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iMacs Freshened with 2.0 GHz G5, Bluetooth, WiFi
amichalo writes "Apple has updated the popular consumer level Mac, the iMac G5.
So better support the now standard Mac OS X Tiger, Apple has made significant improvements to all standard configurations including 512MB RAM, Radeon 9600 128MB graphics, and on 2.0 GHz models (17" and 20"), a slot-loading dual-layer 8x SuperDrive is standard. The 1.8 GHz 17" model includes a slot-loading Combo Drive.
Also standard are Apple's AirPort Extreme 802.11g WiFi and Bluetooth. Pricing remains at $1300, $1500, and $1800 respectively for 1.8 GHz 17", 2.0 GHz 17", and 2.0 GHz 20", though 2.0 GHz models include additional upgraded features.
These improvements are significant as this line has not seen a refresh in about a year and the upgrade to a Radeon 9600 graphics card will allow the new iMac to take better advantage of Tiger features such as Core Image, which is significant because the video card cannot be upgraded. Lastly, Apple is continuing the interactive chat and QuickTime support program for the iMac G5."
Must be Slashvertisement Day ..
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
Does it have that puzzle game with the apple logo? Best game on the mac.
my AdBlock doesn't seem to be working correctly. I still see ads on Slashdot.
Any tips or regexps I can use?
Freshend - is that like Freshmeat for your backend? Uh, wait, on second thought... that's really naughty...
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
just to clarify.
they've also update the emac
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
is that it now comes with gigabit ethernet. It basically makes this machine usable in a variety of environments such as graphic arts and rich media where throwing around tons of data is a daily fact of life.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
"So better support the now standard OS X Tiger,..."
Or else!!
I ordered my iMac in September and it arrived in October. I wasn't the first, but I wasn't far off. OK, it may be 7-8 months since the line has been introduced, but isn't that statement a little 'glass-half-empty'?
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
No no no. It's FreshenD a new daemon that works in conjunction with LaunchD to add a fresh pine scent. It is used in conjunction with the new iSmell software/hardware introduced in the latest iMac.
Whell, I gess litteracie be over-reighted, these dayz. Who needz, it, huh? Seeing others miss-uze the langwidge, like me do, haz brightend up my day!
Am I missing something or is the PowerMac severely under spec'd and overpriced compared to the new iMac? I mean the iMac even comes with a display. I really wish they would take a look at improving the PowerMacs price / performance. It is sad when the iMac outpowers the PowerMac and comes in at the same price even after the recent PowerMac updates. These are the latest specs from the Apple store:
iMac $1,499.00
17-inch widescreen LCD
2GHz PowerPC G5
667MHz frontside bus
512K L2 cache
512MB DDR400 SDRAM
160GB Serial ATA hard drive
Slot-load 8x SuperDrive (double-layer)
ATI Radeon 9600
128MB DDR video memory
56K internal modem
PowerMac $1,499.00
1.8GHz PowerPC G5
600MHz frontside bus
512K L2 cache
256MB DDR400 SDRAM
Expandable to 4GB SDRAM
80GB Serial ATA
8x SuperDrive
Three PCI Slots
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
64MB DDR video memory
56K internal modem
Mods: it's a joke. Phil Schiller is Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. Sad that I had to explain that to (hopefully) avoid being modded "Flamebait"
What about DVI? Is it now part of the iMac? This is my personal long awaited feature. Without DVI it's only half the fun. A second display is always a good thing.
Why is it that when someone (rightfully) comments on the level of English employed here, people will moderate them down? Isn't correct language usage important? More proof that 90% of /. moderators are ignorant, humourless wankers.
Until today, the eMac G4 could outperform the iMac G5 due to some low level issues, see http://www.macintouch.com/perfpack/comparison.html .
If it hasn't been fixed, the eMac may still give better bang for buck. If this matters to you then hold off buying until you see an accurate performance comparison.
I'm very pleased to see they have finally started shipping 512 Mb RAM as standard as this has to be considered the minimum to see OS X in its full glory. The prices to go to 1GB are much better, $125 extra for 1GB using up both DIMMs and $175 for the memory in one stick, leaving you free to buy the additional elsewhere (if you need it on this level machine).
It leaves me puzzled why they are still shipping 256 Mb on the Power Macs (why, why?). However, this looks like a very sensible feature improvement which should provide the perfect all in one home machine and stop the iMac from having their sales canibalised by Mac Minis at the lower end. Sadly my previous generation iMac, which is now 4 years old, is still running perfectly, especially now it has Tiger, so this may still be a hard sell to buy this year.
I'm running WOW on a 2x1.8 G5 with 1GB RAM and a Radeon x800. I run WOW as a 1600x1200 window with mail, firefox, itunes, and eyeTV open as well. Normally, I get a good 30-40 fps with every option maxed, including the terrain distance. The only time I notice any slowdown is really when I have eyeTV open and playing a TV show. I would really recommend though to go with the x800, or an x850 as they are coming out soon for the mac. Also, a quieter card cooler might be a good idea, as the stock ATI fan kinda kills the whole "quiet mac" thing.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
because you are cheap?
The cool thing about this imac is that the bluetooth, airport extreme and ethernet card are all included in the base price, which was not the case previously.
You will never have experience until after you needed it.
Make a better double-sized Mac Mini now!
2GHz PowerPC G5
667MHz frontside bus
512K L2 cache
512MB DDR400 SDRAM
160GB Serial ATA hard drive
Slot-load 8x SuperDrive (double-layer)
ATI Radeon 9600
128MB DDR video memory
56K internal modem
Sam
Mod points are not given to anyone who has ever posted a +5 Funny comment or otherwise made anyone laugh. Only those with absolutely no sense of humor are allowed to moderate comments, around here. (And when I get mod points, it's always when I'm hungry, grumpy, or otherwise unwilling or unable to find anything funny.)
I paid $2400 for a Powerbook a year ago, and you know what I got that I can't get on any PC?
I enjoy using a computer again. A bargain.
i'm tired of fucking dumb ass macs.. i dont care how good they are, i'm not paying $1300 for a Mac that isn't even CLOSE to their higher end models..
You probably think that the 1000 pc. socket set at Walmart is fantastic. I mean, look how many sockets you get!
Quality over quantity, sweet teats.
"My problem with iMacs is the following: there is no separation between the monitor and the computer."
Then don't buy one.
"...I highly doubt that an iMac will be useful after 4 years."
Depends on who you are and what you do. I did a website for a guy when the 266 MHz iMacs were brand new. (1999, 2000?) He bought one at the time and still uses it to this day. As long as his email works and he can visit his site and a few others, he's happy.
Besides, it'll *always* work as a kick-ass DVD player. Add an eyeTV and it's a PVR. I mean, it's not like you have to throw it away once you get a new machine.
"Ultimately, I do not care about the speed of my CPU, because sitting in front of a computer is the last fucking thing I want to do after working 60 hour weeks."
Then why are you buying computers at all?
"With iMacs, you seem to pay for both: a computer and a screen."
Well duh. But compare the price to a base PowerMac and it's suddenly pretty impressive. Other than expandability and small differences in bus speed, max RAM, etc., the iMac has it all over the base PowerMac.
"Why bother? You can pick up a nice 20" LCD from Apple for $800 ($700 if you can get educational discount) and that is all I want."
Then buy it. Sorry, but your 'rant' is really lame--"Mack trucks are stupid. I'll never need to haul that much. I'm buying a Prius instead."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
To break existing 800 MHz iMacs! Those damn things just keep running!!! How is a self-respecting hardware junkie supposed to talk his wife into letting him purchase the latest and greatest from Apple, when they just keep working :-(
We have two matching 17" LCD, 800 MHz iMacs, purchased in November, 2002. They have run 24x7 since we purchased them, with the exception of the power outages caused by the hurricanes in September of 2004.
No matter where you go... there you are.
Now Apple needs to do something about the Mini. 256MB of ram is an insult, especially if they start shipping them with Tiger in the near future. It wouldn't suck to update the video to the 9600 too so CoreImage can be better utilized. Go ahead and leave the drives smaller and the CPU 2.0, but at least take care of the memory issue.
A "sub $500" mac looses it's luster real quick when you have to stuff memory on top of it just to get decent performance. When they almost never leave stock 1.25/Gh/40Gb models at 256MB in the Apple stores, Best Buy, and Comp that says something about the performance.
This is a common problem:= 665&pid=25 29
http://www.sudhian.com/showdocs.cfm?aid
I don't think they were using "quality" capictors.
I also have an entire series of imacs where I work that almost every one has had a hard disk failure. Granted they are 5 years old, purchased in 2000 and are only 400mhz. But started failing one by one after we purchased them, 1 or 2 every month until almost all 60 had hard drives replaced.
Both Xserves I had purchased has had bad slot loading cdrom drives that I had Apple replace. I tried the firmware update that supposidly fixes the problem, but the drives still did not work.
Powerbooks with the same type cdrom seemed to be having similar problems. Ended up sending the drives in to be replaced.
We have had several other Macintosh Computers that could not keep time even after firmware resets and battery replacements.
I have had lots of bad memory, capicitors, and power supply failures -- much higher than all other computers combined (PCs, PPC IBM Servers). Failure has increased with newer models.
Apple used to produce quality computers back in the early 90's that would last for years. Now they are on par with emachines or packard bell.
We purchase many computers and it is not uncommon to see entire series of Macintosh Computers to have to same failure again and again. That does not mean a consumer can see this because he or she may have the "lucky" computer that is not the lemon.
APPLE, PLEASE GET BACK TO QUALITY!
Hey, how's the Tiger upgrade work out on your 3.6 GHz machine? Snappier? 64-bit support working for you?
macgamestore.com, there are several other games. I read this piece of news from mac world this morning.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Keep in mind that there are only so many parts in the iMac G5 - you can basically break it down to: SATA drives, PSU, Midplane, Inverter, Display (+ memory). Things that are separate parts in many machines but not the iMac G5: video card, speakers, bluetooth, antennae, modem, fan(s), cables, and sometimes even the processor(s) and ports.
Considering that drive and LCD failures are unlikely to be heavily seen in any computer's first 6 months on the market, it's not surprising that most of the failures we hear about are the Midplane or PSU. PSU is an easy one - "won't power on/won't stay on." Inverter typically presents itself as a "no backlight" issue. That leaves a laundry list of problems that all reside on the midplane: Fans stop spinning, unit overheats. Fans spin too fast constantly, too loud. No AirPort signal. Bluetooth not recognized. Video scrambled. Ethernet port not working. Memory not recognized. Kernel panics on startup. Bad FireWire port. No sound. ALL of these require replacing the midplane.
My point? Not all iMac midplane failures are equal, and unless they are all failing for the same reason at the same point, there is no larger issue. Apple simply chose to put "the whole computer" on the midplane, so yes it gets replaced more frequently than many other parts (there are hardly any other parts to replace!), however from a customer service standpoint it makes repairing your own computer a heck of a lot easier. There are really only so many parts to go bad in an iMac, and surprise, a few of them have. Also realize that this computer has been flying off the shelves since day 1, so there's going to be a larger number of reports than usual. Add to this people who were shipped a PSU to replace and really needed a midplane, or vice versa, but consider the problem a 'dual failure' because both parts ended up being replaced (I've seen this case a lot online). This was a failure on Apple's support end to accurately identify the problem, but nonetheless does not constitute a dual-failure epidemic. The iBook G3 logic board recall, on the other hand, represents a specific widespread failure that manifests itself in the exact same way every time.
Sorry to go on a bit of a tirade, but I really feel that - like with the iPod 'battery issue' - the majority of iMac owners are happily enjoying their purchases and the fact that anyone with a sad story and no technical knowledge can post to a website really tends to have a run-away effect in the Mac community. It would be nice to see more people address these failures with some consideration for how the thing is built.
His comments don't really display much in the way of "insider" knowledge, but they are usually factual, so he gets modded up as "Informative" a lot, which is the way moderation is supposed to work.
I don't think he's an Apple guy of much significance. For all we know he works the "genius bar" at a really, really slow Apple Store somewhere, and surfs slashdot to kill time... if he works for Apple at all.
Whatever the case is, he can claim to be whoever he likes. It doesn't matter. What matters is that his comments tend to contribute to the discussion, while your comment is just whining flame-baiting.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
http://www.apple.com/imac/specs.html Looks like it is still 400
Why by a "fucking dumb ass mac when you could get an AWESOME PC" for the same money?
"What can you POSSIBLY do that you CANNOT do on a regular PC?" Many things. I'll tell you.
I guess I'm using my computer for different things than you are using your computer for.
There is no way to get anything even remotely approaching the functionality, power and ease of use of GarageBand 2.0.1 on a PC, at any price. If composing and recording music is a priority for you, and it's the main reason I'm buying a new computer, an iMac is a huge value. GarageBand 2.0.1 is FREE.
Not to mention iMovie and iPhoto. How much extra money would you have to pay to add a program as good as iMovie HD to your PC? It's free on the Mac. Would your PC come stock with a FireWire port (the big-plug kind) with power-over-FireWire? That would cost you extra money. All models of Mac have them stock.
Then there's the little fact that you don't have to worry about viruses or spyware on a Mac. They don't exist. Besides, the OS is secure enough to keep such threats away. How much money and time and grief do you spend defending your Windows PC from these scourges? I don't give them a single thought.
The operating system of the Mac has much better and more readable on-screen display of fonts, and better scalability when you want to zoom in. I consider the ease on my eyes and lack of fatigue, and more precise display, as big plusses. There is no way to get these on a Windows computer regardless of the graphics hardware or monitor being used.
I could go on, but you're an inarticulate troll who can't use decent language to discuss something you obviously have no clear concept of in your clouded little mind.
Go ahead, buy a Mac for once in your computing career. You'll enjoy it. You might actually get some work done. We won't tell your friends at the bowling alley. We won't call you a sissy, or tell your mother. We promise.
Oh, how bourgeois! This is an Apple Macintosh! The FreshenD feature would never be used to exude a smell of something so crass as pine! Macintosh users expect and demand more, and the FreshenD daemon delivers--a light, ethereal scent with notes of jasmine and citrus, evoking memories of a mountain lake after a spring rainfall.
Maybe you're thinking of Microsoft's SmellMe feature (which is rumored to be included with Longhorn). It's a shame--they throw all this money at this cool new feature, but it winds up smelling like a freshly cleaned toilet.
Your mind is squeezed by a blast of pain!
It's a German present participle, which means "to make fresh or cause to be in a state of freshness." In other words, "das freshende iMac" means "iMac: the freshmaker!"
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
... in the habit of signing their name to their words, at least he had the guts to do that.
But lets not dwell on the snide tone of your comment. Have you ever tried to get work done on a Mac vs. Windows/Linux PC? I have done serious work all three and I rate the OS.X as first (and it took a major step forward with Spotlight), Linux comes in as a quite close second (largely because it is a bit chaotic and less polished than OS.X) and Windows comes in at a distant third and it's saving grace is mostly the fact that it has a larger and more varied flora of applications than the former two.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
You can add a new HD to an iMac, and upgrade the RAM. Both are user installable parts. As is the airport card if you don't already have one.
And yes, the HD and RAM are standard parts, not proprietary Apple stuff. The Airport card is proprietary though.
... then why are you posting about how much you hate them?
I think the answer is that you *do* care, and being a PC fanboy, you hate the fact that Apple are making real strides and doing things that Microsoft can't seem to (like stick to their OS schedules).
Realistically, this doesn't impact you in any way whatsoever, as you've got your PC, and you're probably happy with what you paid for it.
So why do you hate the concept of the Mac so much?
Is it because you hate anything *different*?
Is it because it threatens to invalidate your choices?
Face yourself - you care, and the proof of that is in your post. You're coming across as someone who's upset about something that really shouldn't affect you.
Oh - to your 'point'... I'll go out on a limb and say that most Slashdot readers know about technology - where it's been, where it is now and some vague idea of where it's going next. Most people are reasonably well educated around here. They're capable of making their own choices, and they're capable of making informed choices.
Apple are gaining a lot of mindshare around here because they're doing a lot of things right. OS X is the best OS out there, and is actually innovating. People can read the source code for Darwin if they like, and contribute to it if they want to. Macs are easier to use than ever, and people like that.
What can we do on our Macs that you can't on your PC? We can forget the computer and use the things as the tools they are. I don't have to screw around on my iBook to get things working, or to maintain the system integrity. The OS takes care of that for me. I don't have to worry about it. I can get on and just use the apps to get stuff done.
I've used computers since 1981 (when I was 10), and I've seen pretty much everything that's happened in the industry. I've used Windows since 3.1, and before that DOS, CP/M, Amiga-OS and others. I know what I'm talking about. In my view, OS X is the current pinnacle of operating systems. People are noticing it, and people are buying Macs.
If you don't like it, you'll have to learn to live with it.