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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. "
well hopefully this will trigger an update for an apple 24" monitor as well to compete with the dell and Benq ones- as 24" has a slightly lower pixel density we could almost hope for a sane price on that one too- or maybe not
I ordered a 17" MBP about 10 days ago, and the ship date was going to be on the 13th despite being "in stock and ready to ship."
Perhaps a MacBook Pro upgrade next week, as well?
And it has FireWire-800 too (in additon to FireWire-400).
I'm not sure I understand Apple policy with FW800. Used to be there on the PowerBook... removed in the MacBook Pro (except the 17"). And it's never been in an iMac.
I like FW-800 but odds are E-SATA would be more useful in future. I have seen profesionnal cameras using the FW-800 interface (Allied technologies), but never heard about mass market ones...
When the iMacs where still somewhat new, there was a vocal crowd yelling "we want an iMac without a monitor!"
There were a lot of people saying it, and they were all very vocal. "We're not buying until we can get a headless iMac with a G4" they said
So Apple made one, and it was called the Cube.
And all the people who said they would buy a machine if this was available (the specs were pretty much exactly what was asked for), suddenly clammed up, and slowly backed out the door with a myriad excuses why they suddenly had something else to do.
I think Apple learned an important lesson that day. The most vocal group of people demanding a specific product and promising to buy it will usually not actually buy what they say they want. They are just looking to get something they can't have, and when they can have it, they don't want it anymore.
Shawn's Tech Articles
Well, considering that the monitor alone is somewhere around $700-$800, then I'm not sure where the huge price premium is. If I were trying to cut corners, no, I wouldn't buy a Mac (in any circumstances). But if you're willing to pay the premium and trade money for time (presuming that owning a Mac results in a better experience and fewer headaches -- anecdotal evidence goes both ways, but seems to skew towards saying Macs are 'better' in this measure).
I'm still not buying one, but boy am I trying to get my relatives to buy them -- no more PC support questions for me, thanks.
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
The important thing to remember is: this is not an announcement. This is HALF an announcement.
Apple has already invited the media to a special event on September 12, where it is widely expected to announce two things. The first is that the iTunes music store is now going to sell feature-length movies. And the second thing is... well, nobody is quite sure, but it is rumored to be something major. Like, for example, an new version of Airport Express that allows you to stream video as well as music. This would be a big step on the road to making an Apple a true media center.
The fact that Apple has announced its widest-screen-ever iMacs with so little fanfare is a sign that the rumor is true--that Apple does, indeed, have something pretty big up its sleeve. If Apple is indeed about to make a big step forward towards being a media center, a 24-inch iMac suddenly has a new use: it's big enough to start serving as a genuine TV replacement.
Oh, and I'm going to add one more speculation to the mix. When Apple announced that some of the features of its upcoming operating system were "Top Secret", the explanation given was that they didn't want them copied by Vista. I always thought that was a bizarre explanation--is Microsoft really going to cram completely new features into Vista in the next few months? More likely, I thought, was that these "top secret" features depend on hardware that Apple wasn't yet ready to reveal. Specifically, I hypothesized that they were media-related features that would interface with a Mac-branded PVR. I was probably over-optimistic on the PVR thing, but I may have been right that these unnannounced software features tie into a Mac-branded audiovisual device. If so, expect the announcement of the new video-streaming base station to be accompanied by an announcement of new Leopard features to take advantage of it.
Arr! Read The Government Manual for New Pirates!
I'm still not buying one, but boy am I trying to get my relatives to buy them -- no more PC support questions for me, thanks.
I told my Mom to buy a 20" iMac to replace her aged Win 95/Pentium 200. Instead she bought at 17" intel dual core, but all my tech support calls just went away apart from getting email setup (the server settings).
Then, visiting home I showed her how to use the iMac as a DVD player, and when she saw this, and how it was better than her regular TV and DVD combo, she ran out and bought the 20" on the spot! So, I ended up with a 17" intel iMac that she no longer needed. I have not touched Mac OS X for years (apart from Darwin in a server environment) but all I can say is "wow". Aqua for 10.4 is how X11 should work for Linux. Everything you need is at your fingertips, and almost every mistake I have made has been because I was over thinking a solution. Mac OS just works, and is simple to use.
And then, for us Unix geeks, there is Terminal, which brings the Bash shell and the assorted Unix tools one expects. And the GUI even has a port scanner, finger and whois built into the network settings, so you don't even need to open the terminal for those functions.
So, IMO, tell your family to get iMac's to get rid of the tech support issues, but then try one yourself. If you like Unix, Aqua shows you a Unix GUI done right.
(one caveat, the version of iMac I have before patching had a keyboard issue, so that is the first bug I have dealt with, fixed in the updates though.)
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
If you want a slick and beautiful GUI environment, Apple's going to be head and shoulders above the competition. I haven't done anything in it, but I can't help but notice that applications done with the Cocoa API all look fabulous. So if you want simulations that are beautiful, the Mac's tough to beat.
MacOS X has all commercial web development apps you need, including Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. Linux doesn't. MacOS X has the video editing market covered with superb applications, from iMovie to Final Cut at the high end. Linux doesn't.
MacOS X has a beautifully designed operating environment; Linux has been gaining, but it's still not there and probably will neverl catch up entirely, thanks to Steve Jobs' relentless attention to detail. There are some things Open source does very well (operating system kernels) and some things they don't (overall user experience). This "dirty secret" is why you see so many open lovers of open source software, including myself, using PowerBooks.
MacOS X can run nearly all Linux applications. I think with X-Windows installed there are very few that couldn't be run. I use mysql, Ruby on Rails, Perl (much less now that I've discovered Ruby), emacs, etc. There's even a nice gui Emacs nowadays.
Incidentally, in the grandparent's price comparison, he forgot to pay for Windows XP or Vista. Sure, you could put Linux on it, but let's compare two commercial OSs here. Apparently at retail it would cost an amazing $200 to get even Vista Home Basic on the machine, and then you've almost hit the price of the 20" iMac. Dell's 24" monitor is $791.10 at the Dell store, so it looks to me like once you add it, you're pretty close to the price of the 24" iMac, and you haven't even taken the time to set up and install stuff.
As someone who owns an Apple Cinema Display 23", I can say that it's worth every penny of the $1,700-odd I paid for it. I'd probably go for the 30" display now but I'm just a glutton for screen size. The 30" display costs exactly the same as the 24" iMac.
D
I love my Mac, but there are a few quirks that the average UNIX buff should be aware of (things some of my friends and I had expected as a result of a more UNIXy background):
-X11 is optional, and the standard apps don't use it. So, no you can't display iTunes over the network on your Linux box. X11 is, however, pretty easy to install. It runs like a normal app, and you can display your Linux apps on your Mac over the network without too much trouble.
-Terminal is certainly better than cmd.exe or straight xterm. However, it doesn't do tabs or any of the really whizzy stuff that you expect on your Linux/BSD box's kterm/gnome-terminal. Incidentally, what do other slashdotters reccomend as a replacement?
-You do get to use your favorite command line tools. Choose between darwin ports and fink for installing them. But, some will work a bit different. For example, you get to use cdrecord, but some of the options are a bit different because it uses IOKit to talk to the hardware. Also, gcc is a bit different...
-Dev tools are based on gcc, but have a few quirks. A lot of those quirks relate to frameworks (or Objective C). Frameworks are really whizzy library like doodads. They are also the reason why your OpenGL headers aren't where you expect them to be. So, you need a few extra #if's in your code, and a few extra switches for gcc. (especially the -framework one)
Those are the ones that strike me off the top of my head. A lot of what pisses you off about Windows and Linux will be fixed in Mac OS X, but some of what you are pleasantly used to will be different. Anybody have any other good Mac OS X "gotchas" for the average technically competant switcher that I've forgotten?