Apple Updates iMacs and eMacs

applematters writes "Apple has updated the iMacs, they are faster and incorporate AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth. There are two models, the 15-inch and 17-inch. For good measure the eMac has also been updated, and you can get it brand new for under a thousand bucks. Not bad."

Comments

Slight correction

[Anonymous Codger]

The eMacs have not been updated, only reduced in price. I'm not complaining - I may finally break down and order one at the new price

End of the G4?

[PsiFireWhite]

With the reduced pricing on the G4s lately it makes me wonder if Apple has finally picked a new flagship chip to use coming soon. It makes sense to get rid of as many G4s in stock if this is the case, and with the recent drops on the eMacs it's even more aparent.

All in all it seems a wise move to start the price dropping now when it is most needed. Hopefully an eMac that's both Classic and OS X bootable for under 1000 will be very appealing to schools. Apple needs to start clawing back it's Educational market share.

Re:End of the G4?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

With the reduced pricing on the G4s lately it makes me wonder if Apple has finally picked a new flagship chip to use coming soon.

Uh... no. There is talk about the PowerPC 970, but it's at least 6 months away from being available for testing, much less for production.

The price cuts are for one reason and one reason only: Apple wants to move more units. Last quarter was more or less a break-even for Apple, and the pace of sales has slowed as the economy has gotten steadily worse over the past two years. So Apple has revised (nearly) every product in the line over the past month, and is cutting prices across the low end to encourage people who were sitting on the fence to buy now.

Re:End of the G4?

[Alan Partridge]

what do you mean? We've got a Powermac G4 Yikes! 400 (the original 400, before the humiliating 50Mhz reduction) which dates from early '99. Our PCs at that time were Pentium III 500s - and the G4 showed them a clean pair of heels in video encoding. 30%, 50%, 100% faster depending on optimisation - and with the promise of rapid clock rate scaling to come - an exciting computer all round.

How far we've fallen...

Re:End of the G4?

[gsfprez]

no. but it sure is a clear sign that its the end of the G3. When the iBook is updated with a G4 later this year - that will be the end of non-AltiVec Macs.

I wonder how much longer apps/Mac OS X will support non-G4 machines.

i'm glad i concidered my iBook basically a "use, abuse, throw away" machine when i bought it...

Re:End of the G4?

[King Babar]

Uh... no. There is talk about the PowerPC 970, but it's at least 6 months away from being available for testing, much less for production.

You're right in that I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for this chip, but I think you're being a bit pessimistic about the timing of its arrival. This page on the PowerPC 970 is decently informative and recent. It suggests sampling will start ti happen in the second quarter of 2003, and volume production will begin in the second half of 2003. Has the schedule already slipped this far? My impression was that IBM doesn't like to let these things slide.

There's no doubt that 2003 could be a pretty tricky year for Apple, but I think I like their roadmap leading to January 2004 *much* better than any other hardware vendor out there. Right now, Apple is basically in a position where they will make a little bit of money, and when their high-end hardware is actually really fast again...I don't think their sales are likely to go down.

Re:End of the G4?

[addaon]

Um... personally, I wouldn't give up an hour of use on the iBook for altivec. (10W increase in processor usage at equal megahertz would be roughly a 20% decrease in battery life, if you tend to use low screen brightness.) And, of course, the G3 iMac is not only still selling, but still being manufactured. The G3 will end eventually, surely, but there's absolutely no compelling reason to get rid of it in the next year.

Post Tramatic Stress!

[jptechnical]

I used to sell Apples and now is the time all the stores freak out about overstock. If you are looking for a good deal, and you don't mind being a little behind the curve, hit some of your smaller shops and you can really save some money.

The compulsary...

[Soul-Burn666]

eMacs?

I prefer Vi!

(Yes, I know what they meant)

Not bad? Try really bad

[X_Caffeine]

There was one point in the last decade where more Macintoshes were being sold to Windows users than people who already owned Macs. That was when the iMac was first introduced, at a $1000 price point. For the first time, a low-end Mac cost as much as a low-end PC, and buyers flocked to them.

Today a low-end PC can be had for ~$500 (less if you're willing to go with Lindows). If Apple really wants "switchers," they need to have a low-end machine for $500. The eMac just isn't affordable enough. (and there's no doubt in my mind that 700mhz G3 iMacs, which are still available for $800, could be sold profitably for about $500)

btw, the low-end eMacs are still shipping with 128mb RAM. Has anyone here tried running Jag with 256mb? What's another 128mb SDR cost, $20?

Re:Not bad? Try really bad

[Twirlip of the Mists]

If Apple really wants "switchers," they need to have a low-end machine for $500.

A common fallacy. Apple doesn't build low-end machines. Every machine they ship, for example, includes a built-in AirPort antenna. Hell, I think you can still buy bargain-basement PC's that don't come with Ethernet in them! Although God knows why you'd want to...

Apple really doesn't care about the low-end market. They care about selling high-end machine for good profit margins.

Has anyone here tried running Jag with 256mb?

You mean Jaguar? Yes. It runs just fine. If you run too many memory-hungry programs at once, you'll start swapping, but that's to be expected.

Re:Not bad? Try really bad

[Alex Thorpe]

Oh, about memory usage. I just downloaded a free utility that monitors memory usage to determine if having more memory would speed things up. I've 320MB, and have opened up my usual programs: Mail, Safari, iTunes(playing), and addtions like Watson and iCal. Not only is there zero disk swapping, but I've got 77MB of extra memory that hasn't been touched. I'm sure that I could push it further with a commercial game, but I'm not going to use any of the others at the same time, save the Mail app. No, I don't have MS-Office, and I don't need it.

I did used to run OS X with 192MB of memory, but slowdowns were few and far between, mainly when I was viewing dozens of full screen jpegs on a single web page.

Re:Not bad? Try really bad

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Of course they have low-end machines -- the 700mhz iMac is low-end relative to the dual-proc 1.4ghz G4.

Yes, the iMac is relatively inferior to the G4. But the iMac is not a low-end computer. It has built-in FireWire, wireless networking, and one of the best flat-panel displays I've ever seen, just to name three things. The most bare-bones, stripped-down computer Apple sells is equivalent to everybody else's mid-range machines.

and those Airport antennas? it's just a cable whip, it couldn't cost more than a couple bucks

Then why doesn't anybody else include them?

It's ridiculous for them to be shipping machines with 256mb, even on their low end.

Oh, great. Yet another Monday-morning CEO. Tell you what. When you start your computer company, you can ship machines with as much RAM as you like. Until then, kindly hush up.

(Incidentally, everybody knows that Apple sells computers with only the minimum amount of RAM because everybody buys less expensive third-party RAM to put in them. If Apple sold their machines with more RAM, Monday-morning CEO's like yourself would just bitch that you're being forced to buy overpriced memory. Yawn.)

Re:Who cares?

[Draoi]

Apple sucks. It's not like they support Open Source.

*sigh* - trolling, I know ...

http://publicsource.apple.com

"We think Open Source is great!" - Steve Jobs

Interesting Note:

[Bob Wehadababyitsabo]

The top-end CRT iMac is $950 for a 600MHz G3 with a CD-ROM. For $50 more, you get the bottom end eMac, which is a 700MHz G4 with a Combo drive (not to mention the 17", 1280x960 display). Why doesn't Apple cut the G3 iMac's price to, say, $500? They'd move more units, and have a good bottom of the line machine for cheap.

Not quite.

[jht]

The only model that was actually _updated_ was the 17" iMac, with a new DDR-based logic board, 1 GHz processor, built-in Bluetooth support, and AirPort Extreme support. The 15" iMac is just a price reduction on the previous Combo drive model (no new features, still SDRAM-based, same speed), and the eMac models were also reduced in price with no new features. That's all.

Of course, had my story submission about 10 hours ago been taken, the correct info would be up for this story already... (grumble)

I'm guessing that the new 17" iMac is based on the same logic board/chipset in the new PowerBooks. I wonder if they're using regular form factor DIMMs now for the user-installable slot or if they're still using SO-DIMMs. It'll make a big difference in memory upgrade prices between one and the other.

Re:You have some facts wrong....

[elemental23]

Airport cards are options.

Yes, but many Apple machines have Airport antennas built in. That's what they mean by "Airport ready". The benefit of this is that the Airport card can be installed internally. This means that a) you don't use up a PCMCIA slot (or a PCI slot, for desktops), and b) you don't have the antenna sticking out of the side the way my Orinoco card sticks out of my Dell laptop (and let me tell you, it's really a pain in the ass).

Apple doesnt care about the low-end market? Then why do they market there computers as quality at a low price so much?

Low price != low end quality. If you want the cheapest computer you can buy, go ahead and get one of those $500 thing, but don't expect anything more than marginal (at best) quality. Or pick up a quality Mac for not too much more.

These eMacs are great for some people

[stefanlasiewski]

My non-computer-literate godmother just bought one of these $800 eMacs for her 10 year old daughter.

It's perfect for her: It's got MS Office & Claris(?) Office for writing papers, a DVD player for watching movies, and her mom can go out and get some decent educational software at a variety of computer stores.

They have a DSL connection and one Power Mac already. We went out and bought a LinkSys Cable/DSL router for $50 at CompUSA, came home, fiddled with some ethernet wire, changed some settings, and boom: Two computers, a networked house, & shared printers.

Running these things on Linux just isn't practical for a 10 year old with an artist Mom. They have better things to do then download and install new libraries to get Gnome2.2 to compile.

Now that I did the initial setup for them, I'm quite confident that my godmother and godsister can deal with 95% of their computer problems without my help.

Look, I'm a big Linux fan, and have been using RH & Debian for about 5 years, but throwing any Linux on a cheap PC and expecting my godmother do simple things like hook up her Palm organizer or installing updates is unrealistic.

Re:iBooks?

[King Babar]

Now how about some hot new G4 iBooks for $999? Otherwise I will be forced to buy a 12-inch powerbook

Dude, the 12" PowerBook is the G4 iBook. Asking for it for $999 amounts to nothing more than whining, and will gain you no sympathy here.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple actually phased out the iBook name except for the $999 model. The PowerBook model has more cachet, and the new 12" Powerbook has some serious overlap with the more expensive models in the iBook line. I just saw the 12" Powerbook yesterday, and some of its best features aren't obvious until you play with one:

• The keyboard is much better than the iBook's (although the keys are a tad slick.
• The hinge is much better than the iBook's.
• The keyboard caps will never scrape the LCD screen.
• It is a slot-loading machine

And it's smaller and faster and just a very nice machine. At my place of business, departments can buy the 12" Powerbook for $1499, and I could get it for $1699. The only drawback I could see is that you really can't use one of the nice new LCD panels with it since it doesn't do DVI much less the hyperspecial Apple digital LCD connector thingie.

Re:Get something useful

[TonyMillion]

why do we need a WIN32 compatibility layer, you can get roughly the same effect by randomly dragging a piece of copper wire across the main circuit board.

You also avoid those nasty licencing issues.