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New iMac Pictures Leaked?
krimmc writes "Pictures have been posted on the internet of the supposed new mac design which will feature the guts of the computer behind the flat panel monitor. The new computers are to debut as early as next week and its creating a buzz among current apple users. News.com has also published coverage of the new design." As with most of these things, we won't really know if it's real until Apple cease and desists the website. Pictures are really crappy looking, so its hard to tell anything anyway.
Actually, the guy admitted it was a hoax - it's really a 20" LaCie in a PowerBook box. That's why the foam doesn't fit the back!
Sorry, no linkage (no French, either).
--- Egads, I glow in the dark!
Although the photos may be fake, the design is sound. A 17 inch or 20 inch LCD creates a massive space of real estate in the back -- plenty of room for a mobo, powersupply, drive bays, etc.
Cooling would only be trick if Apple insists on passive cooling (which is just the type of thing Jobs might do). Even this would not be that hard an engineering problem because the height of the monitor provides an excellent chimney effect for passive cooling. Mounting the G5 (and other hot electronics) at the base of the unit and allowing the G5-heated air to rise the height of the monitor would provide a fairly nice draft (at least 4-8 times the cooling capacity of the ill-fated PowerMac Cube). An auxillary fan might be used if needed (a large low-RPM exhaust fan in the center top could provide extra airflow if needed).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
If The Steve really objects to having a new iMac integrated into the monitor panel, it's not for technical reasons. The Twentieth Anniversary Mac was a computer integrated into a flat-panel monitor, complete with a vertical CD drive, and they made that way back in 1997! (that large box next to the TAM in that picture is just a subwoofer, the CD-ROM is right below the screen)
0 1 - just my two bits
First, I think these iMac pics are probably fakes. Just a gut instinct as a long-time Mac user. It doesn't really look much like an Apple design. I could be wrong, but only if they're striking out in some tangential direction.
Second, look at another Mac-related tidbit that made the rounds of the rumor sites just recently. It hints of a tablet Mac which is strange because the market is weak and Jobs has already gone on record saying that PDAs are not a market Apple is interested in (and possibly by extension, tablets as well?)
So what does that leave us with?
Well, Apple has recently made a relatively quiet product announcement with Airport Extreme so if I were to put 2 and 2 together, the result would be a dockable iMac, a machine where some of the components are in a base station (optical drive for one, some ports, etc.) and the screen actually rests in the base where is recharges when it's in desktop mode and can be picked up and walked around with and used like a tablet using the technology they've begun to explore with Airport Extreme.
Sounds far-fetched, but take a second look at the sketches for the "tablet" which appears to have an dock-connector similar to the iPod's on one edge. Maybe this isn't a tablet per se but the screen for the iMac G5.
My theory may be completely off-the-mark, but just following the threads of Apple's recent products, I'm lead to consider this sort of possibility.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."