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."

Comments

Guess it wasn't cute enough.

[Skyshadow]

So here's the big problem with selling designer computers: You can't stop redesigning them.

So far as I can figure, there are two types of people who bought this thing. The first group is predictible and, as such, irrelevant: Mac die-hards who would buy the latest-and-greatest regardless.

Then, there's the people living in this posh little urban apartments who bought it because it'd look cool on their Britanny Computer Desk from Crate & Barrel. These people are a good market, because they have too much money and they use it to buy things to make them seem hip. This may be a slightly down time for these people, but they're still around and you can bet your bottom dollar they'll be back in force the second the economy upticks.

For a little while, it really looked as if that was the new key market for these iMacs -- the designer crowd. But the problem with selling to the designer crowd is that if you don't have something *different* every six months or so, you've destroyed the whole point of the attraction. Once grandmas in the Midwest start getting these things on their desk, it's time to move on.

Well, this thing's overstayed it's time, and there's still no heir apparent. C'mon, Jobs -- you decided on the target market. Start selling.

Re:Apples market research?

[Drakino]

Speaking as someone who is posting this from a G4 Cube, it wasn't and isn't that great a machine. All it has for a video connector in the back is an ADC connector

Hmm, odd. Maybe you should look again at this supposed cube you are posting from. All G4 Cubes came from the factory with an ATI Rage 128 with ADC and VGA ports, an ATI Radeon with the same ports, or a GeForce 2 MX with the same ports.

The G4 Cube was an awesome machine. It was nearly as powerful as the high end desktops, but also dead silent. The PC industry is now making machines that try to fit the market of small, powerful, and quiet with Shuttle boxes and such. The Cube died because Apple could not price the thing properly to sell, and never marketed it's main advantages. It didn't die due to any technical fault.

And returning to an On Topic discussion, I see no reason to kill the 17 inch iMac. Talking to a local Apple Reseller, it's still selling like hotcakes. It's the only model in the iMac lineup to offer DVD burning, and more and more people are getting into this.

Re:The apple continues to rot

[veddermatic]

that's funny, I bought FOUR in the last 9 months.. a TiBook and G4 dual for home, a G4 for work, and a 17" iMac for my GF for xMas.

I'm going ot go out on a limb and say two things:

1. You have never USED a Mac running OS X (and you probably wouldn't know what to do with a shell, Apache, MySQL, a good GUI, etc anyway)

2. You have never actually built a box (or even better, bought one from Dell, Gateway, etc.) that was FEATURE EXACT and *then* made your "overpriced" out-your-ass comments. Given you cna't compare processor speeds per say (assume 1.5x to 2x speed of G4 == speed of Intel) go ahead. Make sure you include OS, basic productivity SW and so on.

God I hate moronic zealots (both PeeCee *and* Mac) it's fine to dislike somehing based on KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE... but fukcing-a 99% of the people who say "Macs suck, they are overpriced and blah blah blah" have never priced or USED one!!!!

OK, my rant for 2003 is done.

Re:Someone can't listen (or read)

[SethJohnson]

...comparable PowerMac and it is more robust

This is doubtful. Lets say you got them a P4 Dell with a monitor. How much was that? Your victim at work could have bought an iMac with a DVD-R drive for $1700. With it would come iDVD. You're encouraging them to shell out the bucks for a seperate DVD-R purchase and the DVD authoring software (which I doubt will be as slick as iDVD). And is this person planning to run a Unix-based OS like Mac OS X? If not, then there goes robustness. If they are, then there goes native DVD authoring capabilities. With this Dell bundle you dropped on this poor sap's head, is there an LCD monitor? Does the thing make a lot of racket with its cooling fan? Yeah, that person saved some money. Kind of like when I save money by pushing my car around town rather than filling it with gas.

Re:imac = overpriced

[Lysol]

A few things:

You have a $200 walmart pc that will still have shaky support for a wide variety of devices. There will definately not be any of this plug and play nonsense.

Consumers will continue to buy macs just as they do BMWs or Mercedes - because they're willing to pay more money for something better. Apple will never nose out the Wintel duopoly, but it will always (hopefully) have a following of loyal users. I should know, I bought my second Tibook this year. My old one I sold to my friend to replace his iBook.

I've had, literally, dozens of x86 servers at home and have over the past 10 years. So, it's not that I don't know what cheap is. True, lets go down and buy the newest fastest video card or lets get some cheap drives and upgrade to raid. However tho, now I just want something portable that works.

The DVD playback on a Tibook has no equal. AND, since I can make movies and DVDs on my Tibook, the Fujitsu equivalent - the Celcius - (which is the only x86 laptop company I'd ever consider buying from after constant crap from Dell, Compaq, HP), doesn't even have DVD burning. But it does have 1/2 the ram costs $600 more. Laptops vs. desktops are different; true. But Apple designs machines, not commodities. Wintel is all about commodities. And there you have it.

Re:Someone can't listen (or read)

[bnenning]

And if you like your Terminial on your OS X you should give Command a try in Windows. Just run 'cmd' and you'll get a similar app with similar commands.

Too bad you're serious or this would be +5 Funny.