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Apple Confirms G5 Based iMac to Ship in September
evn writes "Apple Insider and Yahoo News are carrying stories about Apple's 3rd quarter report including confirmation of a G5 iMac during Apple's webcast conference call to discuss the filing: 'IBM's manufacturing problems have also impacted our next generation iMac. We normally don't talk about unannounced products but we feel you need to know about the current situation. The new iMac is based on the G5 processor. We could not secure the necessary supply of G5 processors to launch our new iMac on schedule: and as we indicated a few weeks ago, we now plan to announce and ship it in september.' Apple made $61 million dollars profit on $2.01 billion dollars in Q3/04 and had the highest CPU shipments in three and a half years."
Apple pre-announcing a product, that is. Combine that with the Garfield movie, and I think we're only one very short step away from Armageddon... (but then, with such things as the Garfield movie, Armageddon can only be an improvement.)
This should clear up some of the speculation surrounding the new iMacs, and leave less people ticked off and whining about them announcing the release of them and then pushing it back.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
What Jobs didn't announce was that they had started a new initative called "iSoul" where for a small "fee" you can have a G5 imac.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Its amazing how shallow their profit margins are, even with the common perception that "Apple is price-gouging" and whatnot. But hey, kudos on the $2bn gross revenue!
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!
Cooling issues are at the heart. For those who did not catch it, Apple unloaded on IBM today during the Q3 conference call for delays. IBM promises to have its wafer problems fixed by Q1.
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This probably isn't going to be the design they go with, but, I'd like to see them bring back the old 'pizzabox' design like they had with the old Mac LC. That way it could easily paired with whatever montior (even 30" LCD w00t.gif ) But my guess is that it will end up being a variation of the current 'desk lamp' design. Whatever it is, i'm sure it will be gorgeous.
Any thoughts on how long apple can keep up results this mediocre?
Generally if a company is continually making profits, they can keep things up for oh... just about forever.
What makes you think this is a BAD thing for Apple?
IBM's manufacturing problems have also impacted our next generation iMac. We normally don't talk about unannounced products but we feel you need to know about the current situation
;)
If I were a Mac follower, I would have exclaimed:
Oh, it's still a good sign by any standard. (c) Monthy P.
I'd say for a pretty damn long time according to this line: Apple remains a debt-free company with $4.96 billion in cash.
Indeed. Apple's quarterly revenue record (Q4 1994, I think), was just over $4billion.
Or perhaps the elusive G5 laptop is being put on hold until new battery types come out?
-I am an elective eunuch.
Look what Apple comes out with on its resources. What does that say of other companies' R&D?
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
I just can't figure out what's causing Apple to be so damn candid about this shortage. In the past when things like were suspected (cough) G5 (cough) there wasn't a peep out of Cupertino.
What's causing this newfound openness?
into production when they don't even have enough G5s for the Powermacs and XServes right now. Myself, and a lot of internet posters are very frustrated with the delays in shipping. I ordered a dual g5 2 weeks ago, and if it doesn't ship out by tomorrow morning, I am just going to cancel it and build a dual opteron system I specced out on new egg(anyone have any suggestions for a motherboard?) I paid money for my computer, I expect it to be delivered in a timely fashion. I need it to get work done. It's rediculous to have to wait for 2 weeks to get something that you paid money for.
To quoth Cowboy Neal, "I wasn't born an Apple hater, I became one over time" or something along those lines.
Hopefully the new iMacs will be able to offer a less expensive alternative to the current models. I have been saving for a decent mac for some time (I'm a pc user, but want a mac for digital photography.) The inclusion of the monitor in traditional iMacs will drop the price considerably but how much is the question. Hopefully it won't be a long wait until the G5 laptops come out so I can get a mobile G5. Will the new G5 powered iMacs drive the price down on the current G5 models, or will they simply be a lower cost alternative? And what effect will this have? :-)
In nature, there are neither rewards or punishments, there are only consequences.
No matter what they do Apple can't seem to get a supplier who meets their needs. This Reminds me of the G4 roll out. They had hoped for so much but had to back-pedal due to motorola.
$61million in profits can barely drive R&D for a company like Dell or Gateway.
What R&D exactly? Did it cost them $70M to make a bunch of cheap parts overseas, throw them in a black case, and slap DELL on it?
> That's a miniscule amount when you look at the profits of just
> about any other tech company. $61million in profits can
> barely drive R&D for a company like Dell or Gateway.
>
> Any thoughts on how long apple can keep up results this
> mediocre?
Well with nearly $5billion cash on hand, and making profits... that means they'll be down to $zero in...
no, you tell me. you do the math. $5billion plus a positive number, repeatedly, and tell me when you get to zero.
Possibly that profit is after R&D costs? Unless you have a copy of their financial statment that number is useless.
LOOP1: MOV CX,2 LOOP LOOP1
I wonder if Microsoft is regretting the choice of IBM to supply chips for the next XBox*?
;-)
Or maybe it's some machevellian plot whereby MS is paying IBM big $$ to stockpile chips for them, hence reducing Apple's supply?
Or am I totally off track and neXtBox chips are fabbed at a different plant?
*NB: There's no way I'm calling it XBox2, because MS are never going to have an *2 competing with a *3 (e.g. PS3).
gadgetophile.com
Dell has a minuscule R&D budget. Dell is pretty much an Intel Distributor and leaves Innovations to Intel
This is a good strategy for them but somewhat of a problem for the Industry as the competitors needs to follow this route to maintain market share.
The result is almost no innovation in the whole PC sector.
Help fight continental drift.
Just for reference, what were the profit numbers for Gateway, say in the last two or three years? Hint, look below the X axis of the chart...
$61 million is what Apple had left AFTER costs, which include all the R&D that they do. Whether it's 6 million or 600 million doesn't tell you how big the R&D budget was.
So July brought Apple 100,000,000 itunes song sales and September will bring new G5 iMacs, but according to this article, August will bring the first newly designed iPod, which will be similar to the Mini (scroll wheel with built in buttons?) but with the feature set of the non-mini iPods and capacities up to 60 GB.
As for September G5 iMacs, there was some blurb about them being able to hang on the wall. Apple's new 20", 23", and 30" displays can (see "Mounting Kit"). Wonder if this is a mixed up rumor or for real.
It would appear, as Apple's PowerMac line is all Dual G5, that some capacity has increased and it would follow that the iMac line will all be single processor.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
These 2 announcements (new ipod) have persuaded me to keep my $$ in my pocket until the new iMacs ship.
I for one am happy, but doesn't this go against Apple's usual way of doing business?
That's a miniscule amount
Yes, perhaps miniscule in magnitude, but at least it's positive!!!
That said, what I'm really waiting for (along with half of Slashdot probably) is the G5 PowerBook. My old laptop (a 900mhz PIII) is starting to show it's age and I'm not sure how much longer I can hold out. I'd be happy even if the processor was only 1.4 ghz, that would be more than fast enough for me. The other thing I'd like would be an integrated media slot (to take SD cards, maybe memory sticks, or CF) as many notebooks seem to have these days.
So my question to the great and knowledgeable (don't snicker) Slashdot masses is: when do you think we might see a G5 laptop from Apple?
Personally, my expectation is that it will be announced sometime around X-Mas (possibly January).
I think that with lower clockspeeds (and the improvements that may show up by then) it should be possible to put a G5 in a laptop. I would REALLY like one, but I'm not sure I can hold out that long. If not, I'll buy a G4. I'm not sure I can hold out untill this time next year.
So knowledgeable /.ers, what do you think would be the most likely timeframe for a G5 based laptop from Apple?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Which could be used by 2, or more, users.
There was a story here on Slashdot about how some poor areas in Africa were getting 4 headed PCs running some *nix variant. (4 monitors, 4 sets of keyboards and mice, 1 CPU/box)
If Apple could allow people to use their own monitors and produce a headless iMac that allows wireless keyboard and mice to hook up to it (yeah. I know it would need at least 2 video cards and not the onboard, built in type Apple's consumer line always seems to have) then that would be a great product. OSX would have to be able to handle this, if not now, why not?
Think about it, it would reduce the price of the computer for families. Maybe people couldn't play Doom 3 together...or....could they with a g5 and the right hardware? But hey, it would
be cool and even at plus 1000bucks it would be cheap for the end user.
Just a thought..
Just curious - when you placed the order, and they gave you the lead time - was it over 2 weeks? Are you frustrated because they missed a deadline or are you artificially imposing one on them?
Well, consider it this way. The reason Xserves and Power Macs are shipping as well as they are (which might still be a bit hindered) is because none of them are being diverted to iMacs for a while. Getting the initial orders of the pro lines out gives them more room as sales slow a bit from the 2.5ghz intro. This little bit more slack ought to let them ship the iMacs after the delay.
Just curious, what do you do with your computer that so that a dual g5 would be replacable for a dual opteron?
I'm pretty much OS agnostic myself, but when I have a specific task in mind I have a specific OS in mind. If what I do could be done with a PC instead of a Mac, I would do it on a PC. It would certainly be a lot cheaper.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
Just for reference, what were the profit numbers for Gateway, say in the last two or three years? Hint, look below the X axis of the chart...
So Gateway's profits are going back in time? Time to invest in Gateway!
I hope (fingers crossed) This. I doubt it though, Apple seems tied to including a monitor with thier consumer line :P
Linux is unix training wheels, while BSD *is* unix.
For the quarter, the Company posted a net profit of $61 million, or $.16 per diluted share. These results compare to a net profit of $19 million, or $.05 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue for the quarter was $2.014 billion, up 30 percent from the year-ago quarter. Apple has done very well setting themselves up in several markets. First off, apple has the iPod, which brings in revenue, as well as iTunes, another device to bring in money. But Mac's best move was to jump into education, and art. Apple markets its products aggressively to schools, and from my experience with high school computer labs, as well as colleges in my area, most are Mac based. Apple has pushed "laptop schools" and has been the driving power behind them. Many universities are clustering powermacs to create low cost super computers.
The second market is art. When it comes to digital photography, the number one computer I hear reccomended is the iMac. Digital Photography is not a huge market but it is a growing one, combine that with Mac's iLife suite, iMovie and final cut pro.
iTunes, the iPod, marketing to education and towards the arts are in my opinion, a solid footing that despite "low earnings" will keep Mac around for some time.
In nature, there are neither rewards or punishments, there are only consequences.
If by "other products", you mean the iPod mini or iTunes, sure, but otherwise, I'm just not sure about that. The iPod is a digital jukebox that ended up catering to Windows users for the sake of market dominance. Windows users who come to the ipod are not forced to unlearn old habits, or give up a selection of software for the sake of having a superior MP3/AAC player, but that's exactly what you have to do if you convert to Mac. Many of my Mac friends came from a broken Windows home, and migrated because of the simplicity and stability. Generally speaking, "stability" and "simplicity" or anything else like that aren't really big issues with things like MP3 players, since most MP3 players are created equal. Not Mac bashing at all, (very happy with my iMac
In any event, I'll have a new Mac to lust over for the next few months, which is just what I needed. After all, idle hands inadvertently install Windows ME, and you know how much God hates that.
"You and your third dimension."
Ordered June 30th, Original ship date: On or before July 09, now my ship date is on or before July 27......
I paid money for my computer, I expect it to be delivered in a timely fashion.
Did'ja actually pay money for it? Or did you give them a credit card, which hasn't been charged yet? Apple doesn't normally charge you until they ship.
It's still irritating to be without your machine of course.
Oh, and it's "ridiculous", with an "i". Unless of course you're saying that waiting is making you turn red, or something.
I do bioinformatics programming. I can do it on a PC or a Mac, but I would rather do it on a mac. If however, the mac is going to take a month to ship, I would much rather do it on the Opteron, ie it actually gets here when I need it. Actually, because I got a discount with my mac, the Dual Opteron 242 runs about $400 less. A significant amount.
Next question is what are you doing your bioinformatic programming with now? If you would rather do it on the mac, then wait. If you can't wait then buy the Opteron box. Simple solutions considering the parameters you have. I vote for you going with the opteron. It will move me one step closer to getting my G5 faster. ;-)
Did'ja actually pay money for it? Or did you give them a credit card, which hasn't been charged yet? Apple doesn't normally charge you until they ship.
I got it through an Apple educational loan, so basically as soon as I got the loan I started paying for it. Had I been aware how long it would take to get me the machine, I would have not taken out the loan.
Learn to read a balance sheet. Really. Profits are reported AFTER the R&D expense is taken out.
Funny, I'm responding to this post on a four-year-old Mac which will probably stay in operation as a server until Ethernet becomes obsolete. What's this about throwing computers out?
Yeah, the Mac market doesn't work like the Wintel side of the fence. Thanks for trolling, though.
I'm wondering if there's any chance of seeing an iMac with a no-monitor option. Given the choice, for the money I pay, I'd rather not have an attached monitor. I already own a nice 17" LCD monitor.
Its nice to see them coming out with one for September. I have a P3 based system and, frankly, the new Intel and AMD lines, IMO are nothing to drool over unless you play games. Processors nowadays are so powerful that applications and the OS dictate what *you* want to do with the computer.
Windows doesn't have the versatility I would like in an OS and is too slow to come out with features. Linux -despite being fairly computer literate- is too hard for me to setup for desktop use. I'm really looking forward to see what price range Apple wants to price their iMacs at.
I'm doing it on my iMac, but it's not very speedy for what I need it for and the resolution on it sucks for use as a desktop. Right now I am looking at the 20" monitor I bought for the G5(Iiyama, not Apple :P) and it sucks only being able to go up to 1024x768 when my monitor is capable of going to 1600x1200. Yeah, I know there is a hack to make it go higher, but I heard that can cause some major heat probelms. I don't want to be without a computer at all.
This from a maclover, so please don't kill me or something.
Error 404 - Sig Not Found
Take that you "Apple is dying" writers!!!
Like Steve Jobs said "If you go ask BMW why they don't have the market share of the Toyota Tercel, they will tell you that they don't want to make that sort of automobile"
People like BMW's and pay the price for owning one, the company profits, it exists, market share doesn't mean diddly squat!
BTW, UCLA, UMaine, US ARMY, VT all building G5 Supercomputers, anyone else please?
Take a number!
Apple confirms new G5 will boast 1.21 gigawatts of power, and cost about the same!
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Anyway still plenty of time to go.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Although this sounds really nice, one thing I've noticed is that all of the previous versions (just like any lower end machine) have been pretty starved for ram, and with the G5 being a 64 bit processor, this could really exacerbate the problem. Ram prices don't seem to be getting any cheaper, so I wonder if they will raise the price and double the ram, or what. I've not worked on any of the newer generation imacs (last ones I did hardware work on were running OS 7 I think), but they are not really easy to upgrade later IIRC. This might lead some people to think the machines are much less powerful than they really are.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
Moron...
If Gateway were going backwards then they would be to the left of the Y-axis.
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
$61million in profits can barely drive R&D for a company like Dell or Gateway.
This will probably give you Accounting 101 flash backs but your R&D is an EXPENSE which is subtracted from your Gross Revenues, along with all other expenses, which gets you net profits.
Repeat after me: Profits =/= R&D
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
That's a miniscule amount when you look at the profits of just about any other tech company. $61million in profits can barely drive R&D for a company like Dell or Gateway.
:-)
And? Profits are what's left over. Apple could be spending $500 million on R&D for all I know. Considering that $61m is what's left after spending money on everything required to support the business (and more besides, I bet), it's not too bad.. except for the shareholders wanting fat dividends
If you're really in such a hurry, you could lift a finger to try to speed things up.
I just went to www.apple.com/store and clicked through the configurator for the 3 featured G5 configs. No changes, just Select->Continue->Continue from the store main page to get to the shopping cart where there's a ship time estimate.
The dual 1.8GHz: 3-5 business days.
The dual 2GHz: 3-5 business days.
The dual 2.5GHz: 4-6 weeks.
Changing the configuration delays things a bit, but not much. I took the dual-2.0GHz G5 and maxed out the RAM, HD, and video card options, and now it says 7-10 business days.
It looks to me like only the dual 2.5GHz G5 is in short supply (not surprising since it's probably the one that IBM is having the hardest time making the CPU for, though that's just my speculation). The other models aren't. Cancel your order for a dual 2.5 and get a 1.8 or 2.0 dual G5 instead, and tweak the config to your heart's content. Or, if you really really need that 2.5, wait. If you're in a tearing hurry, you could probably walk into an Apple retail store and walk out with one the same day.
Alternatively, you could buy your G5 from MacWarehouse or Outpost.com. Some of them will add RAM and stuff for you; others might not. Outpost.com says they can ship the dual 1.8 and dual 2.0 same-day. CDW says they have dual-1.6 G5's also available same day. This is right on their search results page. I didn't even pick up the phone to find this out. I searched for "G5" on Outpost.com, and MacWarehouse had a link to the closeout 1.6GHz model on their home page.
Using C|Net shopper to find the best price on a dual 2.0GHz G5 shows a list of merchants in which every single one claims to have this model in stock now.
This took me about 10 minutes of surfing to find out. Maybe you should spend a few minutes yourself since it's your computer order?
As one of the people waiting for some kind of inexpensive G5 from Apple this is amazing news. Now, if they can just ensure the screen isn't connected to the CPU I'm sure they'll sell a boatload.
...design and build their own chips. They design and build/assemble everything else, so the core compenent they should do as well. Ya, it would take some scratch, but they got it in the bank and their credit is good.
either that or buy Sun and do it right, and have top to bottom computer solutions
While 60 mil is a lot of money, it doesnt sound like a good return ... thats a pretty low percent overall.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm an idiot, I meant iBook, not iMac.....
So buckle in your corporate brainwashed compliance mode and fire up your sickly compliant Microshaft PC
You sorry dumbficksonabeeach
Heh heh.
-I am an elective eunuch.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
If you're really in such a hurry, you could lift a finger to try to speed things up. I just went to www.apple.com/store and clicked through the configurator for the 3 featured G5 configs. No changes, just Select->Continue->Continue from the store main page to get to the shopping cart where there's a ship time estimate.
The dual 1.8GHz: 3-5 business days.
The dual 2GHz: 3-5 business days.
The dual 2.5GHz: 4-6 weeks.
And when I ordered mine, it said "5-7 business days"(it was a BTO). I thought it would be shipped in 5-7 business days, it wasn't. The reason I ordered it from Apple instead of a reseller is because a) I got a discount(which without it I wouldn't even have considered a Mac, I love them, but not $2,000 for a stock config 1.8Ghz type of love), and I wanted to upgrade the video card to a 9600, which for only $40 is a pretty good deal.
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Yeah, I know there is a hack to make it go higher, but I heard that can cause some major heat probelms.
That hack works excellently. The talk over heat problems is entirely down to 'clamshell mode' where you can shut your iBook up and have it just show on the external screen. But why bother doing that? Just leave your iBook open and running as a second screen.. USB keyboard and mouse.. and you're away. I run 1280x1024 from my iBook and the temperature is basically the same.
Dual 1.6? There is no such beast. Has never been such a beast. The 1.6 GHz G5 was a single processor system; the lowest speed dual G5 you could ever buy was (and is) at 1.8 GHz.
I hope they don't count a dual G5 as 2 "CPUs" in their sales report. Talk about a way to skew numbers. Technically it would count as 2 cpus, but it would be very easy for Apple if they had a bum quarter, to switch the units from "computers" to "cpus" so they could double the numbers on all their dual processor stuff.
"Its amazing how shallow their profit margins are, even with the common perception that "Apple is price-gouging" and whatnot."
I wonder if it's more a situation where Apple took a lot of one-time charges against a good fiscal period. Minimize taxes while simultaneously "expensing while the expensing's good".
Re: the common perception of "price gouging" (not yours of course), today yet again my Gateway wintel box crapped out. 4th time in 3.5 years. Hardware failure. The Dell next to it crapped out a few months earlier. 3rd time in 1.5 years. Meanwhile my 1999 PowerMac G4 and 1995 PowerMac 7600 have chugged along without a hitch to this day.
Those rock-bottom priced consumer PCs are no bargain at all. Good components cost $$$, and on average you get what you pay for.
And yes, I realize there are quality Intel/AMD boxes out there. They also cost a good bit more than your average Dell consumer bargain box.
first computer company that does it will start a domino effect in the whole industry.
Can you just imagine windoze trying to handle four screens, keyboards and mice at once?
Talk about massive BSOD's...
The problem, though, is not the chip itself, but the manufacturing process. IBM has the highest-tech manufacturing plant for CPUs, yet the 90nm bump has them stumped. If Apple were to design their CPU, they'd still have to send them to SOMEONE to have them fabbed.
So they had $61M cash in hand left over after R&D, manufacturing, advertising and everything else that costs them money.
It's completely preposterous that some guy can make this amazingly refined mini G5 and have it universally acclaimed and Apple (in its infinite wisdom) sticks to an all in one consumer machine.
I agree. I actualy would prefer single g5 minitower priced around 1000-1200$. I want to use the monitor I have and paid good money for and that is happy attach to my g4.
Or at least make an additional video out jack to be able to dual screen the new imac.
IBM recently announced *nix servers based on Power5, which makes me wonder if some of the resource going towards G5s got diverted to P5s. They're certainly not the same chip, but the similar foundation probably means they're produced in the same plant.
Apple made $61 million dollars profit on $2.01 billion dollars in Q3/04 and had the highest CPU shipments in three and a half years
That's a miniscule amount when you look at the profits of just about any other tech company. $61million in profits can barely drive R&D for a company like Dell or Gateway.
R&D costs are, well, costs. Profit is what you're left with after you've paid your costs. Like R&D.
According to AAPL's SEC filings, it spends about $120 million every 3 months on R&D (or about 480 million dollars per year).
Dell spent LESS than that, at $464 million for R&D, even though their turnover is 6 times Apple's, and their profit is $3 billion. Relative to Dell, Apple spends wild amounts of money on R&D.
Of course, all that pales in comparison with IBM's $5 billion R&D budget, but then, IBM is also in the business of researching things that Apple uses in its products, like the G5 processor for example (hard to miss that one, really..)
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
And you're welcome.
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... most of which was stashed away in the 1980s when Apple was profitible.
I keep waiting to see where Apple might spend some of that bank account. Because over the last 4 years they haven't been using it to increase Mac marketshare.
Net income/profit = money left over after everything has been paid for, including taxes, R&D, salaries, etc.
I don't think you understand what profit is.
That said, R&D costs are still expensed before profit is calculated. This means Apple can do R&D and turn a profit, which is apaprently something the n-parent poster has a hard time understanding. They aren't even up to their necks in loans like certain other tech companies.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
Can fold my legs. More time to program!
-I am an elective eunuch.
How about just making it dual-capable, like a power book? Having two monitors is pretty neat.
... etc...
I'd like to have a PDF / PS version of my paper / figure on one screen and the latex version on the other. Or Slashdot open in one screen and
You pay in terms of choice. No, you'll likely not see a monitor option. iMacs are all-in-one systems, and that seems to be what Apple wants.
What you REALLY want is a consumer desktop/small tower. I know many, many Mac users who have been asking for the same thing for a long time. Your choices with Apple are either an consumer level all-in-one, or a workstation level tower. Those are both fine, but I do know many like you that would like a lower end tower (smaller case, less CPU, no PCI-X, etc).
However, choice is one of the things you sacrafice going to Macs. Their philsophy since, well, as long as I can remember has been they design the whole system, hardware and software, and present the package to the consumer. Means a limited number of choices in packages.
I don't find it likely Apple will change their lineup or their bussiness strategy so no, you probably won't see a no monitor iMac. If the issue is price, not space, you might want to look at buying an old G4 tower, they still sell those. At this point, the enter at about the same pricepoint as the iMac, but with no monitor (better internals though).
"Who support mac"? Is that like people who "support window" or "support linuck"?
I certainly won't apologize for Apple, but I can say that my first (and only) Dell purchase was equally frustrating. I was insulted and lied to by commisioned sales people, as the ship date slipped, week after week. The box appeared two days after I called to cancel the order.
> the Mac market doesn't work like the Wintel side of the fence
Only because the Wintel computers are so fast and so cheap that you'd have to be an idiot to brag about your sweet 500Mhz computer.
At roughly 2^32 + 1... but I can tell you right now, it'll be a while, $5 billion in cash or not, before they get to $4 trillion. :-)
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
Apple is spending on R&D obviously. They took in 2.01 billion $. They spent most of that on bussiness expenses (including R&D). and were left with 61 million. While not great, they didn't loose money.
When I was in research, IBM was spending 6 billion on R&D. But IBM is significantly larger than apple (and had some old apple employees on the payroll).
Dell and Gateway do very very little R&D. They're more business companies that package. There was an interesting article comparing HP / Dell in terms of RD.
Apple does a lot of interesting inovative stuff considering what they spend.
I think you'll find that 2^32 is actually pretty close to 4billion, so they must already have a 64bit bank account, that means they need to get $2^64 (not +1, we start counting from 0 remember, and probably so does the bank). So when they get $18 quintillion (~ $18,000,000,000,000,000,000) they will go bankrupt.
$61million in profits can barely drive R&D for a company like Dell or Gateway.
.14 a share (as opposed to Apples PROFIT of 16/share) and not including another $200 - $300 million of additional expenses due to restructuring they are pushing off until next quarter. And the sad thing was, for them this was GOOD NEWS! They expected to do worse!
Profits are what you have AFTER you pay for everything, INCLUDING research & development. The R&D is somewhere in the 2.01 Billion, the $61 Million is what was left over and sent out to stockholders.
Dell is a behemoth but Apple is doing MUCH better than Gateway which had less than half the revenue (around $800 million) and a LOSS (that would be the opposite of a "profit" ) of around
R&D will be found in P & L. Profit should appear on both documents.
The Mothership
Hmm *Whips out Calculator*
:)
2^32 = 4,294,967,296
If you were making a joke about 32 bit variables rolling over, you were off by a couple orders of magnitude
-Bucky
...and it's +5 interesting, instead of wrong.
o ld=-1&commentsort=0&tid=201&mode=thread&cid=968482 7
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=114315&thresh
MS has tons more cash, tons more money rolling in, and somehow they're going to implode. Only Apple isn't, because...well....LOOK, SHINY!
Read the whole thread - it's funny. I mean the stuff that's not trying to be funny, the "+5 insightful" doomsayers.
That's funny and all, but if you're counting via integers (and individual dollars) as 2^32 + 1 indicates... well, I hate to break it to you, but 5 billion is more than an unsigned 32-bit integer.
Seems to me that the $61 million in profits is after R&D costs, so I doubt funding that's a problem for Apple. --Ari
I think next summer I might see about saving up enough cash at work to buy one... maybe... hopefully... dang I want one...
Where did all this snow come from?
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
One iPants beta tester was admitted to the Logan County Memorial Hospital with localized burns in the groin area. He has so far refused to speak to the press, but witnesses report his last coherent statement before passing out was "I can take it! Nnngh! It's not that hot! Aaaiiieee!!"
Neither Apple nor Levi Strauss representatives would comment on the case.
When asked about the similarity between this case and the infamous coffee incident, McDonalds Corp also had no comment.
The new version of iPant will reportedly not include rivets.
I was one of those PC biggots who has been kicking around getting a Mac for the past 6 months. Speaking with Mac savy friends, they recommended against getting any Mac product in its first generation.
According to the rumor rags, IBM just got a low power version of the G5 going 3-4 weeks ago. So, assuming that Apple can crank out a power book by years end, would you want to get a first generation product?
I thought about this, and figure it will be at least 12-18 months before there is a chance of a Powerbook that I would want to purchase.
I bit the bullet, and hit the Apple store. Picked up a 15" 1.5GHz powerbook, 5400RPM hard disk, 1GB RAM, 128MB video RAM.
Completely happy with it. Have not turned my PC back on since I copied my data files from it.
Moral to the story: If you want the computer, and have the cash, buy the thing. You will probably purchase a new machine in 18 months anyway.
Did you even bother listening to the conference call? They have been adding to the cash reserve constantly given that they have no debt.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Well maybe next time you will learn not to touch MacNTrash and stop being such a MacNTosser
The last Apple product that I used until recently was an Apple 2, and that was 20 years ago. Ever since 1983, I have been using PC's. Hard core. I hated the Mac.
Got an ipod in February. It's simplicity made sense, and I thought that PC devices should be more like it. In fact, my "pc sense" of "gee, new device, lemme get the new drivers before I use it" messed up my first installation.
I had been mulling over getting a Mac since that purchase, and finally bit the bullet and got it last weekend.
Essentially, my experience with an ipod encouraged me to look at the computer products in a new light, and I purchased one.
There are some things about the Mac that I am impressed with, and some things about it that make me shake my head in disgust.
Overall, I am happy with it.
I know at least 5 other hard core "PC biggots" in the same boat.
I have a dual 2.0 G5.
It is worth the wait
cheers
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Wireless Monitor.
It will have bluetooth built in so it will sync with wireless mouse and keyboard, but the monitor will not be wired to the box. Monitor will also have a built in trackpad.
User input will be sent (via airport-like dingus) to the box, and video will be sent back to monitor in the same manner.
You'll be able to take the monitor (via built in handle) to your couch and surf wirelessly.
Monitor sets into the base station (box) to get charged and become a sharp looking desktop machine.
Monitor might be able to travel and connect to other macs wirelessly (eg: log into an wifi-equipped laptop).
Ok, that's my dream. Make it happen.
My father is a blogger.
You really should mod the parent up.. that guy IS a moron.. and who ever gave him a +5 should be beat up.
Of course they aren't counting duals as 2 "CPUs". The numbers quoted are for computers shipped... as in G5 + G4 + iMac + eMac.
duh
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
> You pay in terms of choice.
And Apple pays in terms of sales. Which were really poor for the iMac.
Sad thing is that you're probably right and Apple probably won't change it's "beautiful corpse" strategy, depsite massive consumer outcry for a real desktop Mac.
Uh, yeah. It takes a lot of $61 Millions to add up to $5 billion. Most of that cash is OLD.
Also, this move is Apple saying "We don't have any idea how to spend this money to promote our computers, so we just let it sit in the bank." Not very optimistic.
The G4s had to downgrade because of eratta in the first chips that caused problems when they hit 500MHz.
Apple can't release iMacs because their G5 sales are strong and the yield on the PPC 970 isn't high enough yet. It's a supply issue.
The G5 iMacs won't be running at 2.5 GHz either.. they'll be lower clocked G5s so IBM shouldn't have trouble getting the chips.. they are most likely getting enough chips.
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
They don't and they never have.
CPU = unit = complete system in their finical lingo.
The hard drive and power supply... most other failures are due to poor manufacturing.
" yet again my Gateway wintel box crapped out. 4th time in 3.5 years"
Nothing like good ole' statistical analysis to spot trends.
Do you gauge global warming by how hot it is outside on any given day?
It's quite a change from G4 to G5. Not just something silly like a few more MHz. I'm a eunuch--I'm patient.
-I am an elective eunuch.
What I also found really interesting was the fact they shipped 13000 Xserves (a quarterly record), in a time when they were dealing with IBM's 90 nm teething pains.
A good 40% of those Xserves were destined for clusters too.
"Either sales were better than expected, IBM was worse than expected, or both"
You forgot the most obvious.
The current iMac just isn't selling. Powerbooks are profitable, the twin G5's are doing okay, and nothing else is moving.
Apple stopped production of the current G4 iMac because the channel was stuffed with a 2 month supply. Don't believe me? Check out MacMall or any of the other online Mac outlets (or your local independant Mac retailer). They're giving rebates and having sales on iMacs to get rid of them at this point. Not huge, but today's announcement will pretty much kill off anybody but the most desperate or clueless.
I may pick up one for the kids, but I may wait for the next version anyway.
"Apple does not drop prices. "
Really? Go check out current iMac prices. They're throwing in rebates, adding goodies, and lowering prices.
The truth is that the current iMacs are pretty, but they're underwhelming and overpriced compared to entry level competition from the rest of the industry.
Its no use sputtering about how much better the Mac is (I agree), you simply can't convince someone who was going to pay $600 for a dell/hp/gateway that they should spend $1800 on a Mac. And frankly, its hard for me to understand the huge gap myself.
You have no idea what you are talking about. Apple acrued ALL their cash during the Fred Anderson era (1996-2004). The big chunks derived from a convertible debenture and a couple of well timed ARM stock sales. They paid off their debt with some of those procedes and then invested the rest wisely. Exactly none of this money is from the 1980s.
"The current G4 PowerBooks are great"
They're sexy, but two major flaws:
1) FSB is too slow on these things, which makes the entire powerbook line feel sluggish compared with the Pentium M line. I have both, and as much as I want to hate my new HP/Compaq nc8000, you can't. It has a big display, ATI graphics card, 1440x1280 (or something) so the display is gorgeous, it has a 1.7 Pentium M, and so its speedy, and the battery lasts for 5.5 hours. Apple can't touch that right now.
2) OS X supports a 2 button mouse. You can buy a 2 button mouse for the rest of the Mac line, but the integrated "mouse" in a powerbook is 1 button. This is beyond stupid, its pure stubborness on Jobs part.
I've purchased 6 Macs in the last 5 years, 2 of which were powerbooks. But I've had it with the 1 button mouse. I won't buy another until they get their heads out of their collective asses and put a 2 button mouse in the PB.
Oh, and a G5, or failing that, triple the speed of the FSB in the current G4.
$61million in profits can barely drive R&D for a company like Dell or Gateway.
IANACPA, but I'd expect that a corporation would count R&D as an expense, and therefore someething that's deducted from revenue along with all the other expenses like payroll, raw materials, rent, equipment, taxes, beer bashes, corporate jet, marketing, legal expenses, warehouses, etc. Profit is what's left over after you subtract all those things from revenue.
According to it's annual report, Apple spent $471 million on R&D in 2003. I couldn't find any statement of R&D expenses in Dell's 2003 annual report, but I did learn that Dell had about $35 billion in revenue for that year. Fool.com tells us that Dell spends about 2% of sales on R&D, and if we agree that most of Dell's revenue comes from sales, we can guess that Dell probably spends around $700 million a year on R&D.
So yes, Apple's $61 million profit for the quarter wouldn't put much of a dent in Dell's R&D budget, but neither would it come even close to covering Apple's R&D.
Any thoughts on how long apple can keep up results this mediocre?
If they want to run the company like a Dell, not very long at all. But given that Apple is not Dell, and that people have been unsuccessfully predicting its demise since the introduction of the IBM PC in 1981, I think they can keep it up for quite a while. And I hope they do, as Apple has been the most important innovator in the personal computer market for the last 28 years.
The G4 cube was a low end mac with out a monitor... It didn't do too well...
Go figure.
By reading this sig, you agree to be bound by all terms and conditions I choose.
You realize that Jobs has gone on the record as saying that he expects Mac users to be on a 4-5 year refresh cycle, right?
Go play in the street, Timmy, and let the men talk about the big things that make your brain hurt.
Dell uses the same parts as Apple, only apple puts an Apple label on them, marks it up another 30% and tells you to "think different".
Then you sit there and defend them. Sucker.
And Apple pays in terms of sales. Which were really poor for the iMac.
Umm, no. The sales were pretty darn good for the iMac. What the sales were really poor for was the machine that you are requesting that Apple make. It was called the Cube. There is a reason they don't make it any more and that is because nobody wanted one.
Finkployd
-"It seems like you're trying to exploit a security hole. Would you like help?"
Wonder at what? Staying in business for over 25 years?
GPL Deconstructed
Yeah, because the G4 Cube was such a hit....
Finkployd
I'm wondering if there's any chance of seeing an iMac with a no-monitor option.
Absolutely. And something that'll be nice about the version without a monitor is that you'll have some extra expansion options. Looks like a nice machine.
There's a picture right here.
I keep waiting to see where Apple might spend some of that bank account. Because over the last 4 years they haven't been using it to increase Mac marketshare.
I don't know about overall numbers, but over the last couple of years there has been a mass exodus to powerbooks in the higher education world. The last internet2 conference I went to the powerbooks made up more than 50% of the laptops, which is becoming a common sight at that type of conference.
Finkployd
I'm wondering if there's any chance of seeing an iMac with a no-monitor option.
Absolutely. And something that'll be nice about the version without a monitor is that you'll have some extra expansion options. Looks like a nice machine.
There's a picture right here.
My 12 year old Compaq died a few months ago, and my 6 year old Dell is still going strong. My iBook is in for repairs for the third time.
I also am privelidged to know that Sun's reputation for quality is completely nonsense. However, my 6 year old Sun machine is going just as strong as my Dell.
I'm not saying that you are wrong; just saying that you have no clue what you are talking about.
From Eweek:
IBM is developing the "Cell" processor for future entertainment consoles sold by Sony Corp.; the processor used by the "Xenon," Microsoft Corp.'s next-generation Xbox; as well as the "Revolution," Nintendo Ltd.'s next-generation console. IBM has already shipped more than 10 million PowerPCs to Nintendo for use in the current GameCube, each a 485MHz derivative of the G3 called the "Gekko."
I ordered the dual 2.0Ghz configuration last week and according to their order page it shipped and is in transit. Expected arrival is either friday or monday (though the 20" LCD that I got isn't due in for a LONG time). The dell laptop I ordered ended up being 4 weeks late. Enough said
There is no Mac article without post mentioning Macs are expensive. Sometimes, I gotta wonder if people only look at dollar amount only to decide if something expensive.
Is a $50K Lamborghini expensive? Certainly, it costs more than a KIA
Is a $20 fillet mignon expensive? After all you can get a T-Bone for much less
Is a $200 diamond expensive if you can get cubic zirconia for $100?
Isn't expensiveness relative to what you actually getting? It's shown over an over that Apple hardware can have a good price/performance/feature ratios. One just need to find comparable laptops or desktops to Powerbooks/iBooks or PM G5 to see the value. Okay, so they need to work on the iMac line. But one should not compare Macs to $200 piece of junk since Apple doesn't make low quality computers.
> The sales were pretty darn good for the iMac
Umm, reality check. The iMac was just discontinued with no replacement. Sales sucked. It was Cube#2.
(And the Cube wasn't a "low-end tower" either -- it was a overengineered, ridiclously expensive contraption, just like the iMac.)
Further reality check. They sold out of them, the replacement is the forthcoming G5 iMac.
Finkployd
YHL , HAND
Operating expenses:
Research and development
3 moths ended 3/27/2004 - $123,000,000
3 moths ended 3/29/2003 - $119,000,000
6 moths ended 3/27/2004 - $242,000,000
6 moths ended 3/29/2003 - $240,200,000
And last quarter's profit was $46 million with revenue for the quarter was $1.909 billion $4.6 billion in cash and no debt
"This is you left and that's your left. This is your right and that's your right. You're gonna die!
If they are then they are fools.
If two investors presented plans to earn $61 for you in a quarter, one requiring a $100 investment and the other requiring a $1000 investment, which would you choose? You think a company spending $500M in just R&D alone would be happy with so little profit? If it were your money you would expect better.
The reason Dell is so successful is that they measure their performance on ROIC (return on invested capital) just like you would do with your investment manager (if you had one). Dell certainly doesn't want Apple's business model with its huge capital investment requirements.
...and one of Dell's internal yardsticks is revenue per employee. Not surpisingly it blows away everyone in the industry in that measurement since it has an aversion to employing people who don't scale with volume (pure overhead employees like engineers).
/. opinion that Apple is the pinnacle of innovation and Dell does none whatsoever.
In the end, would you like to earn $250M a year or $3000M a year for your %500M R&D investment? I thought so. Curious that Apple's and Dell's R&D investments are so comparable considering the typical
Actually, Apple has been a serious alternative to Wintel for... well, longer than there's even been a "Wintel". Just ask the millions of people who have used Macs at homes, schools, and businesses for the last 21 years.
The demise of the Mac and Apple has been predicted pretty much like clockwork over all of those 21 years. No amount of good fiscal or technology news for Apple can seem to dislodge the legions of doomsayers who see Apple's immenent destruction.
Just because Apple does not dominate the personal computer operating system market does not mean that it is going to die. The PC market as a whole has grown, and the Mac is a solid niche platform with a very active developer base (which has been greatly stimulated by OS X and the excellent programming tools given to developers by Apple). The Mac is making a strong comeback in higher education, has extended its reach in professional creative markets, reached into supercomputing, and even made forays into the business world.
I doubt that the Mac is going to "disappear slowly into the night."
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Macintoshes are Macintoshes and Performas are stripped down, lobotomized, unexpandable Macs. Or Powermacs with their balls cut off, depending.
:|
Apple has the Macintosh and Centris / Performa lines throughout the 68k era. Macintoshes with the Power PC chip were called Power Macintoshes. They still came in at least four flavors- slim desktop, desktop, all in one, minitower.
Powermacs were always expandable. Performas were always limited- but most of 'em had slots of some kind. It's only with the advent of the iMac that Apple has ditched the Performa name and pretty much any possibility of internal expandability. Performa meant "crap" in a lot of circles, whereas Power Macintosh (basically, "Mac" these days) didn't.
I'm with a lot of the other posters to this thread- I'd LOVE a headless "performa" grade machine from Apple.
Actually, jeans these days have one fewer rivet than they used to have, the crotch rivet, which went away because of ``crotch rivet syndrome'' (imagine a group of cowpokes gathered around a fire on a cold night, still, quiet, peaceful, until someone shifts position, bringing a certain bit of metal in contact with a sensitive part of their anatomy)
I've heard it said they went away after Levi Strauss himself sat around such a camp file and succumbed to said experience.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
What R&D exactly? Did it cost them $70M to make a bunch of cheap parts overseas, throw them in a black case, and slap DELL on it?
I've had it up to here with your Dell bashing young lady!
If you take a look at Dell's business lines, you'll see some very impressive R&D at work.
Dell's 1U and 2U rackmounts are very well done, and the optiplex line is amazing.
Look at the Optiplex SX280
It's a 3ghz P4 inside a 12" by 13" by 3.5" case. Yet it still has 8x AGP, 6 USB ports and firewire.
Does Apple sell any machines that come with wallmount and under-the-desk mount brackets?
In response to the primary question (how come we get G5 iMacs when we can't get PowerMac G5s) - I would certainly expect the G5 iMac to use a slower processor than the high-end G5 towers, which should not be subject to the same yield issues. Basically, IBM can target 2.5 GHz, and the chips that don't cut the mustard at that speed may still be usable at (say) 1.8GHz. They can fill lower-speed chip volume with "duds" from the higher-speed production. No, they don't get all the 1.8s this way, but it does explain why IBM has constrained supply on 2.5's and Apple can still expect to launch a slower iMac.
As far as the order for the tower - did you preorder a Dual 2.5? Were you told flat out with the order "estimated ship time"? Yes, it's a brand new system, and many vendors are off on predictions for new systems. No, you haven't "paid money" for your computer. You have committed to doing so, but no funds have changed hands until product ships. To quote the AppleStore policy page:
At the time your order is placed, Apple obtains a pre-approval from the credit card company for the amount of the order. Credit card billing occurs when your order ships.
Fairly standard practice, so you're not waiting for something you paid for already. Did you sign a binding contract for delivery on a certain date? No? Well then, why do you talk that way? Sure, I'd love to have something I ordered the next day, but sometimes it happens. With Apple and new products, it tends to happen more often than not, and that is unfortunate, but don't act like it's your "right" to have something just because you're ready to have it.
-- the_Librarian
offtopic? The great failure of Apple to take advantage of Microsoft's weakness is "off topic?"
It certainly wasn't "low end", or it might have sold better. IIRC it had similar price points to the G4 Towers at the time.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
A 6400, actually.
:)
Less than a meg of VRAM. No ethernet. TWO PCI slots.
Suck city! >_
On the upside, it had a really neat form factor and a built-in subwoofer. Heavy as hell but the sound quality was really nice.
Don't worry, we all live in the same paranoid induced zealotry-distorted reality as you!
So I guess apple would sell a new G5 cube to 80% of current cube owners and then not many more.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
We don't charge you until we ship. You didn't pay any money yet. =)
-- If an artist saw things as they truly are, they would cease to be an artist.
You know, the very fact that this was modded redundant proves that Apple needs to do it!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
If they had went with the Athlon 64, this wouldn't be an issue now. First they get screwed by Motorola - big shocker there. EVERYONE who has dealt with them on processors has gotten screwed at one point in time (Atari, Commodore, Apple, etc.).
Then, they take turns bending over for IBM who is having definate supply issues. They knew this could happen - even IBM told them that it was a possiblilty. Apple simply isn't the top vendor on IBM's like.
But supply is the oft used excuse to explain why Apple never went with X86-64/AMD. And yet, AMD doesn't seem to have an issue supplying the masses, even in current high demand.
I think they totally screwed up here. By the time Apple gets their share of G5's, the traditional buying market will be missed (August/September). The students at my school will have already purchased a computer and unfortunately, it won't be a new iMac.
While I do look forward to playing with a G5 iMac, I have to say that I think they missed an opportunity here.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
I commend AAPL for selling more chips, but at the same time, they really need to get with the program and support their "environment" better than they have in the past, otherwise they risk becoming another DEC. They should use their stable OS market to develop new and exciting products that they are well known for (Ipod, Mini-ipod) because these flash-in-the-pan products can only provide so much revenue before the "PC" world catches on and starts releasing similar items of their own. Then it is back to 2 or 3% market share and they have to struggle to find the "next" greatest product to pump.
I hope that AAPL, if it ever gets a clue, will lower their prices on their hardware if they ever start gaining market share again in the OS Market.
thoughts:
1. Use current goodwill to sell more and more G5 based computers and try to fund open source projects to use PPC hardware and create better software
2. In the meantime, secretly, AAPL should be working on getting OSX ready for the x86 platform (just in case they flop). If AAPL does not want to get shelved as a consumer electronics company they need to innovate, and I'm not talking about coming out with the next IPOD. Within one year, DELL and others will have released a clone for half the price and AAPL will instantly lose half its customers because they refuse to drop the prices.
3. Put some more functionality in the next IPod revisions unless you want to lose market share. Radio, Voice Recorder, GPS, camera, PDA, mp3 player, in effect, AAPL could really really make a lot of money by putting some money into R&D for a teeny tiny laptop (with awesome AAPL design) to come out in the next few years. I sense that convergence is already happening, don't most phones have PDAs, cameras, etc on them already? PDA's are going to die very very soon. the PHONE is key to all future electronic devices. In 2-3 years, I guarantee that there will be 1 or 2 cell phones with higher battery life that can also function as radios or mp3 players. The IPOD has given AAPL a much needed boost of cash that they should be dropping into R&D.
4. AAPL is at a crossroads... x86 is really grabbing market share, but at the same time, more and more products are being put out with the POWERarchitecture. AAPL can either become another consumers electronics company (like SONY, PANASONIC, RCA) or they can put more money into their OS and software development. I commend them for the pre-compiled header support they did for gcc, but they really have to go all out for linux and concentrate on the "design" aspect as an extension for linux that they provide some support for. I'm not a business man, but having a few good backup plans is always a decent idea. They may be able to progress faster than intel because they are not bogged down by backwards support for a bizarre architecture (x86). I sense that if IBM and AAPL collaborate properly, they could gain back up to 5% market share in the next 5 years, but they really have to provide good libraries and do most of the porting themselves (or pay people in less expensive countries to do the not so fun part of porting)
Dell's 1U and 2U rackmounts are very well done, and the optiplex line is amazing.
That may be what they want you to think. I currently work as an intern for a large catalogue company and for almost the past year now we have rolled out brand new Dell hardware for all our users and servers. The desktop choice is the Optiplex GX270 and since we recently merged with another company we also deal with Optiplex GX260's now. To date I have personally built and setup about 250 Dell machines. Now, when the things work, I have to admit they run well and get the job done. But while I can count the number of computers I've rolled out, I can't even think to count the number of times I've been on the phone with tech support, had hardware replacements sent, or entirely new systems sent.
As for the servers, the racks Dell sells are freakin awful. We basically payed top dollar for a bunch of plastic and screws that NEVER fit correctly. Setting up a rack yesterday took 3 IT people about 2 hours when it probably should've taken at most 2 people (UPS's could warrant a damn forklift) about half an hour. I haven't dealt directly with the servers, but from what I understand they are very nice, so I won't go "bashing" them.
Even though I prefer the scroll button mice on my desktops, I actually find the one button design easier to use on the laptop. Two button trackpads (or even three) just seem to be very un ergonomical to use. For me it's much easier to use the keyboard modifier than to contort my fingers to do the right click. The work flow is much more smooth. But like I said, I DO find the multibutton mouse more productive on a standard mouse, just not on the trackpads.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
The 6500 came with a 300Mhz 603e CPU (almost twice the smegahurtz of Intel) and some video editing hardware.
I think it also avoided the defective mobo of the 6300/6400 (the issue which killed the Perfoma brandname and fucked Apple over pretty hard).
Sorry to disappoint you, but this info from AppleInsider indicates that the iMac will still be an all-in-one.
well it's based on BSD. You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Apple's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Apple is dead.
Join Team Mozilla #38050 Folding@home
If they had went with the Athlon 64, this wouldn't be an issue now.
You're right. The issue would be all the apps that had to be tweaked to work with X86 rather than PPC.
Slightly bigger problem than supply line issues.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
That Osborne is neat, for sure, but does it run NetBSD?
Hello! The $61 million in net profit is what Apple has left AFTER expenses like R&D. Apple currently is spending about half a billion a year on R&D, and it STILL manages to be profitable. It would help if you actually understood a quarterly statement before spouting about profits.
The IBM issue is the move to 90nm. All the x86 type chips are hitting a wall with the move to this process too. PowerPCs have actually been increasing their speed at a lot faster rate than x86s recently. They are a better chip, which is why all 3 next gen consoles, including Microsoft XBox Next will be using Power PC chips. Yes Apple have got a short term supply issue, but it's far less of an issue than moving to an inferior chip architecture would be.
See subject.
Wow, aren't you an impatient head! 2 whole weeks and you are contemplating changing to a completely different OS, and therefore application set. All the best computers I've ever had from 1982 to the present day I've had to wait a month or two for. Crappy computers are easy to get on overnight delivery.
The confusion is between gross and net margin. Their gross margins are very high on the hardware, but their high cost of sales eats most of this away. The allocated marketing (advertising) and sales cost per machine is huge as they spread their advertising over a relatively small base of machines. Dell which pushes many more machines has a much lower per-unit SGA burden than Apple (but of course starts with a lower gross margin). According to recent Business Week article, about 20% of the profit comes from interest on cash, and if they expensed stock options (to give a truer picture of the company's financial health) about another 50% of their profits would disappear.
Profits equals slash equals R&D.
BTW, the Apple claim was for Personal Computer, not Desktop Computer.
Where did you get that idea from? Apple don't publish the split in sales between eMacs and iMacs. eMacs are obvisouly popular in education - that's what the were originally intended for. But I'd be very surprised if they outsold iMacs to the consumer.
a iBeowulf cluster!!!
Acording to the conference call, Apple have double digit growth in the education market - mostly powerbooks. At the same time, the whole education market is in decline. What you have seen backs that up.
Do you believe everything you hear, especially from corporate executives??
Well the iMac has always been considered an all in one unit. And it probably always will. I would like to see a line of "Lower End" G5s with 1 of the fastest chips available and a couple gigs of ram. In a small form factor without the Extra (Or no more then 2) Empty PCI/AGP slots Just some USB and Firewire connection (front and back), A good video card, 10/100/1000 Ethernet and Wireless. Yea basically an iMac without a monitor, but shaped differently to for its lower profile use..
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Come on, that's a little disingenuous isn't it?
'Box shifting' is a much smaller proportion of Apple's R&D than Dell's. Apple are:
Client & Server OS designers/developers, usability engineers.
Application developers (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, Final Cut Express/Pro/HD, Shake, Motion, iCal, iChat, iSync, Safari, GarageBand, iDVD, DVD Studio Pro, Pro Tools, Soundtrack, Filemaker, AppleWorks, Keynote)
Codec & media creators (Quicktime, QTSS, Pixlet),
Web services provider (.Mac), plus web development provider (WebObjects).
Developer tools creator & platform maintainer (Xcode, plus Obj-C, etc)
Technology developer (Firewire, ZeroConf)
Accessory designer/provider (iSight, Airport Extreme/Express)
Media device developer + distributor (iPod, iPod Mini, iTunes Music Store).
Now, I've got nothing against Dell whatsoever, and I don't wish to belittle the work they put in to their server solutions and their desktop systems. But the scope of their business is nothing compared to Apple's line of software, hardware and services, many of which are entirely in-house creations.
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
$61million is the PROFIT you jackass, R&D's already accounted for!
If Apple stashed away $4billion in the 80's and still have it today why did they need arch-rivals Microsoft to bail them out with $200million in 1997?
Just a thought.
Where you stand depends on where you sit...
Hi. I wanted to chime in and say that I know a few people in bioinformatics (I work as a research computing technician), and they are all singing the praises of the previously-top-end G5/2.0. The guys say it is blazing fast.
I don't want to get into an Opteron/G5 speed contest, but I can say that the G5/2.5 is going to be worth the wait, unless it gets you fired. The 2.5 is apparently a linear 25% increase in speed from the old machines, with greater improvements in many cases.
(I own a dual 2.0 for home use as well, and it is awesome. I am not in bioinformatics, though just computer-nerditry. The G5 is the first desktop I've had where I say "this is overkill." Typically, I max-out the top end of the PowerMac line every two years. It's been almost a year, and I can't honestly justify the power. It is turning me towards a G5/Powerbook, whenever they hit!)
Heh, the problem is I am waiting for a 1.8, not a 2.5. They have been selling the 1.8 for a while, I thought they would have been able to get them out faster.
I actually ordered a 1.8Ghz, so I'm not sure that your conjecture holds. They seem to be having problems even getting the 1.8Ghzs into large scale production. Plus, I will say it again(in case you didn't read the other threads), I got an Apple Loan, so yeah, basically I am already paying for the computer....
Intel's x86 are hitting a wall with the move to a 90nm type chips, i think you mean?
Processor supply is the issue. More specifically, supply of G5 processors that don't produce too much heat.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/200406180 24759.html
Actually they do to large shareholders AND in this filing there were EXACTLY how many emacs iMacs PowerBooks iBooks sold. Just go to Yahoo Finance.
I've bought 1st gen powerbooks since the G3 days... I had a G3/400 (Lombard), Titanium 500mhz, and a 17" Aluminum 1ghz, now 1.33ghz... They've all treated me well, no major problems.
Minor problems have existed, like keyboard marks on the screen, and one of the keys on my keyboard came off, but, these are quick/easy fixes. I've also noticed the AlBooks sometimes don't always awake from sleep (once every month or two). Oh, and, the first-gen AlBooks' CPU fan was much more mosquito-like than the current fan. But... nothing big.
I even dropped my Titanium, which was prone to warping, and it was fine, though the bottom case was warped on the sides afterwards -- I replaced it for a couple hundred $ before I sold it, good as new.
The only first generation Apple product I regretted purchasing was the Airport Extreme Base Station. It took almost 1 year of patches before it could hold a connection in my apartment beyond a couple hours.
-Stu
Apple had around 1-2 billion or so in cash in 1997. So, NO. Apple did not need those 200 million for the money alone, but for the credibility the microsoft deal gave.
Tell them the situation, and I imagine they will either knock something off the price, or arrange faster shipping.
I contacted them about my new DP 1.8 when shipping was delayed by a day, and they upgraded me to free 2nd-day shipping. Made me happy.
Good luck!
You said in your first post that you were waiting for a dual 2GHz, retard.
I own a 12" PowerBook, but it doesn't have the PC card slot. Something had to go in order to get it into that teensy form.
I don't miss the slot. Until now, I've hooked my cameras up over the USB and FireWire ports, and most of those 5-in-1 card readers work fine anyways...
If you have the Apple Loan, you should try to get Apple to extend the price to a local store and maybe you could pick it up? You of course could also go to an Apple authorized dealer to buy w/ the loan but you'll never see the price cut you would get from Apple.
Reviews with a twist! http://www.sardonicbastard.com
Hey, don't underestimate the design costs required in slapping that DELL on the case. I remember when I first saw that logo I was blown away. The way the D curved the way it did and the sheer genious of the capital E. Three horizontal lines! After seeing it I just couldn't imagine an capital E any other way.
Blah Blah Blah Sig Blah Blah Blah
~# su -
fluffybunPassword:
At the time of the early blue and whites, I needed:
Since we couldn't get approval to purchase a PCI expansion bridge, we were stuck swapping PCI cards several times a day as we worked on projects. Meanwhile, our Apple sales and support reps kept rabbiting on about how the machines were perfectly designed for professional audio/video editing. Bleh.
"Be Happy or Die." -- AoN
I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. It's clear that Apple portions its R&D spending much differently, but Dell is certainly known for trimming fat so it's unlikely that their R&D budget is purely wasted. I think it's safe to say that Dell spends a lot of its budget making sure its products work properly in the ways high volume customers desire. Compared to Apple, Dell contributes much more there and the industry benefits. In addition, Dell doesn't perceive its image and a (non-)innovator as an issue for its market, so the money it spends there is more behind the scenes (and selectively spent).
People who perceive that Dell does nothing in terms of R&D are naiive. A company that size cannot afford not to and the numbers presented here simply bear that out. That was my point. Apple has a much more limited product line and does not have to support the breadth of hardware and software that Dell does. They can afford less spending there in exchange for significant investments in OS and application development. All told, considering the investment in R&D is similar and the profitability is and order of magnitude different, it's easy to understand where I want my money invested.
You said in your first post that you were waiting for a dual 2GHz, retard.
God I love feeding trolls, here is my first post:
into production when they don't even have enough G5s for the Powermacs and XServes right now. Myself, and a lot of internet posters are very frustrated with the delays in shipping. I ordered a dual g5 2 weeks ago, and if it doesn't ship out by tomorrow morning, I am just going to cancel it and build a dual opteron system I specced out on new egg(anyone have any suggestions for a motherboard?) I paid money for my computer, I expect it to be delivered in a timely fashion. I need it to get work done. It's rediculous to have to wait for 2 weeks to get something that you paid money for. To quoth Cowboy Neal, "I wasn't born an Apple hater, I became one over time" or something along those lines.
So please, since I am so retarded point out to me where I said I was waiting for a 2Ghz machine. I know you probably aren't very bright, and get distracted by pretty numbers like 2, I was using the number 2 as in 2 weeks. God I love trolls.
From reading some of these comments it is clear different people define an R&D department differently. IMHO I define Apple's R&D as a place where new exciting products are created, improved, or popularized(ex. firewire, Mac OS X, iLife/digital hub, Industrial Design of products, iPod etc.). Whereas Dell does an amazing job of taking existing products and making it as cheap for the masses as they can. I'm not saying one appraoach is better than the other. Personally I have 3 Macs and 1 Athlon64 machine at home. I always find new Mac products released more exciting than the Dell's stuff...
End of Line...
You too. :)
Reviews with a twist! http://www.sardonicbastard.com
If they had went with the Athlon 64, this wouldn't be an issue now.
Yeah, you're right. The issue would be the dismal performance of the PPC emulation that would be needed to run current Mac apps.
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
If the A$6,000 screen is the new 30" display, it's actually US$3,299 plus US$599 for the required video card. So the total's a shade under US$4,000.
However, in the states, sales tax is not included in the price. (I don't know if that's the case in Australia, but I know it is in Europe). When I buy mine, assuming I get it from the retail Apple store, it will cost me a total of US$4,220 including tax.
I think Apple pricing is fair for what you get, but it's certainly not bottom of the barrel cheap. I do wish Apple had a truly affordable tower, because I think I could convince a lot of people to switch if they did. If they had a $699 system that would let people reuse their old monitor, with bottom-end PCs going for $499 I think I could convince people to switch. But with their base systems going for $1,099 and up that's not easy.
By the way, I'd might as well toss out a question for anyone who knows: Can I run the 30" monitor and an Apple Cinema HD Display on the $599 card? I know I can run two 30" monitors, but that's a bit pricey even for me. I'd like to be able to still use the HD Display I already have as a second monitor.
is it possible?
D
Perhaps, but the question is: Will the G5 be able to scale to those heights of performance without:
a) Costing an arm/leg
b) Relying on shaky chip die shrink processes resulting low chip volume (current situation)
My main issue here is that Apple continues to extend themselves with this processor. IBM is the only manufacturer of the G5 series and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. This isn't the case with x86 and with a clear upgrade path to 64 bits, I think it's a missed opportunity.
Nonetheless, I really do hope IBM figures this out - I did have higher expectations of them than Motorola. The G5 is an awesome chip... When you can FIND one!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
You forgot resale value.
If I'd known then what used Apples retail for, I'd have bought an iBook years ago. You should consider doing so.
If you don't wish to buy on credit, then you're obviously thinking in the long term (avoiding interest payments = you do better in the long run). If so, being able to sell back your old computer makes your next purchase more affordable.
But this isn't the first time AppleInsider have made the prediction (with the implication that they have inside knowledge) of a new iMac that looks like a thicker cinema screen with the motherboard built in it. They made exactly the same claim 2 months before the original LCD iMac was announed, and were completely wrong.
And didn't some other rumor mill dig up a drawing of a semi-headless iMac? Sort of a dome that easily detached from the wireframe stand holding up the LCD screen.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
But your comparison also goes to show how out-of-touch Wall Street can be when it comes to the choices actual consumers make. They looked at the end of the G4 iMac supply and said "Apple won't have anything for the crucial back to school window this year." Um, again, for students in particular an iBook would be the best choice.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I hadn't factored in the cost of the video card, but in Australia tax is included in the price. I suppose if the video card's $600 in the US, it's probably about $1000 here, so the total cost would be $7000, which makes me cry.
Look out!
My out the door price for the Cinema Display HD 30" plus card is US$4,220 which is (today at any rate) AU$5,828. So the premium you're paying for living in Australia is about US$800 or so.
:-).
Don't feel too bad. My mortgage on my entry-level house here in Southern California is US$2,750. That's AU$3,798 a month. I'm betting that although I pay less for the Cinema Display than you do, you pay a lot less for entry-level housing (in a nice but not top-drawer neighborhood) than I do.
Finally, realize that the 30" Cinema Display is very much a niche product. Those who will buy it are passionate about it and so you'll hear a lot from them, but unless you're doing heavy animation or running Photoshop on enormous image files, you really don't need this kind of display. If you actually saw it, you might feel that it's a bit large even for you; it would overwhelm all but the most enormous desks.
Most people think the 23" display is enormous enough - and it's half the price. The 30" display is only for serious photographers, animators or egomaniacs like me
D
Total BS. SEC rules forbid companies giving preferential information to some shareholders and not others. Apple do not break down those figures, and a trawl of Yahoo Finance would not locate them Mr Troll.
Oh, I'm not sitting here whingeing about the fact that Apple's jibbing me of a few hundred dollars, and I don't think I would have a use for a 30 inch screen, as you say. I reckon I'd be struggling to use a rez of 1600x1200 (I'm currently struggling to fit in 1024x768, but that's because I was spoilt by an 1200x1200 virtual resoultion when I only had an 800x600 screen).
:)
So yeah. I'm just acknowledging that Apple has some reasonably-priced mid-end stuff and some premiumly-priced ultra-high-end stuff. That's the way it is. But I'm not buying any hardware till after I've seen Europe, so I don't think the issue fo prices is one I should be fretting about
Look out!
The g4 cube had the price tag of an imac. it needs to be a sub $1000 g5 box, preferably around $800.
http://www.rustyrazorblade.com
what you are paying for is the LCD and SUPERDRIVE... but you are right there is not much difference in Mhz RAM etc. But the LCD is where the cost comes into effect oh and that damn SUPERDRIVE -- please note not available on the ibook. thank you for your support.
Also, now that they have hardware with decent lifespan (i.e. no more "beige box" PCs), they don't have to replace the machines every two years.
Those two changes, coupled with budget cuts every year has led to a decline in the market. Seems kind of straightforward. It's worse than a zero-sum game. :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I work at an Apple Specialist in SF, CA. We can get dual 1.8 next day and have been able to since the announcement. Why don't you try a local resller or call on your order and have things sped up.
You also mentioned you paid good money to wait. I have not heard of anyone actually taking payment without shippment.
BTW, it will be worth the wait.
I'm pretty sure I saw an article not long ago that said the G4 iMacs were selling pretty poorly. Otherwise, I probably would have come to the same conclusion as yourself.
They broke down eMac/iMac this quarter: iMac Sales were at Cube levels
I work at an Apple Specialist in SF, CA. We can get dual 1.8 next day and have been able to since the announcement. Why don't you try a local resller or call on your order and have things sped up. You also mentioned you paid good money to wait. I have not heard of anyone actually taking payment without shippment. BTW, it will be worth the wait.
I made mine BTO(Radeon 9600XT, is that causing the holdup?), I can't get it through an Apple reseller because there no Apple resellers within 100 miles who actually has the stuff in stock(my university has iBooks and powerbooks, but they just refer you to Apple's site if you want anything else). I went through Apple's site to get the developer discount, I don't think I can get that at a retailer....
I'm starting to think that a dual Opteron system would probably meet my needs almost as well and be $400 less($500 if I can get them to refund my student dev fee)
If you really believe you can reverse engineer a modern chip like G5 to the point you can clone it by taking a look at truckload of macs, you are even bigger idiot than you already look.
Moron.
Note that shipping a dual-processor machine doesn't mean two CPUs were shipped; a "CPU" is a system unit, not a processor chip.
No they didn't break the eMac/iMac sales down this quarter or any other. That's a dead link, and there is no such story on the main arstechnica site.
I second that. At the HOPE conference last weekend, it seemed like well over half the laptops there were Apples, including mine.
The problem is, if you do x86-64 port of OS X, how will you keep people with non-Apple AMD64's from running it?
It's absolutely critical to their survival that MacOS is limited to only Apple hardware, which means they will probably never, ever, use x86 base no matter how sweet a CPU is.
Dont' quote me on it, but you should be able to drive a 30 and a cinema display from the same card. Apple's documentation for how the 30 inch display works cites a specification in the DVI standard for having dual data streams over a single DVI port, so it should be possible for your cinema display to use just a single stream on one of the ports. But, when in doubt, call Apple.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
If you search the US Patent and Trademark Office database for patents with an assignee name of "Dell Products", you get 222 patents. A search for just "Dell" yields 1089 patents, at least one of which is for "Dell U.S.A." rather than "Dell Products" but is still Dell (Round Rock, Texas, and a patent on "Apparatus and method for a combination personal digital assistant and network portable device"). Searching for "Dell Computer" or "Dell Products" or "Dell USA" or "Dell U.S.A"[sic] in the "Advanced Search" page (that's an/(dell andnot ("dell computer" or "dell products" or "dell usa" or "dell u.s.a")) - there's no "not" operator, as far as I can tell, but there is "andnot", and if you try to search for "dell u.s.a." it "helpfully" removes the final ".")) found 61 patents, some of which are, alas, for "Dell U.S.A.". About 11 of those appear to be computer-related, so I'll be lazy and assume they're for some other part of Dell, leaving 50 non-Dell patents, for a grand total of 1039 Dell Computer patents.
Some of them are mechanical and electrical patents (for the parts of their equipment that don't come out of the box from Intel or Microsoft or {fill in a BIOS vendor} or {fill in your favorite Linux distribution vendor}, some are manufacturing patents (for example, 6,714,937, "System and method for virtual setup and configuration for a build-to-order computer") - i.e., the sort of stuff that their component makers wouldn't necessarily do.
A search for patents with "Apple" in the assignee name found 1813 patents, but at least one of them (6,723,044, "Abdominal retractor") isn't assigned to Apple Computer (it's Apple Medical Corporation, Marlboro, MA, USA). If you search for "Apple Computer", you get 1777 patents; if you search for "Apple" and not "Apple Computer" in the "Advanced Search" section you get 36 patents, at least one of which has Apple as one of the assignees (5,996,057, "Data processing system and method of permutation with replication within a vector register file", which is a PowerPC patent with the other two assignees being the obvious, i.e. IBM and Motorola). About 5 of those look as if they'd be Apple Computer patents, so make that a grand total of 1782 Apple Computer (or Apple+IBM+Motorola) patents.
Of course, Apple's been around longer than Dell, so let's restrict the search to, say, patents issued in 2002, 2003, or 2004, by adding "and ISD/1/1/2002->12/31/2004". Unfortunately, doing so causes the patent search engine to take Too Damn Long to search (Safari times out the request), so let's just look for patents assigned to something with "Apple" in its name in that range - oops, that times out, too. Sigh.
OK, let's try 2004 patents, with an/"apple computer" and ISD/$/$/2004 - 70 patents. an/dell and ISD/$/$/2004 yields 78 patents, most of which look Dell Computerish.
I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide whether the number of "major" patents from Apple or Dell is higher - patents can range anywhere from a patent for a new I/O bus to a patent for a minor tweak on a hinge.
And, in the "offtopic but interesting" department, note that one of the examples on the Advanced Search page is "in/newmar-julie". I was curious whether Julie Newmar actually had any patents - yup, two: 4,003,094, "Pantyhose with shaping band for cheeky derrier[sic] relief" and 3,935,864, "Brassiere". I suspect there might be a fan of the old Batman TV show hiding somewhere in the US Patent and Trademark Office's IT department.... (And, yes, I know about Hedy Lamarr and spread-spectrum communications. Unfortunately, patent 2,292,387 was issued in 1942 and is only available in scanned form.)
Maybe he's not, but I am, and given that one of the schools I work at has 5 old powermacs running as web file, email and FTP servers from 1997 or so running system 8.1 and the only reason we're considering replacing them is because the memory on them is finaly going and it's more cost efficient to buy new machines than new memory, I'd say he's right.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
"If they had gone with the Athlon 64," dumbass.
Instead of making 98% of customers buy more PCI slots than they'll ever need, a better solution is for the 2% who need 5-6 slots to get a PCI expansion chassis: www.magma.com
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I think Gateway is at 2% so that would make Apple's 27% margins considered as healthy thank you very much. As iServices and software play a larger role in their price mix they'll go higher or they'll use the higher margin stuff to fuel greater hardware. Blah Blah Blah
Cheers to Apple!
Am I the only person here who thinks that an iMac G5 is no good?
Well, when you can get a POWER based system without the chrome tax and true UNIX, the G5 ends up being no good. If anything, the people who clamor for a lowend headless POWER3/POWER4 system ought to look this direction, since they've been around for ages. The only things you'll leave behind are the zealots and the Apple chrome case.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Um, in the near future PCI-X will REPLACE AGP. AGP was a need-based solution because PCI33@33 was just rolled-out and video was hosing the bus. The whole idea of PCI-X is that you can finally put all your devices back onto one port-type.
In my opinion AGP caused more trouble than it fixed. I've got a B&W G3 tower with a double-speed PCI port for the video card (same speed as AGP1) and It's better to have all general-purpose slots than a special one for video.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Thanks for the clarification. Most people say 'systems shipped' when they mean systems shipped, so that's a helpful heads-up.
I would pay $125 for the reliability and durability of desktop parts over flimsy laptop parts. If my iMac keyboard gets a coke spilled in it I just pay $30 to get a new USB keyboard. If my iBook gets a coke spilled in it I'm without a computer for a week or worse, my shit 1-year Apple warranty ran out and I have to buy a whole new computer. Believe me, I have a laptop where one of the keys broke and my warranty ran out. It will cost me $80 (plus FedEx shipping) to get a replacement keyboard and to install it myself I need to remove about 30 screws and every single component. The service fee for someone else to install it? $125 minimum. I'm out at least $200, probably more, just to fix a broken keyboard that wouldn't have broken in the first place if it was a desktop (I've never had one break yet). I imagine the service fees for an iBook are not much better. Yet a good USB keyboard? You'd get a damn good one for $50.
The iMac uses a standard 3.5" hard drive. I can buy a 250gb drive for about $150 from CompUSA. The iBook uses some back-assward tiny laptop drive which maxes out at 80gb and would run me about $350 from a catalog. The iMac hard drive spins at 7200 rpm. The drive for the iBook probably spins at less than 2400 to 3600 rpm (sloooooow application launch and disk cache). The iMac uses GeForce 5200 Ultra desktop graphics. The iBook uses Radeon 9200 Mobility. There is a very large difference there. The iMac includes a SuperDrive that can burn DVDs. The iBook has a normal combo drive that can only burn CDs. The cost to upgrade the RAM in an iBook is nearly twice the cost of buying RAM for an iMac.
Need I go on? I think the $125 is more than worth it.
There was an article at Apple Insider discussing the new iMac and speculating on the possible design.
It sounds like they will make a unit much like the IBM Netvista X series with the internals built in to the LCD and have no base unit. Presumably the styling will resemble the new Cinema Display monitors with a Netvista X-looking hump on the back for the internals.
I personally welcome this design if it is in fact the way it shall be. With an optional VESA FDMI mount, Bluetooth wireless keyboard/mouse, and AirPort Express the new iMac will take up zero desk/floor space aside from your broadband modem.
You did. However, that's not to say it was true. Apple's sales figures indicate that their iMac sales were significantly better than analysts were saying they were, and the analysts were where you were hearing about the poor sales figures.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Mind you, the Applecare 3-year warrantee is a very good idea for laptops.Of course, you neglect to mention that that's not an Apple laptop, because all the Apple laptops have easy-to-remove keyboards.Ah yes, the back-assward 'standard laptop hard drive'. Which tops out at 80 gigs for $250. Or you could just get a damned external firewire case for $30, and that $150 hard drive you mention. And gee, if your machine breaks, you have all your important data in your external drive, which isn't a bad idea anyway.You make my head hurt. But I do love the idea of a 2400 RPM hard drive. FYI, the iBook is a 4200 RPM hard drive, and most iMacs were 5400 RPM hard drives.Actually, it's a modest difference, but a difference nonetheless. If you're a hardcore gamer, I'd go with a G5 tower because neither of these is good enough for you. If you're not, I'd say that either of them is.Well, actually, the iMac that was being compared here only had a combo drive, same as the iBook. The iMac that had the superdrive was more expensive... just like the iBook with the superdrive.Adding a 512 mb module to an iBook: $89
Adding a 512 mb module to an iMac: $89
Noticing that both take the EXACT SAME RAM modules: priceless
(Actually, some G4 iMacs took PC2700, some took PC2100, and some took SDRAM (133), but they all took SO-DIMMs. The G4 iBooks all take PC2100 SO-DIMMs.)
I wonder if anyone actually believed anything you said? I suspect that most slashdotters giggled and tuned out when they saw you talking about 2400 rpm hard drives, but you never know.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
I may be totally wrong here.. but I was under the impression that the 30" widescreen required the use of BOTH dvi ports on the $600 card in order to function correctly.
Apple up to 1993 or so had really owned the high-quality portable market for much the same reasons they have their share of it today. They went through a long dry spell when they didn't upgrade the portables at all, leaving stuff like the "Duo 230" in the dust of their desktop machines. Then the first PPC machine was just plain crud. Even so, they could have sold more, but they had their usual supply chain problems -- refer to "G4 iMac 2004."
That and the Newton were huge bad spells for the company.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
There would be plenty of ways to make sure MacOS/X only ran on approved hardware even if Apple moved to a commodity chip. First and most easily it may require a proprietary BIOS. End of story. Even if people reverse engineer it and whatnot (like people do with the X-box) only a tiny portion of the market will go through the exercise.