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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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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. .
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...
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.
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 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