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Apple Store Reopens With Many New Products
An anonymous reader writes "After being down for a couple of hours, the Apple store reopened this morning. All of the speculation has turned out to be a reality with Apple dishing out many new products and among them are; iMac 20", three iMac 24" models, two Mac Mini models, and two Mac Pro models — with one including an ATI Radeon HD 4570 graphics card. Also as rumored, there was the new Airport Extreme, and Time Capsule in 1TB. The Mac Pro is the granddaddy of them all. The lower-end Quad Core system includes a 2.66Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor, 3GB of memory, 640GB hard drive, 18x double-layer Superdrive, and a NVIDIA Geforce GT 120 with 512MB of memory priced at $2,499. Finally, we have the 8-core system which includes two 2.26Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors, 6GB of memory, 640GB hard drive, the 18x double-layer Superdrive, and of course the NVIDIA Geforce GT 120 with 512MB of memory priced at $3,299."
Wake me up when they make a nice, expandable, mid ranged desktop class Mac. I still think that's the big gap in their lineup.
After the disaster that was my ATI card that came with the first generation Mac Pro (2 Warranty replacements for over heating and continued issues even after that, Thankfully they released the NVIDIA 8800 GT for the thing) I would never EVER trust a high end card in my Mac again.
markets.
Man are the fanbois belly aching on many of the bigger sites. What shocked most is that prices for the new machines went up and in some cases a lot. An example comparing old aussie prices to new http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=7199753&postcount=164
What is missing is...
LED screens on the iMacs
Blu-Ray (of course no one really expects it)
Quad Cores
Mac Mini got its update but the price is absurd as well.
For those of us who are still upgrading (I have an older 2.13c2d white model) some selected upgrades push ship times out four to six weeks (like buying an ati 4850 chipset)
Amazing that what Apple considers affordable is getting more extreme. Consumer level goods are professional level pricing.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
An example comparing old aussie prices to new
Apple is an American company. How much of this price change is due to the fluctuations in exchange rates?
There's two Mac Mini's, one is more expensive ($800) but one is less expensive ($600), just to compare I spent $700 on mine about a year ago or so. Granted that it would be way more attractive and competitive (and reasonable) at $500 but its still not too bad if thats what you're looking for. As for me I'm just waiting till ASUS releases a $200 eeeBox as the ultimate XBMC/Boxee pc to hook up to my TV
I can't find out from Apple's page - do the new Mac Minis come with a bundled remote control? Because I'm thinking of putting one under the TV - especially with the low power draw at idle, the ability to do 1080p without breaking a sweat, and the firewire 800 port that will tell my external hard drives to spin down when not needed. Heck, this could probably handle my Time Machine backups for the other macs in the house while serving 1080p. Now if only Apple would rent HD Movies to this machine. Sadly, they still only rent HD to the Apple TV. ---matt
The majority of their Macs, iPhones and displays are manufactured, assembled and shipped straight to their destination from Asia. The only parts of Apple that is really American is their R&D and sales and marketing parts, the rest was outsourced years ago.
Instead of looking at the Pound-Dollar relationship you probably want to take a closer look at the relationship between the pound and the currencies of South Korea, etc.
You do for most Dell and Lenovo products.
- oZ
// i am here.
an increase in price, and not a minor one.
The entry level Mini now has 128 MB of video RAM, but a shared one as before and with still 1 GB RAM total.
Then again, you get even more of these USB ports than before - great, isn't it? Especially considering the price jump of 100 euros over here in Europe.
But at least one good thing: Apple did not throw out Firewire from the Minis, so we should probably praise them for this, day and night...
Weaker video all around next to the old systems and a even bigger mac pro rip off $2500 for a core i7 based system with ONLY ONE CPU and nvidia 9500 video as the GT 120 is a 9500. What a ati card pay $200 more for a 4870 512 makeing it cost $150 + $200 = $350 makeing it about $100 more then other places you can get core i7 systems with better base video and the same cpu speed FOR ABOUT $1000+ less some even with 6gb of DDR3 ram. And why mini DP on a full size video card why not full DP with a DP to mini DP cable?
The old $1,199.00 $1,499.00 level imacs used to have ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT with 128MB memory and ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB with a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS with 512MB memory in the $2,199.00 one now they have slower and weaker NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics on board video in the $1,199.00 $1,499.00 ones and NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 with 512MB memory in the $2,199.00.
The mac mini is still a ripoff $599.00 for 1 GB OF RAM? $50 more for 2gb and $150 more for 4gb?
# [Add $150.00] for a 2.26 cpu
120GB is still small.
The $799.00 mini has the same 2.0 cpu but 2gb of ram and a 320gb hd. It should have at least 128 - 256 vram that does not come from system but it does not.
For about $500 you can get a X2 7750 and 790gx board with 128 side port ram with 4gb of ram apple should of put more in to the mini.
How many people who would buy one would upgrade it? At the mid range you can get a pretty good (Windows or Linux) laptop, or iMac, or Mac Mini. High-end, sure, you want to put in the latest and greatest video card, or USB 3.0 card, without buying a new box. But any other expansion? Why not use USB? Or bluetooth? Most devices will work Well Enough that way. The EyeTV HDTV tuner is USB and works fine.
A Mac Mini looks to be a decent media center if you get a wireless keyboard+mouse and download HandBrake+VLC. A better AppleTV than the AppleTV, since it comes with a DVD player. The 24" iMac is Good Enough for anyone who isn't a media producer. It's certainly a decent software development machine, although a Mac Pro is better since it can do multiple screens.
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Reread what the grandparent said: In certain markets. The price of the Mac Mini has gone up by a fair amount in the UK. None of the current lineup looks particularly enticing, but I still have 18 months left on my MacBook Pro's warranty, so I don't have to worry about replacing it any time soon. I'm starting to think that my next machine won't be a Mac though.
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Apple never dropped prices for the UK when the dollar tanked against the British Pound, but this rise is due to fluctuations in the exchange rate (which sees the British Pound more or less back to where it was against the dollar before the dollar tanked)? Hell, I'm a heavy Apple user and I'm not even that much of an apologist!
The new Mini is expensive, and there's little justification for it at that spec level.
Why not just build one yourself? With the right case, power supply and fan, you could probably build something for around $200-$250 with a full-blown Core 2 Duo and 1 GB of RAM or so.
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I am disappointed to see that the new iMacs don't have quad cores, although I'm a bit heartened to see they at least support up to 8 GB RAM. An imac quad core would be a great virtualization machine. I think Apple has missed the mark to not go quad core -- at least in the high imacs -- considering these models will likely be out for 9 months to 12 months. I'm also disappointed that prices didn't drop a bit considering the current market conditions. To ask folks to put down $1200 to have an all in one solution may be a non-starter nowadays. If you want a Quad core mac, you have to pay $2500 -- and for that you get 3GB RAM. Wow. Anyway, I can understand why there isn't fan fair here -- these are pretty minor speed bumps. These were much needed so I'm glad to see them arrive, but in the absence of new innovation, these speed bumps are decent today, but in 6 months they are going to be quite far behind.
If you've bought an iPod touch or an iPhone in the past 2 years, apple has a free program called "Remote." It lets you browse all your music/movies from iTunes over wifi, do coverflow from your mini to the iWhatever, etc. Then you tap on your movie/music and it plays it through the computer.
It absolutely love it; It can be found in the App Store.
This is exactly why I have not considered Mac as a viable option for me. The video card offerings are just not current enough. Why is it that everything else in the system is relatively high end and the video cards fall off the face of the planet on the low end or mid-range at best?
Until they either offer a base system with either NO VIDEO CARD (choose your own later) or something in the GTX 200 series, I can see no point in buying one. And what's up with the single HD4870, why not at least offer an X2? High end everything else and then crap for video card makes a nice workstation, but it's an insanely underpowered gaming rig. And at the price range of the Mac Pro, the only reasonable thing to compare it to is gaming class systems.
Fear is the mind killer.
The lower-end Quad Core system includes a 2.66Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor, 3GB of memory, 640GB hard drive, 18x double-layer Superdrive, and a NVIDIA Geforce GT 120 with 512MB of memory priced at $2,499.
Since they don't come with a monitor, the profit margin on these things must be around 50%. Wow!
The hardware is typical mid-range stuff: decent hard disc, low-end GPU (renamed 9600GSO) and mid-high end CPU (renamed i7 920). Including a high quality motherboard and PSU, that would cost around 900 dollars at retail. That leaves a healthy 1,600 for the case, OS, software and peripherals.
Honest question: Who buys these things?
How much of this price change is due to the fluctuations in exchange rates?
Well, I'm not sure how it works in other countries, but here in Australia the price seems to be pegged at an advantageous rate (for Apple) and that is that. There is no room for negotiation: you either want the product or you don't. This is IMO one of the more distasteful aspects of Apple's business model.
Their model doesn't annoy me enough to stop me using my second-hand MacBook, since I find it complements my (linux) desktop machines quite comfortably, but my approval isn't required...
I like the new keyboard that ships with the iMac -- basically a wired version of the compact wireless keyboard.
even if apple wanted $500 for osx you can still build a better system for less.
Looks like Apple has finally moved on from FireWire 400, as all the new products only have FireWire 800 ports. About time -- two different FireWire ports was starting to get annoying, although it does mean you'll need to get an adapter for old stuff.
Weaker video all around next to the old systems and a even bigger mac pro rip off $2500 for a core i7 based system with ONLY ONE CPU and nvidia 9500 video as the GT 120 is a 9500.
God damn Nvidia and their stupid naming schemes. I thought it was a 9600GSO.
Can't they just settle on one scheme? For anyone who doesn't follow GPU news closely it must be incomprehensible. Not to mention the irritating tendency to release the same GPU over and over again under different names. The 8800GT was also the 9800GT, and it'll soon be the GTS 240 as well. The 8800GTS 512 was the 9800GTX... Etc.
AMD/ATi seem to have gotten the idea at least.
You might want to try reading a little more closely. People are discussing the prices in various non-US markets. Quoting a bunch of USD prices is, at best, irrelevant.
Perhaps because this site isn't solely devoted to providing personalised news for you and nobody else? The irony is, you could customise slashdot so it doesn't show apple stories if you were so inclined.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
Last I saw Apple is a tech company... they just released a ton of new products. How is this not applicable? I guess when Google released their single cellphone, or Microsoft releases a new line of Zune's, that would also not be worthy for technical people?
If you don't like stories on Apple, you can, you know, set your preferences to block it.
I walked into a Mercedes dealer today when I realized that, as a contractor, what I need is a truck and not a car.
As Mac user *I* don't need a laptop without an optical drive, which is why didn't buy the Air.
Oh, and one more thing, I'm tired of the "one button" crap. It's just old. The fact that you neanderthals are still using crappy plastic buttons rather than gestures and other multitouch goodies isn't my fault. I use an external mouse when I have the room, but when using a touch pad, sorry, Apple is by far the nicest to work with, period.
whereas the old one had
So you're getting twice as much graphics memory that is also faster graphics memory. Also, the intel GMA is onboard video the same as the 9400M. As for the price increase, it's only overseas prices that have gone up, the american ones are the same. That means it's probably just the exchange rates that's determining the european price.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Actually, it's totally relevant because if the U.S. prices are staying the same, but the foreign ones are going up, it's because of the exchange rates, or what apple expects the exchange rates to do. The U.S. dollar sucks right now and europeans should be paying much more for U.S. products. I was in europe last summer and it cost me a tremendous amount of money, just because of the exchange rate.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
The U.S. dollar sucks right now and europeans should be paying much more for U.S. products. I was in europe last summer and it cost me a tremendous amount of money, just because of the exchange rate.
Um, no, if the US dollar is down, then while you (as noted) should be spending a lot more in Europe, they in turn should see much LOWER prices (in their terms) for US products.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
You can drive two screens with an iMac! Been done, and planning to do it with the latest crop. Slightly disappointing CPU specs, but at least the HD4850 is an upgrade option.
And the license for OS X!
If you're buying a Mac to put Linux on it, you're probably wasting money. (Unless you're buying a zillion of them and getting a discount) OS X is like that Lenovo one, maybe... except for me the OS X vs Windows difference just dwarfs anything else.
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With the MacBook Air $2499:
And complain that the MacBook Air is more expensive because it is designed for ultralightweight applications yet has a faster bus, more memory, better graphics, etc. Apples to oranges.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I've been an Apple fan since my Apple ][+ when I was 9 years old. Throw in a 512ke, SE, 6100, iMac Rev B, and my iMac G5; along with my Dad & family's numerous machines, and I love it all.
However, I probably won't be buying another Mac any time soon for a few reasons: /home/username. I just really want to backup my documents & mail & a few other things. So, either I back up the whole gargantuan mess, or just my documents. Rooting around for all the necessary prefs files is a PITB.
* I live in a multi-computer home environment. I've got two Windows machines, an Ubuntu machine, a MythTV, and random stuff. The Mac works great *when you do everything the OSX way*. However, in a mixed environment, it doesn't. I'm thinking of movies, pictures, address book, and things like that.
* I bought my iMac G5 20" ALS, and it was a great machine for about 40 months. Then, it failed. Apple told me to go pound sand since I was out of my 36 month AppleCare (that I never used previously). That stings. Higher-quality hardware my ass. I recapped the PSU, and I recapped the logic board. There was something else wrong with this machine, so I finally sold it for parts on eBay. Bummer to have a perfectly good machine die on me and have no recourse other than my wallet.
* I was really getting into iMovie HD 6 (I think that's the version), then the iMovie programs got really dumb.
* I hate backing up
The big challenge for Apple, to me, is a few fold:
* The hardware *is* expensive. And, in my experience, very proprietary to the point where a failure totals a machine. My x86 tower is nicely generic.
* OSX isn't perfect. Neither is XP/Vista/Ubuntu.
Okay, I don't quite know what my rant is. I'm just in a small minority of "Mac Fanboy for ages, switching to Windows and living just fine."
I think your typical Mac Pro buyer will spend most of the time in Photoshop, Aperture, Final Cut Pro, etc. I'm sure they optimized the graphic card and processor for those markets.
E pluribus unum
Too damn right!
It's priced at 599 US dollars, and at 599 Euros (for the cheaper one)... except that 599 Euros is well over 750 dollars. I'm sure there will always be price differences, but this is just plain idiotic. That's a price increase of 25%. I think it would actually be cheaper to buy direct from the US and pay shipping and import taxes!
-- Steve
Since they don't come with a monitor, the profit margin on these things must be around 50%. Wow!
Nah, the Mac Tax has typically been documented to be about 30-40%. Unless you count the annoying funky hardware as a cost. Most of the Apple fanboys try and count the design as a benefit worth that extra cost, but I gotta tell you, I'd be happy to pay that surcharge on top of the price of OS X to get a version I could legally run on a Thinkpad or generic white box.
Apple hardware is the price you pay to get an OS that doesn't suck as bad as Windows, with applications that don't suck as bad as the ones you can get for Linux.
I was seriously considering buying a Quad-Core MBP. Not even a refurb, brand spanking new. There doesn't seem to be one to buy. Apple has officially fucking lost it, considering that the Quad-core Q9000 has about the same TDP as my Core Duo. As far as I'm concerned the only bright spot here is the Mac Mini, which finally gains the power to do HD video in its base configuration. It's a little overpriced for the specs, but the form factor will be worth a couple hundred bucks to a lot of people. This is the first mac mini which deserves to be used as an entertainment STB coupled to an HDTV. Finally, I think Apple has also completely fucking blown it not offering a touch option on all iMacs. Speaking of which, I'd like to add touch to a 32" screen, does anyone have any info on doing this by putting a sheet of glass over the display and reading its state with pressure sensors or something? I don't demand multitouch or immensely high accuracy. A screen this big just always makes me want to be able to jab at it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
High end everything else and then crap for video card makes a nice workstation, but it's an insanely underpowered gaming rig.
Everyone knows that, despite Apple's best efforts, Macs are a year behind PCs when it comes to major games anyway. I doubt anybody who's shopping for a gaming rig even gives Apple a second thought.
A comparable PC laptop (like a Lenovo X200T) would be $800 to $1000 cheaper.
It is to warn people away from buying mac products by showing their prices.
Last I saw Apple is a tech company... they just released a ton of new products. How is this not applicable? I guess when Google released their single cellphone, or Microsoft releases a new line of Zune's, that would also not be worthy for technical people?
If you don't like stories on Apple, you can, you know, set your preferences to block it.
Eh, you can easily look at this from both sides.
On one hand, this was a product refresh (not really a brand-new product). Other companies refresh their products all of the time: Dell, Nokia, Samsung, etc. Yet we don't hear about them, nor do we really care. Some companies do this every month, yet nobody really considers it news worty.
On the other hand, Apple refreshes their products quite slowly... hence why some people find it to be news. Dell might quietly up the CPU or RAM offered in their machines every few weeks and/or drop their prices as the hardware ages, but Apple typically takes forever to do either.
In my opinion, this hurts Apple. Sure, when Apple has a refresh the prices usually aren't too bad. But then those same products (with the same specs) sit on the shelves for months without much of a price break. Meanwhile Dell has either released something faster or dropped their prices since they aren't as "shiny" anymore.
While the 4 billion combo drives that used to cripple the smallest Mac mini and Macbook seem to have been sold, the new 120 Gb drive is now used to cripple the smallest models.
Come on Apple. The price difference between the Seagate Momentus 5400.4 120 Gb and the Seagate Momentus 5400.4 250 Gb is less than 15 dollars ...
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
Unfortunately I really doubt it was an error. RAM is one of the highest markups I've seen in Apple products.
For a smaller screen, a lower video chip, more weight, and on sale, yes, it is $800 to $1000 cheaper. Base price it is only $100 or so cheaper.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Crossfire/SLI does not function under OS X at this time (and all indications are that it would take quite a bit of work to change that), so X2 and NV Sandvich cards are out of the question. This makes their GPU choice for the Mac Pro all the more puzzling - the 4870 is competition for the GTX 260, not the GTX280/285. And this isn't even dealing with the wonkier ATI drivers, the lack of CUDA support (technically this doesn't matter with OpenCL, but ATI doesn't have their act together there either) and future support issues*. Why Apple didn't go with a top-to-bottom NVIDIA GPU lineup is baffling.
* There are 2 ATI cards in the current Mac lineup, both of which are BTO options and require separate drivers from the ATI 3k/2k lineup. Anyone want to wager on how quickly driver updates for them will stop coming in?
God damn Nvidia and their stupid naming schemes. I thought it was a 9600GSO.
Which 9600GSO were you thinking of - the original one that was a renamed 8800 GS and had 96 stream processors, or the newer one with just 48 stream processors? (Yes, Nvidia really did that. Sneaky, huh?)
I think you're neglecting to consider that many gamers are using (want to use) Bootcamp to dual-boot their Apple boxes into Windows.
Mac Mini got its update but the price is absurd as well.
For those whining about the price of macs, go spec a computer that has equivalent hardware and equivalent software.
Included in the price-tag of the mini (and the other over-priced macs) is OSX, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, garageband, and iWeb. Things may have improved in the last few years, but last i check there was no software on windows or linux that was as easy and fun to use as iMovie, iDVD, and garageband. To get that functionality in windows you would have to pay hundreds of dollars (or steal the software).
Can someone tell me (honestly, i would like to know) the current free options for making movies/music/dvds on windows and linux?
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because it isn't even remotely easy for the average user. It isn't fun for those of us who don't mind ripping them apart.
The iMac is not meant to be open, now replacing a drive in a notebook isn't that hard because even Apple has a hard time dictating what notebook layouts are like
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Screw that. Buy your RAM at Crucial or elsewhere for a small fraction of what Apple charges.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
It's a Mac PRO; not a Mac HOBBY, Mac FUN, or Mac HOME. Professionals will gladly pay the extra cost for a shiny designer computer. Let me put it this way. I've made about 500k EUR in the past year or so from submitting grant proposals. If I spend an extra 15min working per day because of the new/shiny/overpriced computer, that's an extra 5 hours per month. Every new PhD student here gets a top-spec MacBook as soon as the enter the group (MacBookPros are kinda heavy and a pain to lug around) because they'll get more done and be more accessible if they have one. Sure, it's a premium over a Dell craptop, but they're more likely to use it and travel with it. To be honest, I can't believe all of these arguments about overpriced equipment. It's device to used by professionals, whom, if they are really professionals, will see the additional value.
The fact that you neanderthals are still using crappy plastic buttons rather than gestures and other multitouch goodies isn't my fault.
Couldn't agree more. Gestures are where it's at. For example, if I want to launch Safari, I simply gesture like I'm lovingly fingering another man's anus and up it pops. One hundred percent reliable. My Mac understands.
* I live in a multi-computer home environment. I've got two Windows machines, an Ubuntu machine, a MythTV, and random stuff. The Mac works great *when you do everything the OSX way*. However, in a mixed environment, it doesn't. I'm thinking of movies, pictures, address book, and things like that.
This depends a lot in my experience based upon how you interoperate. OS X is very good at using open standards and file formats provided you pick decent software to run on top of it. It is less good at interoperating with Windows proprietary formats and protocols and if your servers or Windows machines are using them and you're set on them, Linux is often better at reverse engineered solutions. Example, if you standardized on Windows Media formats, OS X will play them, but not as well as Windows or even Linux. If you picked MP3, MP4, OGG, and the like, OS X is much better than Windows at interoperating.
I bought my iMac G5 20" ALS, and it was a great machine for about 40 months. Then, it failed.
Your anecdote certainly shows reason to be annoyed, but what could Apple the vendor do to prevent this? Extend their warranties to four years and then people complain when machines fail a month after that. Would you like more reliable hardware? Of course, we all always want more reliable hardware, but Apple already is the top rated among major vendors by consumer reports and other independent reviewers. Some people will always have hardware fail regardless. You're that person. And Apple is already taking flack for using more expensive and reliable components. Just look at all the comments here about how expensive Apple is compared not to the other top rated vendors, but ones with very poor reliability numbers. People don't look at reliability when buying.
I hate backing up /home/username.
Umm, you've heard of Time machine, right? You can apply it only to selected parts of your filesystem and it does versioning more smoothly and easily than almost anything. Or, use one of many third party backup solutions that handles them intelligently.
* The hardware *is* expensive. And, in my experience, very proprietary to the point where a failure totals a machine. My x86 tower is nicely generic.
Apple has custom motherboards, but other than that, everything is pretty much off the shelf. What are you looking to replace? I don't see how it is any harder than anything else (with the exception of the motherboard which you have to buy from Apple).
* OSX isn't perfect. Neither is XP/Vista/Ubuntu.
I don't really see how this is a challenge for Apple. You want them to be perfect? Not going to happen.
Okay, I don't quite know what my rant is. I'm just in a small minority of "Mac Fanboy for ages, switching to Windows and living just fine."
Hey, use what you like and what works for you. I use OS X, Linux, and Windows daily. On my laptop Linux and Windows live in VMs and OS X gets the most love because OS X handles migrations the best and because running OS X in a VM on top of Linux or Windows gives me more headaches. People get way to hung up an emotional about these things.
Hahaha.
Okay. Okay.
Touché sir.
Anybody else think it's funny that the people who want macs the most are paid the least? Graphic Designers make half what most engineers do, but they almost always have nice macs.
From apple website, you can buy the OS & all you listed for 219$. Build a PC without an OS, add that 219$ and see, you get a much lower price tag.
I think Apple doesn't target their desktop computers to gamers for this reason. Apple is targeting their computers to specific markets. General users who are not gamers: Your average grandmas, college students, etc will get an iMac or MacMini. They may play WoW but Crysis is out of the question. Professionals who edit audio/photo/video will get MacPros.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Since people are willing to pay a $1500 premium to buy that Mac Pro, I guess for those people OS X is worth over $1000 more than Windows Vista Ultimate, even after allowing for your using an upgrade price instead of a full license in your analysis.
Gah! It's turtles all the way down, isn't it?
I'm thinking i could steal one for free... but doesn't mean its gonna happen. I'd like you to show proof you could build a system just as good for a third of the cost.... everyone else who has tried failed.. mainly by using standard Core i7 processors instead of the Xeon versions, which are better, not just a rebranding, and can cost 4X-5X as much.
Then I guess OS X is worth more than $500 to these people.
* 2.66 GHZ Nehalem 920, overclocked to well over 3.2GHZ.
* ASUS p6t6 mobo with LOTS of features like SAS ports, RAID 0/1/5/10, at least 3 PCI-X x16 slots, eSATA connectors, etc.
* ATI 4870 with 1GB DDR5 RAM
* 12 GB RAM capable of 1600 Mhz (rather than 1066 avail on the Mac)
* 750 Watt Corsair PSU with gobs of connecting cables
* not one but FOUR WD 640 GB drive configured as RAID 0/1/5/10
* LG Bluray burner
* Acer 23" monitor
* Windows vista 64
* mouse, keyboard
Anyone know when Nehalem Xeon chips might be available for the rest of us? Then we'll compare apples to apples. Damn Mac tax!
From apple website, you can buy the OS & all you listed for 219$. Build a PC without an OS, add that 219$ and see, you get a much lower price tag.
Fair enough. Ignoring the fact that $219 is really the upgrade price (since you need to have previously purchased a mac to use it) if you take $219 off the mac mini price, i think you are getting into the price range where there is a reasonable ($100-150) premium for the form factor and design.
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I have had similar experiences - less time in actual Apple hardware, but my 2.5 year old MacBook Pro (no AppleCare) has an annoying hardware fault that makes it all too apparent that Macs are subject to the same faults as any other PC.
OS-X is nice, until you start really trying to do Unix stuff on it, then you might as well run a Linux VM instead of fighting with all the necessary "adjustments" to make whatever happy under OS-X.
The Apple apps are o.k. if you use that sort of thing, I did for about a year when I first got them. I just don't have enough free time to screw around making DVD slideshows that nobody really cares about.
For a brief time in 2006-7 the MacPros were good value for money compared to open market dual CPU socket PCs. They're still decent machines, but I agree the prices seem to have stayed high while the competition has come down.
Until Display Port gets much wider market penetration, I'm going to call it a proprietary, overpriced $30 dongle PITA.
I think that OS-X would be a lot more useful if Psystar wins some kind of court decision forcing legal acceptance of hackintoshes. I'd still be tempted to buy the Apple "reference hardware" for professional applications where I don't want to screw around with compatibility issues.
I'm disappointed, after watching the keynote on youtube I was looking forward to some paticular products, like the iRack and iMicrowave.
Carbon based humanoid in training.
The previous generation 24" iMac can be had for $1299 new or $1199 refurbished through the Apple store. In some ways this machine is superior to the new entry-level 24" model that replaces it - for hundreds less. Slightly faster processor, discrete graphics, etc. A plausible alternative for those underwhelmed by the new specs and overwhelmed by the price.
Mac Mini got its update but the price is absurd as well.
The mini is reasonably priced for an ultra-SFF. If you're just looking at it as a generic desktop then of course it's overpriced, but it compares well to a Dell Hybrid.
Of course, Apple will probably keep the mini at this configuration for another year and a half at which point it will be horribly obsolete again.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
...my 2.5 year old MacBook Pro (no AppleCare) has an annoying hardware fault that makes it all too apparent that Macs are subject to the same faults as any other PC.
Has anyone argued Macs don't ever fail? The point is you can't equivocate and claim they fail as often unless you have evidence to contradict market studies.
OS-X is nice, until you start really trying to do Unix stuff on it, then you might as well run a Linux VM instead of fighting with all the necessary "adjustments" to make whatever happy under OS-X.
I think you have this a little wrong. OS X is fine for UNIX stuff. It takes adjustment, to run software intended for Linux or really iffy ports of said software.I can see where you'd be confused though if you don't differentiate between Linux and UNIX.
Until Display Port gets much wider market penetration, I'm going to call it a proprietary...
Okay, why do we care? People said the same thing about USB when Apple was basically the only company including it on consumer machines. New technologies have slow adoption rates. That doesn't make them proprietary, which is something else entirely.
I think that OS-X would be a lot more useful if Psystar wins some kind of court decision forcing legal acceptance of hackintoshes.
The most Pystar can hope for is a ruling that says pre-installing off the shelf on generic hardware is legal and thus forcing Apple to stop selling OS X in boxes and only sell upgrades via the Web. It makes it less convenient for users and Pystar is still screwed, but that's really the only thing they can hope to accomplish in the long run (aside from a legal precedent against EULAs, which would be awfully nice).
No, the iMacs come standard with 4GB. Upgrading to 8GB is damn expensive, because the iMac has two memory slots and 4GB SODIMMs ain't cheap.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
OK, here's a question. Why does the store go down for new products? Newegg add new products every day, as do Amazon, eBay, and every other store I can think of, all without downtime. And it's not only a reboot blip, but a gone-fishing page for hours. Is it just to make sure that all the blogs "notice" and sit around waiting to see what's coming? I can't imagine they lack the technical know-how to keep the thing up.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
I see your MB Air, and raise my generic Dell D630 company laptop valued at $1330:
- 2.00 GHz Core2 Duo
- 800MHz bus
- 2GB DDR2 RAM
- 120GB 5400rpm HD
- 128MB Nvidia Quadro NVS 135M
- 14.1" 1440x900 screen
- 802.11 Draft-n wireless, bluetooth
- 8x DVD+-RW built in
- Smart card reader
- PC Card slot
- A real DB-9M serial port
- 4.5 hr battery
- 5.1 lbs
A real computer geek makes sure he has a serial port.
They still charge a UK price, regardless of dollar:sterling rate. What I don't know (and haven't read enough of this thread) is if they raised the mini from, say 499 to 599 sterling for an arbitrary reason, or if the new models are the same price as the old (which is the Apple norm).
You lost all credibility at "one mouse button". Seriously people, drop this 15-year old myth! If you want to be pedantic, the Macbooks are now a NO-button mouse or an ALL-button mouse.
Idiots and people who don't know how to use a computer buy them, that's who.
You left out people that like being able to get to a unix(like) shell when they want, but have better things to spend their time on (like making money to so they can buy Apple products) than farking with linux.
The Airport Extreme & Time Capsule 1TB were already there. As far as the iMac goes, they mostly lowered their prices and replaced the motherboard with something that handles faster RAM (1066MHz DDR3 vs 800 MHz DDR2) and more RAM (8GB max vs 4GB max before), and reworked the video options.
In simple terms, if you bought a 24" iMac prior to store closure and configured it with all of the upgrades, when the store reopened you'd find that configuration as the default 3.06GHz machine with faster RAM and different video. Except it would be $400 (US) cheaper.
One word why people get the MacBook Air: Ultralightweight. I would never get one because I don't need to shave off the 2.0 lbs for the extra money. Others want this feature.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
You can get a DELL Studio XPS 435 about $1000 less with x2 ram then the mac pro.
With the same cpu power.
750GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive vs 640GB
a 640gb is $50 less on the dell
Dell 24 inch S2409W Widescreen Flat Panel vs none
ATI Radeon HD 4670 512MB vs # NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB
can add ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB for $100 or ATI Radeon HD 4870 GDDR5 1024MB for $200 vs ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB for $200 more
can also get a Studio XPS 435 with No Monitor for $1,299
with x2 the ram or - $150 for the same ram
ATI Radeon HD 3650 256MB
ATI Radeon HD 4670 512MB [add $50]
ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB [add $150]
ATI Radeon HD 4870 GDDR5 1024MB [add $250]
you can also find other dell core i7 deals as well.
In the US, it seems so. In other places it's not so much of an interesting price.
The racket comes much more in light when you start looking at the 24" iMacs, with prices, once reduced by the software cost, still over twice as high as equivalently built computers.
You might save space (no tower ..) but you lose on the upgrade possibilities & facilities, so any higher price is very hard to accept.
Except that the entire track pad is now a button. For the past five years the complaint was, "but two finger click isn't the same thing as two PHYSICAL buttons!". Now they've made the entire track pad a button that has multiple zones that act as, at a minimum, two buttons. Click anywhere on the left half of the track pad and you get a left click--click anywhere on the right half of the track pad and you get a right click. Why limit yourself to two buttons at the bottom of a pad? So yes, the "one button" argument IS old, and hasn't been valid since Mac OS 7.6 about 15 years ago.
I've actually played Crysis with decent results on my two year old 2.4ghz iMac (with 2gb of ram and the bigger video card option, Radeon X1600 256mb). I imagine it would be even more playable with the nvidia card in the 24" iMacs and the newer faster Core2Duo chips. It plays better on my iMac than my old "gaming rig" pentium 4 of roughly the same age, with a better video card.
Other people are also really, really, really dumb. :)
2.0 lbs for more than $1000 and less functionality definitely falls in the "really dumb" category for me. I don't hate Macs, I just think that Apple has become an elitist club that requires an insane membership fee to join, and perpetuates the mentality that you have to keep paying them to stay a member.
And that's why I will keep tweaking my old Powermac G3 and G4 towers so they will live forever; the last of the relics which were real Apple computers.
* I hate backing up /home/username. I just really want to backup my documents & mail & a few other things. So, either I back up the whole gargantuan mess, or just my documents. Rooting around for all the necessary prefs files is a PITB.
Time Machine. Ur doin' it wrong.
I'm not sure it's a "poor move". I would imagine you'd need two 4gb ram chips to get the 8gb mark. How much do single 4gb ram chips sell for these days (quick internet search says $250-$450). I'd stick with the 4gb stock and upgrade in a year when the stuff is dirt cheap.
Summary is wrong; it states a "Radeon 4570" as one of the options. According to the Mac Pro page (under the Comparison tab), the 24" iMac has the ATI Radeon 4850 as an option, while the Mac Pros have an ATI Radeon 4870 as an option.
"... core i7 based system ..."
Sorry, but the Pro is using server-class Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Nehalem" processors, not i7's.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
To be fair when claiming "Apple is so expensive!" you really need to price a PC with the EXACT same specs. Same CPU, screen size, form factor, everything.
You'll find that Apple is either about the same price or cheaper.
The closest laptop I found to my new Macbook white is a Dell XPS series which has less features, is slightly slower and costs MORE. I looked at similar machines from Lenovo, Toshiba and Acer as well. The Dell does come with a little more RAM and a bigger HDD but those don't mean much. Those are cheap upgrades you can do yourself at some point.
Like someone said above, never buy RAM or HDD upgrades from Apple, buy the base machine and upgrade yourself.
The Magsafe power adapters are really slick as well, it's already saved my laptop from my kids twice. They were problematic at first but it looks like they fixed the issues.
I have to say, I personally am happy with using two fingers on the touch pad and clicking with the button to do the two-finger-click gesture (which is equivalent to right-clicking). I'm just dubious of the new design where the pad itself is the button. I had thought maybe the pad sent the same event to the OS no matter where you clicked on the surface, but now that you've described it, I guess this is a superior solution... except when some crud gets into the mechanism and prevents one side or the other from registering click events.
I think having gestures + clicking a single physical button that is separate from the pad is the best arrangement, but it seems that Apple ranks cool design higher than ruggedness and reliability in many cases. And I'm saying this as a long-time Apple fan. I'm just glad I bought my MacBook Pro when I did: before they did away with matte finish screens and the separate trackpad button, yet after they came out with LED backlighting.
I'm pricing a Xeon Dell Precision workstation class machine on dell.ca, which is a better comparison to the Xeon based Workstation that is a Mac Pro, and I'm up to $2800 right now and guess what ? It has 2 GB DDR2 ECC ram vs the Mac's 3 GB DDR3 ECC (triple channel). It has an older, non-Nehalem Xeon processor, same ghz as the Mac but no 2 threads per core like the Mac. 1 SATA hard drive, 80 GB (WTF is this ?), same superdrive optical drive, etc...
I think Apple nailed their market just right. This isn't a cobbled together gaming PC, it's a Professional Workstation with a certain grade of hardware you're not getting in your cobbled together PC.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
The new Mini is expensive, and there's little justification for it at that spec level.
It's a pretty pricey little box but show me a cheaper PC in that SAME small form factor w/ the same Core 2 Duo CPU w/ 1066mhz FSB, DDR3 RAM, Firewire 400 and 800, gigabit ethernet, SPDIF Audio In AND Out (24-bit 96khz at that), displayport, an IR reciever for the remote, and a DVD burner.
Even if you found a mini-itx board with all of those goodies (you may but you most likely won't), by the time you got everything built, it would cost just as much if not more than the $600 mac mini. The new mini is not a wussified EEE desktop.
Now try to find an HP or Lenovo SFF desktop that has all of the same gear at a reasonable price.
BTW, it may be integrated video but the GF9400M is no slouch, I have no problem playing Call of Duty 4 @ 1280x800 on my low-end Macbook white.
Don't believe me? Prove me wrong.
Unless they've changed their EULA or other agreement, no, you can't do that at all. OSX may only be legally installed on hardware purchased from Apple.
assuming that Mac Mini is silent, combining it with XBMC would be heaven!
TIAEAE!
To give Apple engineers a little more credit, the click pad seems to work better closer to the bottom of the track pad, which is feels more natural because we've grown accustom to the buttons being there, not because it is a superior position. On my MacBook, I turn the right click on and still tend to go towards the bottom right corner, even though I don't have to go that far. It's nice NOT to have two physical buttons under your palms that can be clicked when touch-typing. Worse, like most poorly designed generic pcs, are buttons that are hard to click and hold while you are using the trackpad, or hard to click the left mouse button with your right thumb without accidentally clicking the right mouse button.
I call. My new Macbook White 2009, $999
-2Ghz Core 2 Duo "Penryn"
-1066MHz front-side bus
-2GB DDR2 RAM
-120GB SATA HDD
-256MB (Shared) GeForce 9400M
-SPDIF Audio In/Out
-Firewire
-13.3" 1280x800 LCD
-802.11a/b/g/draft-n wireless, bluetooth 2.1
-8x DVD+-RW
-4.5hr battery
-5.0 lbs
A real computer geek also knows that USBserial adapters are dirt cheap and work with just about any remotely modern operating system including OSX and even support funky baud rates or port settings.
A PC-card slot would be nice but I can live without it. I wouldn't mind being able to put my old PCMCIA SCSI card to use and use CF->PCMCIA adapters instead of a USB card reader.
The shared-memory video isn't really an issue as the 9400M is actually quite capable and has 16 real stream processors. CoD4 runs well and Quake 4 runs REALLY well. It'll be supported by OpenCL in Snow Leopard as well.
When the loonie tanked down while the USD was going back up, there was a short period where Apple was cheaper than OEM who had adjusted and you got essentially the US Student Discount price before discount in Canada...
Dell != Newegg
....I think what people are really wanting this year is an Apple netbook. Come on Apple, take some risks, surprise us a little.
Nice! That's a good deal you got there.
USB/serial adapters have *terrible* reliability when it comes to the actual serial data implementation. There are myriad problems that can result when trying to talk to devices such as embedded computers, GPS units, or data acquisition systems. This is even true with the manufacturer's Windows drivers running on Windows. They don't always work how you might expect.
- iMovie - Avidemux is nice although I admittedly prefer imovie ;)
- iPhoto - Digikam, f-Spot, seriously, I rarely use it as I have other pieces of software for my photography habit.
- Garageband is shite, then again, I come from a musical background, I've used actual professional software
- iWeb is horrible, nobody should be allowed to do websites in WYSIWTF
- iDVD - er, you kidding?
And that+iWork is only 220$ btw. But admittedly, on the price of the mini, it's not too bad. I guess. Only, the prices students pay would probably be closer for oem pricing
It's not an upgrade price, it's full software: you can install it blank without a previous license behind.
It's only one pound lighter than laptops in its footprint.
And slower memory. And slower bus. That's if you want the Air. It's a niche product for a specific market. For a general computer, you should compare to a MacBook.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
...for the front page Slashdot stories when Dell, Lenovo and Sony modestly update their current lineup of computers!
Oh wait...
Read Pynchon.
Newegg != professionnal grade workstation.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
"If you picked MP3, MP4, OGG, and the like, OS X is much better than Windows at interoperating."
Really? I'm interested in seeing how you measure that.
"And Apple is already taking flack for using more expensive and reliable components. "
No they aren't. They take flack for price. You are assuming they are the same.
"People don't look at reliability when buying."
Really? I'd like to see your data on that as well.
"Umm, you've heard of Time machine, right?"
Time Machine is bug-riddled. It never works for me.
One thing I can't figure out is why does Apple need to shut down their online store for updates? I would hope that they would treat it like any other roll out, create a test environment, make the necessary changes to your portal, update with all the new toys and products and then elevate to a production environment with the old portal pointing to the newly elevated site.
It's still 900 from Crucial, which means that's a 25% markup at most. Their markups for DDR3 are about the first time they're close to the levels asked of other OEM.
You forget in Europe we include the sales tax (VAT) in the headline price, in the states they don't do that. I think (but have no accurate figures so am probably wrong, but by less than 5% either way I'd venture) that sales taxes in the states are about 10%, so you are looking at 660 - 750, which is still more but then you expect that from apple, at lest we do in the uk...
Except that's exactly what we did:
As you can see, we have two computers with equivalent hardware and equivalent software. Identical, even. Yet, one costs 25% more than the other.
The complaint was about prices in other markets. The US price ($599) is about 477 Euros, so a list price of 499 Euros would have been reasonable. There's no justification for what they did.
-- Steve
I'd have to disagree on Garageband. I'm a seasoned Logic user, and I find it very useful as a sketchpad. A four-track recorder to Logic's full studio.
I simply run Apple products because I've found them better on so many levels. Their hardware has fewer problems, lasts longer, and looks good. Mac OS is okay (better than Windows for most things) and I can easily run virtual machines to get my Linux and Windows tasks done. My client computers and my music player (if you can still call it that when it's really a PDA/phone/whatever) are Apple products because of those reasons.
I still run custom made PC boxes running Linux for most my servers. Along with a fancy IBM box running AIX that is just a bit crappy for the $30k it cost.
The only reason to have a Windows box IMO is to play games. It's kind of like a toy.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Okay, I guess Garageband can be nice for this. I used to scratchpad on a paper scratchpad, I came down a bit stronger than I felt (I've seen friends do nice brainstorming on it)...
Well, you can compare them, and you just did.
I agree with you, if you want the cheap one, no point coming here and complaining, go and get the cheaper one. Me, I prefer quality, and I prefer the Mac experience, and only having to put up with Microsoft shit (and I say this having experience in their latest absolutely shit OS Vista) when I am forced to.
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Not only does newegg sell fully assembled Macs, it sells very pricey workstation components such as multi-thousand dollar RAID systems, video cards far faster than those available at apple.com, and motherboards with much faster RAM speeds than 1066MHz. What you might find even more interesting, is that if you knew how to install your own RAM, you could buy it from newegg for about 40% less than advertised on the apple store.
And you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about when it comes to Pro workstations. People don't even think about newegg when purchasing a Dell T5400, a HP XW6600 or a Mac Pro. A cheap PC assembled from off the shelf components is going to be cheaper than any of those options, but you still won't see it under the desks of real professionnals that require these workstations in the first place.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
"If you picked MP3, MP4, OGG, and the like, OS X is much better than Windows at interoperating."
Really? I'm interested in seeing how you measure that.
It is certainly difficult to measure and you have too look case by case, but OS X does a good job with plugins for standard technologies but just look at what you can play a preview of from an OS native window. Or look at the services provided/supported by the different OS's Linux and OS X both use the open standard ZeroConf for auto discovery and work together. MS implements a proprietary protocol that other OS's need to reverse engineer or the application you;re using has to handle running the ZeroConf server itself (like Adobe CS does for discovery on Windows).
"And Apple is already taking flack for using more expensive and reliable components. "
No they aren't. They take flack for price. You are assuming they are the same.
I'm not assuming anything. Take a look at the studies performed by consumer groups and professional reviewers. Apple has been at the top of the reliability numbers for years and has prices about 20-30% above average, right in line with other companies who get similar ratings.
"People don't look at reliability when buying."
Really? I'd like to see your data on that as well.
REliability numbers don't make it into marketing literature on the side of product boxes. You see bullet points of features and if you look up in this thread you'll see dozens of people comparing the price of Apple systems to "comparable" systems based upon those bullet points. Notice how many reference published reliability numbers?
"Umm, you've heard of Time machine, right?"
Time Machine is bug-riddled. It never works for me.
Okay. Why do I care? Use something else. Ignoring time machine, how is it harder to back up OS X installs using included or third party software compared to any other OS? I don't get it.
High end everything else and then crap for video card makes a nice workstation, but it's an insanely underpowered gaming rig.
Everyone knows that, despite Apple's best efforts, Macs are a year behind PCs when it comes to major games anyway. I doubt anybody who's shopping for a gaming rig even gives Apple a second thought.
Not now that you can install windows on them. Gaming on my old MacPro is fantastic - plus I'm not tied to windows for my work. Price isn't so bad (not good, just not terrible) when you get a decent gaming pc AND a high powered workstation - although these new ones could indeed use a bit more graphics power.
The clincher for me (personally, no evangelising here) is the operating system though... To say I've used both windows and mac and prefer the latter would be...erroneous. I do use mac os x (with elegance, the slightest touch, subconsciously if it weren't for the beauty - and I don't mean visually). I can't say I've ever progressed to the level of actually "using" windows... the experience (hah!) is better described as suffering, struggling against, despite years of trying. With windows I get stuff done despite the operating system, but the mac actually speeds my process. If I have to pay through the nose for apple hardware, so be it, as long as I get to keep the operating system
Ok, so I did stray into the evangelising. Sorry. It's just so hard not to...
The complaint was about prices in other markets. The US price ($599) is about 477 Euros, so a list price of 499 Euros would have been reasonable. There's no justification for what they did.
The only justification that i can imagine is that there are import taxes in the EU. Just a guess.
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The justification for it is at the demand level. People are still buying them at those prices.
http://cgi.ebay.com/New-Apple-Mac-Mini-1-83Ghz-Core-2-Duo-1GB-RAM-80GB-HDD_W0QQitemZ280317872335QQcmdZViewItemQQptZApple_Desktops?hash=item280317872335&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=66%3A2|65%3A13|39%3A1|240%3A1308
New in box Mini (from before today's upgrade), only 1.83 GHz, 1GB ram, 80GB drive, and it went for a premium over apple prices...though the lack of tax probably makes up for it.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
What happens when you want to add a second CPU to that Dell? Just buy a second one? Comparing a multi-socket workstation to a single socket consumer model (even a high powered one) seems pretty silly.
It's not an upgrade price, it's full software: you can install it blank without a previous license behind.
I know it isn't an upgrade price, but unless you have previously purchased a mac it isn't much use to you. So it is in a sense an upgrade. From the Apple store page on iLife:
Upgrade to iLife '09 and get the most out of the photos, movies, and music on your Mac with the latest versions of iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb, and iDVD.
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I do agree that iWeb is pretty bad. But I think it is better than nothing if you are a mobileme user that doesn't know any html or css.
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I know what a pro workstation is. You're only showing your ignorance when you lionize the Dell and HP workstations. And to say that newegg components are cheap is just plain wrong.
For example, a dual-socket intel Skulltrail mobo is $600:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121330
This asus mobo is also $600:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131287
There are 15k hard drives faster than anything you'll find in the apple store:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822332012
You can also get the nVidia quadro 5800 at newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133253
Any workstation you buy from Dell or HP you can match with parts bought from newegg. At the moment, only Apple is offering the dual nehalem xeons, but that won't last long. In the meantime, you can't get the quadro 5800 from apple and you can't get any 15k drives.
*ponders*
The point of iDVD is that it burns DVDs for DVD players. You don't use it for photo/video sharing with another computer. It makes beautiful menus and slideshows and also in conjunction with perian will re-code any kind of video supported by quicktime to play on any standard DVD player (which i believe is mpeg-2).
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And as of right now, the pound's dropping off against the dollar again, and your Prime Minister says he's coming over here to "help us into the Global New Deal"...
Frankly, just like in the late 1700's, about half of us aren't interested in Old World "help"... but it'll help the other half figure out that our President is nothing but a socialist... tell him thanks for heading over!
We'll put his butt back on a boat and thank him for "helping" as quickly as we can! LOL!
Oh and let us know when the UK has a computer company worth bragging about. That'll be rich.
+++OK ATH
What's "distasteful" about a company saying, "Buy it or don't" and making a profit on it? Good lord...
+++OK ATH
Uhh, at least in terms of what's really going on, you have it backwards. The euro is tanking, and the dollar is coming back strong again. Check your numbers.
The "higher" prices in the EU and UK are a reflection of that and Apple believing that trend will continue.
+++OK ATH
Then do it. We'll take the money, either way. :-)
+++OK ATH
I haven't seen any of the THREE Apple retail stores around here hurting for customers packing in every weekend, or real sales ringing up and walking out the door. You can say they're "hurting" themselves, all the way to wherever that leads, but it doesn't match the reality of what's happening at their retail outlets.
+++OK ATH
The reality is... gestures, multiple buttons, whatever. I use all of the above, on all the different types of machines (PC, Mac, whatever), just fine. You just have to have enough brainpower to remember how to USE the computer you're sitting at. Supremely tough stuff, I know... but there are a number of us that do just fine running "all of the above", while getting work done on any of them...
+++OK ATH
Of course, the REALLY nice part about OS X and to a lesser extent, Windows... is that almost ALL of the "stuff" people do with the silly pointer and mouse/trackpad "clicks" is still available as keyboard shortcuts, and you really don't have to use the darn pointer at all, if you don't really want to. You just have to have the brainpower of a higher chimp to remember a few keystrokes.
+++OK ATH
A real computer geek carries a FTDI-chipset based USB to serial adapter, usable on ANY OS.
+++OK ATH
Correction: CRAPPY USB/serial adapters have those problems. Ones based off of solid chipsets and drivers (like FTDI chipsets), don't. Do more homework. Most of us did and moved on from real serial ports a few years ago, maybe after being burned by a $9 "special" back then.
+++OK ATH
People that NEED machines like those (and the Mac Pro) would find assembling a machine to be a waste of time and their talent. All this blah blah blah on Slashdot about whether you can build a workstation cheaper is hilarious, while the people that needed an updated Mac Pro have already whipped out the company credit card and placed the order...
+++OK ATH
"I think it would actually be cheaper to buy direct from the US and pay shipping and import taxes!"
Hot Damn, I just came up with the basis for our next "Bubble"! Move over Cash4Gold and title loan refinancing, there's a new infomercial in town!
Shift happens. Fire it up.
And nobody uses macs for photo editing, video production or animation rendering...
Shift happens. Fire it up.
Weaker video all around next to the old systems and a even bigger mac pro rip off $2500 for a core i7 based system with ONLY ONE CPU and nvidia 9500 video as the GT 120 is a 9500. What a ati card pay $200 more for a 4870 512 makeing it cost $150 + $200 = $350 makeing it about $100 more then other places you can get core i7 systems with better base video and the same cpu speed FOR ABOUT $1000+ less some even with 6gb of DDR3 ram. And why mini DP on a full size video card why not full DP with a DP to mini DP cable?
The old $1,199.00 $1,499.00 level imacs used to have ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT with 128MB memory and ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB with a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS with 512MB memory in the $2,199.00 one now they have slower and weaker NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics on board video in the $1,199.00 $1,499.00 ones and NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 with 512MB memory in the $2,199.00.
The mac mini is still a ripoff $599.00 for 1 GB OF RAM? $50 more for 2gb and $150 more for 4gb?
# [Add $150.00] for a 2.26 cpu
120GB is still small.
The $799.00 mini has the same 2.0 cpu but 2gb of ram and a 320gb hd. It should have at least 128 - 256 vram that does not come from system but it does not.
For about $500 you can get a X2 7750 and 790gx board with 128 side port ram with 4gb of ram apple should of put more in to the mini.
What planet are you on? These Xeon Core i7 are the first in the industry. Intel hasn't even released their information on the Xeon 5500 Nehalem because Apple got them early.
Because the Macbook Air is certainly the only laptop Apple sells, and it certainly doesn't have a model for less than $2000. The trackpads give you extra "buttons" by placing extra fingers on the pads. It works surprisingly well. Maybe you should look a little further than the front window the next time you check out the local Mac store.
You can have it now, just get an EFI-X module, I have a mid tower Mac I put together myself using one, whole thing didnt come to more than £300, most expensive part in it was the EFI-X module itself, I have build hackintoshes in the past but the module takes away all the pain of kext and plist tomfoolery.I'm really pleased with it
I've got some photographs, I'd like to show them to you. Though you don't know the girls You'll recognise the view..
The previous 20" iMac had a TN screen, and the 24" was an IPS. What kind of screens do the new ones have?
How about you read my comment again? Here, I'll quote it for you, "...or what apple expects the exchange rates to do." Did it ever occur to you that Apple might be expecting the dollar to rebound?
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Yeah, so far I'm real happy with the machine. Would have liked the DDR3 RAM in the aluminum version but I don't "need" it.
If you grab a cheesy USB serial port off the shelf at Walmart for $12, then yeah, they suck.
I have one that's reliable and has no problems talking to just about anything but I had to spend $35 or so.
Most companies adjust their prices as the exchange rate fluctuates, instead of trying to pick a number and sticking with it for the long term. Of course, this is Apple and they do love their price points, so go figure.
Oh, really? Well, that must mean Psystar have become geeks since then, hrmm?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
According to the UK site, a Mini with 2GB RAM and 320GB HD will cost £711 when I've added a keyboard + mouse. That's without a display of course.
So around £750-£800, for a machine with about the same spec as the Dell I bought nearly 2 years ago for less than £500.
And it's also getting a bit too close to the price of a 20" iMac (£949 with keyboard + mouse).
Yes, even for Apple, the Mini is erm, reassuringly expensive.
Oh, how convenient: a theory about God that doesn't involve looking through a telescope.
"I know what a pro workstation is."
Apparently not. Who does your service contract? Do you have to go to each manufacturer for each part if something fails. 4 hour on-site service? If there is a software/hardware conflict, who do you go to, and if they point the finger at each other, what do you do then? Are you paid full time to make sure your machine works, or is that just extra free time for your company? Who pays for problem resolution if any of the hardware manufacturers dispute your claims for failure? Will your company even give the go-ahead for a custom built machine to run production?
Sorry, there is a difference between "pro-level" parts hobbled together into a system and an actual "pro-level" system. Ever stop to think that the reason that the professional system manufacturers cost more than home-built because they do a little compatibility and Q&A first? Maybe not a whole lot, but I would bet that they test out a whole lot more situations than you do, if you actually test out at all.
Hey, I know it's /. and all, and I'm sure you hack a nice machine. Just don't get all nutsy.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.