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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."
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?
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.
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.
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.
I'm not sure it's any more admirable to price-gouge because your expenses are too high than it is to price-gouge because you're greedy. After all, "expenses" includes benefits to executives while cutting out the shareholders, whereas actual profits would benefit the shareholders, as well as the execs (given that the execs grab their stake of equity as usual).
Typically they don't pre-announce so that the new upcoming product doesn't stunt sales of the current product. But in this case, they stopped selling the old one, so you might as well fire up the Hype Engine early.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
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.
That's a miniscule amount
Yes, perhaps miniscule in magnitude, but at least it's positive!!!
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?
Don't hold your breath.
This has been said many, MANY times before: Apple does not drop prices. Apple likes the price points they set. Rather than sell "last year's" model, they just add more to the current line. This keeps things simple, inventories low, and margins high.
Bottome Line: If you want an iBook/iMac/PowerBook/PowerMac/Xserve, then save your money for the corresponding price point or look on eBay.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Frankly put, Apple ran out of G4 iMacs. Either sales were better than expected, IBM was worse than expected, or both. They STILL have G4 Power Macs, having just quit making them, so they didn't want to cannibalize sales on the Power Mac G5 release. Now they want to get people excited so they keep their pants on and don't go get a Dell or even settle for an eMac before September. Besides, it's nice to let your stockholders know what's up when you have hit a mishap -- remind them that the dark cloud of no iMacs has a 64-bit silicon lining.
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.
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.
This from a maclover, so please don't kill me or something.
Error 404 - Sig Not Found
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
It takes 1 - 4 Billion USD to start up a current gen chip plant. That is the reason apple doesn't do it.
Jesus christ I'm tired of seeing speculation about this. In a thread talking about how Apple can't ship a G5 iMac, people are still talking about the mythical G5 PB. Let's all start speculating now about when the G6 desktop and dual-G5 PB will ship! Whee!
Here's why this doesn't matter at all. If you've ever spent any time shopping for a computer, you'll notice that prices on existing models always drop, and new exciting models are always around the corner. It never ends.
Either you can wait for a new computer, or you can't. You'll go crazy trying to dig for rumors and hints as to when model XYZ with the 5 terawooble whosie-whatsis will be released, instead of the 4 terawooble that's available now. Gotta have the 5! I just gotta!
But really, you don't. If you have urgent important money-making work that needs doing now, buy something now. You can sell it later when a newer model comes out that's so much better that it's worth the switch. It's not like you're going to church and declaring your lifelong pledge to use this and only this computer so long as you both shall live.
If you don't need something today, then why are you in such a hurry to buy the latest-greatest? The top end product always carries a price premium, and quite often has availability problems. You're just setting yourself up to pay extra for something you don't need.
Most vendors let you return the computer within a few days if there's a new model announcement right then, or at least they'll price-protect you if you complain enough (i.e. you get the lower price under the new model lineup, so they refund you the difference).
1.8, 2.0, and 2.5 is a bit optimistic, IMHO. I'm guessing the speed will top out at 1.6 or 1.8. Apple really doesn't like overlap in speed between their i and power product lines (see iBook and Powerbook). Also, it's looking like the new iMac will be an all-in-one with the motherboard behind the LCD which means (as has been rumored) that heat is a big issue. There's no room for the huge heatsink and water cooling needed to keep the dual 2.5 cool and silent. It'll still be a kick ass computer, though, with enough power for most home users.
Oh, and multiple Apple sources have said no G5 laptop in the near future - still too many heat/battery life issues. The G4 still has a bit of life in it if you look at freescale's (motorola's) roadmaps, which predict the current generation to scale at 1.5+ and the next gen to hit 2.0+. They're even working on a 64-bit processor.
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 hope not, simply because Apple has always overcharged for memory. You can usually get memory from Crucial for half what Apple charges. Of course, your "typical" iMac buyer may not relize this, and may just think that being ram-starved is "normal."
Thank god someone gets it.
Unlike BMW, Apple has to maintain an "Ecosystem", which includes things like 3rd party software developers, diverse user bases and so on. In order to do this, they really do need to sell some computers. (It seems obvious, but Mac Fans will frequently argue the point.)
Sometimes I wonder that after the G4 Debacle happened, Jobs just sorta gave up and they decided that they were only going to sell interior design pieces to Graphic Designers and slowly disappear into the night.
I'm not expecting Apple to take on Dell (Chevy), but when the mainstream high-end PC is a ~$1000 3-Slot Minitower, and Apple refuses to sell one of those, you have to wonder if they even care anymore. If the new iMac is positioned and priced the same as the G4 iMac, I have to take it as a sign that Apple sees no chance of ever seriously being an alternative to Wintel.
Even BMW keeps their model lineup and pricing competitive with everyone else, AND is trying to increase marketshare.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
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.
I don't know that this is the ONLY reason Apple doesn't preannounce products. After all, they don't pre-announce completely new devices (such as the new Airport Express) or new software packages (iTunes for Windows was almost a surprise).
Besides, what did they pre-announce? I think we all guessed that the iMac would be back and it would have a G5 in it. It's not an announcment, really, until we can see how they've changed the DVD Lamp's looks to match its new guts. I mean, this is Apple after all. No product is announced until there's a Quicktime 3D walkaround for it.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
so you might as well fire up the Hype Engine early
How about some customer relations engine then? Like giving a good discount to people who are stranded without a computer they want and are willing to preorder and wait?
Which card to support? CF? SD? MMC? Memory Stick? XD?
Why use a memory stick reader when you can just plug the camera in to the laptop?
I don't understand what you're on about. Powerbook already has wireless Ethernet, gigabit wired Ethernet, bluetooth, and a DVD burner. Plus firewire and USB2. I can see how you might have trouble connecting stuff to the computer. I mean, it's not like each of these ports are a different shape and only connect to one cable or anything...
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
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.
Wonder at what? Staying in business for over 25 years?
GPL Deconstructed
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
Consider the prices of the current iMacs and iBooks for a moment - The low-end iBook matches the low-end iMac in everything but hard drive space, and its $200 cheaper. You can bump that drive up to a 60gb (the iMac's is 80) for $75, and you'll still have $125 more than if you bought the iMac.
I'm not willing to *pay* $125 to be tied to a desk, are you? Maybe a few people would be willing to pay the extra for the larger, but same resolution, LCD. Personally I think the portability and $125 are worth the 3" though.
I think this probably had quite bit of influence on Apple's decision to discontinue the G4 iMacs so long before their replacements are available - the iBooks undercutting the iMacs like that couldn't have been good for sales.
Most modern PCs and laptops are just as fast or faster than the G5 and cost much less.
Sure, there is alot to be said about what you get with Apple. You get quality hardware with Apple, but so do you with a PC if you choose carefully (and it wont cost all that much more).
OSX is the only real advantage I see, but for the vast majority of people, me included, I can get everythng done in Windows and Linux very well.
I have never been able to justify the exhorbitant price of Apple equipment.
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)
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...
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.
There's a really good point to made about PCI slots and the Mac vs PC debate. Back when I was more involved with all this stuff I remember a lot of people using the argument that Macs (we're talking Power Macs here, this would be around the days of the blue and white G3s and the first G4s) didn't have enough expandability in the way of PCI. I never could understand that. You've got audio, ethernet and later on, Firewire built into the board. What more do you want? Three displays, a TV tuner, and a fiber card?
After all, they don't pre-announce completely new devices (such as the new Airport Express) or new software packages (iTunes for Windows was almost a surprise).
Your kidding, right? The Airport Express was pre-announced by over a month (it just started shipping), and they announced iTunes for Windows nearly 6 months before it was released!
I think the problem is with the initial outlay, and that there are no third-party/cheaper alternatives.
Although I've not really used a Mac (and definitaly not since waaay before MacOS X), they do look a whole lot better than Windows PCs. However even though a mac is probably better value for money, the inital cost is currently outside my (and others') price-range.
I think that's why people do go on about the price. There are probably many of us out here who'd dearly love to give a Mac a try. But the cost of the unit is too much.
(Yes, I know it's possible to buy on credit. But certainly for me I'd rather not buy on credit what I couldn't pay for quickly anyway.)
Although cheaper computers are rarely as good value for money, having a much cheaper entry-level machine can be what gets people interested/hooked. Apple, going more for the luxury market, have opted not to go that route. That's up to them, but it doesn't mean that there won't always be people who wish that a cheaper Mac didn't exist. (Especially as Windows-dissatisfaction slowly rises)
TiggsTiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
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.
Now let's see:
20" Monitor does 1680x1050 at 24 bit color. That means that the whole screen estate is at about 5MB in size. Let's be fair, and say that the screen's refresh rate is at only 50Hz. That means that you need to trasfer to the screen about 250MB/s, or, 2GBit per second. Yes, you need a 2GBps wireless link. So, yes, you can continue dreaming. Didn't wanna wake you up there.
The PowerMac G5 was announced and shown at WWDC last year, and then the first units shipped at the end of August, beginning of September. Here, on the other hand, we are merely being told of a machine's existance in a similar timeframe away from it being shipped.
What's up with that? What happened that's so bad, Jobs couldn't even demo the machine? Were these G5 shortages so bad Apple couldn't even mock up a prototype machine?
This doesn't make any sense to me.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I'd also say the quote "The processor is the most critical factor" is deliberately ambiguous. It could mean "There aren't enough of them", it could mean "They run too hot".
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Don't get your hopes up. You could just as easily say that PowerPC has "caught on" due to the huge number of PowerPC chips in cars. I would hazard a guess that more processors based on the PowerPC core shipped last year then Intel and AMD mainstream processors. Saying MS has abandoned x86 is simply wrong. PowerPC is not going to beat Intel and AMD on the desktop for the same reason PowerPC didn't take over a decade ago: backward compatibility. MS is able to switch architectures on the XBox because backward compatibility is not expected. PowerPC has always been a better architecture. It makes complete sense that MS would look at alternatives.
A pre-announcment means that they haven't started making the product yet, not that it isn't commercially available yet. The Airport Express was done and working when they announced it last month -- but factory delays meant they couldn't ship until now. Counter this with the way most companys operate -- which is announcing a product or displaying a mock up before work on the product has even begun -- and you see where Apple does things a little differently.
Also, you'll notice when Company X announces a new product, their stock price rises. When Apple announces a new product, their stock promptly falls. This is because Apple is actually an anti-company.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
This is a deliberately ambiguous statement. The question was asked twice, suggesting to me that reporters covering the event felt it wasn't a straight answer too.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
No, not like the G4 Cube, the cube was an iMac without the monitor. The thing I'm imagining is a small-form uniprocessor G5 box with one PCI-X slot, two 3.5" internal SATA drive bays, two RAM slots, onboard-everything, and a firewire-800 SuperDrive with built-in FW800 and FW->USB2 hub.
The video would be ADC-out, but DVI dongles are cheap (because ADC IS DVI with extra pins), and the thing would come with some sort of mounting to let it attach to the back of the new LCD monitors or be mounted on the underside of a desk.
All you'd have on the desk would be your monitor and the SuperDrive, which would have plugs for the keyboard and mouse (hence the firewire-USB2 hub inside the SuperDrive enclosure).
Hell, you could take it even another level: throw an iPod dock on the SuperDrive enclosure, and Apple's powered speaker port, and the WiFi slot. You'd have all your 'perhipherals' out on this nice upgradeable CD-ROM sized box on your desk, while the CPU sits in another little box behind the monitor or under the desk.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I agree with your general thoughts here, but:
a) 'Greed' connotes an avariciousness, a desire of money for money's sake, that I don't think characterizes either Steve Jobs or Michael Moore. Jobs has had many opportunities to change the kind of entity Apple is and become a much larger player in the industry, but he hasn't. Michael Moore financed his first doc by selling his house and and raising money via community bingo games, knowing it was very likely he'd never make it all back.
Both men are committed to their own set of ideals; they just happen to be profitable ideals. The word I'd choose instead of greed is 'desire'.
b) I'm not an apologist for Moore, but characterizing him as "agitating for a Cuba-like society" run by a dictator is laughable.
You mean PCI express. PCI-X is _not_ PCI Express.
My mistake. I was writing a quickie.
At least at this point in time, AGP would be a better choice.
Maybe _right now_, but in the near future having all cards and all boards running ONE kind of port just makes sense. If there's bandwidth, why not use it? It would also reduce the manufacturing costs on the chipset, motherboard, and video-card producers, because they wouldn't have to use as many different kinds of parts.
You'd be in the minority. I'm not aware of many people who think AGP caused any real "problems".
No, chipset makers have to add pins to their northbridges and design elaborate memory interconnects to feed AGP, and more to feed PCI. Killing AGP would be a step towards reducing the complexity of modern computers; it would be a step towards even smaller form-factors and lower power use. Having a single bus would reduce OS complexity and driver issues. Motherboards wouldn't have to add layers to their boards to accomodate the leads for AGP. It would make it easier to have multiple video cards as there would be a SLOT to put a second one, and it could be the same exact card as the one next to it. Eliminating the stupid use-main-memory-as-vram concept would ensure that even onboard GPUs had faster vram, and it would cut back on the issues caused by AGP apertures eating into system ram.
It's not like AGP video cards are hard to find (unlike the 66Mhz PCI video cards that you'd need
Right, but that's just because they're so popular TODAY. a switch to PCI Express would ultimately result in cheaper and more flexible computing. The beauty of my system is that I can put a NIC card in the video slot if I so desire, or a SCSI card, or whatever I wanted. With one type of slot I have more flexibility.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails