screen_notebooks_popup_inspn_gen.htm
LIAR!
*stamps "TROLL!" on your forehead*
Why is it that everyone forgets that CRTs have a mask? Must be the same brain defect that prevents people from objectively comparing processors when they see MHz.
FYI: 17" eMac has a 16" flat viewable. Granted the flatness allows for a smaller mask, but that's still only 1 inch difference from the 15"(viewable) iMac. I'm not going to even start on moire, or gaussian distortion in CRTs...
"Small user base"? Small is a relative. The largest installed base, and the fastest growing by far- of open source operating systems is Darwin.
I find it funny that slashdots hate microsoft so much but they hate apple even more. So, everyone should kow-tow to microsoft and complain about it?
Or are you going to support a real alternative and stop buying Wintel PCs?
Talk about hypocracy!
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
The "macs are more expensive" myth has been around for ages.
But since 1990, if you compare a mac to a PC similarly equipped, you find tht the mac is cheaper and faster. Or, if you find a PC that is as fast, you find that the mac is about HALF the cost!
The powperPC advantage lets you buy a high end computer for low end prices.
Macs are ALWAYS a better deal.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
... according to you people. Is 800MHz worth that much more than 667? You ask?
Well, as if that's the only difference. PC people are so fixated on MHz, they ignore everything else-- I swear these people would buy a car with no wheels because the engine was 8 cylinder rather than 4.
The LCD is a bigger one, with a higher resolution. the cache is the largest availible on a laptop anywhere. It now comes with gigabit ethernet and more video out options, etc. etc. etc.
I bet most PC laptop people don't realize that A PowerPC runs at 800MHz even on battery while a Pentium runs at 200MHz on battery.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
An 800MHz PowerPC processor runs at 800 MHz. IT does more calculations becuase of wider datapaths and a modern design than an 800MHz Intel chip. It is FASTER.
Secondly, on a laptop there is no such thing as a 1GHz Intel chip. Why? Because when you're not plugged in, that chip runs at 250MHz or slower.
Intel chips cannot run low power at 1GHz, they are too big, and to complicated and draw too much power.
So, you're actually whining that Apple doen't have a 200MHz processor in their laptop, which you'd prefer over the 800MHz processor they do have?
THIS MAKES NO SENSE.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
I, for one, found these results to be quite interesting, bearing in mind that the website is sort of a Macintosh-oriented one, and the fact that they have results using the dual G4-1000MHz, etc.
http://www.barefeats.com/pentium4.html
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
A lot of home users don't want LCDs either, but they aren't given a choice
Uh, the CRT based iMac is still for sale on Apples website. You you can run any VGA monitor your want with a PowerMac. don't want a new powermac? Can't afford it cause you're so po? Go buy a used Mac.
You have the choice. Whatever you really want, you can get from Apple. They do make machines focused on what most people want. but if you want an 800MHz G4 with a CRT monitor, go buy a used PowerMac.
Or just keep making up excuses to avoid switching to the best hardware provider out there.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
What does apple give users for the price premium you pay for thier computers?
There is NO price premium. There hasn't been one for a bout a decade. Find a PC that is equivilent and you'll discover it costs 2-3 times as much.
What you get is a faster machine, better quality hardware (ie: things actually WORK) better software, the largest selling open source OS in existance, the best UI in existance and consequently the best user experience in existance, and you get all of this for hundreds of dollars less than it would cost you to buy a closed source, 1974 era technology intel-processor based PC.
It takes a lot of evasion to continually pretend that this isn't the case... and a lot of ignorance about how computers work. Like the fact that intel processors cut the clock speed to a quarter when operating on battery power, etc. etc.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
"I brought you into this world, and I can take you out!"
There are low-end Sony DV cameras which have this feature which seem to cost *less* than the dedicated conversion box. I recently got one (TRV340) as open-box stock at a large electronics store for $299. (The very lowest end Sony does not have analog-DV conversion.)
:) What am I missing by using this instead of the standalone version?
So are there big advantages to the standalone box? I bought this camera in large part to convert old family videos, though I will be using it as an actual regular video camera, too
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
No, no, no - sorry - I should have qualified this.
:-)
How about the 800mhz new model versus the 667mhz new model?
I'm excited about the big screen, but wondering if I should buy the cheaper $2,500 model instead of the $3,200 one.
I currently have a G4/400 PowerBook and it's wonderful for most things, but I've done some awfully slow FCP 3 rendering and would love a faster version.
And, of course, the big screen. I always need big screen. Mmm.
D
Well, that 399 poud emachine is a $800 computer here in the US.
Given the addtional costs of going that route, you would easily eat up the $100 difference. It costs 2-5 times as much in total cost of ownership for a Wintel machine than it does for a Mac. So, really you'd be paying at least twice as much over the lifetime of the machine in cables, replacing video cards, dealing with faulty power supplies, etc.
And you'd end up with LESS COMPUTER. The eMac is faster, and probably exceeds that eMachine in every releavant performance spec. they always have whenever I've done a comparison.
The ONLY reason Wintel machines look like good deals is that tehy claim higher clockrate. Nevermind that they are slower processors, they run at a higher clockrate so they are "faster". NOT
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
I still don't understand why Apple won't take the plunge and introduce netbooting diskless workstations. Note that they've got *NIX under the hood, a server OS, nice firmware that can netboot, and high-speed networking. I'd like to see apple make up 'packages' for delivery to schools: 2 servers, a gig-ethernet-to-100bt switch, and a pallete of eMacs all set to run off NFS or AFP. They'd have to hire a few geeks in each locality to service the machines (I'm up to it), and have marketing folks swing through the schools. .edu environment.
Hell, with that setup, you could chat with the principal in one room while the 'crew' sets up a room with these things, a live surprise-demo of how easy it is to set up. even make the teachers set up their own machines, it would be a great way to get macs back into the
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Looks like the new eMac is filling the void apple made when they pulled the G3 A-I-O, which was also only available to the education market
.
"There hasn't been one for a bout a decade. Find a PC that is equivilent and you'll discover it costs 2-3 times as much."
It is the other way around actually. are you trolling?
"What you get is a faster machine, better quality hardware (ie: things actually WORK)"
Also not true; you end up paying more for a slower Mac. The hardware looks good, but it is not up to snuff: quirky and bizarre. What do you expect from a company that says it is easier to eject media by jamming a bent paperclip in a pinhole than it is to press a button. A company that tries to make even the most basic part of the user interface (the power button) obtuse and hard to find.
"the best UI in existance and consequently the best user experience in existance..."
9 out of 10 users reject the experience and the UI.
"and you get all of this for hundreds of dollars less than it would cost you to buy a closed source, 1974 era technology intel-processor based PC."
I prefer 2002-technology based AMD PC's not Intel. But even the Intels cost a lot less than supposedly equivalent Apple hardware.
Better check the facts. I did just a couple of months ago when the new iMac came out. I easily came up with several alternative flat-screen PC alternatives, all a lot more useful, with more options, faster... and for hundreds less than the iMac.
It costs 2-5 times as much in total cost of ownership for a Wintel machine than it does for a Mac.
What about PC's that are not Wintel, such as AMD machines? This figure anyway is so much Apple baloney. If it were true, people would prefer Mac over PC. However, in real world economics, people prefer PC over Mac. One way that PC's do cost more than Mac's is that there are so many more software and program options: there are more things to do so you might end up buying more.
This is certainly the case in my experience: I buy a cheaper faster more capable PC knowing that it is so versatile that I will be buying extras down the road that just aren't available for Mac users.
"So, really you'd be paying at least twice as much over the lifetime of the machine in cables, replacing video cards, dealing with faulty power supplies, etc."
You are certainly paying more in cables if you buy some stunted thing like an iMac, which is missing standard features that are built into PC's. Not to mention the cable dongles needed to run standard peripherals. Or how about the jellyfish cable tangle needed for triumphs of form over function like the Cube? Do you want a useful computer, or do you want your living room to loop like a Spongebob Squarepants set?
"The ONLY reason Wintel machines look like good deals is that tehy claim higher clockrate."
I'm not talking about Wintel. I'm talking about AMD PC's.
It is the best only in niche markets. Once you "think different", and try to think outside of Apple's narrow box, the hardware and software isn't suited for general purposes or most other niche purposes.
On eBay you will find for sale right now many Intel based PC's of 1 ghz or faster.
See this specs on this box - pretty hardcore!
"and 700 gigahertz G4 processors"
700 GIGAhertz!!! Holy smoking Itanium, Batman!!!
http://digitalmass.boston.com/news/2002/04/29/emac . tml
---
Information wants...you to shut your pie hole.
...or "education". For a computer marketed at...the education market!! Whodathunkit??
You've just got to log in the right way. I am a college student, and my PC box died (thankfully) last night. I just configured and eMac for kicks to $999. Try exploring a bit before posting your anti-Mac drivel.
***
Wrong.
The Centris 610 and 650 were released to the general market in the beginning of 1994. The Quadra 610 and 650 were released a few months later, replacing the Centris units; these were the same systems, only with slightly faster processors.
The Quadra 660av was a completely different machine. Its only similarity to the Centris/Quadra 610 was in the form factor. And it was actually released after the Centris 610 (though before the speedbumped Quadras, IIRC).
The education based idea is great, I know recently one of the schools here required people persuing and education degree buy a Macintosh computer.
I'd like to see what other things Apple includes in the educational package. I wonder if it has iMovie and Firewire, things that most educational machines won't need, but other educational machines (particularly av and student RTF and TV station students) need. Can we truly call anything 'educational' focused when the needs are so specific?
But they do have grilles. I'm not sure why they're not in most of the display pictures on Apple's site, but they're clearly shown in the PDF data sheet of the eMac.
They look adequate for deflecting pencil stabs.
...called Babymac, part of the SnowWhite project from way back when.
LCDs are more likely to be hurt than a CRT. LCD's don't have glass in front of them, you can tear (or sabotage) a LCD screen.
I wish Apple would stop throwing that "supercomputer" BS left and right. Yes, it WAS classified to be a supercomputer a few years ago, but then again, probably a 486 would be considered ungodly powerful to the folks that manned the ENIAC!
Maybe I should call my Commodore 64 a supercomputer and sell it on eBay. It's the very same sales tactic!
This is _the_ system that Apple needs to break into the enterprise business category. Of course Apple would prefer businesses to buy their PowerMac line, but the up-front cost of this system makes it unattractive to most medium businesses. The entry level system with the 15" LCD is $2,198. When you are buying a small number of workstations, you may be able to justify a couple hundred dollars difference. When buying several hundred, however, price will be king. Furthermore, the PowerMac is simply over-qualified for most business users, as these systems are primarily used for Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Outlook/IE
The eMac would be perfect for medium to large companies. As configured it should handle office productivity apps at a very reasonable cost. Compare the price against similarly configured business systems from Dell and Compaq:
Apple eMac (700mhz G4, 128MB RAM, 40GB HD, 17" monitor, 32MB video card, Apple Protection Plan): $1,118*
Dell Workstation 340 (1.7Ghz P4, 128MB RAM, 40GB HD, 17" monitor, 32MB video card, basic 3yr support): $1,374
Compaq Evo D300s (1.7Ghz P4, 128MB RAM, 40GB HD, 17" monitor, 32MB video card, basic 3yr support): $1,277
* This includes the "education discount". Even if you add on $100, you still have a competetive system.
Let's hope someone at Apple can "Think Different" enough to realize the huge untapped market the eMac could mean to that company.
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
Just be glad the OS version is 10 (X) and not 6 (VI). Then you could run emacs and vi on an eMac running VI.
par example:
"What are you running there, son?"
"Emacs."
"I can see it's an eMac, I asked what you're running!"
"Emacs! It's a text editor!"
"No, no, no, junior, these fine new eMacs are much more than just text editors."
"Fine, whatever, I'll just run vi instead!"
"Of course you're running VI. All these fine eMacs came preinstalled with Mac OS VI."
"Ah, fuck it. Can we just buy Dells next time?"
Cool funny t-shirts for geeks, gamers and everyone else
IIRC, the handles on many early Macs were removed by their owners to make room for a fan. I guess they were just "too hot to handle".
Does the Ti powerbook come with a potholder?
Actually, when the original iMac was introducted it was stated that the "i" stood for "internet."
I know this in part because I worked the Apple Demo Days at the time and it was drilled into us so we could tell the potential customers.
Nowadays, it's being used to identify the consumer-level machines.
We can only give you what we think you said you thought you wanted.
I suppose that I agree with most of what you said, but I don't see the eMac as something to get to the corporate world. (granted, I have no understanding of enterprise computing, and think they're a little nuts) This isn't Apple's first education only Mac, in spite of poorly researched news stories to the contrary. The All-In-One G3 was released a few months before the iMac was first announced, and is something like a slow eMac with legacy ports. It stayed education-only.
"Common Sense Ain't" -Unknown
An iMac with a 17" screen has been talked about for a long time. It was the obvious successor to the original iMac, and what everyone assumed Apple would do next.
Then the new, flat screen iMac came out. It upped the ante, and upped the price point. It's possible the eMac was in the works for a long time, but the new iMac leapfrogged it. Naturally, Apple would want to milk the iMac for awhile before letting the eMac out- the eMac might have eaten into iMac sales.
Whatever happened, there's definately a market for both. It's unfortunate the eMac is edu-only, at least for now. There are a lot of starving artist Mac users who need a CRT, but can't afford a new G4 and monitor. Plus, the eMac is the perfect office appliance- as someone else said, "e" should mean "enterprise."
I must say, these new Macintosh computers sure look good. The eMac and the Powerbook Titanium are very sharp and would look great sitting on one's desk. I like the flat screen CRT (or is it LCD) on the eMac and the thinness of the Powerbook.
Personally, I'd love to have one of these, with a DVD/burner combo drive, and a bunch of RAM. I really like the all-in-one idea- everything fits into the footprint of the monitor. I'm sick of having to build a shrine for the computer and its peripherals.
It's perfect. The old iMac's screen was too small for X at 1024x768, which is about the minimum you'd want to use. I'm dying to give this one a try...
Anyone want to buy my TiBook 667?
(Actually, I still like it just fine - but boy, is that DVI out sweet!)
I was almost going to say the same thing! You see, I placed an order last week for one of the new TiBooks, and was pretty depressed to see the kickass new specs and features on the new models that were released/announced today. So, with a heavy heart, trying to count my blessings, images of all the "it's old when you buy it" advertisements/jokes running through my brain, I went to the Apple on-line store to check the status of my order, and whaddayaknow, Christmas came early! They were kind enough to automatically cancel my old order and replace it with the new machine, all at the same price!
*sniff* Apple? I love you man! *sniff*
The only thing that REALLY sucks is the 10 days you have to wait to get the thing in your hands!
$0.02 (CDN)
If there's this much buzz among this group, I'm wondering if the eMac isn't going to be a monster hit in education for Apple, and will probably make it to the consumer (low-end) market by summer.
I think I'll buy some stock..
It might also be a good, cheap Unixy machine (he cackles, rubbing his greedy little hands together) for students and starter developers to practice on without having to tinker all night to get it to run. Muahahahahahaha! /runs away laughing maniacly.
Now if they could just loose the retarded ATI video chip in favor of something from Nvidia.
The quote from the Henrico Co School System reminded me of one problem that Henrico had when they started their iBook program - the systems and especially the LCD screens broke frequently. Or more accurately, usage by teens and pre-teens tends to generate a higher rate of damage to the systems.
fraserspeirs mentioned the arm being a risk for breakage. I'd imagine that both the LCD and Arm on the new iMac might fare poorly in a public school. The eMac seems blissfully free of moving parts except for the mouse and keyboard (which are easy to replace) and an optional adjustable stand. In short, it looks like the eMac is designed to be a little more rugged.
Apple is not a leader in "uncompressed" editing solutions - Avid Media Composer, Avid Symphony, Avid D|S, Media 100i, Discreet Smoke, and Discreet Fire would be the market leaders in "uncompressed" video editing. Although some of them run on macs, they all run on non-apple systems. Especially in the world of High Definition video, Apple systems are being left by the wayside.
Apple's Cinema Tools was not "dropped" in price to $1000. Cinema Tools used to be called Film Logic and sold for less than $1000. Apple bought Film Logic and now sells the once multi-application plug-in solely for Final Cut Pro for more than it used to cost. Thus, apple sells less for more money and leaves the non-Final Cut Pro customers of Film Logic without an upgrade path.
Is the new PowerBook keyboard USB or ADB??
The answer to this question is vitally important (to me and other long-time unix users). In order to see why, see some old Slashdot comments.
In short, if the keyboard is still ADB (as are all other Apple laptops), then it is not possible for unix old-timers to effectively use the keyboard, because it is not possible to re-program the CapsLock key to act like a Ctrl key. Note that it is possible on Debian, but it is not yet possible on any other OS ... including OSX.
While I will certainly use alternative OSes on any hardware that I buy, if I can't use the keyboard in OSX, then Apple won't sell me their hardware (until it because a lot more unix friendly).
Apple: Will you please fix your broken-by-design keyboards?
Why bother with a crap-ass Mac anyways. My Athlon more than blows away any other home-based computer system out there
:)
Since everyone knows CPU speed is the most important factor when selecting a computer.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
yes?
yes.
My Personal Laptop= PowerBook G4 667 512 MB/ 30 GB
My Company Laptop= Dell Latitude PIII 750 512 MB/ 12 GB
Had them almost the same amount of time. Guess which one has a broken mouse button, has needed a new keyboard and motherboard. Hint, it's not the one with the exotic exterior.
As for performance of OSX/Win2000 they're pretty much a dead heat across the machines.
Speaker grilles come with the machine. You can snap them on or leave them off. Your choice.
Funny, I can't seem to find the expandable desktop computer with PCI slots for less than $1500. Nor do I see an expandable laptop (PCMCIA) for less than $2000.
Both of these are available with Wintel, so it seems that Apple does NOT sell what I really want.
If I'm wrong, please post a link, because I'm not into $1800 computers where I can't upgrade the video card.
See? Mac people have trolls, too!
Look, BitGeek, don't be such a fucking tool. You know damn well that a Pentium does not run at 200mhz on battery, and so do I.
How do I know? BECAUSE I'M USING ONE RIGHT NOW. It goes from 600, plugged in, to 500, on battery.
Defend your platform choice all you want. But do it with truth, not with made up lies.
If the G4 is twice as powerful per mhz, then why is OS X still so god damn slow?
You're fuckin right it does. What the hell? Are you so intent on bashing down the one company that has enough soul to keep computing in general fresh, that you are blind to the fact that they would LIKE TO MAKE SOME MONEY.
I'm over people acting like Apple's a bunch of retards. They do some stupid things. So do other computer companies (any Gateway ad with their ponytail idiot in chief embarrasing them). In the long run Apple makes good money, and in the process pushes all of computing forward. To the letter, every computer maker has some box in thier line that has some "mac flavor" in it. If Apple didn't exist, would that neato PC be a little rounded off and have that clear window? Don't know, but Apple does exist, and their industrial design has made computing friendly and accessible.
Can l33t d00dz build a box that will embarrass any Mac? Yes. Who gives a fuck? Your company sits on the curb and smells like patchouli. Apple drives Audi's and sells sex. That's it.
So to your point, yes, it's about profit margin. It's about making enough money to keep making computers that people with an ounce of style can appreciate. People who don't give a flying fuck what some pale, smart, h4x0r, l33t geek can throw together from 60 different trips to Fry's. I know your point was why don't they sell these to the public. You wouldn't buy one, you just want to say something, anything, that makes it sound like if you were running the company, "they'd be kickin ass!" You're not. Therefore, you don't get to decide what to sell to whom. Does that make Steve stupid? Maybe? Does it make you stupid? Most likely.
You know what?
Being a sheep is the shittiest excuse for selection of the best OS for the job i have EVER heard of.
You know what?
As much as the all-white is part of the Apple lineup now, it doesn't seem the ideal 'colour' for a school environment. Being a rather smooth plastic however, is another matter that counts in the positives. I could really see the use in grubby-finger-hiding-patterns. Keep it fun for the littleuns too...
Great. I'm impressed. Now, if you can get Mac OS X to run on it, I might actually be interested. ;{)
Yeah, I know there are *WINTEL* laptops out there with higher-rez displays. If you read what I originally posted, I said the new PowerBook G4 would be my next *MAC*. Let's compare apples to apples, folks. (Pun very much intended.)
Hence my enthusiasm.Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself.
DVI is a standard. It works on PC's.l ?i=1577
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.htm
VGA is a technology that's almost 15 years old. Shouldn't a company dedicated to high-end graphical design want to push the envelope here a little, even if it means using a little teeny (free) dongle to adapt back to VGA?
This argument is almost as asine as suggesting that one shouldn't have to put up with thos stupid AC adapters, why can't they be built into the case?
-Stu
No shit sherlock! An adapter? Well bugger me - I'd never have thought of that!
That would be yet another another thing I'd have to carry around.
No thanks, I'd much, much rather buy a Viao than carry around an adapter for something as trivially common as a VGA interface on such a large laptop.
Adapters are usually easy to damage, difficult to get replacements in a hurry (unless you are in a major city and near an retailer that just *happens* to have them in stock) and a hassle to carry around. THAT is why laptop manufacturers have *stopped* using adapters for things like VGA, Ethernet and Modems - people *hated* them.
AFAIC if you can afford an Apple display, you can probably afford a desktop Mac too (rendering the DVI interface on the laptop moot) as you could use the laptop in Firewire HD mode.
Yes, pretend the PowerMac G4 doesn't exist and the iBook and Powerbook G4 don't exist.
Are all PC users practicing consistant denial of reality to justify their platform choices? Why is that?
Especially when these same people seem to dislike microsoft.... yet they keep giving them money. I don't understand that level of denail.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23