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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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
Ok. You did your estimate. Now let's do one that is more realistic. Let's figure first that probably 30% of those kids go to city schools that can't afford new computers. 50% of them have bought computers in the last two or three years and find them satisfactory for what they are doing.
Now the remaining 20% that MAY buy new computers this year MAY buy Macs but many of the children in those schools aren't going to be making the buying decisions in their family any time soon. Most of them probably already have PC's in their house because their parents use them at work. Some of them will just not like the Mac (yes it happens) and will go with something else.
In the end, maybe 6-7% of those 15M will end up buying Macs which is right inline with Apple's current market share.
You had a bit of bad luck there. Apple has not produced anything before or since which has sucked as much as the Powerbook 5300 series. They got severly burned over it from all quarters. Heh! An occasionally, so did customers.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
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!
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.
http://www.apple.com/displays/adapter.html
repeat after me: using computers in schools is not about teaching how to operate one. using computers in schools is not about teaching how to operate one. using computers in schools is not about teaching how to operate one. it's about math, history, language, biology. the OS should get out of the way asap, which is why so many schools prefer macs.
Don't get me wrong!
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
.
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.
It least it's better than IBM's arbitrarily renamed server lines. The RS/6000 is now called the "pSeries". Power? Punishment, maybe? The S/390 is now the "zSeries". Zippy, perhaps? The AS/400 has become the "iSeries". Sounds like a Mac ripoff (although they do use PPC processors). The only one that makes sense is their Intel based "xSeries". X of course standing for x86.