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."

Comments

remarkable...

[npistentis]

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!

Candid

[mrpuffypants]

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?

Re:Candid

[MBCook]

My understanding was that was because of supply and inventory snafoos, they basically ended up running out of inventory too soon. This meant that they had the factories shut down (actually probably converted to the new iMac but it doesn't matter) and so they couldn't make more (without taking a major hit). So they were stuck with a major chunk of their product line out of the running for two months or more. They basically had to announce what was going on, or face being a computer company without desktop computers (eMacs are "educational", not "desktop") for two months. Yeah, that would look good.

So basically their planning didn't work out and they had to do something, this was probably their best option.

So, in a way, their hand was forced (IMHO).

neXtBox chips?

[nzgeek]

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).

Anyone know what it looks like?

[bcjanes]

I hope (fingers crossed) This. I doubt it though, Apple seems tied to including a monitor with thier consumer line :P

Apples Profits

[Lifix]

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.

Definitely get what you pay for

[MooseByte]

"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.

Here's my guess on the new iMac.

[Big Sean O]

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.

iMac G5 is nice, but so is 13000 Xserves

[Anonymous Coward]

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.