Posted by
CowboyNeal
on from the catching-up dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Reuters is running a story that Apple has delayed the release of the new iMac until September and has stopped taking orders for the current models."
"We planned to have our next generation iMac ready by the time the inventory of current iMacs runs out in the next few weeks, but our planning was obviously less than perfect."
But the new iMacs are announced for September, which is really too late to catch the school sales.
Re:Pidgeon Holed
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Standards don't have to be free. Something can be a standard as long as it is appointed one by the relevant standards commitee.
eg. MPEG4 isn't free.
Re:If Microsoft did it...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Informative
Steve is God. Bill Gates is the antichrist.
Re:Legitimate Sales Tactic
by
NeedleSurfer
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· Score: 3, Informative
imacs have fan now, they have fan since the advent of the firewire iMac...
my 2 unnescessary !
No more 15inch iMacs.
by
ITR81
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· Score: 4, Informative
The reason I know because about 10 days ago I ordered a 15inch iMac for my biz. but a couple days later Apple sends me an email informing me I've been upgraded to a 17inch iMac.
So right now only 17 and 20inch iMacs are in inventory, but I'm sure you can find some more at say CompUSA and Apple Stores and Apple resellers.
Re:Legitimate Sales Tactic
by
HRH+King+Lerxst
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· Score: 2, Informative
My original Rev. A Bondi Blue iMac has a fan...
-- No one got beat up more often than the mimes of the old west!
Re:Think different
by
BasilBrush
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· Score: 2, Informative
As a computer tech, you seriously need to get yourself up to date. $40 buys you a USB flash drive with the space of 200 floppy disks on it. Floppies have been worthless pieces of junk for some years now.
Re:Brain Holed
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5, Informative
If your CS lab is forcing you to code in Windows, they're doing something wrong. You should be coding platform-independant C, which you sure as heck won't be getting on Windows (unless you're using a godawful DOS prompt).
What are you talking about? What does developing from the cmd shell have to do with what type of code you can write? You can write code that's just as portable in Windows as pretty much any other platform at the level that portability is reasonably maintainable (i.e. no gui's). Unless you're definition of portable means "*nix" of course.
Plus what the hell difference does it make what platform you're writing in (even notwithstanding the fact that the guys lab is using the same OS that is significantly more likely to land that person a job), the point is to learn how to code. You talk about platform independence, then you start spouting off about restricting the platform (for dubious technical reasons).
Re:Think different
by
crawling_chaos
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· Score: 4, Informative
-- You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
Re:Think different
by
gaj
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· Score: 2, Informative
Depending upon the age of your PC, any drive. Most PCs built in the last several years can boot from a USB device. Don't know if Macs can, but I'd assume so. I've configured my flash drive with bootable OSes before, both Linux and DOS... mostly as a lark, as (with the exception of the %$@#$$! Intel 2100 wireless drivers) I've not had need of a rescue disk for years.
FFS. They don't have nine fans to cool the CPUs in the PowerMac. They have nine fans to cool the CPUs quietly. They've designed it the way they have so that, under normal operation, the fans will rotate at a fraction of their full speed, meaning that they are that much quieter than normal.
If you look at this PDF file, you'll see that typical power dissipation of the 1.8 GHz G5 is 42 watts. Assuming that's 75% of the maximum, we still end up with a maximum power rating of 56 watts. In comparison, typical power dissipation of an AMD Barton running at 1.8 GHz is around 54 watts typical, 68 watts maximum; an Intel P4 at 2.8 GHz (the slowest I can find readily available where I live) is rated at 56-68 watts (same page).
The other thing to bear in mind is: that thermal rating for the 970 is based upon figures for the 130 nm process. The die shrink to 90 nm should reduce it.
I don't think cooling is a major problem. It may take a bit of engineering work, but there's nothing particularly hard, I'd imagine. Yes, it's more than they've had to deal with when using the G4, but at least they don't have power constraints (which they will when it comes time to slide the G5 into a PowerBook.)
No, the iBook G4 is WHITE PLASTIC. I just bought one for my gf's parents.
From Apple's site:
The deceptively smooth and well-rounded iBook is surprisingly rugged. It was designed with durability in mind, using ultratough polycarbonate plastic -- the same material used in bulletproof glass -- with an internal magnesium frame for added strength.
http://www.apple.com/ibook/
Are you thinking of the 12" Powerbook G4, which is aluminum?
Re:Legitimate Sales Tactic
by
CordMeyer
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· Score: 2, Informative
without cannibalising sales of the present generation of stock
According to the article, there is no stock. And else would they be refusing orders?
Playing Cards Close to Chest
by
catdevnull
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· Score: 2, Informative
Apple is famous for doing stunts like this for hype. But, I think this one might have been a flub on the forecasting. Maybe outsourcing is biting them in the butt this time.
Whatever the cause, it's mysterious and it's anybody's guess. Jobs is probably whipping up a huge frenzy and they might spring it on everyone a bit earlier than they announced.
No matter what, we're all just rumor whores on this thread anyway:)
--
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Re:Legitimate Sales Tactic
by
evenparity
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· Score: 4, Informative
It is more likely a problem engineering/production.
Two issues here: 1) Clearing the retail channels of old inventory, and 2) Start the clock ticking on the consumer decision making process (e.g. there is a lag between when a consumer becomes aware of a product and when he/she is ready to make the purchase).
To clear the sales channels, you wouldn't really want to announce a new product because people will just decide to wait for the new product. Possibly, announcing the delay will get some consumers frustrated enough to buy an old model, but according to the article, it was an internal schedule, not a public schedule, that is running behind.
To start the clock on the decision process, you need to actually hype the new product and get people excited about buying it. In this case, they don't reveal anything about the new product, so it is hard to think about buying something you don't know. (But maybe Apple users are just crazy that way....)
The irony is, if this is an announcement of a misstep, the announcement itself is further hurting Apple's business. Apple's got great marketing and product design, but its business processes really need some work.
Re:Attention: Important info about Apple
by
saddino
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· Score: 4, Informative
Not content with ripping off Watson, they've now stolen the features for another product without proper recompense and included it in their "Tiger" OS.
Not content with doing any actual research on this story, now you've propogated the misconception that Dashboard was "stolen" from Konfabulator.
For John Gruber's excellent write-up on why this "spin" is plain wrong, read here.
Re:Pre-announced
by
Graff
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· Score: 4, Informative
The silence over the recent security updates (and the resulting mocking of one-paragraph summaries Apple then decided to release) has lost a lot of people's respect.
Oh you mean something like this incredibly detailed list of every security update ever? The one which lists the CVE IDs of the vulnerabilities and which links to the appropriate discussion of the problem?
Apple has provided this list for quite some time as you can see by looking at what was fixed. It only took me a few seconds to get from Apple's main page to locate this list.
The explanations of the security problems when you download the patches are left sparse deliberately because there are housewives, kids, grandparents, and other non-techs reading the explanations. If you had a diatribe on every vulnerability that was patched then you'll take the chance that the users might get scared off from patching just due to the geek factor required to read the update notes.
Apple does the smart thing and gives a small, easy to read blurb about the update in the download notes. Anyone who needs more in-depth information can easily find it at the Apple support webpages.
Re:Legitimate Sales Tactic
by
zhenlin
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· Score: 2, Informative
They are stopping _online_ sales. The brick-and-mortar Apple Stores will presumably still have old iMac stock.
And, this is the first time [in my experience] that an old Apple product will run out of stock before a new Apple product is shipped, so I don't expect the typical rapidly falling prices of a must-clear-stock-sale. On the other hand, maybe people will just sit on their money and wait for the new iMac, and the price will fall because of low demand.
Who knows.
Re:Pre-announced
by
Graff
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· Score: 4, Informative
Oh, I also forgot that there is the Apple security announcement mailing list which also exists in archive form. The archive is password protected to slow harvesting of e-mail addresses but they tell you how to access it right in the password question, just enter archives as the user name and archives as the password.
Apple mails out a detailed announcement every time they release a patch or a fix for a vunerablility. Anyone can sign up with the mailing list to receive these timely announcements automatically.
Security Update 2004-06-07 delivers a number of security enhancements and is recommended for all Macintosh users. The purpose of this update is to increase security by alerting you when opening an application for the first time via document mappings or a web address (URL). For more details, including a description of the new alert dialog box, please see: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artn um=25785
Versions: Security Update 2004-06-07 is available for the following system versions: * Mac OS X v10.3.4 "Panther" * Mac OS X Server v10.3.4 "Panther" * Mac OS X v10.2.8 "Jaguar" * Mac OS X Server v10.2.8 "Jaguar"
The following components are updated:
Component: LaunchServices CVE-ID: CAN-2004-0538 Impact: LaunchServices automatically registers applications, which could be used to cause the system to run unexpected applications. Discussion: LaunchServices is a system component that discovers and opens applications. This system component has been modified to only open applications that have previously been explicitly run on the system. Attempts to run an application that has not previously been explicitly run will result in a user alert. Further information is available in http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=257 85
Component: DiskImageMounter CVE-ID: No CVE ID has been reserved as this is only an additional preventative measure. Impact: The disk:// URI type mounts an anonymous remote file system using the http protocol. Discussion: The registration of the disk:// URI type is removed from the system as a preventative measure against attempts to automatically mount remote disk image file systems.
Component: Safari CVE-ID: CAN-2004-0539 Impact: The "Show in Finder" button would open certain downloaded files, in some cases executing downloaded applications. Discussion: The "Show in Finder" button will now reveal files in a Finder window and will no longer attempt to open them. This modification is only available for Mac OS X v10.3.4 "Panther" and Mac OS X Server v10.3.4 "Panther" systems as the issue does not apply to Mac OS X v10.2.8 "Jaguar" or Mac OS X Server v10.2.8 "Jaguar".
Component: Terminal CVE-ID: Not applicable Impact: Attempts to use a telnet:// URI with an alternate port number fail. Discussion: A modification has been made to allow the specification of an alternate port number in a telnet:// URI. This restores functionality that was removed with the recent fix for CAN-2004-0485.
Re:Legitimate Sales Tactic
by
AKAImBatman
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Another clever way of combatting heat is to be able to change speed on the fly, so that you match the current processing load. If you are editing code the processor can run slow and then when you compile it cranks up to full speed. This way you don't have a performance penalty but you aren't generating lots of heat the entire time.
Most processors go into "halt" mode when they're not processing anything. This automatically keeps heat and energy usage down without reclocking the chip. The chip only wakes up when it receives a interrupt that needs its attention. (e.g. Time for the next time slice.)
Re:Macintosh needs to go back to the future.
by
mattkime
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· Score: 2, Informative
Have you looked at the eMac screen? Flat, bright, and sharp are three good descriptions for it. Its a top of the line CRT.
-- Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Re:Pidgeon Holed
by
alienw
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· Score: 2, Informative
You just have a crappily run IT system at your school. At my university, they set stuff up so that your personal filespace is on a Linux server (running AFS), and all your preferences, bookmarks, and so on get saved to the network drive automatically. If you double click on the mail client, it opens your email. If you set up an icon on the desktop, or a desktop background, it will stay there when you log in on another machine. This works exactly the same on WinXP, Linux, and OSX from anywhere on campus, so it's very convenient.
WinXP is not too bad of a system, actually. It just requires a very skilled admin to lock it down and set it up for a multiuser system. Plus, the security holes are a biatch.
Re:Pre-announced
by
sjonke
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Also note that starting with the most recent security update, Apple has started including a link to the detailed list in the short descriptions provided in Software Update. Click the link and you are taking to the detailed info web page. They made it much easier to find the details.
I believe the quote was "This is a Unix system! I know this!":P
Re:Good
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Informative
You don't need to spend thrice as much buying an iMac as a building a Linux box, if you're just going to email and process words...
Re:Pre-announced
by
Graff
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· Score: 2, Informative
What degree of vulnerability does each security update affect (serious, critical, not that big a deal)? What's the attack vector? What are the workarounds? How do these changes affect other apps that may rely on them?
If you look up the CVE name for the vulnerability at the CVE website you can find links to all this and more. Here's an example: CAN-2003-0020 is one of the Apache vulnerabilities that were fixed in Apple's Security Update 2004-05-03.
Name CAN-2003-0020 (under review)
Description Apache does not filter terminal escape sequences from its error logs, which could make it easier for attackers to insert those sequences into terminal emulators containing vulnerabilities related to escape sequences.
RTFA, or at least think about it, how can they be trying to clear stock by STOPPING SALES. there is no stock, you cannot buy an iMac from Apple.
This is a fuck-up on Apples part, I assume due to the engineering problems of getting a G5 into an iMac case.
They say as much in their statement:
"We planned to have our next generation iMac ready by the time the inventory of current iMacs runs out in the next few weeks, but our planning was obviously less than perfect."
Quite candid, really.
But the new iMacs are announced for September, which is really too late to catch the school sales.
Standards don't have to be free. Something can be a standard as long as it is appointed one by the relevant standards commitee.
eg. MPEG4 isn't free.
Steve is God. Bill Gates is the antichrist.
imacs have fan now, they have fan since the advent of the firewire iMac...
my 2 unnescessary !
The reason I know because about 10 days ago I ordered a 15inch iMac for my biz. but a couple days later Apple sends me an email informing me I've been upgraded to a 17inch iMac. So right now only 17 and 20inch iMacs are in inventory, but I'm sure you can find some more at say CompUSA and Apple Stores and Apple resellers.
My original Rev. A Bondi Blue iMac has a fan...
No one got beat up more often than the mimes of the old west!
As a computer tech, you seriously need to get yourself up to date. $40 buys you a USB flash drive with the space of 200 floppy disks on it. Floppies have been worthless pieces of junk for some years now.
If your CS lab is forcing you to code in Windows, they're doing something wrong. You should be coding platform-independant C, which you sure as heck won't be getting on Windows (unless you're using a godawful DOS prompt).
What are you talking about? What does developing from the cmd shell have to do with what type of code you can write? You can write code that's just as portable in Windows as pretty much any other platform at the level that portability is reasonably maintainable (i.e. no gui's). Unless you're definition of portable means "*nix" of course.
Plus what the hell difference does it make what platform you're writing in (even notwithstanding the fact that the guys lab is using the same OS that is significantly more likely to land that person a job), the point is to learn how to code. You talk about platform independence, then you start spouting off about restricting the platform (for dubious technical reasons).
Your Google is weak, grasshopper.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
Depending upon the age of your PC, any drive. Most PCs built in the last several years can boot from a USB device. Don't know if Macs can, but I'd assume so. I've configured my flash drive with bootable OSes before, both Linux and DOS ... mostly as a lark, as (with the exception of the %$@#$$! Intel 2100 wireless drivers) I've not had need of a rescue disk for years.
If you look at this PDF file, you'll see that typical power dissipation of the 1.8 GHz G5 is 42 watts. Assuming that's 75% of the maximum, we still end up with a maximum power rating of 56 watts. In comparison, typical power dissipation of an AMD Barton running at 1.8 GHz is around 54 watts typical, 68 watts maximum; an Intel P4 at 2.8 GHz (the slowest I can find readily available where I live) is rated at 56-68 watts (same page).
The other thing to bear in mind is: that thermal rating for the 970 is based upon figures for the 130 nm process. The die shrink to 90 nm should reduce it.
I don't think cooling is a major problem. It may take a bit of engineering work, but there's nothing particularly hard, I'd imagine. Yes, it's more than they've had to deal with when using the G4, but at least they don't have power constraints (which they will when it comes time to slide the G5 into a PowerBook.)
Apple currently has two distinct case types. White for home, and metallic for professional.
The iBook, iMac and iPod are all white, while the Powerbook, Powermac and XServe are metallic.
Find funky gifts
According to the article, there is no stock. And else would they be refusing orders?
Man and Goat
Apple is famous for doing stunts like this for hype. But, I think this one might have been a flub on the forecasting. Maybe outsourcing is biting them in the butt this time.
:)
Whatever the cause, it's mysterious and it's anybody's guess. Jobs is probably whipping up a huge frenzy and they might spring it on everyone a bit earlier than they announced.
No matter what, we're all just rumor whores on this thread anyway
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Two issues here: 1) Clearing the retail channels of old inventory, and 2) Start the clock ticking on the consumer decision making process (e.g. there is a lag between when a consumer becomes aware of a product and when he/she is ready to make the purchase).
To clear the sales channels, you wouldn't really want to announce a new product because people will just decide to wait for the new product. Possibly, announcing the delay will get some consumers frustrated enough to buy an old model, but according to the article, it was an internal schedule, not a public schedule, that is running behind.
To start the clock on the decision process, you need to actually hype the new product and get people excited about buying it. In this case, they don't reveal anything about the new product, so it is hard to think about buying something you don't know. (But maybe Apple users are just crazy that way....)
The irony is, if this is an announcement of a misstep, the announcement itself is further hurting Apple's business. Apple's got great marketing and product design, but its business processes really need some work.
Not content with ripping off Watson, they've now stolen the features for another product without proper recompense and included it in their "Tiger" OS.
Not content with doing any actual research on this story, now you've propogated the misconception that Dashboard was "stolen" from Konfabulator.
For John Gruber's excellent write-up on why this "spin" is plain wrong, read here.
Oh you mean something like this incredibly detailed list of every security update ever? The one which lists the CVE IDs of the vulnerabilities and which links to the appropriate discussion of the problem?
Apple has provided this list for quite some time as you can see by looking at what was fixed. It only took me a few seconds to get from Apple's main page to locate this list.
The explanations of the security problems when you download the patches are left sparse deliberately because there are housewives, kids, grandparents, and other non-techs reading the explanations. If you had a diatribe on every vulnerability that was patched then you'll take the chance that the users might get scared off from patching just due to the geek factor required to read the update notes.
Apple does the smart thing and gives a small, easy to read blurb about the update in the download notes. Anyone who needs more in-depth information can easily find it at the Apple support webpages.
Sapere aude!
They are stopping _online_ sales. The brick-and-mortar Apple Stores will presumably still have old iMac stock.
And, this is the first time [in my experience] that an old Apple product will run out of stock before a new Apple product is shipped, so I don't expect the typical rapidly falling prices of a must-clear-stock-sale. On the other hand, maybe people will just sit on their money and wait for the new iMac, and the price will fall because of low demand.
Who knows.
Apple mails out a detailed announcement every time they release a patch or a fix for a vunerablility. Anyone can sign up with the mailing list to receive these timely announcements automatically.
Here's an example of the latest announcement:
Sapere aude!
The original iMacs had a fan, until the redesign, the iMac DV, SE and friends. Those were convection cooled. The iMac G4 always has had a fan.
I have a shitty sig!
Another clever way of combatting heat is to be able to change speed on the fly, so that you match the current processing load. If you are editing code the processor can run slow and then when you compile it cranks up to full speed. This way you don't have a performance penalty but you aren't generating lots of heat the entire time.
Most processors go into "halt" mode when they're not processing anything. This automatically keeps heat and energy usage down without reclocking the chip. The chip only wakes up when it receives a interrupt that needs its attention. (e.g. Time for the next time slice.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Have you looked at the eMac screen? Flat, bright, and sharp are three good descriptions for it. Its a top of the line CRT.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
You just have a crappily run IT system at your school. At my university, they set stuff up so that your personal filespace is on a Linux server (running AFS), and all your preferences, bookmarks, and so on get saved to the network drive automatically. If you double click on the mail client, it opens your email. If you set up an icon on the desktop, or a desktop background, it will stay there when you log in on another machine. This works exactly the same on WinXP, Linux, and OSX from anywhere on campus, so it's very convenient.
WinXP is not too bad of a system, actually. It just requires a very skilled admin to lock it down and set it up for a multiuser system. Plus, the security holes are a biatch.
Also note that starting with the most recent security update, Apple has started including a link to the detailed list in the short descriptions provided in Software Update. Click the link and you are taking to the detailed info web page. They made it much easier to find the details.
--- What?
I believe the quote was "This is a Unix system! I know this!" :P
You don't need to spend thrice as much buying an iMac as a building a Linux box, if you're just going to email and process words...
If you look up the CVE name for the vulnerability at the CVE website you can find links to all this and more. Here's an example: CAN-2003-0020 is one of the Apache vulnerabilities that were fixed in Apple's Security Update 2004-05-03.Yeah you might have to dig for some of the information but overall they direct you pretty much what you need to know.
Sapere aude!
It was UNIX. I think that graphical thing you saw in the movie was a little-known file manager for IRIX.
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.