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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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Must...save...money.
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.
then users will need to upgrade to a jPod and perhaps a jPaq for compatability - a great marketing scheme
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.
Maybe they decided that the current Design Style was just... shite! Back to large beige boxes that we can stack CDs on and arrange all your happy meal toys over!
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
In the education market, Apple has historically emphasized its iBook notebook PC and the eMac desktop machine rather than the iMac computer, which has a circular base and a flat-panel screen that hovers above it.
Last I checked, the iMac's flat panel was attached via a swing-arm to the circular base. Where can I find one with no arm where the LCD magically hovers above? Perhaps this is the new model in fall? The hoverMac?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
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'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.
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...
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.
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).
Surely these delays are a death knell for Apple. It is only a matter of time before they go under. 2005 will be the year that Apple dies. If not then, definitely by 2027 (or very soon after that!).
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).
...which may explain why Jon was last seen wandering around Steve Jobs' vegetable patch muttering "I know we've got to ship, but all I can come up with is these damn broccoli sticks."
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
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.
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.
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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.
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.