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G5 in an iMac
babbage writes "I recently bought a Power Mac G5, and when I registered it with Apple, I was offered a free subscription to MacWorld. When signing up for the subscription, one of the questions you're asked is which Apple product you purchased most recently, and one of the items on the list was 'iMac G5.' Does the MacWorld marketing department know something that the rest of us don't?" Maybe they had seen the page that incognito writes about: "Over at AppleFritter, there's an awesome mod that changes an ordinary iMac into a mini version of the aluminum G5 tower. There were lots of details in the creator's work that leads to a very polished final product."
I suppose given the jet engine sound my G5 at work makes, it would be possible to fit all of that in a similar form factor but the sound would kill the mood.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
The popularity of miniATX boards and Shuttle's mini PC are a proof that Apple was on the right track with the Cube. People want small powerful computers but not the attached LCD screens in the iMacs.
This is exactly the type of product Apple needs a scaled down version of the PowerMac G5. The full size machines should all be dual processor and the PowerMac G5 mini should be single processor.
However, since the current iMac's motherboard is based on the powerbook's, I'm not 100% positive that there will be a G5 iMac announced in San Francisco.
Well, I'll be happy enough to see iMac G4 with 128 MB Radeon 9700 available in current crop of high-end powerbooks. Lame video card always kept me from buying an iMac G4 (32 MB GeForce MX? And that's supposed to be a $1300 home computer?). The current powerbook upgrade was more a GPU rather than CPU upgrade and as for me, I'm happy with that. I'd rather have a 1.5 GHz G4 with 128 MB Radeon 9700 than 2 GHz G5 with el cheapo video card.
Headless G5 iMac! My credit card is ready!
The form was a dropdown list, the HTML source for which was:
This doesn't seem to have been a typo.
I'd post the URL, but I can't tell if they have my information encoded in it, so I'd rather not.
As a substitute, I'll leave up a screenshot for a little while. Astute readers will pick up on the fact that the URL is on a buysub.com server -- I have no idea who they are, but that's the URL that Apple's subscription invitation sent me to, and it seems to be legit.
(Now, i'm trying to be generous here, but please don't melt my puny server. If the load gets too bad I'll have to shut it down, so if there's interest in seeing that screenshot, mirrors would be welcome.)
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
A good observation, but one I'm not sure how to interpret. They want it to appear on the form, but they aren't actually gathering the data if you select that. I'm not sure why they would do that...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
The iMac's motherboard is based on the PowerBook the same way that a Dodge Neon is based on an '81 K-Car. Sure, if you look back far enough, but not so much. The current iLamp iMac is based on the G4 Cube design. The old CRT rev A-D iMacs were based on PowerBook motherboards, and redesigned with the DVs.
- oZ
// i am here.
Well, the monitors have some of the same problems. The touch switches are not incredibly reliable (Apple has gotten much better with them, so they're not as bad as the Cube switches were in the beginning) and that does cause problems.
The "cracks" were a myth. A few people who bought cubes decided that mold lines (which are present on just about all plastic products) were cracks - and the rumor spread.
That rumor IS what caused the cube to fail in the market, though. They were selling like crazy at the Apple dealer where I work until that story broke, then sales dropped to almost nothing.
I also think you're underestimating the market for a cheap headless Mac. If Apple were to ship something in the $500 range (with a useable configuration below $700) I think Apple could take a significant share of the home market. Many people want to pay nearly nothing for a computer, and Apple has no offering in that market segment - even though they've got the best value in the high end of the market.
I think a $500 box with a G4 (or even a slow G5 - if you underclock them, they're cooler and cheaper than a G4) would sell well - the only problem for Apple would be capacity to build enough of them.
I think we can count on an iMac G5 in the fairly near future. The only reasons not to do it are portable marketing and an abundant supply of the current G4 units. I'm not sure what the supply of G4 iMacs is right now, but I suspect Apple is near a replacement.
The G5 is a less expensive chip, easy to cool if you underclock it, and should be a good choice for the iMac and eMac very soon.
(think about it - it's quite possibly costing Apple more money for the iMac processor chips than the G5 tower chips. that alone is a good reason to switch chips.)
Have you actually used a Cube? The button was on top, larger and more conspicuous... Waving your hand past it would shut the machine down.
The button on a monitor is right there, glowing invitingly. And it's also very sensitive, just like a Cube's. Maybe it's slightly less sensitive, but not in practical terms.
How is an iMac or eMac without a screen a "niche box"?
We're going around in circles here. Apple floated the idea: it failed. Why would they float it again? What in the marketplace has changed?
Look, if you're hoping Apple will slice their profit margins to produce a cheaper Mac, forget it. They've become one of the most consistently profitable (perhaps the most consistently profitable; they're going on 30 straight quarters of positive revenues, aren't they?) using a high-margin business model. They're not going to just chuck that because some guy on Slashdot think it'd be wicked kewl.
the iMac "lamp" design is dated
That's a matter of opinion. The iMac itself is certainly not dated, however; you can get one with a 1.25 GHz G4 and a 20" screen. A 20" screen! Have you used one of those things? It's huge! It's 1680 by 1050!
I guess my basic point boils down to this: Apple is doing very well. They tried your idea and it tanked. Why would they even consider, even for a nanosecond, trying it again?
I mean, isn't one of the signs of insanity doing the same thing again and expecting different results?
I write in my journal
As a form factor, the Cube was good (although I hope any replacement would have room for a decent dized AGP card).
However, they were stupidly priced, which is why they weren't very popular.
People want small powerful computers but not the attached LCD screens in the iMacs.
I think one of the smartest things Apple could do would be to make the iMac screen detacheable and simultaneously revamp their display lineup. The engineering behind making a single LCD screen that can either attach to an iMac or a base with ADC, DVI and VGA inputs (and a USB hub) should be trivial. Added to that, doing so would simultaneously reduce their overall production costs and widen their product line to fill a niche.
In our area, the cube was useful because of the small footprint and quiet; very much like a G4 iMac would have been.
The problem was that the combination of a cube and an LCD screen was prohibitively expensive (at least in education); and buying a cube with a CRT monitor defeated the purpose.
At the end of its lifespan, when the price of cube+LCD became more attractive, we bought (or at least ordered, I don't recall if we ordered them in time) several of them.
Nowadays, the people who would have purchased a cube purchase an iMac. Not because the iMac is cheaper than the tower, but because it has a small footprint and looks nice on the desktop and isn't overly expensive compared to the tower.
I'm not sure who in our area would want a headless iMac. The clients who want headless computers also want easy access to RAM, they want PCI cards, they want a tower.
But then they would have to design a base and sell it separately. And worry about the LCD-Base connector, and how it might break, and making it forward compatible to future LCDs The LCD mount on an iMac is very sturdy, and has to be since people manhandle it all day. And once the LCD is removed and attached to a base, how do you make sure it stays that way.
The way things are now, the only electronics that are in the LCD are those that are essential, so costs are minimal. To make things portable, adaptable, and upgradable is to make them more expensive (at least in this case)?
Excellent post, but I was making the point that current G5s are pretty hot in comparison to G4s - since the iMac design currently works with G4s - not x86s.