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Apple Offers eMacs To All
pinqkandi writes "Apple released the cool and cheap eMac a few weeks ago -- but for educational purposes only. Today, they announced that it is now available to everyone, for only $1099, making it the cheapest G4 Mac ever. I'll buy one." I won't, but I am glad people who want to buy it, can. It's a nice little machine. I guess Apple doesn't see it cutting into iMac G4 sales, but I wonder if iMac G3 sales (starting at $800) will suffer.
I'm using 128 megs on an G3 iMac (circa Jan 2000) and Mac OS X works great. Of course I don't use it for high end game playing, photoshop or other workhorse apps.
For typical use (e-mail, browsing, an office suite), digital hub stuff (iPhoto, iTunes) and for unix-y program-y stuff, the eMac is likely to be a pretty good choice.
Don't expect a machine billed as an 'educational computer' to blow the doors off your expectations.
My father is a blogger.
Hey, jackass: If you followed your own link, you'd see that particular model has fewer features and add-ons than the eMac does (e.g. integrated Intel video that uses shared memory, versus a GeForce2MX in the eMac. I'm not saying the 2MX is some stunning graphics powerhouse, but it's better than that onboard horseshit).
The one point you would have is the Dell offers more configuration flexibility -- PCI slots, etc. Other than that, if you configure them identically (or as close to identical as the two stores allow), their price is almost the same.
So your point was what, again?
Budget system users want to be able to get on the internet, write some documents and maybe play some games. They can do that just as well if not faster with a $599 Dell system as they can with a $1100+ Apple system.
If your premise were correct, your conclusion would undoubtedly be correct, too. But as it is....
I think Apple's biggest success over the past two years has been marketing the idea of the digital hub. While it used to be true that the average first-time computer buyer was interested only in email, surfing, and Quicken, today's newbies want to play MP3s, connect their digital cameras, and make DVDs out of their home movies.
Keeping up with these new trends just isn't practical with PC hardware running either Windows or Linux. Have you ever tried to capture video, edit a movie, and burn a DVD with either of those platforms? Nightmare!
If all you're interested in is surfing and email, by all means, buy the Dell. But Apple's contention-- rightly or wrongly-- is that you should expect to be able to do more than that with your home computer. And I think they're doing a great job of promoting that point of view.