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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."
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Though the swinging monitor is great, the lampshade look is getting a little tired.
OT, I know, but has anyone removed the monitor and stand to use the base as a headless computer? I inherited one with a dead LCD Apple refuses to repair, the cost of replacing it isn't worth it ($400 and up) and it works fine with an external display...
I know taste is a personal thing, but I never liked the design of the current iMacs. In fact, I think it's rather ugly. I liked the design of the Cube a lot better, and I suspect it would have sold better than the G4 iMacs if it was priced somewhat saner.
As a CS student, I often wonder why are labs are all WIndows. Its a horrible OS to write software in, IMHO.
OTOH, you have to realize that 95% of students are using computers to surf the web, send e-mail, and write papers...and thats it(unless you count entertainment things like games, mp3's etc.). These are things that could be done on literally ANY platform, and are virtually the SAME on every platform. You have MS Office for both Windows and Mac, and for Linux under Crossover Office. You have Mozilla or Netscape for any of those platforms...not that using them is all that different from IE.
And nowadays, a document or picture saved on one of those platforms is going to be readable on any of the others. So a student can easily take their work home, regardless of whether they have a mac, windows, linux, whatever.
The bottom line is that generally speaking, schools should just buy whatever is the best deal. Whether it is the most widely used platform or not is completely insignificant at this point. Unless you're a CS student, you'll do your homework the same way no matter what the system is.
once you go slack, you never go back
I bought one of the flat panel iMacs the moment it was announced, about 2.5 years ago, and it still works great. The iMac was an incredible value, had an excellent screen, and a fast CPU. I know that sales have been slowing, and the design has been out there for about 3 years, but it is still has alot of potential, and is definately a good bargain.
On the other hand I can't wait to see the new iMacs (mabey i'll buy one), And 3 years is a long time for a computer design. Unless your talking about a PC where towers have been 'in' for over 10 years.
I would really like to know how this is going to affect the Apple resellers who would have a large inventory of iMacs which they would undoubtably have to lower the price on. And as we have seen, Apple is not always on good terms with its resellers
Apple has always been a pioneer when it comes to technology.. things like imac, emac, ipod and newton come to mind. Nevertheless, I think in light of pushing the envelope, Apple often refuses to consider some people don't like doing things different... and therefore alienate a good percentage of potential customers who would buy a product if they made one that was applicable to the way they do things TODAY.
A good example of this is the emac, which is a great computer but is overkill for the tasks of checking email and cruising the 'net, and too inflexible to do things like operate with external music devices (ie MOTU).
Apple currrently sells Emacs for $799. That's pretty cheap, but I think Apple highly underestimates what the public really wants. Most people want a computer that is expandable, and can accomodate things internally (or at least have the option to).
Most people have a monitor of sufficient size to meet their current needs, but have a computer that is too slow. Out of these, most would probably end up re-using their old monitor if it weren't for the fact that Dell generally bundles it in with the package.
I would gladly give up the CRT in the Emac for a cheap Macintosh tower that has slots for expansion, and places to put those extra hard drives.
My guess is many people would change to a mac if it was cheap enough (which I believe the Emac is appropriately priced), and eliminating the CRT wold more then likely offset the cost of adding slots and materials for the drive space.
This is just my two bits, but I believe both of those bits are on, so I guess that's my three bits. .
i get what you mean... my (not so clear) point is, however, that schools will always buy whats chepest, rarley whats best and nevr whats wost interesting - which is why, in many schools, you end up with a hodge podge of mixed up and poorly maintained pc (and curriculum for that matter)
i've seen a few schools try to go all linux - only to find that they don't have the expertise to manage them - this is where apple have always been strong in the education market, not only do they provide education with discount pricing, they often provide training and services at a price point education can understand (and its well marketed to them)
We have no windows only machines in the labs, they either dual boot, are linux only, or are G5s. So it does seem to depend on where you attend. Our network is managed by the department, and largely by student, however, people are fighting to keep it this way, if college IT gets hold of it, I dread to think what might happen.
Apple as been a very secretive company in its past, which is absolutely bad if you wanna get in the entreprise market which Apple has now started to try. Even the media market can't deal with secrecy anymore, it's fun to be surprised but it might cost you a lot by realizing the new product fits way better than the old for less money.
Anyway, thing is, Apple should always do this, maybe not a year in advance but a few month is good, let's hope this isn't just a reaction to a problem but the beginning of a new attitude...
Please back this up by pointing us to instructions that show how to boot a PC from a USB drive into DOS and run a simple task such as repartitioning the hard drive.
Which drive in particular would allow this? Please tell us.
wbs.
Huh?
It seems Apple has been changing their entire product line so that they all have aluminum casing. They changed the iBooks so that they had them. Then the Power Mac G5 had one. The iPod minis have them. The new displays all have them. Maybe they're going to change the iMac casing as well.
It isn't true at all, if you go through their 10K report you'll see that they hold about 16-18 days worth of inventory.
The average person doesn't even keep up with release news. None of my 200 clients or so had even heard that there was a World Wide Developer Conference or that Apple had introduced new displays.
The real reason is supposedly two fold.
IBM is JUST NOW catching up with demand on PowerMacs for the G5. This computer will most likely be a G5. Demand is expected be met within the next few days to a week and then production in Taiwan on the new design iMac (most likely with a G5 but definitely with an IBM chip) will begin.
We'll most likely see 1.6 1.8 and 2.0 single versions - the iMac will become Apple's single processor line and the Pro line will be it's dual processor line. As you can imagine, that's a lot of chips to produce.
Apple is changing it's patterns, instead of building demand only to not ship and customers losing interest, they are building interest THEN shipping on time. This has pretty much been on the advice of IBM - and after the intro of 2.5 Ghz G5s and the backtrack on 3Ghz.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Dunno about anyone else, but in the picture box for the article is a picture of the Sony HD-based MP3 player (mentioned yesterday).
Maybe this is how Sony plans on selling it? Confusing people about it being an Apple product?
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Personally I use a Mac these days, it's bootable off the iPod plugged into the firewire port, so I don't need any more than that.
Some people were aghast at the absence of the floppy drive. Now that Dell has embraced the idea of computers without floppy drives,
That doesn't mean shit; the original floppy-less iMac came out in *1998*. Now, the omission of the floppy drive could be justified nowadays (assuming you can boot from the USB key), but 1998 was a long time ago, and I think the decision was wrong at the time.
The fact that the majority of (original) iMacs I've seen had an external drive would seem to bear this out.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Not true! Voltage and clockspeed both influence hot hot a processor runs. Many people that want to run fanless for noise reasons will buy a fast processor and underclock it so that it will run cool.
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.
It's really not a hot processor, so anyone who knows the basics of cooling a computer can handle it.
You seem to be oversimplifying the problem of cooling a G5 in the space of an iMac. Maybe once you've mailed in your solution you can tell them how to get one (or two!) into a Powerbook as well.
Lasers Controlled Games!
The Apple (retail) Stores have plenty of iMac inventory. The announcment was intended in large part to make sure they aren't out of iMacs two months from now.
Before you chastize others about not reading carefully, you might consider the meaning of the word "inventory." You got it wrong.
One is by *far* the lowliest number, unless we're talking about the beloved Stupida Mouse.
... and honestly, is anyone here reading slashdot without a scroll wheel?
Think about it, you've got Five fingers on your hand, and you happen to do something where Macs are supposed to excel in, say Photoshop. Hotkeys are great for your left hand on the keyboard, but your right hand, on an Apple mouse, is only able to use one if its five fingers for any functional purpose.
I'm sure it's possible to design around this, just like its possible to not use hotkeys, but in the long run taking advantage of the fact that humans have 10 fingers and not one would probably benefit productivity.
This isn't just an online sales thing.
Tech Data and Ingram have been out for quite a while now. The dealer where I work hasn't been able to get either iMacs or eMacs for a month now - from either distributors or direct from Apple.
I've got customers who are PISSED that they don't have machines that were ordered a month ago. We started selling them used CRT iMacs as temporary machines so that they won't have employees sitting on their hands.
I think if anybody still has these machines, they can count on getting above MAP right now.
the parent to this parent did do some homework, but they didn't bother to actually look for .09micron thermal numbers. The low end chips now (1.8 and 2.0GHz) come in at about half the thermal output of the .13 micron chips. They could easily fit in an iMac, thought the fan may spin up more often.
Just to put the new chips into perspective.. The max wattage for a 2Ghz Pentium-M is higher than than typical for the 1.8 (and I think 2.0) G5 cpu. PM, the darling of big punch - low power only runs cool at 600MHz.. when it's cranking, it's in the same league as the new G5.
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
eMac... get a freaking eMac
My other car is first.