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Apple Unveils 24" iMac
beren12 writes "Apple today announced a new model in the lineup of iMacs, a new 24" HD model. It comes with a 1920x1200 LCD, 2.16GHz or 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1-3 GB Memory, 250 or 500GB SATA Drive, NVIDIA GeForce 7300GT or 7600GT with 128MB GDDR3 Video card. Also posted is a new lower end iMac, which looks very similar to the education iMac. Also available is a small speed boost to the Mini line, which now sports a Core Duo 1.83GHz Processor. "
What is so bad about the idea of a tower for ~$12oo with theose specs and the option of adding a cinema display?
The 17" iMac with 1.83GHz Core Duo processor comes in at $899. That's some seriously lucrative stuff for incoming college freshmen!
Um, I think that had more to do with the ridiculous price of the cube.
The mini is today's version of a headless iMac, and it's priced more reasonably. It's also selling better, I'm sure.
A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
1.66Ghz Core Duo in the low-end, 1.83Ghz Core Duo in the hi-end. No pricedrop though :(.
If you look at look at Apple's recent history, then you will see more often than not feature upgrades with maintained prices. Apple usually only drops prices on products they want to clear from the inventory. If you want a cheaper version of the Mac mini, they buying a recent one second hand is probably your best bet or seeing if anyone has discounted the previous model (assuming they have any left).
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
With regard to your complaints...
Graphics: The onboard video chipset does *not* make HDTV playback a problem, it was the core SOLO that stuttered during playback. I have a core duo linked up to my plasma, and it works beautifully.
CPU: The mini is the low-end machine, you can't expect the top-end processors in the low-end machines
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
...I couldn't imagine buying a computer built into a 24" monitor. If I'm gonna make an investment in a screen that nice, I'd darn sure want to be able to hook it up to any computer I had and be able to use in in a few years when I needed a system upgrade.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
The cube wasn't an iMac without the monitor. It was a PowerMac packed into a very small case.
Why it failed:
Price... period.
You could buy a cheaper and faster PowerMac for $200 less (with expansion bays [still important in 2000], space for a 2nd [or third] HD, space for a full sized video cad, etc. etc.) Benchmarks showed that the singe 400MHz PowerMac was faster than the 450MHz cube [Macworld]
In my humble opinion, the cube would have sold much better if it had been $1199 ($100 less than the iMac of the time) while having the same feature set and a nice mini-tower type enclosure. It was VERY difficult to justify the price of the Mini in contrast to the PowerMac.
It all depends upon what you do with it. For me the cost savings from using OS X over Windows is significant. The cost of using OS X over Linux is very high, since I don't think I can do my job at all without software not available on Linux. I don't know the cost of a good 24" monitor and I'm indifferent to whether on not it is an all-in-one or not. The labor cost of my assembling it all, figuring two hours for assembly, installation, and drivers/troubleshooting is also pretty damn high, considering how much I make hourly. Combined with the cost of the labor every time I do an upgrade of installing an new OS, and moving all my settings, certs, software, licenses, data, accounts, etc. instead of plugging in a firewire cable and having it all automatically migrated easily combines to pay the cost difference (4-6 hours of work usually).
Everyone has different cost/value propositions though.
why does a $2000 desktop have laptop ram and room for only 1 hard disk in it?
Old Mac mini: $500, Bluetooth and Airport for $100 more
New Mac mini: $600, Bluetooth and Airport included!
Brilliant!
(Yes, yes, I know... the new Mac mini also includes other new features too)
For more information, click here.
This would make a perfect HTPC for my living room... Think of it - hang a 24" HDTV on your wall and use it 85% of the time (for news, backround tv, etc) then when it's time for a movie, drop down the projection screen and have the same 24" PC feed your HD projector... I've thought about doing this for a while with a Cinema display and an iMac, but honestly this is even slicker!
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
And if you don't have a monitor, or speakers, or need more than 1 internal and 1 external HDD, but want a fast computer that's quiet and small (no tower). I spent $300 on a 20" monitor that maybe matches the iMac one. A 24" monitor would be at least $500. Joe, you (here and in most of your other internet comments) assume that everyone wants or needs a high-end video card and 3 hard drives. I do, but that's because I involved in amateur video, blogging, game design, and a CompSci major. My parents need a decent screen, a decent processor and a gig of RAM (for basic computer stuff) I get the Mac Pro, they (hopefully will) get the iMac.
NVIDIA GeForce 7300GT or 7600GT with 128MB GDDR3 Video card
Why should Mac users have to settle for middle of the road Video performance, yet again. 1920x1200 displays, and yet 128mb Video cards from last year that will have trouble rendering a game at the monitor's native resolution. How does this make sense?
Where is the industry leader that the Mac name was built on? Everyone waited forever for a credible OS like OSX, and now Apple's hardware lineup has gone to middle of the road crap. Why?
Please, Mac users stand up and scream at Apple for something that can at least compete with a freaking 7lb Dell Laptop. These are Macs not glorified eMachines. Argh!
You really want to call 1 putty knife and 4 screws a bitch?
How about "a touch more difficult?"
Apple is the very last of the PC companies that depends upon a hardware platform with a closed architecture as its business model; the "pc-clone" industry pretty much destroyed everyone else, proving once again that an open market will find more efficient ways to produce goods than a closed market can. Apple has chosen to leverage its proprietary architecture in a different way; rather than attempt to make machines that are exactly the same as the "pc-clones", they attempt to grab the niches that the clone makers haven't yet captured. Apple attempts to make their hardware "stylish" and "upscale" when everybody else is trying to make cheaper gray boxes; Apple goes for the completely-integrated iMac as clones become a jumble of cords and connectors; Apple pushes ease-of-use as life with Windows becomes more complicated.
But people who only buy the cheapest product don't care about these things. Only those willing to spend a little more will be willing to examine the "extras" that Apple adds to their products. Apple has explicitly chosen to market to that crowd, and has given up on the large "percentage of the market" you seem to believe they could participate in. Only an open hardware architecture could truly compete in the pc-clone world, and doing that would probably mean the end of Apple as a company...
The proof is the success of the mac mini, relative to the cube. The mini's very well priced for what it is.
Macs are for the frugal, not the cheap. Never have been. Probably never will be.
There, fixed that for you.