Slashdot Mirror
17-inch flat-Panel iMac Dead
EnlightenmentFan writes "Apple plans to stop production in June of the iMac with flat-panel 17-inch display, according to this article at Asian tech-news site Digitimes. As with the now-history 15" flat-panel iMac, sales started strong but stalled once the early-adopter crowd had bought in. Probably-not-unrelated story (also posted today): Chungwha Picture Tubes is boosting the price of its 17-inch LCD monitor panels."
The product may look cool but Apple continues to charge more for less. Also, this will be marked down as total flamebait, but I consider most Apple computers at this point to be femmie in appearance. If you are trying to sell a computer to the type of guy who drives a VW Golf convertible, sure, but a style conveys an image. I would have never thought it was possible to make a computer look "gay", but Apple succeeded.
MM did you read the article?
The 17-inch flat-panel iMac will terminate production in June, following the same fate as the 15-inch flat-panel model, which stopped production last October, said local PC makers familiar with the matter.
It is on the first line!
..to MacDot...who gives a shit, cuz it is all overpriced.
For $1000 I can get a $200 Walmart PC that will run circles around an imac performance wise, and a nice 17" Viewsonic monitor. The current rate for a 17" imac is $1999. Does anyone else see the problem for Apple here?
e e-software-hassles wave. The problem is, none of those waves has done anything to create a solid customer base, and Apple is falling back into its old habit of hyping gimmicks to the undying cult of Mac Geeks, who cannot keep that company alive. The time has come for Apple to start a new wave, the Apple-switched-to-AMD-CPUs-and-cheap-RAM wave, and then the company might have a chance in the long run.
Apple's problem is that consumers have grown up. Windows is just as easy to use and more reliable (I have had fewer Win2K crashes since 1999 than I have with OS X since 2001.) than Mac OS 9 or X, so Apple cannot keep pushing the ease of use button. People know that Apple's 700MHz CPUs are slow compared to the 2+ GHz X86 CPUs, and that Apple is charging twice as much for RAM and old Nvidia/ATI cards than X86 vendors.
I have said this before and I will keep saying it; Apple computers cost too much. Buying my ibook was the worst computer-related decision I have ever made, and after seeing how an Apple system performs for the cost, I will never do it again, nor would I encourage anyone else to.
Apple has been riding on waves lately; the Jobs-is-back wave, the visual-aesthetics-are-nice wave, and is now trying to stay on top of the Linux-geeks-really-want-to-watch-a-DVD-with-no-fr
I'll ignore the processor flaimbait.
iat of M$.
DD, Disk Utility, tcsh, and such have no included equivalent in winshit.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.