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Apple Sticks with CRTs For Now
A reader writes, "eWEEK talked with Apple about the state of its hardware line at Macworld Expo/New York, six months after Apple said it was going all-flat panel with future Macs. Greg Joswiak, senior director, hardware products, with Apple worldwide product marketing, says that while LCD Macs are still 'the future,' surprise boosts in flat-panel prices mean CRT systems like the eMac and old-school iMac will stick around a while longer."
The average user does not appreciate the difference between flat panel and CRT screens. I believe Apple's strategy to be a prudent one...
Though many slashbots and computer enthusiasts will praise the flas-screen monitor, many are uncomfortable to fork that extra cash out for a more aesthetically pleasing monitor.
As you can see in this article, both have different pros and cons... but the average user is more likely to stick with the CRT monitor because of the cheaper pricing.
Nothing could be worse than Apple sticking to some visionary principle and completely phasing out CRTs. When you build an integrated system, swings in the price of any component will kill you. The G3 iMac and eMac footprints are not all that big and are perfectly reasonable systems. This is a smart business decision.
[That said, the 17" G4 iMac arrived just in time for my birthday. Woo hoo!]
--- "It annoyed me, so I fixed it." -- Tom's First Principle of Engineering
Apple would reverse course on the death of the CRT for a few reasons:
... Or not
(1) Foremost, to compete in the low end market where the CRT iMac lead Apple's sales in numbers (not dollars), CRTs are nearly and order of magnitude less expensive which can help apple attract 'value' customers
(2) In the education market (eMac) flat screens may still be viewed by value minded school boards and parents as frivolous expenses that could be used to put more computers in classrooms
(3) Until those who purchase a CRT today will have one more reason to anxiously await an upgrade tomorrow. Until Dell, Gateway, etc make LCD standard, the consumers who purchase CRTs will have hardware envy for LCDs.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
they don't skimp on some options. You can't by a Mac with too little memory
Huh? The $1400 iMac, the $1200-1500 iBooks, and the $1100 eMac all come with only 128MB, which is certainly too little to run OS X properly.
LCDs give you superior picture quality compared to a CRT. Less eye strain, better image quality.
Most "GENERIC" PC LCDS may be crap, just like all those generic 13inch "15 inch CRTs" that gateway and Dell and everyone else sold thruout the 90s that are worthless now.
But you have the choice- buy a powermac and get a CRT if you want, or get an eMac.
But when Apple drops the CRT all together, you'll still be able to go buy a Sony monitor and plug it into your mac (any mac).
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
You're wrong on a couple counts.
First off, Apple owns %30 of the company that makes the LCDs. Apple owns the factory, in effect because they used apple's investment to build a new factory.
Secondly, Apple has very large marketshare-- and probably sells more LCD screens than any other single company.
Finally, these designs are not "outdated". They are top of the line, and possibly exclusive to apple. Apple is definitely getting a competitive price here, and as usual, passing it on to its customers. For, AS USUAL, the iMac is far cheaper than a comparable PCs. (course nobody bothers to compare it to comparable PCs. the XBOX doesn't count- no display, slower processor, etc.)
(Why is it people constantly compare apples share of the market to the SUM OF ALL OTHER COMPANIES COMBINED and then say apple's a small company? Its one of the largest computer companies in the world and for a long time was the largest.)
Your assumptions are false, and you conclusion therefore is pointless.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
You've probably just never seen an LCD run properly. And LCD runs at one and only one resolution, ....X...., it can fake other resolutions by adding and subtracting pixels as it thinks is appropriate, but its looks fugly!
A little thing called reality.
Can't speak for your friend, of course, but I have a G3 iMac (400MHz) with less than a gig of RAM (768MB, I think) and OS X 10.1.5 runs just fine. I use Imageready 7, Dreamweaver MX, XFree86 4.2, BBEdit 6.5.2, Mozilla 1.1alpha (nightly) and a variety of other software, mostly running at the same time. Notice, no video editing software - that should be used with a pro-level machine, me thinks, or resort to using the versions of software that were out when the G3 debuted as "pro-level" ...
No, I think it was more of a general OS/network issue. From my own experience, Mozilla seemed a lot 'snappier' on a Windows box than it did on my TiBook... but I still prefer my TiBook for general use. ;)
For $129, Jaguar better be faster.
Because for many purposes, that's what matters. I can use Dell hardware or software with a Compaq, but not natively with a Mac.
Its one of the largest computer companies in the world and for a long time was the largest.
Apple never was the largest computer company by any measure. That title has mostly been held by IBM.
Screen refresh rates are in Hz, which is a frequency. I don't remember much from my physics days, but a screen refresh of 75 Hz means it refreshes 75 times per second.
Even if Apple used slow monitors, it would only be slow by 1 or 2 seventy-fifths of a second. In short, impossible to notice.
Where you do notice this is with shadows or cursors and things. Nobody wants movement shadows (they look horrible on DVDs and games).
As far as I know, however, Apple flatscreens have EXCELLENT refresh rates. Since that's up for debate, I'll simply retain my original point. Web browsing using a Mac is not a monitor issue.
lcd's are not known for their accurate color rendition. motion, while better than years ago, still sucks on an lcd vs. a good crt. and even still photography is very hard to do right on an lcd.
I own almost nothing BUT lcd's. I have 4 sgi flat panel 1600's (on linux), 1 vga flat panel and 1 dvi flat panel. I do software devel 95% of the time and so for xterms and mozilla, flat panels are perfect. but for the few times that I need to color correct a skin tone (from some scanned slides or negs), I look all over for a good crt and do the work on that box.
macs are known for their video and still photo ability. colormatching is easiest on them than win* or unix (except for maybe sgi. maybe.) apple just can't drop crt support on high end boxes. gfx people wouldn't stand for it.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
case in point, i have the cheapest ibook currently available with 600MHz g3 and 128MB of RAM. OS X runs great. the only app that is really noticably slow is internet explorer. I have done some web graphics in photoshop while running bbedit in the background, not to mention having apache and mysql also running at the time. photoshop responded fine.
Admittedly, programs like photoshop take a little while to start (like 20-30 seconds) They actually perform fine.
Now if you are going to work with really huge images as print artists do, it is not enough, but for me (and i suspect MANY others, it's enough for now)
Now i see nothing wrong with getting more RAM (i am waiting for my 512MB module myself to arive in the mail) however the argument was that 128 was not enough to run osx reliably, and i am simply rebutting it.
They never stopped selling the CRT based iMac.
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
That is a review of the 15" Apple studio display. The bottom of their line not only in size but in quality. The last I checked (admittedly this was some time ago) the Cinema displays and the PowerBook displays were of significantly higher quality, and widely reviewed as being of better quality than what was typically bundled with windoze machines.
;)
Last I checked, Dell, Gateway, HP-Compaq all were of a larger market share than Apple.
True, but aside from Dell, not THAT much smaller. Besides which, overall PC marketshare is not the issue when negotiating with LCD manufacturers. How many LCD's you are buying and selling IS. Since Apple has (mostly) standardised on LCD technology while their larger competitors haven't I would imagine that their LCD "marketshare" is disproportionally larger than their overall marketshare and puts them in a better negotiating position.
So? 30% is a minority, not a majority. The factory has other investosr/s of higher importance, who get what they want first because they own more, and contribute more to the profitability of the factory.
Umm. 30% is an awfully large chunk of a publicly traded company. If that number is correct (I couldn't verify it) I think it's safe to say Apple is probably one of their largest if not THE largest single investor. The other large investors are probably institutional investors (pension funds and the like) who aren't going to be throwing their weight around competing with Apple for production facilities. In any event the investment was made explicitly to ensure that Apple got the kind of special treatment that the original poster referred to, and did go towards new production facilities built specifically to meet Apple's needs. I'm sure it was accompanied by contractual obligations to that effect.
My friend has a G3 Powerbook, and it is nearly unusable, and that is with 1 GB of RAM!
Your friend should have someone look at his computer. Either he hasn't upgraded to 10.1 or there is something wrong. I can see slow but "nearly unusable?" I have a beige G3 233 that was running 10.0 with less memory than the "minimum requirement" (I installed it on a lark). THAT was "nearly unusable"
As for price, I don't know what the original poster was thinking. Macs are definitley sold at a premium. BUT as I think your comparision points out the premium is NOT as large as is generally thought. You configured an equivalent Dell for the same price. I'll grant you the 80GB vs. 60GB drives, the memory is the same though, any place other than the Apple store will throw in the extra RAM for "free" (since Apple discourages resellers from competing on price they all compete on free bundles, usually memory, printers & the like). So the main difference between the Dell and the Apple is the Apple machine is a lot more nicely integrated & engineered but the PC has a faster CPU and bus. Damn that Mhz gap!
For their target market the Mac is probably still the better deal. Most home users are not taxing their systems very hard and probably wouldn't even notice if their CPU was twice as fast (it's just a matter of how many more processor cycles get wasted waiting for the next keystroke) For those things that consumers do that DO tax the processor (Audio & video encoding & such) Altivec makes the PowerPC much more competetive than it's raw processer speed would suggest.
Apple never was the largest computer company by any measure. That title has mostly been held by IBM.
This is flat out, factually wrong. FRom approximately 1989 to 1994 Apple was the largest Personal Computer maker in the world-- both in volume of units and dollar volume.
At one point in that time I think Apple was doing 12B a year in annual revenue while Microsoft was doing only $4. And people then were talking about how much bigger Microsoft was than Apple.
Everyone's perceptions of what happened in the past are totally based on the current situation-- Microsoft is bigger, so they think it always has been.
When you own %25 of the new machines being built, and there are a dozen people competing for the other 75% its easy to be the largest pc maufacturer in the world.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Given that Macs have been significantly cheaper than comparable PCs since about 1995, I don't think anything Apple does will "dispel" that image.
The image is created and maintained by PC owners who want to feel justified in their purchase. That is all.
Every comparison I've done, since 1995, in online forums and off, and I've done this repeatedly working for PC software companies and having to prove to my coworkers that Macs aren't a ripoff-- has shown that an equivalent Mac is %10 to %50 cheaper than a comparable PC.
Hell in this very forum people were claiming thant the XServe was too expensive when the closes 1U dell was %50 more and had less drive capacity.
The eMac makes the case- I know of NO PCs from REPUTABLE manufacturers (and that rules out Gateway and all the no-name companies) that can compete with the eMac on price and performance.
Unfortuantely, there are two versions of Dell-- the ripoff, never going to last a year , POS models they sell, and then the high quality models at real prices.
It isn't a comparison to point to a Yugo and claim that a Toyota is thus overpriced... and that's what people do to claim the mac is Overpriced. Point to a computer that won't last 4 months, and doesn't have half the features to begin with.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
A little thing called reality
Ok, you're an idiot and have been correctly identified as flaming.
But its worth pointing out that if you were really doing a comparison to some Dell, you'd have quoted the model number of the Dell you're comparing too. Otherwise we must conclude you're just making that up. I do comparisons against dell regularly, and regularly MAcs are a great deal cheaper for comparable hardware.
BTW- OSX is NOT slow. I have it running on a 9500-- an ancient mac that is way beyond the "supported" list and even on that guy its only a bit sluggish. I used it on my PBG3 and it runs with perfectly fine performance-- I don't notice the difference day to day between a 400MHz G3 and the 800MHz G4 I use.
You have the first modern operating system released by ANY COMPANY-- Microsoft promised cairo in 1993 and it still hasn't shipped-- linux is mostly modern except for the UI layer-- and of course since you can't bash it on its merits, you claim its slow because its graphically rich. but the thing is, every computer apple ships has a 3d accelerator and transparency is rather easy for them to do.
What you should be complaining about is that your current OS doesn't make use of the 3D hardware thats there.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
The part where thats NOT WHAT WAS SAID.
Apple sold the most PCs. Not "biggest computer ocmpany".
IBM has always had more employees, more land, and more mainframe sales than Apple.
But that's irrelevant when you're talking about the PC space.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
it's totally true... i would think the people that say LCD displays look like crap either looked at one faking a resolution or looked at a cheap one. when they are running right they are incredible. i was at Macworld last week and saw ATI demo their sexy cards on the 22" or 23" LCD panels. wow they looked cool.
back to Apple LCDs.... the one thing about Apple LCDs is that they are top quality. if you find an unbiased shootout of Apple's vs any other manufactures display of the same quality, they are on par. in some cases actually cheaper. you can't compare the generic 15" LCD from bestbuy to the Apple one. the Apple ones do not even have analog signal processing, they are only intended for vid cards with digital outputs. a lot of the cheaper ones other people are buying purely for space saving, and style. they often stick them on an existing PC that doesnt have a vidoe card with digital out. my housemate bought a 15" sony one and he had to go back to the store to get a digital cable... the darn thing only came with an analog one. go figure. now that he put on a digital cable it looks pretty ok. with the analog it seemed like a waste of money (unless your desk space is very valuable to you).
then again i guess a LCD display that is about the same quality of an average CRT is positive because it does not produce as much heat and sitting here sweating like i am, i have to respect that. i don't know offhand but i would assume LCD screens draw far less power too. combine that with the reduced need for airconditioning in big office buildings and it makes sense. i would think the initial cost to upgrade would pay off in time maybe? anyone in California listening?