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New iMac Rolled Out
Ivo writes "Apple just announced a new iMac. The base model starts at $999, and the $1499 model has built-in firewire and DVD. More at Apple's website " Three different models (no fan, better graphics and sub-woofer), and the commercials are online.
Bzzzzzt! Sorry, wrong answer. Would you care to try again?
The original iMac did have a fan. And if you block the vents to the fan on, well anything with a fan, it doesn't work to well.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
If GM says that their pickup truck has the best gas mileage in its class, that doesn't also mean its the cheapest in its class.
In this case, the devil on your shoulder is supposed to go "the Mac is $200 more" and the Angel goes "but it has better graphics and a faster CPU". Whichever one wins is up to you.
Bose Acoustimass.
I'd imagine that Harmon/Kardon (who build the iMac sound system) could do a decent job, too. The trick (if I remember correctly) is the distance the air travels, so with enough baffles, you could certainly do it in a case the size of an iMac.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
The 'Save RAM and shutdown' feature of the iBook (and new iMac? Someone confirm please) is incredibly useful. It means (according to how much RAM you, and how many apps you got open) you can boot in a few seconds, and you're presented with exactly the same screen as you had when you shutdown (eg the documents you were working, the browser you had open are just there).
It will become even more useful when (if rumors prove true) Apple integrates this RAM-saving feature into its multi-user system. Each user could have their own RAM file, so they could 'instantly' carry-on where they left off. No more quitting applications and restarting them after logging on/off, you just go back to where you were.
I think the thing they are a
little short on is hard drive space.
That's why god invented external drives.
The top line machine has a 10gig drive. Not bad, but I'd still would want an external for LinuxPPC.
photosMy Photostream
Well I'm tired of hearing how proud PC users are that their computers can (finally) boot from a CD. They should have been doing that for much longer than the last 2 years. Macs are moving towards being net-bootable.
The original poster was not complaining that the IMAC was without a floppy, but that Apple was making a brain-dead marketing move by not including some kind or writable/removable medium inside the imac. I would wager a guess that Imation would practically give zipdrives to imac users if it meant the zipdisk became the new definitive standard.
Yes, I know you can buy a removable drive and many do, but if they already had the drive, they wouldn't think twice about buying media for it.
Hmm....you could use your Zip, Orb or Firewire HD that fits in your shirt pocket. (No Power Supply Needed.)
Doesn't matter how cool the chip or the crt is, there are two FACTS that are gonna make this thing the iOven:
1: The ATI chipset is very hot.
2: MacOS has a way of using all the chip, so it'll heat up.
3: Apple doesn't have the best history with heat-disipation (*cough* PowerBook *cough*)
"Special Edition" does not mean limited. Get your facts straight.
Why did you get the external floppy?
Wasn't it at extra cost? If not, can't you sell it on Ebay or something?
We want to know why you have the external floppy drive, since you've said it's useless. Here, hand that over to me so I can lock it away. You don't need it. You don't even want it.
They figured out how to use the clear plastic as shielding, either by incorporating a small amount of conducting material in the plastic itself, or by applying a transparent conductive layer on the inside. This is very neat. It sure takes guts to have your guts in sight like that :-)
> I am tired of reading here that there
> are still PC models on the market that
> can't boot from a CD.
Often this is because many users don't know how to make their machine boot from the CD. If it's not enabled by default then they have to edit BIOS settings. Easy for some, but impossible or very stressful for most. Also, what CD do you boot up? I've never seen a bootable Windows CD.
On a Mac, you put the Mac OS CD that came with your machine in the CD-ROM drive and either select it as your boot disk in the Startup Disk Control Panel, or reboot and hold down "C". When it boots, you're running Mac OS off the CD.
Trust me, you're wrong. I booted my 8500 with a floppy not more than six months ago.
Okay, maybe my tone was a little harsh in my previous post. Sorry about that. But my point is that Jobs/Apple do infact use misleading benchmarks in the marketing war against wintel. There is no question that Macs are the right kind of machines for graphics production/desktop publishing/ect...
Wait I'm falling into the same trap again.
Apple/Jobs uses misleading benchmarks. End of Argument.
Pete
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
Actually, it's really not meaningful at all, for the following reasons:
/., so I won't go into the specifics here (though if someone really wants me to, I will). Those numbers are Apple marketing, not real-world performance.
1. The ByteMark processor benchmarks Apple uses are in no way representative of typical performance. In fact, if you look at the numbers, they are downright misleading. This has been hashed over a lot on
2. Apple is not comparing machines of the same class (for purposes of comparison, let's say that the targeted class is consumer machines costing $1299 to $1499). A Wintel system costing the $1299 (or $1499) the new iMacs do would not have an ancient Rage Pro video card, and would probably have a better CPU than a 400MHz Celeron. In fact, for $1299 you can get a PIII/500, a 16MB Voodoo3, 17" monitor, 13 Gig HD, etc etc from Quantex (where I got my computer), which makes excellent machines and has one of, if not the best, tech support staffs of the computer makers out there (important to the consumer class the machines are targeting). I'm sure other PC OEMs have comparable systems/prices, this was just a 30-second lookup on Quantex's website.
No iMac even compares in performance at a given price point. Clearly the iMac does not have the "best technology in its class".
3. PC manfacturers do tend to scrimp on their underpowered systems. Thing is, the "underpowered" systems tend to be the sub-$700 segment. Machines that cost $1299 and up are by no means underpowered, generally speaking.
It seems fairly evident to me that nothing has significantly changed here. Apple still maintains a hefty price premium over machines of comparable performance. And still uses misleading marketing to imply that the performance of their machines is greater when that is not the case. Essentially, you're paying a whole lot of $$ for the privilege of having colored plastic instead of beige.
Today I used a half dozen floppy diskettes. To move the new firmware from the build machine to the machine where I program it into the flash on the embedded device I help develop.
I also used it to boot the embedded OS/2 machine into DOS so I could connect a Zip drive and pull in big chunks of code onto the machine.
Dilletantes who only have one machine don't need a floppy drive. They can also just buy a new laptop when the one they are using "gets full" and needs to be replaced.
Could shield the parts of the crt that need sheilding (the gun).
Or could line the case with semi-transparent aluminum (sorry I couldn't resist), or other material.
Well, I know for a fact that it's not the first slot-loading CD drive on a computer, (my friend has a Compaq with a slot CD drive) but I'm curious to know if this is the first slot-loading DVD drive on a personal computer. Anyone out there know?
Linux does run on it. Check out LinuxPPC and NetBSD.
There's nothing wrong with having several choices of color at all. I just wish one of the colors was a dark sinister Vader-helmet black! Of all the colors, they left out the coolest. Oooh yeah. To some people, you just can't get any more aesthetically pleasing than obsidian. Black is beautiful, baby! MMMMmmmmmmmmm....
Someone ought to add it to the Hacker Test as a way to lose points: how much performance would you be willing to trade for a black machine? Me? I'de trade about half!! Oooh, there goes my score...
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
for the price of the new iMacs ($1299 and $1499) I bet you could buy one. Maybe for $999 too, but doubling the score might be hard in that case.
Yeesh. You sure took that one personally.
Anyway as I stated in my other reply, my tone on the original post was a bit harsh. I give you that much. My arguments about Mac vs. Wintel were out of place, but I still believe that the numbers that Apple/Jobs uses are misleading to consumers. Especially the consumers they are targeting with this machine (novice/first time users).
Pete
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
Probably not next, but you can probably count on Apple to be first to eliminate the keyboard (or at least make it optional).
Actually, Apple sold the keyboard and computer separately for years.
True, the ATI chipset is hot, and I can't speak much to the CPU utilization of the OS, but I'm not sure what you're referring to on the Powerbooks. One problem recently has been G3 series Powerbooks (Wallstreet, not the new Lombards so much) being warm under operation. That I'll concede to you. But if you're talking about the 5300 series powerbooks that reportedly burst into flames, that wasn't so much a heat dissipation problem as faulty electronics in some of the early Lithium Ion batteries they used (If I recall correctly Apple was some of of the first to use them).
I think that the most important consideration is how clear users keep the computer, ie, do they drape something over it in an extreme example? Keeping the vent holes open is important. Convection works great, but if you change the route air uses to travel through the computer it's going to get pretty dicey.
Anyways, that's what I think, and although I wouldn't buy one, I think the new iMacs are quite a great value for what you get.
Erik
Granted I am only a little experience with the macOS, but when I asked our MAC guys if booting from a disk was possible, they told me the system was way to big to do so.
If you know of a way to boot any modern macintosh with a floppy, please email, although I'm pretty sure it is not possible.
Can anyone explain the MAC boot up process? How might I boot a MAC off a linux floppy? What changes might I have to make to an existing ext2 formatted floppy which works fine on my i686?
I've had one for over a year in my home-built PC...
You market that machine? Didn't think so! Any other System manufacturer put a slot loading DVD into there systems?
Not that you care, but Apple didn't really design the speakers. That was done by a little group called Harman-Kardon. Maybe you've heard of them?
One cheap box with everything you need to make and edit home movies except the digital camcorder, and it's easy to use? There's been demand for that for a long time. Too bad Microsoft has been too busy making NT pretty to provide any leadership in that kind of thing.
Video In/Out-Firewire and RGB Video Out are in the DV models. It comes with iMovie )a slimmed down version of Final Cut Pro.
Wow, gotta love those fruity (literally) colors...I was kinda hoping they'd abolish that...oh well :)
Anyways, they seem to be semi powerful when you think about it...Firewire and DVD would make one worth buying, if some good OS supported them...but a lack of DVD Support in Linux (only other PPC OS that I can think of) sucks
Judging from Apple's policy with the BW G3's, rather than making any deep cuts with the existing Imac Series D, they're more likely to keep them at the same price and sweeten the pot by throwing in a printer and/or memory.
:MAC were never able to boot from a floppy
Um, they used to ONLY be able to boot from floppy. In 1984 hard drives weren't too common on the desktop. Or am I dating myself here.
Ok, I give up, why you?
The external floppy was included. I had the option of having either the CD-ROM or the floppy built in. It's necessary for the laptop because that CD-ROM cannot be used as a boot device, unlike the SCSI/USB/Firewire devices on the iMac.
Considering how my floppy uses a special connector, it would only be of use to people with the same type of notebook, who should already have one. Most of the time, it sits (detached) in the travel bag in case I ever need to use a rescue disk.
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That's pretty cool for iMac - seems a weird decision for HK, though.
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
Sony has a video capture application only. They use a "lite" version of Premiere to do the actual editing. What I hear from users is that the video is captured just fine (which is quite an impressive technical achievement), but editing and playback are very poor. For that reason, I can't recommend those machines.
The Mac, on the other hand, is the best machine by far for editing DV. I have one; no fuss, no muss, no problems at all. Highly recommended.
D
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If you look even closer you'll see that all the iMac DVs are shipping with a copy of A Bug's Life on DVD. Imagine what that'll do for the sales figures for Disney/Pixar. -Andrew
Isn't this argument over software subwoofer detection rather lame? After all, this problem was solved in a "plug and play" manner in hardware 40 years ago. (Or was someone too cheap to solder in a $.10headphone jack?)
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
1499 gets the DV special edition.
FireWire and DVD are available on the $1299 model as well... Pretty nice deal I think. -n
(and that will soon be gone with bootable CD's
I am tired of reading here that there are still PC models on the market that can't boot from a CD.
Name for us one current brand of motherboard or PC that doesn't have an option to boot from the CD. They all do. They all have for several years.
It's not a way in which the Macintosh is ahead.
To go from $1299 to $1499 you add 64MB more RAM, 3 GB more HD and the graphite color, but all of the iMacs except the base model come with DVD and Firewire.
I want to buy an iMac solely for the purpose of spray painting it beige.
Over the weekend, I added yet another hard drive to my PowerCenter Pro 210. (A Mac clone for the uninitiated.) The PCPs shipped in a mid-tower case with three 5.25" accessible drive bays on the front bezel, one 3.5" drive bay not accessible through the bezel, and a bracket under the power supply that lets you hang two 3.5" drives for internal RAID. Nifty.
/have/ any floppies anymore. The Zip, Jaz, CD-RW, Travan, and Syquest work quite well, thank you :-)
My problem is that I've run out of drive bays. CD-ROM, Zip, Jaz all are in the 5.25" bays with two, 9.1GB UltraSCSI (part of the upgrade...) drives doing the RAID thing, and an old 2.0GB drive in the final 3.5" bay.
Solutin? Yank the floppy and -- presto! -- one last 3.5" drive bay. I don't miss it at all... I don't even
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Using a Matrox Marvel or a Miro and its hardware based mjpeg capture, you dont need anything higher than 7mb per second. Of course with a SCSI you can capture, browse, email, ect all at the same time. Of course you would have to be a moron to want to do that.
www.becomputing.com sells a dual-celeron with a voodoo3..maybe triple that benchmark....
Oops. Guess I'm thinking of the Apple-supplied Network Boot Disk, which gave you the ability to connect to an AppleShare server, which I generally did to do a network installation of the OS.
/. -- if I ever buy a Mac again, I'll look forward to being able to boot from a floppy.
In fact, the clouds now clear and I'm certain that this is what I was thinking of. I did have a few floppies that could boot PCI PowerMacs with MacTools Pro.
I remember hating booting from the MacOS CD-ROM because it wouldn't let you mount AppleShare volumes. It was obviously read-only, which didn't work well with the AppleShare client at the time.
So thanks
Oops, maybe not.
(And my Zip drive won't work, either.)
Actually, I've done some real-world video editing with EditDV on a G3, and in my experience modern ATA [extended IDE] drives work great and is, of course, much more cost-effective than SCSI.
From the discussion of the Sun SPARC systems with IDE, I have the impression that IDE performance does fall over when you're doing multitasking. Fortunately, video capture doesn't require that - if a system can run a single process fast enough to capture the data, it will work. In my experience, it does.
D
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Bear in mind that Digital Video isn't just about $3,700 three-chip MiniDV camcorders like my Canon XL1. There's a new crop of $1,995 three-chip models, and there's Sony Digital8 (DV format, 8mm tapes) for the sub-$1,000 end.
There are loads of gadget lovers who are going to love this stuff to death. I bought my beige G3 for basically the same purpose as the DV iMac and it was $ 2,800 plus monitor. This is very impressive work on the part of Apple.
The only problem is the monitor's a shade small for video editing. They need a 17" model, and then, darn, I might even buy one.
D
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If you call it FireWire you get the priviledge of paying more royalties to Apple. Since the PC industry is busy cannibalizing itself, its adopting FireWire in the form of OHCI 1394, not even SONY is using the FireWire trademark, they call it iLink. I heard Apple lowered the royalty from 1$ Not sure where it stands now. Of course you cant connect it to an eOne, use your brain! Those things are meant to just surf the net and nothing more. Can you buy a Compaq out of the box and do the same? Yup! Sure can, and you can expect to pay a few 100$ more for it as well. Of course a 1394 Host Controller Card would only cost what 200$ on top of the eOne price. So for what less than 500$ you can make incredibly short movies.
> for booting
> off a floppy to bypass security measures.
> The last two can be major problems for
> sysadmins.
The last PC BIOS setup that I had a look at had specific options for disabling a floppy boot or disabling the whole drive, as a security/anti-virus measure. In that case, why not make it an external USB device that you can buy if you want to, or not? Disbling a Mac floppy drive means unplugging the USB cable and putting the drive in the closet. If you need it, it's there for you to use the same drive on any number of Macs.
I don't know how the x86 platform will ever drop a technology. I read that Intel has been trying to ditch the LPT and COM ports but Windows gives you problems on a machine that doesn't have them. Maybe a forward-looking Linux reference spec could drop the old stuff, but in that case, you'd have to ask if you would even keep the x86 processor when Linux runs on so many architectures.
So the preorders that have qued up since July 21st are finally shipping?
I consider that a dismal failure all in itself.
This may have been said, but the HP-9000 servers at work had trayless CD drives; most DVD players, as far as I've seen, have this feature.
The $999 machine comes with 64 meg ram. After seeing the hardware Apple has come out with lately, I have a feeling I'll become a mac convert. I've been working with macs at work, and have really enjoyed the experience.
And, I have to admit that the case stylings are cool. I don't care what all you macho geeky 'computers must be ugly' guys think; a nice package is never a bad thing. So in short, my next computer will most likely be a mac, provided Apple doesn't find some way to kill Linux support on the platform.
Besides all this, just think what this means for non computer literate family members. My mom, for instance, is almost afraid of computers. iMacs are non threatening, fun looking, and compact. Practically, they're great for internet use, come with a very nice works suite, and have the power to handle pretty much anything your average user will want to do. Plus, I'd have to spend less time maintaining the things.
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One of the annoying things about these slot-loaders is that you can't play mini CD's in them. I have quite a few singles CD's from Japan that won't go into these slot-loading CD drives. You either need one of the typical tray CD drives (preferrably the kind where you snap in the CD, like on laptops and the old iMac) or you have to put the mini CD in an annoying adapter disc. Oh well, nobody uses the mini CD's in the US, but in Japan it's the only way that artists release singles.
> So it looks like we have yet another example
> of Apple copying something that Microsoft did
> before them.
Damn. I missed the other ones. Please detail them here for me.
Answers: 1) Absolutely. You've got 11Mbit of wireless bandwidth...make good use of it. You could surely put 20 or 30 against each-other. Just as long as you're within 150ft of the AirPort hub. 2) The only *new* hardware to worry about is the ATI Rage128 AGP/2X graphics card. This should take the folks at LinuxPPC.org a couple of weeks to get functioning. DVD viewing won't work until the rest of the industry has it figured out anyway.
My G4 has since day one had yellow dog linux installed on it... its a redhat ppc port with all the trimmings and a better installer than linuxPPC. Yellow Dog has a much better business ethic than linuxPPC who sells releases *BEFORE* they are done... or released... (i.e. R5 [1999 Release]) ... Fuck LinuxPPC, Lovin' the Yellow Dog find it with support for g4s built in (no patching) at www.yellowdogllinux.com Peace... Tai Kahn http://www.luxlucis.com/trk/
And netbios is a great protocol? Atalk is chatty, but it was designed for a pre-90's network, one without system adminstrators, and friggin windows nt boxes.
AppleTalk worked. You plugged in a laserwriter, and hooked up 20 or 30 macs, and you could print to it. It still works.
Windows still requires you to install the printer on each machine And Linux requires you to know what the address is.
Yes. There is a history of people claiming that Apple's many failed products are the last gasp.
There have also been so many failed products.
Staggering numbers of them.
I found a reference that said the G4 could be
run in SMP systems, although the apple buy
site doesn't appear to offer SMP systems.
Can anybody direct me to some more info regarding
the G4 and SMP?
This would be appreciated, thanks....
(Email or reply post is sufficient)
The new iMacs don't have subwoofers built in; that's an extra $100. They do have improved speakers, though I don't know exactly by how much they've improved.
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It has been interesting reading the various comments on Apple. I have noticed that there has been a change. I see less bashing on these pages. Maybe Apple is doing something right, or maybe we have a better picture of what they are trying to achieve. Probably both.
Lets face it, the only two things really happening right now is Apple and Linux. They are the ones pushing the technology. sure there are mergers, and some software breakthroughs, but they haven't had the impact that that little blue box and that fat penguin has had.
Go into an electronics store, they may not have the iMac, but the iMac is everywhere. It doesn't stop there, look at the new Colgate iMac biondi blue toothbrush. I'm not kidding.
This machine, the iMac has had an impact far beyond and above the computer world. they have put a friendly face on technology, they have ripped it from its beige, stodgy conservative image.
My wife, a technophobe is now using a green iMac. she has amazed me. She is reading and understanding the manuals. Her eyes don't glaze over when I talk tech to her. She has even learned some email tricks.
This is the big plus for Apple. they have removed the distance between man and machine. They have made a machine that a person can get emotionally attached to. It's too cute to fear. It has character.
You may not like the OS, or Steve jobs and some of Apples' policies, but Apple and the iMac could be the best thing to happen to the industry. those cute machines will bring more parents and their kids into the world of computers, and that is what we need.
Schwinn always emphasized selling that first bike to a kid. You sell him the first bike, and you have him for life.
I think Apple understands that.
photosMy Photostream
I think it's pretty obvious why Apple compares the iMac's G3 and Rage 128 to Celeron and Rage Pro.
The iMac is Apples low-end machine, and should be compared to other companies low ends, and then especially eMachine's eOne.
The eOne comes with a Celeron 433 and Rage XL-graphix. I obviously havn't compared the two but I think the iMac will have a fair chance of winning every serious benchmarking-tests.
- Henrik
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
And now the big news from Apple is ... three new and different brands of iMac.
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
   I don't see how others doing bad things makes it OK for Apple to do bad things.    I think Apple's dishonesty with benchmarks is shameful.
   I do agree though, that Apple is good about sticking to public standards.   I guess this is one example of the love/hate response Apple draws.
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The real use of floppies on PC's is for booting from them (and that will soon be gone with bootable CD's. MAC were never able to boot from a floppy, so by taking it away the only thing they're lost is the ability to store small files off the hard drive (which wasn't utilized that much anyway). Me, I'd prefer a floppy, but that's more for booting then for anything else.
Well, you can't boot a mac from a floppy these days, but it used to be common, 5 years ago.
Booting from CD replaced that. About 5 years ago.
On any modern mac, hold the C key at startup to boot from CD.
Mind you it says elegant... I've yet to see a cheap elegant PC.
The Mac should be using iso9660....
Unless you have your computer completely out of the case, the CPU is STILL getting quite a bit of the air from the fans. And if it is open, well, 'nuff said. And I have no doubt that it has some form of heatsink, if not a massive heatsink...that also keeps it cooler. If I remember, I believe the G3 runs at 72 degrees with a single fan...not sure if it had a heatsink or not, but its still up on the K6...and try to get a K6 (no reason trying on a pentium!) to get below 32 degrees with a simple peltier (spelling???) and water cooling system...I've seen that done on a Mac... Blake
I use floppys all the time. When I'm in a computer lab, I just pop a floppy in the computer and keep whatever document I need on it. Then when I'm on my computer at home, I don't need to get on the internet to download something. I do keep a backup of my files on my unix account at school, but it's much easier to keep track of the most up-to-date copy when it's always in the same place. It also prevents having bunches of possibly sensitive documents spread among bunches of lab computers.
PCI PowerMacs with Open Firmware (which includes just about anything after and including the era of Mac clones) can boot off nearly anything with the right OF config. The Mac OS has been a little to big to fit on a floppy for several years now, But I know that LinuxPPC and NetBSD/macPPC have both used a boot floppy for installation.
Joshua E Cook
sahib@earthling.net
I prayed about it, and God said, "Don't do it!" But I thought, "I know better."
Ever since the IBM PC in the early 80s people have been saying that Apple is going under. Apple has survived cheap computers (Commodore, Sinclair, Trash 80), IBM PC introduction, and made a successful transition from the Apple II, to the Macintosh, then to the PowerPC-based Macintosh. I would gladly take bets (I would bet on Apple) on Apple's demise in the near (5 year) future. When money is on the table these death mongers shut up pretty quickly. I have a rule of thumb now that operating systems never die. They just fade away. MacOS will be around for many many many years.
Wow, that would kick ass. Gimme analog video in, or some way to convert analog to digital (?) so I can plug it into the firewire port, and I just might buy one.
Alas, I think it also needs a SCSI port so you can copy stuff to DDS tape. Hard disks still aren't big enough. A gigabyte here, a gigabyte there, pretty soon you're talking real storage.
But no kidding, they are getting really close to making an appliance that I would buy without regard to hack value.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I'm in college now, and my parents gave me an iMac. I love it, but at first I was very upset that there was no floppy drive. Now that I've been using it for a while, though, I've realized that I don't really need one. I have an account with the Unix server, but I honestly don't use that, either. I think perhaps floppies are becoming obsolete... you can't store that much on them anyway.
Have you read the Moderation Guidelines Addendum?
No fan? Convection cooled? Wonder what the projected lifespan is. Coulda fried eggs atop the last FAN-COOLED iMac I had my hands on. Couldn't believe how hot what little air was coming out of it was. A marvel it didn't MELT.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
No actually. Very few designers will use flatscreens because the colors are not consistant. It's already very difficult to match printed colors to colors on screen, and I for one avoid doing so whenever possible. It would be a damn lot harder if I couldn't shift my head any.
LCDs will probably never overcome this flaw. I'm hoping that plasma or color-changing polymers or something will work better. Sadly, this means I'm stuck with CRTs for another 10 years at least.
(also LCDs will always be expensive compared to CRTs because of the difficulty in manufacturing them. LCD plants are built on a 'glass mountain')
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
the sub-woofer is a $99 USB add-on (and really shows how far Apple is able to take plug & play).
Yes. I am indeed impressed. USB Speakers.
I have had Microsoft brand USB speakers plugged into my Windows 98 box since spring, though, and they were only the market six months before that.
So it looks like we have yet another example of Apple copying something that Microsoft did before them.
Alas, maybe here in Australia where the iMacs are around $2500!!! I know nobody who has one, and 100's that have PCS. I know of no school that is buying them (such as secondary, hay don't really seem them at Uni).
If you can buy a window system for 1/2 the price, who the heck will buy your system? When half the software is not being written for you (so you have Microsoft office, but for how long).
Hey, I love a mac! But when they are seriously out of my price rang (considering I have to buy new software), and I can get a lot better system from my corner shop for a far less price.
Sure Macs selling heaps of iMacs for the short term, I don't believe this can substain.. Hopefully I am wrong, but in the end I don't really care as I wont be buying one.. my friends don't have one, I don't use it at work, I don't use it at uni, hay I don't use macs (as there is none around).
But without the capacity for additional internal IDE drives, it seems like it would be basically a toy in the video editing world.
Not to flame, this is true though.
No one, and I mean No one at all ever has used IDE for serious video editing. You can put 500 TerraBytes worth of IDE drives in a machine and it is still a toy for video editing.
That is why most macs ever released have had SCSI.
And now Firewire.
Also there is NO capture.
That is what firewire is. Digital Video. It goes from the tape in the camera to ram (or hard drive) no Analog to Digital conversion necessary.
Nope, sorry... Slot-loading DVD drives have been out for a couple years now, and I've had one for over a year in my home-built PC... so in other words, Apple marketeers are just full of shit on this point.
Yes, with this push slot iMac, I can get one with the AirPort and place it in my bedroom and leave it on when I go to sleep. It can also be set to turn on and be an alarm clock. Never thought of it, but with no fan, what the hey? The iBook will go in the living room (with AirPort). My FreeBSD machine along with Macs and NeXT will sit in the "computer room" whirring their fans away. Problem is how loud are the hard disks.
Perhaps your web browser window is too wide.
It's the web browser's job to format text so that you can read it, not the page author's job. When people start treating HTML as a layout language, it becomes impossible.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
No... Apple said it would not be available until October... It would not be released until October. That is why they call it PREorder. Get the idea?
Not flamebait.
I am not saying Mac is crap, far from it!! I would love one, but in the end here in Australia they are far to dear to buy..
What good is it if your the only one in the street with it? Esp. if you are new to the system. What good is the system if you don't use it at work? What good is it if your friends don't have it? What good is it if you have allready got software for windows?
Hay, hope mac is arround for another day. But in the end Mac is just a small segment of the market, compared to PC's..
If your happy with mac good, I hope you stay with them.. But since hardly anyone is using them why the heck buy one?
EOF
If you're into retro-computing go buy a ZX-80 and run CPM.
--
I just figure, it's *REALLY* easy for Apple and Pixar to make these kinds of cross-company promotional deals... (But will an iMac make a cameo in TOY STORY 2? :-)
Haven't we been over this? I use my floppy drive a lot. Mostly to boot up Linux, and then also to transfer HTML documents and source code from school to home. While floppy are small, they are on almost every computer, which gives it a HUGE user base. I guess for a business it's totally dead, but for the home, well, not quite.
I just figure, it's *REALLY* easy for Apple and Pixar to make these kinds of cross-company promotional deals...
:-)
(But will an iMac make a cameo in TOY STORY 2?
They'll be marketing fresnel lenses framed in five fruity colors before too long.
I got my iBook last Friday, and it's definitely worth the wait. I'm using it for Java development (codewarrior) and graphic design (photoshop & illustrator).
The full-size keyboard is a joy to use, it's very quiet without a fan (convection cooling works marvelously), the screen is crisp and bright, and the industrial design is a joy. My biggest surprise was how useful the handle is. It's so much more comfortable to tote it than any other laptop I've owned.
The iBook is *far* from a failure.
I recently had to transfer 180MB of files from an old quadra but since the new macs dont have a serial port and the quadra has an AAUI-15 ethernet connector (one of the many reasons i dislike apple) ... i had to connect another old mac to quadra via serial and then the other old mac to the brand spankin new mac via ethernet(one of the reasons i llike apple - dead easy networking)
it was still easier than using 140 floppies
Quite simply, the point is to compare systems within the same price range.
That is difficult. Killing you is simple: merely push the CRT so that it crushes you into jelly. But carrying it away... boy that could take some work.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
And once you are going to dump your computers (not your used razors, please) please send them all to me. I'll provide a home for them, even if I have to assemble furniture out of the things.
It's not just a beowulf cluster but also a handome settee. Well, someone had to say it.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Do not mock the mighty beige Mac keyboard. Those things are solid. They feel great. They use reverse wired phone cords, with jacks on the front of the case. They have their own processors.
Only two keyboards stand supreme above the beige Mac keyboards. The first is the Apple Extended II keyboard (affectionately known as the Nimitz) and the other is the original IBM PC keyboard, which weighs more than many men.
Microsofts keyboards aren't even made out of solid battleship steel! And people buy that junk?
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I'm not disagreeing with your main point here, but your most dramatic point about nuclear subs sounds persuasive, but we can't forget that a submarine is by definition, water cooled. I'm not saying that keeping a nuclear reactor cool in a sub isn't a challenging task, but when you're hundreds, maybe thousands of feet under and ~30 degree water is rushing by a 20-30 knots, keeping warm is probably more of a concern than keeping cool.
But the issue here is the new imacs and temperature. Since the new imacs will be using copper processors, and in addition, the powerpc's run much cooler than x86 processors, you're much cooler to begin with. Top if off with the fact that Apple has had a year to see the real world effects of heat in the original imac case, and that they actually design cases instead of just putting a pc in a metal box, you can expect airflow to be better than your standard pc.
AAUI probably made more sense when it was first introduced, a LONG LONG time ago. Most Mac LANs were using appletalk. Ethernet was not that common *ON MACS*. And so a generic solution (plug in 10b2, or 10bT or whatever) probably seemed like a good idea at the time.
By the time the power macs were out they realized this was no longer the case, and the 2nd generation of power macs had a 10bT and an AAUI (for backwards compatability). Not long after the AAUI was dropped entirely.
But for a quadra, that made some degree of sense. Don't you remember how much Nubus cards cost? PCI has been a godsend.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The lack of a fan is a wonderful thing.I still long for my Mac512e because it let me work in peace. By the way, the recent G3 powerbooks do have a small fan which activates under heavy use or high temperatures.
Awesome... He used my ASCII penguin, too. :)
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
(Sorry, at a lab computer, can't recieve login password.)
GO to your Startup Disk control panel and make sure that the internal HD is selected. I've seen a lot of people a few places I've been freelancing complain how long it takes their B/W G3s to boot up. Turned out the HD wasn't selected in the Startup Disk. I did that, and Voild! Boots up just fine. I blame their IT dept. They were upgrading all the video drivers and didn't know about that bug.
Not a bug, a feature. Simply tells the computer whether to boot from a single drive ALL the time, or whether to search for the "best" bootable drive currently plugged in. (I may be wrong... but as I recall, the ROM searches for the newest version of MacOS from the mounted drives...)
And if it helps, my PC boots a lot quicker if I tell the BIOS to ignore checking the floppy drive on boot. Same "feature", different platform.
James Schend
I find this funny, because the speakers on the original iMac were described with the same glowing words as those on the, um, new iMac. (Don't get me started on Apple's naming system... I worked tech support at an all-mac college...) Those were Bose speakers. Despite the big name, the original iMac's speakers are generally regarded as its second most hated component (after the mouse, of course.)
I wouldn't expect much from these either.
Not that I'm knocking small speakers. My Cambridge Soundworks set are the best speakers that I've ever heard, and they make a decent geek status symbol as well.
MSK
But to the point: We got down to hunting Zerg, and halfway thru the evening I began to smell that distinct odor of overheated components: plastic, epoxy resin, and solder outgassing at a temperature of close to 100C, I'm sure...
That's when I realized there was no fan in the unit, and the l^Huser had a week's worth of junk mail stacked on top of the thing, obstructing any convective flow that might have arisen.
Fortunately, my Starcraft CD was immune to idiocy...
I can see the fnords!
When I was young, Apple IIe where all the rage. The schools had them, and everybody wanted one (heck even I wanted one).
Alas years went by, and Apple still remained expensive (and other computers became more attractive). Who the heck wanted a small Mac classic that had a real bloody small monitor!!! (not me). This is where Apple had a superior operating system than Microsoft (good old dos and windows 3.1).
What could have apple done? Start creating an operating system for IBM Compatible (heck theirs more money in it, look at Microsoft).
Ahh, then again if Apple started creating a operating system for the IBM's along time ago I would be typing in a Macintosh Operating System and then Apple Company would be the evil one.
I must say I like the look of the iMacs, except for price and limitations as monitors and no floppy drive standard. Then again since Schools aren't buying iMacs (or none that I know of), its only a matter of time before a Mac is a thing of the past a bit like a Amiga, Commodore 64....
Apple created: AppleTalk (chatty, but very flexible for small LANs), TrueType, FireWire, QuickTime, co-designed PowerPC and AltiVec. Apple was the first to ship a PC with a mouse, plug-and-play networking (LocalTalk), SCSI, PostScript printers, USB, AirPort, etc.
They may not have created every technology, but they certainly have certainly led the crowd in many ways.
Matt Slot / Bitwise Operator / Ambrosia Software, Inc.
Ahem..
Firewire is only 400Mbps, ie about 40MB/s
Gigabit Ethernet is 1000Mbps, ie about 100MB/s
But.. it'd be nice with hot-swapable networking.
- Henrik
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
First off, I'm a little concerned about the convection cooling, having owned some of the original Mac 128 and 512s. However, the internals of these new iMacs are quite different. In particular, all the boxy metal shielding around the CRT tube has gone (so you can see right through one side to the other), which means there's freer movement of air through the whole case. Also, they use a new motherboard architecture, which shrinks the number of chips and power usage, plus they are going to be copper 400MHz G3s, so less power usage there. If you look at the venting system, it looks like swiss cheese around the handles etc... holes everywhere to generate a cooling tower effect. Of course, I probably wouldn't leave one running in direct sunlight on a hot Arizona summer day.
The mac handles ISO9660 just fine.. This user should be using ISO9660, his/her Mac is not the problem.. In fact I've found that the best way to store data is iso9660 w/ Mac names using toast. The disks are readable from the Mac, but also any Unix (we use AIX and Solaris around here) or Windows PC.. DOS may not like the long filenames, but I really don't care; and the truth is most of the data I write to cd is gzipped ASCii named in the 8+3 standard anyway...
I don't really see any resemblance between the Apple web site and a newspaper. Sure they use a two column design in places, but they mix it up with short sections that go across the entire page and quite often the second column is used for short bits of information and factoids. This is a good format for selling products like Apple's because you can read a couple marketing paragraphs, and then absorb a blurb n' graphic, then scroll down, absorb another blurb, then read about another feature.
The Apple web site's weakness is it's fixed width format. It looks great in 640 x 480 and 800 x 600, but if you're surfing with a big ass window open it looks lopsided with all that extra white space. This is a trade off that all web sites have to make though - do you let your text flow as wide as the browser window, and risk having your layout fall apart (reducing the impact of your design), or do you fill the window and dumb down your design creating a more useable but design-limited page?
A section like Apple's Tech Info Library (Apple TIL ~ Linux HOWTO) could benefit from a design that fills the whole window. At least Apple doesn't make the collosal mistake that so many sites are making of specifying really small fonts - like AMD, wow, there are some web designers who have been spending too much time with the dummy pipe. They've specified everything on the site as x-small CSS. Who wants to read an entire press release in an extra small font?
A web site that needs to realize that the web is not a newspaper is http://www.nytimes.com
First off, I'm a little concerned about the convection cooling, having owned some of the original Mac 128 and 512s.
However, the internals of these new iMacs are quite different. In particular, all the boxy metal shielding around the CRT tube has gone (so you can see right through one side to the other), which means there's freer movement of air through the whole case.
Also, they use a new motherboard architecture, which shrinks the number of chips and power usage, plus they are going to be copper 400MHz G3s, so less power usage there.
If you look at the venting system, it looks like swiss cheese around the handles etc... holes everywhere to generate a cooling tower effect.
Of course, I probably wouldn't leave one running in direct sunlight on a hot Arizona summer day.
Mac Bootup (PCI-era)
Electricity
Open Firmware starts, probe hardware, assigns interrupts, hardware test.
-> LinuxPPC starts, or
-> OF loads the MacOS rom as a unix ELF kernel, out of a second ROM or (on new-world machines) out of the harddisk. On these machines, there is no chance of floppy booting MacOS, since the ROM alone wouldn't fit.
MacOS ROM goes grey screen (this is the first you see of the happy mac)
-> Mac ROM tries to start a system file from somwehere, but the newer ones don't fit on a floppy anymore.
And MacOS starts in the familiar marching-extensions way.
The Matrix is going down for reboot now!
Stopping reality: OK
The Matrix is going down for reboot now! Stopping reality: OK. The system is halted.
Considering that the Linux crowd has not had a revolutionary idea for as long as Linux exists (8 years and counting), you don't have any moral grounds to stand on.
I have some Cambridge Soundworks speakers on my PC that aren't very big at all (except the subwoofer "brick") and they sound *terrific*. I have no doubt that Harmon/Kardon could do the same with the iMac.
As a sys admin for a mixed Mac/Winbloz/SGI/Linux facility, I have to look at my budget and determine what I can afford when it comes time to upgrade those old Mac IIci's and 6100/60's because they can't run current software. The G3/4 workstations are such total overkill for a desktop user that an iMac makes the most sense in a Mac network, as they are affordable, the users like them because they are cute (puke) and they, with OS8.6 & 9.0, are more network oriented than any previous Mac.
:: cstefani@pinnaclestudios.com
So in the scheme of things and as a defacto Mac admin, I am very happy to see Apple produce something affordable and less-featured for more mundane tasks (email, word proc, etc.). The upgraded features are nice too, of course. I would prefer to see Mac produce something more business machine oriented, although this has never been thier forte.
I think that the iMac/eMachine is an interesting shift is the computer hardware market. Aside from the cuteness factor, this really exemplifies the new trend toward "disposable" machines. Buy, Use, Toss. Kind of like a Bic razor. Once it's old, obselete and doesn't work well anymore with what you need, dump it.
colin.stefani
"Every tool is weapon, if hold it right"
-Ani DiFranco
"But the thing to remember is that this is still a machine sqaurely targeted at the computer/illiterate/phobic." Althought I agree that the iMac is indeed designed to please computer illeterate/phobic, I'd like to point out that the iMac (and the macs in general) does not target only that kind of users. Many knowledgeable users do prefer to use the mac, for it's ease of use and it's great graphical inteface. Personnally, even if I love to work with Linux, I prefer to use the Mac OS for doing my school works. Also, please keep in mind that, as you pointed it out yourself, Linux can run under the mac. To me, it means having access to two great operating system, radically different, on a single computer. That makes an iMac an attractive choice. -Delta
I have had Microsoft brand USB speakers plugged into my Windows 98 box since spring, though, and they were only the market six months before that.
Check it out - it's a USB subwoofer. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure it works like this: the iMac recognizes your subwoofer the moment you plug it in and - get this - tweaks the EQ of the already excellent H-K speaker system in the iMac to compensate for all that bass that just showed up. Now that is cool.
+++ Chromalon.
You are proving the point: none of the things you mentioned will be done by 99% of iMac users. iMac isn't targeted at developers, and so the things you do with floppies are completely irrelevant to most iMac users. I have an iMac, and I use my external floppy about once a month. I could easily get by without it.
Dilletantes who only have one machine don't need a floppy drive. They can also just buy a new laptop when the one they are using "gets full" and needs to be replaced.
So you're saying that when my hard drive "gets full" I should copy the files to floppies? Do you have any idea how many floppies it would take to store the contents of a 1 gig drive? (several hundred) I'm pretty sure you already know that, so what does this have to do with floppy drives on iMacs?
Our iMacs at the office boot faster off the net than they boot off their hard disks.
GO to your Startup Disk control panel and make sure that the internal HD is selected.
I've seen a lot of people a few places I've been freelancing complain how long it takes their B/W G3s to boot up.
Turned out the HD wasn't selected in the Startup Disk. I did that, and Voild! Boots up just fine.
I blame their IT dept. They were upgrading all the video drivers and didn't know about that bug.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Huh? You're using floppies for long term storage? Your problem isn't a lack of a floppy drive -- it'd be a lack of any salvageable data on the floppy itself. What is MTBF for a 3.5" floppy? 2 days? ;-)
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
The last Macs that could boot off of a floppy were the original x100 series Power Macintoshes (6100/60, 7100/66, 8100/80). When the speed-bumped Power Macs came out (66, 80, 100 respectively), you could no longer boot from any floppy disk. Trust me, I lived through it.
The workaround was to get an external SCSI Zip drive and boot from that. This was such an improvement in so many ways that it's not really a workaround:
Heady days, indeed.
>No fan? Convection cooled?
Amstrad had a PC that didn`t use a fan around ten years ago and they couldn`t sell it, the media didn`t beleive it didn`t need one so wrote about suspect reliability in the reveiws.
In the end Alan Sugar had them fitted with fans just to shut up the sceptics, when asked why he did this he said "I`ll paint them pink with polka dots if it makes them sell better"(probaly not his exact words but near enough).
IIRC after he said this they painted their building pink with black polka dots.
I think the SuperDrive would have been a good choice -- backwards compatability and good sized storage at the same time. Alternatively, the Zip drive has a large installed base, and you can sacrifice backwards compatability. Heck, a combination CD+DVD+CD-RW wouldn't even need extra space.
I can't remember the last time I used a floppy disk. The superdisk is pricey and slow. I had a Zip drive, but it got the click of death - twice. A CD-R would be nice, perhaps we'll see this soon as the price of CD-Rs are finally starting to hit the consumer level.
Despite the limited number of models that the iMac II comes in, Apple has still given us quite a bit of choice. Those who don't need removable media aren't forced to buy one. Backing up data is important, but that's what the 'i' is for in the iMac, FTP your files somewhere safe on the net and your house could burn down and your files would still be safe. Apple's not being reckless they're just thinking different.
does this mean that there's going to be a new iBrator? http://www.ibrator.com/
Hell I do it on Win98 all the time. From home movies (my dads 2nd wedding) to DVD captures (for personal use), take a wild guess what OS bootlegers use to make digital copies of movies? If its a low end card, then chances are they're using Win98. If its a high end card, its got NT support (obviously no Win9x support if you paid 10,000$ for it) Why do you think some people wont ever migrate over to Linux, no support for low or high end capture cards not to mention the lack of tools. Hell BeOS looks more promising than Linux because all your interested in is network performance. You dont need a Mac to do serious Digital Editing since ive seen the two, I dont think I could tell the difference in raw A/V formats. Do you want to know why you folks think you need a Mac to do video editing? Because when you say NT you think it of as a Network server (or lack off). NT isnt just for networking, they have support for Digital Editing using OHCI 1394 cards. Capture to 720x480 isnt a problem, tho you will need a crap load of disk space. Currently 2 gigs = 9 minutes of A/V at Broadcast Quality. Of course I myself dont require an exspensive Digital Format to get high resolution video. Hi-8 seems to work fine with a Matrox Marvel using the mjpeg codec to capture to AVI. Encoding to mpeg looks as good as a 1,000$ capture card (Miro uses mjpeg as well). The only problem is Matrox drags its feet when it comes to updating the drivers to NT, so im more or less forced to use Win98 for my editing needs.
or just use an AAUI--RJ45 transceiver. ;-)
Sheesh what did you plug that into anyway without that
Why follow the crowd? Just because your friends have PCs doesn't mean you have to. Nobodu uses the Mac? Over 30 MILLION users (2+ MILLION iMacs) is nobody? The #1 education computer and #1 consumer computer means nothing? Comparing sales with Gateway, IBM, Compaq, Dell, etc., Apple is always one of the top 5 computer OEMs, often #1. If you're not going to buy a Mac, fine. But look at the big picture before you talk this "Apple going out of business" nonsense. That's just stupid.
Oh, yes, certainly the new iMac is 2.5x faster at everything than the K6-2 400. These marketroids must be stopped!
And, I dunno about graphics boards, but they compared the iMac's Rage 128 to a Rage Pro Turbo-equipped Celeron system ... how meaningful is that?
Note: this post should not be taken as an endorsement of the inherent superiority of the x86 architecture to that of the PPC -- I just hate these misleading benchmarks.
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
1) The eOne could be considered iMac competition, it uses the much slower RageXL graphic chipset (more along RagePro speed)
2) Rage128 is found in lower-end midrange systems, not the iMac competition eMachines, NEC, and FuturePower all-in-ones
3) The ATI drivers for MacOS _SUCK_ compared to their PC/Windows counterparts. While I use MacOS 8.6 on my blue&white G3, the list of extensions required to use an ATI card for OpenGL on MacOS 9 is very similar to what I have to put up with.... a nasty, slow kludge of ancient drivers patched for modern hardware (see below).
I think it's about time that Apple chooses A) a new 3D hardware company to work with, B) to push ATI to create better drivers, or C) get the specs on the Rage128 and make their own drivers.
[from above]
Below are the files for ATI acceleration and OpenGL alone (from MacOS 9, Final Candidate 4):
ATI 3D Accelerator 4.8.4
ATI Driver Update 1.4.8
ATI Graphics Accelerator 4.6.7
ATI Resource Manager 2.0.3
ATI Video Accelerator 4.2.9
ATI Video Accelerator Update 1.0.2
OpenGLEngine 1.1.1
OpenGLLibrary 1.1.1
OpenGLMemory 1.1.1
OpenGLRenderer 1.1.1
OpenGLRendererATI 1.1.1
OpenGLUtility 1.1.1
He means the average consumer who buys their computer at Best Buy...not a person who spends hours on the Internet hunting down the cheapest prices...then overclocking their computer, etc.
It's not like you can't hand pick a better system than what you can get for the same price from PC OEMs. As in, the OEM computers which are the computers most people, businesses, and schools buy, also have an extra price to them, compared to the lowest price a person could get if they knew well about computers already, where to look, how to overclock, etc.
I fail to understand how these machines can continue to lack any sort of removable media without Apple pushing any new alternatives. I would appreciate the idea of iMacs as 'network machines' much more if they were actually efficient at it. I'm just totally flabbergasted that they continue this policy when it doesn't have any clear benefit...
Do you have any idea how long we noise sensitive folks have been waiting for a modern, fast desktop PC without a fan? The background noise from my PC is literally driving me nuts.
Way to go, Apple!
The question now is, how cheap are you going to be able to get the old iMacs for. If these are only $999-$1499, the older models should be downright cheap!
I don't know to much about Mac's, but if the older version will run Linux... they are going to make, some great, cheap X terminals... One in the Kitchen, one in the Living room to server up MP3's, one in the bedroom as an Alarm clock... Cool!
/* CDM */
The iMac DV (and iMac DV SE ;) have standard VGA out in the back. So they DID include this. (Jobs said it's important in edu).
/.'ers bash the mac. Compared to other places.
So it's there and there's no reason to explain why it shuldn't be there... And acturlly it's nice to see how little
Acturlly I a bit proud of you. If places like ZDnet pring a Mac article you can be damed sure that at LEAST half of the 'talkback's are PC loosers trying to convince themselves that Windows is good and there's no reason anyone shuld use anything else (and they do that by saying foul words about Apple and Macs no matter what's in the article).
Imation makes the superdrive.
Imomega makes the zip drive.
Why is a floppy drive a necessity? I can see some people using it to sneakernet small files around still, but with being able to boot off of CD-ROM for recovery, I can't think of anything else I'd use it for.
Gimme a USB/Firewire zip drive or a CD-RW and I'd be much happier. Hell, I'd rather just tansfer files via the network. My current laptop PC has a built-in CD and an external floppy -- because I use the CD far moe often than the floppy.
If not including the floppy saves $X for those who don't use it, great! If you do use it, isn't there a USB/Firewire floppy accessory?
--
Yeah. But the original Macintosh Keyboards
have Intel Inside (8051 uC)! REPENT!
For IBMs, I'd rather have the AT-02 Keyboard, and of course you have forgotten to mention the greatest (and smallest) Keyboard of all Time: The Apple IIGS ADB Keyboard. Each single switch is made of many precisely crafted components, with gold plated contacts. I still have hooked one of these to each of my Macs. It is nothing less than the haptic revelation.
rich
one big thing about the imac-- and what i think he nicest part is-- is that it's _portable_.
:)
Not portable by laptop standards at all, but portable in the sense that it isn't actually painful to lug around. In the sense that you can _carry_ it with _one hand_. If you ever get in a situation where you have to move the computer around a room or building a lot, you'll find out how nice this is..
With a larger-than-15-inch monitor that just wouldn't work. at some point putting the monitor in the case begins to cause problems if the monitor's big enough.
15" is good enough. If you want bigger, well, you're not going to be buying an imac are you?
macs are unparallelled in their capabilities of handling multiple independent monitors at once, but since i don't see where you'd plug the multiple monitors in..well, that's not an option with the imac
lessee.. a good 3d card, good speakers. Now if only they'd put in an extended keyboard..
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
A)You can only get 500 Mb/s from gigabit, you don't believe me, doesn't matter as firewire will be 800 Mb/s within 6 months B) Gigabit ethernet costs $1000/node, firewire costs $100/node.
Well, if you disregard Bose's absolutely atrocious Lifestyle series (which are nearly as painful to listen to as most computer speakers or cheap headphones), there are some well-known ultra-mini satellite systems that produce acceptable sound. Good examples include Cambridge Soundworks' Sub/Satellite combos, which produce about the best sound I've ever heard for such tiny little drivers. Granted, the iMac's new sound system will be useless without the iSub (so add an additional $99 to the cost of the system), since the speakers bottom out at 100hz, and the C2 octave is a very important one if your goal is accurate music reproduction. Granted, I wouldn't expect this system to fill an auditorium, or break 100dB SPL, but if you are looking for an additional CD player, the "Odyssey" should be considerably better than your average boombox. Of course, if the bass performance really is equivalent to a "$50,000 automobile," Apple can shove their sound system up their collective ass... I have yet to hear a car subwoofer that did anything positive to music (while most are very adequate at doing a negative job on my naps)... of course, marketing Odyssey as a $50k car stereo system is considerably more impressive than marketing it as a $300 bookshelf system - and probably more true than marketing it as an REL/Velodyne/Shiva.
Not according to the Apple Store hotline. The new iMacs don't require OS9, and will ship with 8.6 until OS9 releases. One rep told me late October OS9 release. Another said unknown and the only way to be sure was to wait for OS9 release and order then.
Funny thing is... when I tried to order a new iMac, it told me 20 day wait... which would be late October!
Anyone know the real answer to whether the new iMac will immediately ship with OS9 (or must we wait)?
There have also been so many failed products.
Staggering numbers of them.
???
(spoken in Carl Sagans voice)...and as we look out into the Universe, all we can see is a sea of billions and billions of failed Apple products...
Does anyone else find it strange that Apple chose to compare their high end graphics system (Rage 128 VR) against one of the cheapest graphic chipsets in the PC market(Rage Pro Turbo). I wonder what their reasoning behind this was? This considering that the Rage 128 VR is also a PC chipset.
Also strange was that they compared thier processor to the Pentium III 550 but only a K6-2 400. Why not an equally high end K6 or an Athlon?
Minne-snow-da: Winter is comming...
I am relieved to see no one is taking this seriously If I only had a nickle . . . .
I haven't used a floppy on my home Mac in a long, long, long time... CD and Zip work fine...
;)
Can we admit these new iMacs have some killer, groundbreaking features (that will be copied by the PC cloners very soon?)
I want an iMac, even last years model, for my kids and the wife - it really would be the *perfect* machine for them...
(I want a G4 for myself of course
...end of transmission...
Is there any particular reason this post hasn't been moderated down yet?
With a response like this, I am sure he is doing the right thing to protect himself.
My G4 has since day one had yellow dog linux installed on it... its a redhat ppc port with all the trimmings and a better installer than linuxPPC. Yellow Dog has a much better business ethic than linuxPPC who sells releases *BEFORE* they are done... or released... (i.e. R5 [1999 Release]) ... Fuck LinuxPPC, Lovin' the Yellow Dog find it with support for g4s built in (no patching) at www.yellowdogllinux.com Peace... Tai Kahn http://www.luxlucis.com/trk/
I don't think they try to make any secret out of the fact that Jobs is also CEO (and owns) Pixar. He has one share of Apple stock and I don't think he receives any salary for being "interim" CEO of Apple. Can you imagine anyone at Apple resenting the fact that the DVD they use to demo the DVD iMac is a Pixar title even if they weren't giving them away with the iMac? The markets are similar. When they demo QuickTime streaming they use a Pixar movie trailer or whatever as well.
Fuck Me
I agree with your point, but you are looking @ things from a PC/Linux/x86 standpoint. Macs don't need to boot from floppies, ever. So there true use is dwindling.
Maybe apple can add CDRW capability later, but for the majority of iMac owners, the largest file they'd transfer would be 100k (word documents.. nugh said), which can be emailed, ftped, or sent via a variety of messaging mediums within a matter of seconds on a measly 56k.
You made a good point nonetheless.
Well, I don't know....I saw that flatscreen and the colors looked pretty consistent.
Sir, I was ranking on the iMac keyboard. I love Apple's old keyboards! The Apple II Plus was my favorite.. the case made this cool ringing sound when you'd strike the keys.
:)
I _miss_ my old Apple Ext. kbd. (the "aircraft carrier"). The current flimsy Kensington I have is hell on my fingers. Getting a Kenisis soon anyway.
-- haaz.
Oh, so much for the "media OS" sorry, couldn't resist
If you have a spare one, just hook it up to the VGA out, on DV iMacs.
Been there, done that. Try the Newton (and its smaller, cheaper, better-marketed cousin the Palm), among others.
Just did some pokin' around the web. Geez, the more I look into this Digital Video stuff, the more I realize how utterly ignorant I am about it. I didn't realize that most (all?) digital cameras already have built-in tape drives. :-) Seems like it would be redundant for some applications, though. No wonder they're still expensive.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I watched (okay listened mostly -- slow modem) to the live webcast. Jobs still knows how to manipulate a crowd. The new iMacs are impressive for what they are. The redesigned cases and reformualted colors (more translucency, and brighter (if you can imagine)) are sure to turn just as many heads as the old ones. The new sound system looks good (the sub-woofer is a $99 USB add-on (and really shows how far Apple is able to take plug & play).
;-)
These machines are all convection-cooled. No fan. That makes them quieter than anything on the market. I know a big complaint about the original iMac was how noisy its fan was. Well, the fan is out. (just don't plan on overclocking any of these new iMacs).
The top-end iMac ($1499) features digital video editing and authoring software built-in, as well as FireWire (the only iMac to have it).
Upgrading the new iMacs should also be easier, thanks to a swing-down door which gives direct access to the memory and airport card slots.
But the thing to remember is that this is still a machine sqaurely targeted at the computer/illiterate/phobic. Slashdotters in general need not apply. Might make one heck of a Linux box, though
Gee, does that mean my wife's old Mac Plus (which only had a floppy drive until she added an external HD) never existed? ;-) Along with my collection of bootable Disk Tools floppies, ranging from System 7.1 to OS 8.5?
Any Mac prior to the iMac & blue G3 can boot from a floppy. Maybe they can too, I've never tried. Here's a link to a free OS 8.1 download. But any Mac that was built with an internal CD-ROM can boot from CD, and that's the preferred method for non-HD booting.
Of course, none of this changes the fact that floppies are 99% obsolete and not needed by large portions of the iMac target audience.
How can you possibly judge something to be a failure when it hasn't even been available for a month yet? The only failure I've seen on Apple's part concerning the iBook is the failure to make as many iBooks as people are buying... that's hardly a failure on the iBook's part (if anything it's a great success for the iBook).
Unless they are going to disparage many of their own core features (Unix deriviative with multiuser/multitasking/memory protection/[insert latest buzzword here]
Oh well. They will probably then complain that they don't have choice amongst multiple competing/incompatable desktop environments or that it is too easy to set up.
I for one am eagerly awaiting it. Oh, OS X will also have something that Linux does not - shipping Apps - kinda important
Still, it would be neat to load http://www.yellowdoglinux.com on one :-)
I remember the IIgs keyboard all right. I had a IIgs, and I really wish that my Dad had asked me before donating it to a local school, which won't give it back.
;)
I just enjoy a full-sized keyboard, with Fkeys and pagenav keys and arrow keys and room for a small assortment of military aircraft.
I do remember playing lots of Apple II games that were made difficult on the IIgs because they relied on open apple/closed apple being left and right but on the IIgs closed apple became option and moved to the left. Annoying as hell for a while, let me tell you.
(key configurations in games, no I don't believe we HAD those yet
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Wow, 11 replies to my short post. I guess I hit a nerve. :-)
Well, I have to thank all the Mac zealots out there for educating me on PowerPC power consumption and heat output.
My turn.
My AMD K6-II running at 350 MHz never goes above 75 degrees or so. I know: I have a temperature monitor attached to it. The CPU is far from the primary source of heat in a computer.
The power supply, hard drive spindle motors, and pushing-the-limit graphics hardware are what generate the heat. My hard drives hover around 90 degrees, and that is with two fans blowing directly on them. My NVidida Riva TNT seems to idle at 110 degrees, and gets warmer under heavy use.
Please go on to tell me how the same PC hard drives and video chipset that Apple uses somehow runs cooler in the iMac?
As far as the floppy drive is concerned, yes, Apple has sold tons of iMacs without floppy drives. And the number one iMac accessory? You guessed it -- rewritable, removable storage.
Do not get me wrong -- I am not advocating the venerable 1.44MB floppy disk for modern use. However, I think Apple was wrong to ignore the huge installed base of existing Macs with 1.44 MB floppies. Furtheremore, I believe that providing a system without backup capablility is reckless. Apple should have picked something to take the place of the floppy drive.
I think the SuperDrive would have been a good choice -- backwards compatability and good sized storage at the same time. Alternatively, the Zip drive has a large installed base, and you can sacrifice backwards compatability. Heck, a combination CD+DVD+CD-RW wouldn't even need extra space.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Wouldn't these make the cutest beowulf cluster? -Nick OW OW OW stop flaming me!
Have GNU . . . Will Travel
We know that IRQs are a thing of the past, but DLLs, the Registry (What A Modern Feature!) and other wonderful items make your computing experiances that much worse.
At the $1299 price point (iMac DV), here are a couple choices:
From www.cybmax.com:
500 MHz AMD Athlon
64 MB PC100 RAM
10.2 GB HD
DVD-ROM drive
nVidia TNT2 graphics card w/ 32MB and TV out
15" monitor
PCI sound card
Speakers
56k modem
10/100 Ethernet
Win98 + Corel Office suite + software bundle
---------------
$1270
That ought to triple the Quake III performance of the iMac and run circles around it on every other application as well.
At the same price point as the $999 iMac, the same vendor (CyberMax) sells the following Celeron system:
500MHz Intel Celeron processor
64MB RAM
Intel 810 chipset
Integrated video (2D, 3D, and MPEG acceleration)
Integrated sound
6.4GB HD
48X CDROM
15" monitor
56k modem
Speakers
10/100 Ethernet
Win98 + Corel Office suite + software bundle
-------------------
$1003
That probably won't double or triple the Quake III performance of the iMac, but it will be faster in just about anything.
Although Apple has improved the iMac price/performance, it still falls short of the x86 market.
Sure it looks nice, but have you ever tried to find anything? They have a really obfuscated layout, and their search page is awful. For a company that makes "your internet search detective," you'd think they could make a decent search engine for their content. Their front page isn't too bad, but it's kinda sparse on actual information.
You might wind up as blue as that Imac and the 5000 other people who said (insert random apple product) is Apple's's last gasp over the last 10 years.
The eOne is priced at $799, not $999, so that's not a useful comparison. I spent 5 minutes searching some of the reputable midrange x86 vendors and found these comparisons that I posted above.
Actually... Car Stereo is a good way to measure Sound quality. I personally, am big on Car Stereo. At competitions, the big thing is QUALITY. And it is true that the expensive cars have really nice quality from the factory. Car stereo competition isn't all about who's the loudest..... Personally, the factory system in my $30,000 recieves almost a perfect score on quality.
Please read my reply at #274.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I don't know why Apple doesn't just get on the stick and either go with another company for video (nVidia, 3Dfx, Matrox, SiS)... nothing good can come from ATI's sub-par hardware and drivers. I've been on a rollercoaster with video performance on my beige G3 (ATI RagePro) from one driver release to another -- it's getting better, but from what I've read by John Carmack, the current drivers could be half again as fast if written correctly.
Go back and read my post.
The microprocessor is not the source of most of the heat in a system.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I think you must have something in your throat, because there was never a 5300 that burned in the ownership of a consumer. The only place that happened was after their release in Apple testing labs, and it was a problem with the contacts on the then new-tech. Lithium-Ion batteries, which I think Sony made (I can't remember exactly). Apple did good to immediately recall all of them and replace them with NiMH batteries to fix the problem. This is unlike another company which just tried to keep it quiet and hope nobody noticed (think 2 + 2 = 3.9999999999).
I like Macs, and I use PCs (one for games and one for everything else). While I probably wouldn't buy an iMac, I wouldn't complain if someone gave one to me. G4 for me, baby!
The one and (thankfully) only,
LafinJack
we are building a religion
a limited edition
we are now accepting callers
for these pendant key chains
Does anyone really care if they bundle a movie made by Jobs' 'other' company? I don't know if you've seen it, but I think it was a kickass movie in story, humor and the sheer beauty of the landscapes (especially that last shot pulling away from the island).
To reiterate: who cares?
The one and (thankfully) only,
LafinJack
we are building a religion
a limited edition
we are now accepting callers
for these pendant key chains
in case you missed it, the new iMacDV has Video out for your 21" display. so you can live/write/game as large as you want....
the product slick lists this as a feature. really.
In
They spout out a lot of impressive lie^H^H^Hbenchmarks on processor and games performance. Then they hit you with a 15" monitor.
Last time I used a 15" CRT was about 4 years ago. Even a 17" display seems small these days.
You'll take my 21" Trinitron from me, when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
Slashdot's obligatory "no floppy" post. Somebody always has to pop up with that anytime Apple is mentioned.
I guess you could also make a Beowolf cluster of new iMacs that would be fast enough to get you the first post so you could complain about the moderation and remind everyone how much Linux roolz.
For that, you'll have to wait until the end of the year for high-end WildFire AlphaServers. Don't plan on seeing that sort of technology on the desktop for at least a few more years...
I believe some of the high-end Kodak cameras have firewire connectors.
Unfortunately, these are also the ones in the $15,000 to $30,000 range. If you can afford that, I doubt that you'd be editing your pictures on an iMac, no matter how good they are. (A G4 with that cool flatscreen monitor apple has is what I would imagine...)
I know for a fact that USB ZIP drivers require external power. I wouldn't doubt it if the toher two you mentioned require them as well. Zealot.
Blar.
You caught me, I did mean iomega and not Imation.
Does your superior PC's monitor have a fan? - No? Okay....
If i turned off your PIII, and just turned on your CD-ROM drive and your hard drive, would you need a fan? - No?
okay.. you're still with me, i hope.
Then why, when i add a mere 5 watts to the equation - do you believe that i MUST HAVE A FAN?!?!?!?!
If you do the MATH instead of just saying "Well, shit, my PC would burn up without a fan..." you'll find that the iMac II (or is that iMac ][) will probably use less juice than a standard, unfanned 17" monitor.
And since the iMac can't be expanded internally, the power supply is geared to exACTLY how much DC it needs - not jacked up to 500W "just in case". Which, it turns out, is about the same as a standard 17" monitor.
As for convection cooling- this is how your monitor is cooled.... the vents at the top of the monitor? Right? See?? Go look at the top of your monitor..... okay? Back now?
(condescending tone)See that's how the iMac II's will keep themselves cool too! The hot air from the monitor and motherboard rises, causing a drop in pressure at the point of heat, to which there are vent holes at the bottom... where cooler air will enter.
Therefore, just like your 21" monitor with no fan which uses at least twice the juice of the iMac II, the iMac II will be just fine.
So if your 21" monitor doesn't need a fan - why would you assume that a machine which will suck less juice - and therefore, produce less heat - would need one?
is it just because all you who are whining about the lack of a fan are so brainwashed that you couldn't think of a way to accomplish something that hasn't been done in 15 years?
The original fanless macs (Macintosh, Macintosh Plus, etc.)had overheating problems because there were far too few vent holes at the top and bottom, and because the capacitors on the board that provided power to the computer were not of a good quality. They bled an unnecessary amount of heat.
I would wager that the power requirements for the new iMac's ar probably less than the original macs.
For those who still don't think the processor is going to be okay...the G3 and G4 chips use 11 watts of power at PEAK! At "typical" - they run at 4-6.
The PIII's START at 25.3 watts.. and cruise up to 35 watts at 600 Mhz.
so i'm sorry if you're not used to it, but the Macs simply will run cool enough without a fan - just like your monitor does.
sheesh. Get over it already.
___
"I know kung-fu."
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
hello moronic web designers out there...
repeat after me: a web page is not a newspaper... a web page is not a newspaper... a web page is not a newspaper...
I am annoyed at the apple page where you have to scroll down while reading three words per line and then have to scroll back up the page to read the other !@#$ column. When will people learn that the resolution and space available is nowhere that of printed material. I mean... this is apple... if anyone else did that I would be saying... well it's FOO and although FOO makes pretty good BAR's but they couldn't come up with a web pages to save their life.... but that's ok... I'll deal with it because I like BAR's... however apple is supposed to have some people on staff that concentrate on UI... right???
...and no fan. That's right: No fan. So now iMac is not just the coolest personal computer out there. It's also the quietest. (http://www.apple.com/imac/features.html )
:)
This makes me worry. The new iMac is a pretty cool design from a pure hardware standpoint. But leaving out the fan might be a bad idea. Half the home-market PCs these days have heat problems with at least one, often two, fans in them. Leaving it out entirely may lead to heat-related failures down the road.
And still no floppy drive. I mean, okay, I can see that a few people don't use it, and others need more then 1.44 MB. So bundle a SuperDrive on some models, then, and have a low-end unit without the floppy if you want. But having no removable, rewritable media is still a dumb idea, IMNSHO.
What next, no keyboard?
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Don't know why I'm bothering to respond to this, but when was the last time you used a floppy for something besides x86 OS or driver installation?
The iMacs have always been great consumer boxes with one of the big complaints that @ $1199 how can they compete with <$1K or lower wintel machines. Alot of those cheap wintel machines get that way via rebates for ISP contracts. Apple finally jumped on that bandwagon. Compuserve is offering $400 rebates on iMacs purchageed through J&R and CompUSA with a 2 year contract. That brings the low end model (enough for alot of consumers) down to $599, the DV down to $899 and the DV SE to $1099. That seems like an excelent pricepoint to me. Hawks (ya know, one of these days I gotta get me a /. login)
He has one share of Apple stock and I don't think he receives any salary for being "interim" CEO of Apple.
That may have been the case two years ago, but I doubt it is now. Apple said some time ago that executive and board members would receive rewards/payment via options, rather than cash. Though Jobs probably does fine on his on.
He takes a $1/yr salary so he can get benefits. This was all in Time magazine a while back. He's clearly not in it for the money.
As for all the Bug's Life connections, I think it's mostly a fun joke. Jobs always tosses something around about Pixar at keynotes and follows it with a chuckle. But it probably boosts both companies a bit as well.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
no... the previous iMac's audio were not made by Bose (Bose make terrible speakers by the way)
I don't know to much about Mac's, but if the older version will run Linux
they do...
When you toss in the sub-woofer it might be pretty good. Beats me, but it's best not to berate them until you've really hat a chance to test them out.
For example: Apple brags it's iBook gets a 6 hour battery life (what laptop actually gets it's marketted battery life?). I've read two reviews from people, one from the L.A. Times and the other from the Wall Street Journal, that actually got 6 or more hours from the battery.
I love apple keyboards. I really love the imac keyboard. I haven't found a keyboard for my machine that's as nice to type on. I don't know what it is, but if you type a lot, that keyboard is a godsend. That mouse, on the other hand, is a piece of crap.
My apologies, I appear to have been on crack. I did check back, though, and I notice that every version of the iMac right from the original was rumored to include Bose speakers, but they never actually materialized. Mac-related rumors have a funny tendency to repeat themselves like that. (Hey, I hear Apple is going to replace the MacOS with this great multi-tasking, protected memory OS... It's being developed by Taligent, and it's light-years ahead of System 6...)
MSK
>>Then again since Schools aren't buying iMacs (or none that I know of)............ Actually, I work next door to a Public School on a small island off the coast of the US (Manhattan) and they just moved in 5 iMacs to replace some aging, non Y2K compliant "Pee Sea"'s
Yes you can play QIII on 10 of them, and the great thing is you don't even need the base station. As long as they're all within 150 feet, and have the AirPort card installed (99 bucks each), you don't need the station. The reason for the base station is so that you can have one point that's connected to the internet/other LAN or something and a bunch of AirPort enabled machines can share that connection wirelessly. If you had one of the machines hooked up to an internet connection/LAN then up to 9 others can share that one's connection. Also, you can make a little LAN of your own if you have 10 of them within 150 feet, no wires, no station.
Did i just see a bunch of iMac behinds?
The Mac version of the QuickTime player has had drag and drop editing for years. Before that, it was copy and paste editing.
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
Below are the files for ATI acceleration and OpenGL alone (from MacOS 9, Final Candidate 4):
ATI 3D Accelerator 4.8.4
ATI Driver Update 1.4.8
ATI Graphics Accelerator 4.6.7
ATI Resource Manager 2.0.3
ATI Video Accelerator 4.2.9
ATI Video Accelerator Update 1.0.2
OpenGLEngine 1.1.1
OpenGLLibrary 1.1.1
OpenGLMemory 1.1.1
OpenGLRenderer 1.1.1
OpenGLRendererATI 1.1.1
OpenGLUtility 1.1.1
Sickening, if you ask me.
Say I don't want a floppy.. with a iMac I don't have to buy an archaic piece of technology that I'll never use. Try buying a ready-made system without a floppy. You don't have that choice, unless you buy an iMac.
smart desicions in the product design stage - the true reason behind Apples revival (and I don't mean Flavors) I mean strokes of briliance like dropping the ADB bus from the original Imac and sticking on USB - that way USB makers had to make drivers for iMacs (since iMac was the only platform that addopted USB in high numbers). the same tactic Apple is appling to Wireless networking (with Airport - latching on to an emarging standard early, ensuring support from thirs party manufacturers)
The new design also highlights some interesting design desicions.
The original iMac was about Industrial design and esthetics (as well as simplicity and access to the net) the new iMac is about sound quality and home digital videos.
It still remains to be seen if digital Video will become as big as Desk top publishing (which is one of the things Jobs said in his Keynote). Personaly I'm not convinced of this, the prices of Digital cam corders are still too high for it to become practicle in the consumer space, IMHO.
But the thing that Might actualy work to make the new iMac a best seller, is the sound speaker system cuppled with the DVD drive. I am kind of puzzled why they didn't debut a set of additional speakers for the full serround effect, But I'm sure some fast USB periferal maker will jump on the opertunity soon ennough.
The fact that the new machine has no fan, and is therfore persumably quite ennough to be concidered a consumer Hi-fi device is also a interesting point. now all thats missing for the collage student is a MP3 player that can get MP3 files from a remote computer using wireless networking..
--------------------------------
Hear hear! Atalk was great for its time and its market. Slow and chatty, sure, but it was so simple even I could use it.
Two Macs, one cable, no hub, no fuss, easy filesharing.
Never refuse a breath mint.
Linus said that in an interview a few months back. I can't find the link.
Hopefully that won't stop firewire from being implimented..
It could be even better if someone would write TCP over firewire for linux, 400 Mb/s Gigabit Ethernet is only 500 Mb/s. (should be called half gigabit)
OEM... OEM... disclaimer: I'm not sure if anyone has shipped a slot player OEM, but I believe Apple is the first major manufacturer to do so.
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
iBook failure??? what crack have you been smoking? the iBook has 250,000 pre-orders by now. Apple is still trying to get out all the pre-orders! Get your facts straight. as for the comments from people about lack of scsi, and floppy drive; this is a consumer machine. It is meant for first time computer buyers, who will likely have no scsi peripherals, and who do not need any sort of removeable media. they email their files, ftp, or buy an external floppy if the REALLY need one. Thanks to Apple, a whole new generation of internet literate familes have been born. This machine makes internet use a snap. and whether you like the MacOS or not, it DOES make using the internet a piece of cake. configuring macs to be on a network is so easy. unlike wintel machines, which need to be restarted after switching TCP/IP settings.. what's the deal with that?? The iMac is meant for new users, and is not for Linux Users, or very heavy power users.. granted, it is probably not the right computer for many slash-dotters.. but that does not make it ANY less of a computer. I think that SOME slash-dotters are becoming more and more prejudices, and ignorant. just because it isnt for you does not make it crap. Nima Parivar email: nima@sweetness.com
...that's Iomega... one "m". -simo
It's also rumored that the next serie of PowerBooks will ship sans fan, eeking out maybe another 30 minutes or so of battery life. Keen. I just want the damned BookCovers back from the 1400s. We have one at work (newspaper) along with a solar panel that sits in the bookcover spot. If you work near a sunny window, you can easily go all day without plugging it in.
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
-=-=-=-=-
-=-=-=-=-
My mom's going to kick you in the face!
it amazes me at how many stupid people there are on slashdot. If you want a computer to drive external monitors and such and you want it of the apple variety, get a G3 or G4 tower. The iMac isn't suppose to be a nerd/geek computer overclocked to 15 jillion mhz.. it's a consumer device for godsake. Aimed at people who don't want to even think about programming or doind anything on a computer that matter except for surfing the web and sending email. This is why is doesn't have removable media, IT DOESN'T NEED IT. All these companies (like Be) are trying to come out with killer internet appliances. Apple already has. It's called the iMac. Slashdotters, get a clue. The iMac isn't designed for you, it's designed for the general Joe Blow who needs to get on the net. And for $999, the iMac does a hell of a lot better job at being a inet appliance then any wintel box could hope to. With a nice, simple to use OS (despite its problems, MacOS will never be considered difficult) and those pretty colors, the iMac will never be as intimating as anything from the wintel side of the fence.
have they been seen in any movies or been endorsed by any celebrities?
I believe that BEOS has DVD support?
Hey Apple!
Put in some Video in/out ports, a huge HD or two and bundle it with a cable-box tuner (or at least IR codes for most cable boxes) and video recording software, and viola, it's your VCR, it's your MP3 player, it plays games, and you can surf the web on it, or your big TV in your living room.
These kind of features would make if worthwile for people to start putting machines like this in their living room, rather than in the office...
Apple seems to be moving slowly toward the "home electronics" market with these iMac things... why not go full-tilt?
Questions: 1) Can I really run Quake III Arena on 10 of these simultaneously over an AirPort network? 2) How long before a Linux PPC port supports all the new hardware? Heck, I'd be willing to PAY for the DVD software!
> The top-end iMac ($1499) features digital video editing and authoring software built-in,
/.'ers aren't interested int he iMac is lame. I love my Linux (x86 and ppc) for Unix and programming, but MacOS is still way, way ahead on DTP/DV. Mix 'em and match 'em.
> as well as FireWire (the only iMac to have it).
The $1299 models have those features as well. The extra $200 gets you 3 more GB of hard drive and a 128 MB DIMM instead of a 64 MB (or two 64 MB's, which costs $140 more on these models). And given, say, thechipmerchant's current prices, that's not a bad deal.
BTW, the notion that
Oh boy! More fruity goodness from the same people that brought you AppleTalk! *grumble*
Good Lord! We know AppleTalk sucked, but that's a many-year-old technology. You would have done better to say "Oh Boy! More fruity goodness from the same people that brought you FireWire!"
Fact is, Apple's been producing lots of exciting new technologies that go way beyond the "sexy look," as you so aptly put it. The sexy look is just Apple's way of catching your attention so you'll take a closer look and (hopefully) say "hey! this looks like a really good deal! I want one!"
As for something better than a "translucent port-a-potty," why don't you have a look at the new G4's? In addition to a really cool industrial design, the G4 Macs are really fast and (finally!) competitively priced! The Programming Board at Dartmouth* has one or two of these, and they're just incredible. Now, if I can just get them to install LinuxPPC...
The point is, Apple's come a long way, and they have a lot more to offer than bright colors. I can't wait for the 1Ghz copper G4's!
*As always, my opinions are my own, and not necessarily those of Dartmouth College or any affiliated organization.
If you really must, then buy a USB floppy or zip drive. Me, I do most of my backups over the network anyway, in which case only ONE MACHINE on the network really needs to have removable media.
I sencerly doubt it... apple has a love hate relation ship with linux...they support it but only sometiems and never fully. I am still trying to get everything working totaly on my Beige G3 with LinuxPPC. got most of it working but somethigns still work better under mac os than linux, atleast on the powerpc. I love the hardware though and i use both os's so its ok.
Can I Play With Madness?
Why is intel marketing a 64bit 700mhz plus cpu at INTERNET access? And why is apple marketing a cpu that can do about 800(intel style)mhz as an INTERNET computer? Don't people know that a 266mhz amd k6(like mine) will do just about everything under the sun (except Quake 3)? I can't belive they can actually get away with marketing monstor machines for something as trivial as websurfing.
char *stupidsig = "this is my dumb sig";
If there is actually a second video chipset, you should be able to. One of the things that the MacOS excels at is dual monitor support at multiple resolutions.
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
Jesus! Everyone seems to be complaining about CHOICE. C-H-O-I-C-E. That's what it's about. If I want a rasberry flavored computer why can't they be available? Does everything have to be graphite and black and beige? Everyone's always talking about that "corporate" look. Step inside of most ad agencies and you'll see colorful walls and bold Italian furniture. Having a colorful computer can be cool if it fits the scheme of your office. Heck, speckling your office with multiple colors isn't so bad. It's actually kind of nice on the eyes.
Tomsrtbt fits on a floppy. :-)
----
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Open mind, insert foot.
I think Apple finally included either composite video out or VGA out so you can drive that 21 inch display.
-Signed Me
-- Infatuated with the fact that they can, software developers usually don't stop to think if they should.
I for one think they make great pages. I can't stand reading things that go waaay across the page and only take up three lines with 256 characters per line. Perhaps you're reading it at 48pt.
Speaking of column, seen suck.com lately?
How about the slot load DC/DVD a la a car stereo CD player? Maybe more to break? Awe, no more drink holder jokes...
Apple is still obviously trying to drive the USB accessory market by still offering that crappy keyboard and mouse, along with the lack of removeable media. I think they are smart for doing it. The Wintel market is sure not doing much for USB. USB should have taken over already, but it hasn't, except for Apple machines.
The iMac needs no fan because the PowerPC runs so cool. It is a good chip design, and I wish my computer made no noise. Then I could leave it on without disturbing my sleep.
The ass shots of the iMac are kinda funny looking, check them out at Apple's site. Their product marketing has gone too far with that one.
EC
EverCode
I thought Sony had one? Or it might have been a digital camcorder that also had a still mode where it captured a single non-interlaced frame at a time.
The Graphite iMac is CLEAR. That's really cool, but it leaves me with one question. How in the world do you shield that thing? It just seems like a really bad idea to have an unshielded CRT hanging out in the open like that. It seems like the current iMacs do have a small amount of shielding around the unit, so why not this one?
deal-mac is reporting 10,000 old iMacs still in the channel. They would be the place to check if you want one.
Give me a break. When you sell millions of machines per year you are always going to get a few that slip into the cracks. Comprehensive surveys like JD Power always rate Apple service and support very highly.
As far as speed goes, how the hell can you make a statement like that? The results are so dependent on what application is used that the only thing you can say for sure is that if you want to run MS Office, stick with Windows (big surprise).
Yes, the drivers that shipped with my Yosemite G3 were a piece of shit. After installing the first driver update, my machine was rock solid stable, but before that it crashed a few times a week.
Actually- I don't believe that anyone at Apple designed the website. As with any company who actually wants to focus on making cool stuff, they leave the website design to other media companies to fight over- I believe the designers of Apple's site were from Sapient (formerly Studio Archetype) and if you ask me, they're pretty damn good- Nintendo, IBM, AmEx- some pretty good design. But if you want to bitch about someone for that design- I suggest you see them- http://www.sapient.com
please remember that Apple didn't create FireWire, they didn't create USB, they didn't create the G4, they didn't create the CODECs which power QuickTime, etc etc etc... don't give them too much credit now. =)
Also, us nerds should know that the reason they are fruity isn't to impress us. It's to impress the dumb american computer illertate consumer. To make it an appliance to them, and to make it look less intimidating.
iMacs have nothing to do with us. The G4 Professional on the other hand... =)
_________
My name is Aaron Landry, and I approve this message.
Drag and drop re-arrangement of the shots? Cool. I haven't touched an AVID system in many years, but I don't remember it being this easy to use.
Now if someone would just bring out a firewire camera, we'd be all set. (Note that I said Camera, not Camcorder. Who needs the tape drive if we've got firewire disks available?)
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
On one of the pages, they describe the audio system as having "bass performance normally heard only in $50,000 automobiles." Who here uses car stereo technology as a yardstick for audio quality? Then again, who uses SPEC marks as a yardstick for computer quality? Oh, wait, never mind.
Oh, well. Typical market-speak from Apple. This is about par for the course, I guess.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I'll try to make this short and as nicely as I possibly can.
This isn't just about colour. It's about easy of use and simplicity. Sure the colour and the design is attractive, but the pinnacle of the Mac has always been the ease of use, and it still is. And the iMac is alla bout that.
Only now is the iMac getting more technically respective, but with bells and whistles like FireWire, low-noise (no fan) etc. it rules.
And remember: The imac isn't for nerds.
Remember that your typical G3 uses something like 5 Watts while a comparable Pentium processor uses more like 40. I think is great they can get away with fewer moving parts and I strongly doubt they will have heat related problems in the future.
-ccm
'not enough RAM'...64MB now
'too hard to expand'...nice back door
'no FireWire'...ahem
'still not under a grand'...ahem
Looks like Apple's actually paid attention to feedback. Imagine.
I already have 5 computers. The new iMac is really cool in my ever so humble opinion, it's what most people want a computer to be. You turn it on and it works with no setup and few wires. If you naysay the lack of a fan, stop yourself. The PowerPC chip runs very very cool because it uses this wonderful thing we call copper. Copper lets the chips run on a lower voltage (1.1v) instead of the 3.3v for Intel's chips which means you get alot less heat and alot less powerr consumption. The G3 in my Powerbook is the same chip in a desktop Mac. My powerbook is the only one of my computers that I could leave running alnight without keeping me awake. I think it's also a great idea to include Airport hardware with the iMac, it really looks like technology thats going to beat the pants off phone line and power line networking in the home especially because it uses the 802.3 standard so any device you buy can work on it. iWebpads in the future maybe? I did notice something funny about the iMac though, when you turn it off it wilkl save it's state and whe nyou powerup again you can start where you left off, this is a feature found only before on their Powerbooks (either when you put the screen down or the battery is about to die also when you set it to sleep) up it just puts that info back into the RAM, I'm not so sure if thats so good for a desktop but it'll be interesting to see if it's a featurew we'll see in alot of PC's from now on.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Well, let me be the first to thank you for pointing all that out cankerman.
Would you please tell us why someone of your intelligence would waste their valuable worktime reading and posting to Apple articles if Mac Nazis make you so mad.
I'll tell you what, why don't you post your name and the address of the advertising agency where you work and I'll send your boss a "My employee is a fuckhead on Slashdot" t-shirt to wear around the office.
Apple did create FireWire. Apple (as part of the AIM Alliance) cocreated the PPC with IBM and Motorola. And while they didn't create USB itself, they essentially created the market for USB.
If it weren't for the first post b.s. I would have moderated you up for being funny.
Actually, I'm _almost_ certain that FireWire was, in fact, created by Apple. I'm not _entirely_ certain, but almost.
Failure? It's been out two weeks and they've sold 250,000 of them. How is that a failure?
You're just trolling.
The new iMac is pretty good, but the OS 9 demo was interesting as well. If you plug in a USB/Firewire device that your computer doesn't have drivers for, it automatically downloads the correct driver. Cool! It's a shame Linux seems to be almost deliberately obtuse when you need to add new hardware. I think I'll get a tangerine DV iMac.
I can't wait for the ability to plug-and-play RAM, and extra processors, while the computer's still on...
At the risk of injecting a fact...
I've been using a pair of iMacs for just over a year now. Only once have I had any use at all for a floppy, and that was because someone carried a document in for me to print. Good ridance to the floppy.
Macs have always been able to boot from a floppy but since they can also boot from a CD, floppies are even less useful.
Well. Hmph. Guess that slot-loading CD on my ancient Micron Millenium must have been virtual. Micron must have discovered time travel.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
apple may not be doing the right thing with benchmarks, but how do you play fair with the intel/microsoft crowd (the politicians of modern technology)?
;) kuma
otoh, apple is doing *exactly* the right thing by consumers with the imac... usb and firewire are easy to use interfaces, a dozen removable media *formats* (not just products) will be available if-and-when the new computer user needs heavy-duty archiving. anything other than cd/dvd rom becomes a potential liability.
if you need scsi, get the supercomputer
What is FireWire?
Apple has introduced the next generation of Power Macintosh G3 computers -- now with built-in FireWire technology. FireWire is a high-speed serial input/output (I/O) technology for connecting peripherals to a computer. Originally developed by Apple, FireWire is now an official industry standard (IEEE 1394).
Firewire Fact Sheet (pdf)
Firewire Home Page
Being an ex-mac user, I have a lot of old docs and stuff on floppy still, mostly from school, granted the files are useless, but if I really needed to access them from a new imac, I couldn't...that's about the only use for them on a mac of any kind...ok, you win :P
*tap tap tap* this thing on?
It's great that Apple finally recognizes their market and has put a big honking subwoofer in the case. Now if they would just strip out all the extraneous electronics in there that spoils the acoustics....
Better than having an iMac 6100DV, 6250DV, 6500DV, a Power iMac 9600, blah blah blah.
Yes, it's much more simpler. Customers want simplicity, but they also want a choice. Apple's doing a good job at providing that.
It's about time that the iMac got DVD.
I don't think it's any more complicated really. The Powerbooks and PowerMacs have always had 2-3 configurations. Good, Better, Best as they like to call it.
They've merely extended this to their consumer model to expand their range. One big complaint was that they didn't have a sub $1000 iMac.
Now they take their best seller and give it that same good, better, best set-up.
Good is Blueberry: 350 Processor, 32 RAM, 6 gigs, USB, Slot load CD, Rage 128 and Harmon/Kardon speakers.
Better is choice of 5 colors: 400 Processor, 64 RAM, 10 gigs, USB, Firewire, Slot Load DVD, Rage 128 with RGB out, iMovie software added to the bundle, Harmon/Kardon speakers.
Best is Graphite: same as above except with 128 RAM and 13 gig drive.
It's still 4 products only now they all have 2-3 configs, except iBook.
I run BeOS as my primary desktop OS and unfortunately it does not support playback of encoded DVD movies. This support may appear in R5
Details may be found here.
Well, word is that they don't boot Linux for now. They have an all-new chip set that we need to adapt to. We'll do it, though. :) For now, though, they don't boot. So if you have a significant other that's thinking about getting an iMac but doesn't want you trying to put Linux on it, you're all set -- they're impervious for now. ;)
;)
:)
Also, anyone else notice that these are kind of like a much more expandable Mac 128?
- Crappy keyboard
- Built-in monitor
- No fan
OTOH, the iMac is almost infinitely more expandable and capable, with 100BT Ethernet, FireWire, and DVD.
-- haaz.
* - joint licensing program
I don't know about you, but I've had a slot-loading Pioneer DVD drive in my computer for over 3 months now... Oh, I guess mine isn't elegant...
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
It's always my smaller monitor running off the stock ATI card that changes colors when my machine locks up, not my main ixMicro run monitor.
I can sure boot my Beige G3 Power Mac from a floppy.
Now that you've publicly announced that you're a moderator, don't they take away your little star badge?
Yes, he publicly announced he has moderator access. A few months ago that would have been enough for his moderator access to be stripped away. Is that still the case?
I think the Mini-CD in a RW format would be a killer removeable media. It would fit in your pocket and work in many existing CD drives. One would probably hold about 250 Megs I bet.
Even could make a 3.5 RW drive for it too I bet!
EverCode
While the iMac having no removable media may at first seem to be a disadvantage, after careful consideration, I have come to think of the floppy drive as more of a liability than an asset.
Consider. What does a system administrator use the floppy drive for? For one thing, and one thing only: to raise the computer from the dead in the event that it gets completely trashed by a virus, clueless user, etc.
Now. What does an ordinary user use the floppy for? Well, to transfer files to other computers. i.e. Sneakernet.
In a properly set up network computing environment, there should be no need for the user to sneakernet to other machines within the network, since he/she should have some space on the server. So assuming we have a well-run network, sneakernet is only useful for transfering files to/from the outside world. But wait! Isn't there this great thing called the Internet that lets us transfer small files quickly and almost for free?
Yep. So now, at least for ordinary users, Sneakernet is only good for transfering files to and from computers that are not only off the network, but not on the internet; for transfering larger files (file>300K) from connected computers with low bandwidth; for ripping off programs and data that they aren't supposed to have, without leaving a log of it at it goes through the firewall; and for booting off a floppy to bypass security measures.
The last two can be major problems for sysadmins. For the first two, well, high-bandwidth access is becoming downright affordable and if your computer isn't on the net, it's probably because it's too old and klunky, and with a suave machine like the iMac DV going for 1299, you really ought to go buy one.
A usb zip only runs $129.
It's usb, so just carry it with you to the computing lab, and make sure the lab has installed the drivers.
usb floppy is $70. Bit expensive.