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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.
You're right in respect to the eMac - but did anyone really want to know about it? Most of the new Powerbook specs were over the net the past couple of weeks.
--[Nothing important]--
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.
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I am glad I got my TiBook when I did. I dislike the new resolution; it's going to be too small to read easily.
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...
June/July are big edu/k12 purchasing months. Apple wants to be ready for the market. Smart move and smart timing on this one...
I'm not so sure that's a dumb idea right now. Apple is pimping the flat-screen iMac like mad to the "rest of us", so limiting the market of the new one is a potentially good way to keep demand high for the more expensive, "cooler" iMac while they still quietly sell the old iMac (remember, they kept a model hanging around at the low end) for a while. Also, since Apple almost always has supply constraints on new models for a while, the eMac can stick to it's intended channel for now.
Not coincidentally, it's the season where edu purchasing for the coming year starts to ramp up - so dedicating the supply to education for now is probably a Good Thing.
If I had to prognosticate further, I'd say to expect a flat-panel iMac speed bump around MWNY, followed by the quiet dropping of the old iMac and the eMac moving into general availability at the low end. Because in the longer run, streamlining their low-end models does make sense.
Oh - FYI, Macs are still only available from "authorized dealers", it's just that CompUSA and Apple themselves are on that list now, along with more mail-order folks than before. Don't be surprised if some eMacs leak into the channel early from some of them.
Anyone want to buy my TiBook 667?
(Actually, I still like it just fine - but boy, is that DVI out sweet!)
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Several anti-Apple cronies have voiced similar sentiments here. Do you guys really not get it? It's not hard. Jesus, Apple doesn't always get it right...not even close to "always"... but listening to some of you guys you'd think they were the worst managed company with the worst products in the entire history of commerce. Listen up guys - clue phone ringing for y'all:
Education institutions don't want flat panels in labs with 3rd graders. And they don't want CD-RW drives. And they're short on cash, too.
Everyday consumers, however, do want flat panel displays, do want CD-RW/DVD drives, and usually do have more money to invest than a grade school - after all they're only buying one machine, not thirty.
If you at all understand the above, then Apple's "new" product makes sense.
Plus, as someone pointed out earlier, this neatly takes some demand off of them for the flat panels. If some of the education market is ordering eMacs, then they won't have to come up with quite the number of flat panel displays that they might have had to.
As for the fool who was blathering on thusly..."oh great this will really prepare me for the real world - they're not even available in the real world..." PLEASE. You're kidding me, right? So if Dell decided to sell a particular configuration of a low end box specifically to the education market...a configuration that contained nothing new...you just hadn't ever gotten this particular CPU, monitor, optical drive config in one box before... that it would be a disaster because it's "not available in the real world?"
I think someone needs to cut the little pills in half tomorrow, mkay?
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
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.
Maybe they just wanted to make the things harder for kids to steal. Student (and non-student) theft of lab computers has always been a big problem; making this one weigh 50 lbs. and giving it nice round edges is a small way to impact the problem, but I'm sure it helps.
15 pounds of bigger monitor and heat sink?
Yes.
Selling them with 128 Mb and MacOS X preinstalled is kinda silly. That's just not enough memory to run MacOS X comfortably.
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Yes. My Apple 17" studio display weighs about 40-50lbs. I don't have a scale with me, but it does weigh more than my rev A iMac (40lbs). Add a computer, power supply, big heatsink, and extra shielding/casing to a 17" CRT and 50lbs sounds very reasonable. Hell, most steel PC cases weigh around 10 lbs without the power supply.
Education institutions don't want flat panels in labs with 3rd graders. And they don't want CD-RW drives. And they're short on cash, too.
A lot of home users don't want LCDs either, but they aren't given a choice. CD-RW drives aren't that expensive, that's why they're becomming standard on many PCs. They're being ommited on the low end eMacs because in many educational environments they don't want the students to have CD-RW drives.
Everyday consumers, however, do want flat panel displays, do want CD-RW/DVD drives, and usually do have more money to invest than a grade school - after all they're only buying one machine, not thirty.
I don't personally know anyone who has chosen to spend the extra money for a LCD display for a desktop computer at home, and most my friends have one or more computers at home. I don't know many families that have extra money laying around that they can spend on a nice pretty LCD display. Why should schools be buying computers when the company selling them is pricing the consumer version above their competition and requiring features on the consumer version that make them more expensive for those consumers.
Plus, as someone pointed out earlier, this neatly takes some demand off of them for the flat panels.
If Apple wants to reduce the demand on them for flat pannels, why don't they sell iMacs with CRTs to consumers, and let the consumers decide? I have a strange feeling it has something to do with higher profit margins on the new iMacs.
If you at all understand the above, then Apple's "new" product makes sense.
What makes sense is that Apple has realized that their marketing decisions (LCDs only) have priced them above the price the educational market is willing to spend. They can't afford to lose this market, so they are reacting by bringing back to old iMac at a price point that is more favorable to that market. Why can't they also make this more affordable computer available to consumers? Apple is marketing thier iMac as a household accessory. It's cool looking, you can do some neat stuff with it like burn a CD full of MP3s. The problem is that it's somewhat weak on bang for the buck. What does apple give users for the price premium you pay for thier computers? What reason do schools have to choose Apple's computers over other computers? Most importantly, what advantages will the students get? If there aren't some real advantages, schools shouldn't buy them.
it's not a REAL flat-screen: it's a flat FACE CRT.
(and CRT's ARE the cheap option right now.)
Great! It sounds like that might be the right computer for you. I wasn't suggesting that Apple shouldn't offer the iMac to consumers, I think they should offer both to consumers.
I've found that a decent comfortable chair and a desk that doesn't place the keyboard too high is what makes a computer comfortable to use for me. I think those would still be requirements with the new iMac as well. The monitor, for me, seems to be something that I have to get adjusted the way I want it once, then I can just leave it alone.
it'll never happen, apple (and other manufacturers) need to preserve the upgrade path that non-standard and hard-to-get-to video cards (and other components) force us on to.
you want a snappier card? apple's answer is a new laptop. not so good for us, very good for them. the margins on laptops are much higher than desktop machines, companies make a killing on closed-box designs like the powerbook and ibook.
even getting to the hard-drive on my ibook requires a complete tear-down, on my old lombard it could be changed in two minutes.
Except that if you offer TOO many options in your computers, the consumer gets confused. This is what happened before Jobs took control again and created the current Business / Home, Desktop / Portable matrix. Slashing their product base down to basically 4 computers, each with a specific function, is exactly what helped bring Apple back to life.
Having more than one home desktop machine is a step in the wrong direction... bringing us back to the days of the PowerMac 7600 SE/LE ver2 rev.M. It's harder to support, and it's harder for consumers to figure out what they want/need.
- 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.
"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
Well, yes Jobs did say the CRT was dead. However, it does appear that Apple is listening to their customers and for education, the CRT is what they wanted.
Lemme ask you if you have ever seen a kid poking his finger at a LCD computer screen. Yeah, it makes you cringe. With a CRT, kids can poke all they want and the most damage that can be done is smears from dirty little fingers. Hell, I have even had other adults poking at my laptop screen rather violently when demonstrating data. For the education and business environments, sometimes a little more rugged CRT is better.
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One word: Cooling. A next-generation video chip would probably be a lot hotter than the previous one, and laptops are already very close to the limit with regards to heat and airflow.
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."