Slashdot Mirror
Apple Delays New iMac
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."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
This may have more to do with clearing old inventory in retail channels ahead of the traditional educational back to school computer bonanza.
A well timed announcement of a really sexy new iMac in August will get everyone excited, without cannibalising sales of the present generation of stock.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
Its amazing to see Apple actually pre-announce a product! This is virtually unheard of, espessially for something as important as the next gen iMac. It looks to me like this pre-announcement is the result of some terrible mistake in predicting when all parts (PowerPC 970FX maybe?) would be available.
I had one of the original Bondi Blue iMacs. While other people were praising its beauty, I thought it was kinda ugly. As a fashion statement, the blue translucent plastic seemed somehow akin to bell-bottom trousers and leisure suits. The periodic release of new machines with different color schemes seemed to support that view.
But it was a fine computer. The original iMac was a brave departure from the beige boxes we'd all become so accustomed to. The compact all-in-one design simplified things for people who don't want to invest a lot of time in figuring out how everything goes together. (You or I may feel unfulfilled with any computer we haven't built with our bare hands from raw sand, but there are plenty of folks who just want to use the thing.)
The iMac moved things forward in part by turning its back on a lot of legacy stuff. The iMac upset a lot of long-time Mac fanatics who were upset that they couldn't plug their old ADB and serial peripherals into the USB ports. Some people were aghast at the absence of the floppy drive. Now that Dell has embraced the idea of computers without floppy drives, I guess the iMac's work here is done.
Snif... Drat... I promised myself I wouldn't cry...
Thank you for your support.
I'm not sure how valid this thought is but it would seem that using Apple products in a school (talked about in the article) setting would pidgeon hole students into a very limited sector of the market.
That is moronic, and yet oddly it is used by school districts all the time to put a Windows monoculture in place. Think about it: what system could possibly be used that isn't totally outdated by the time kids graduate in 5 years? Even if you gave them expert-level training on Windows XP, Microsoft's defacto standard that enjoys a monopoly position, that "education" is down the drain when Longhorn ships. The same is true of any non-monopoly system, too. The pigeon hole playing field is pretty level.
I would have loved being able to choose to work on a platform of my choosing instead of being forced into one thing.
Kids don't know shit. Platforms of their "own choosing" are video game consoles. Teachers aren't there to follow the students' instruction; it's the other way around. What school administration needs to go with is a computer that will build a technology base for the students without causing the teachers a lot of headaches. That neither describes Windows nor Linux.
Yeah, yeah, someone says it every time. But seriously, if a company like MS did this, the same people who I see here calling this a 'legitimate business tactic' and 'good marketing' would be calling it a shallow, greedy attempt to abuse market power.
No, I'm fairly sure a lot of slashdotters would rejoice if Microsoft were to delay a product until it's truly ready. Throw in the discontinuation of the current product as well and you've got the ingredients for the declaration of a bonafide Open Source holiday.
On a serious note, I think you've fallen into the trap of thinking the specific action is what people object to. Nobody really cares about integrating a browser into the OS (although the way MS did it, technologically, was a big screw-up--but that confuses the issue, there are many instances (WebKit on OS X, Konqeror on KDE) where it's been done right). It's not the action, it's the ultimate effect the action has on the user that people really are fed up with.
Which brings us back to the topic at hand. What is the effect of Apple's announcement? Media buzz? Big deal, who cares. It doesn't quash Dell or IBM by locking them out of a market, it doesn't pull the rug out from under the consumer. In fact, it's the result of a screw up at Apple, and they're afraid of an already slow and, to some, stale product continuing to get ever more slow and stale. They've fessed up, and humbled themselves before the consumer. What they've done is take a bad situation and do the right thing about it.
This is a good thing, and if MS did it, I, for one, would find it refreshing. Sadly, MS rarely does the right thing, so I have to look to Apple (and, for other but somewhat similar reasons, IBM) for a company that I can feel good about dealing with--that the persuit of money doesn't corrupt everything it touches, as it so often seems to do (such as you see with the RIAA, MS, and Sony's ATRAC players).
Really, this is good for a lot of people. Sure, they can't get an iMac right now, BUT, this will also save them the agony of "I bought an iMac 2 months ago, and now it's a discontinued piece of obsolescense! Thanks a lot, Steve!" syndrome.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I know all of one person who is not a CSE who has opened their computer to upgrade it. I know one more who has paid the cost of a new computer to upgrade theirs (when it made no sense).
No one else's has ever been opened unless I was visiting and wanted a peek inside.
And remember; you can't upgrade PCI or video in an imac. Aside from that, they're about as expandable as one of the towers, and they come with anything a *normal* user (ie, someone who doesn't play FPS or need SATA RAID) would need built-in.
The fact that its an "all new iMac" line hints at these models being G5 based. I don't see Apple completely redesinging the iMac just to release another G4 version. This would mean another complete redesign before they go G5. IBM seems to claim that the 970FX can run at very low power consumptions and is even suitable for a laptop. I am almost certain that these iMacs will be G5 based.
d) Apple engineers are trying to get the G5 into a form factor that is up to apple standards, not Dell Standards.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
The people at WWDC (or paying attention to news about it) aren't generally an iMac market. It was a better place to focus on Tiger.