Is there a need for a new prosumer line? - Page 2

Based on today's RETAIL pricing, these would be approximately:
1) G5 ($?)
2) case, mobo ($300 for Shuttle)
3) RAM ($50)
4) SATA HD ($100)
5) SuperDrive ($200)
6) Radeon 9600 ($200)
7) internal Modem ($50)

So, we have about $900 RETAIL, not including the processor. Moreover, if you axe the SATA for an IDE, and redude the Radeon 9600 to a 9200 (or equivalent GeForce), you get $680 RETAIL.


Wow! That G5 processor sure does cost a LOT!

Don't mean to be overly-snarky, but the PC world is already doing this CHEAPER and BETTER. Apple is a competent-enough company that they could contract Shuttle to do the work for them, or set up their own line and still be cost-effective.


And if you are privy to numbers that support this claim, I'll be more than happy to eat my words. But it seems to me that the PC world is already doing the R&D, creating new assembly lines, and making a HEALTHY PROFIT all the same.

I'd be more inclined to believe that Apple couldn't produce a mini/micro tower if the PC world hadn't done it already. As it stands, Shuttle has nearly perfected the process.


Actually, I just want to use my existing monitor and the Macintosh OS for less than $1299. Currently the Apple lineup does not support this price point.

Respectfully,
-Antithesis

I believe I'm in this camp with you. Just thought I'd add that I've used the signiture below for a long long long time, yet, I still buy Apple computers, sigh.

Well, I cannot condemn you for buying Macintoshes. Up until a year ago, I was an avid Macintosh user (since 1985, actually).

But because the Macintosh line could not support my computing needs, I was forced to switch to a Windows platform. And while Windows XP functions much better than its predecessors, I'm afraid that it requires much more daily maintenance and caution than the MacOS.

What would it take to woo me over to the Macintosh side again? Well, if I could get the MacOS to run on hardware that was as powerful, as customizable, and affordable as PC hardware, I'd make a purchase today.

Regards,
-Antithesis

One of the best reasons to have expansion slots in low cost machines is to allow the use of lowcost expansion cards. Things such as parallel cards and A to D cards. The type of things found in labratories and automation.

Such cards are not likely to be implemented in a G5 class machine due to implementation issues with cost and space. Generally you want your lab computers to be small, reasonably powerfull, and cheap. Apple really has never had a machine that plays well in these markets.

What I see doing the trick is a mini me compact tranportable computer. Imagine a G5 shruck down so it is about the hieght of a CDROM drive mounted on end, then add enough width to accomodate 2 half length PCI slots and the other required guts. I've already seen many examples that come close to meeting the design requirements, both imagined on this board and real life examples.

I'm not even that excited about the AGP slot, as long as Apple supplies a good on board GPU who really cares. One thing that all should admit to is that Apple does produce very reliable hardware. High integration leads to that reliability, it is not something that should be given up to satisfy a random desire for future video upgrades.

Thanks
Dave

<Curly>Me three!</Curly>

I think Apple realizes that there's a market for an expandable machine in the $1k-2k range (and the G5 1.6 only BARELY counts), otherwise they wouldn't be selling Powermac G4s for $1299. The market is there. Apple just has to build a price/performance competitive machine to serve it. Personally, I hope that what ever Apple decides to bring out will have (at a minimum) a standard AGP slot. Having at least one PCI slot would be a bonus, but for what I plan on doing with the machine, it wouldn't be a necessity.

Rubbish. Go to Apple Store, they have refurb PowerMac G4's for $979.

Insist on a G5? Well, you can't get an Athlon64 or Opteron with WinXP Pro for $1299 either. (Make sure you include equivalent hardware and price of WinXP Pro.)

Here, I'll play the PC troll game: (whining) I can get an iBook G4 for $1099. Why doesn't Dell sell a 12" laptop with good graphics (not shared memory crap) and a Pentium IV 3.2GHz processor for the same price, and with the same battery life? It's shameful how high their prices are! I'd love to transition back to Windows, but the prices are too high!

Ahem.

I see this is going to be a heated argument for you, cubist. Let's see if we can keep this civil, eh?

Yes, if you want to compare refurbs to new machines, we can make the analogy that the Macintosh platform has the potential to be in line with PC pricing. Of course, if you're going to go along that line, then we have to compare refurbed Macintoshes to refurbed PCs. And once we do that, we'll have to be very savvy about choosing a refurbished Macintosh because the models vary depending on stock and time of day and cycle of the moon. Please note, also, that there are none of the models at the price point you mention in the "special deals" section of the Apple web page as of the time of this post.

Might I also say that I made so such assumption about needing a G5 processor. I think you'll find that if you search through the thread (after you've calmed down a bit), my original post mentions a G4. I believe another thread poster mentioned that a G5 costs the same to produce as a G4, NOT ME.

So, instead of calling me a 'troll', you might want to calm down, go back through all of the posts, and try to come up with a link to that $979 G4 tower with ALL of the specifications I've mentioned in my first post (yes, a superdrive, too).

Warm wishes,
-Antithesis

Why is the only viable competition for the G5 an Opteron/Athlon64/Itanium? You can call up Dell & get an Optiplex GX270 with a P4 2.6GHz w/ 512MB RAM, 80GB HD for about $1200. Why not try and compete with that? I think a G5 1.6GHz in a similar enclosure, with similar specs, at a similar price would be pretty competitive. I think Apple can produce such a machine, and I'm hoping they do sometime early next year.

I didn't specifically call YOU a troll, I said that is the "PC troll game".

For that matter, you should have been able to build a new G4 tower with a Superdrive for no more than $1500. I find it very remarkable that anyone would switch platforms, with all the costs that entails, to save a mere $200. Why, XP Pro itself costs $200. (At this point, most PC trolls trot out a story about how they built the PC themselves, from parts they found all over the country, for a mere $674 and thirty hours of their time.)

BTW, I like Windows 2000 Pro a lot better than XP. XP does have a couple of features that W2K lacks, but W2K is lots more stable and IMHO easier to use. You may wish to consider it.

Personally, I have a G4 Cube. It's small, sufficiently expandable for me, does what I want very well, and sold, when new, for $1299. I think if Apple had sold them at that price from the beginning, they'd still be selling Cubes to this day. The Cube was not a "mistake" that Apple should be loath to repeat, it was a good machine at an attractive price point (eventually) that filled a gap in their line. That gap has reopened and not been refilled since.

I'm left a bit breathless by pace of this thread.

But points that caught my eye were excellently made by Jade, Bunge and Matsu amongst others!

"It would be better to do away with one of the AIO ranges and replace it with a headless machine."

(That certainly applys to the iMac2/eMac line...)

I think there's room to drop the 1.6 and 1.8 single G5 Towers into the G4 tower price bracket and have the San Fran' Jan' PowerMac G5 'all dual' bumps at current prices.

That leaves a solid Tower for gamer (not to be discounted...lots of Mac folks like myself play games too! And the Mac has never had it so good with games at the moment...or graphics cards!) to edu to serious pro'. All in the £1K-just over £2k range.

The mini-tower? Well...I think the single G5 tower at the current G4 tower prices would begin to cover that.

But a Cube with single 1.6 and 1.8 under the 1K mark would cover the rest! Hey, the PC market has already done the research (R&D) for how a shuttle (I mean, 'Cube') should be done...

Where does this leave the iMac2? Dunno. I guess we'll have to wait for the iMac3 to be sure. But as a G5 based product? A powerful AIO for those who want that. And plenty do. Just as plenty more want laptops and powerful(!) towers (as Kasper's breaking story proves...)

The iMac2 and eMac are on borrowed time. My opinion.

I think next year will see a serious re-adjustment in Apple's desktop line. They've done the r&d over the last few years. They have 70 Apple stores which show what is selling and what not.

Look at the recent quarter sales figures. You'll see where the weakness is. And I know Apple under Jobs will address that. Sooner or later...

Lemon Bon Bon

What exactly are your computing needs? What is so customizable on the PC side of the pool than the mac side? I've never seen one platform be able to run, photoshop, office, and a unix terminal at once. Personally I find windows much more working against the user than making itself customizable. the only windows excels in is, video games, and I think personally database stuff (but then I don't know much about those sorta things) The sad thing is what a person thinks they need (want) with whats available. Why does dell sell you a monitor with your computer or try really really hard too? because that lets them increase the price that much more. Percieved value. We need an AIO, for the majority, and a headless computer at the same time.

Perhaps, like many of us, he thinks that the existing G4 simply has such a horrible price/performance ratio that it isn't worth his time? Apple has a hole in their line for a competitive headless machine between $1-2k. Personally, I don't really think it can be filled with a G4. The sooner Apple can get G5's out in this range the better.

Well, if the new rumor on the front page is true, the initial rush of sales of the $1299 PowerMac G4 were pretty much a one-shot snapping up by OS 9 users, and the PM G4 is currently selling about half as well as the Cube did in its last quarter (curiously, the Cube also sold for $1299 at that time).

That changes my working hypothesis somewhat. Apple is currently selling 50 iMacs for every PM G4, which means that the line could go gently into that good night and the loss would hardly be a blip amid burgeoning PMG5 sales and (if another rumor is true) iMac G5 sales.

It seems to me that the iMac is going to be the prosumer machine.

yeah, if the iMac goes single G5 at 1.6 and 1.8GHz with a 20 inch lcd and a nice graphics card (ATI 9200 with option for a 9600) and large HD and superdrive, that sure sounds like a prosumer machine to me....

leave the iBook and eMac for the newbies and kids, the PM for the pros and give us yuppie posers a G5 iMac and huge floating screen to compensate for our extremely limited attention spans and tiny peni.....anyway....

yeahhhhh iMac G5....bring it on


g

I suspect that Apple is going to come to the same conclusion, but I'm hoping that they'd come out with a G5 "pizza-box" machine starting around $1k. Who cares if it competes with the iMac? It's not like Apple is completely averse to different lines overlapping-- look at the 12" Powerbook & iBook.

You know, it occurs to me that mac-heads adopt an entirely ridiculous rhetorical frame even when they're trying to be critical of Apple. "Is there a need for a new prosumer line?"

Huh? Think about that question for a second... A "need." Whose need? Apple's or ours? And who cares? We should be asking instead whether there's a "want" for said particular product. We don't work for Apple -- well except for Amorph -- and really shouldn't give a damn, neither about what Apple "needs" to sell, nor what people think we "need." I only care about what I want to buy and I can find the vendors who want to sell it and buy from them. It doesn't have to be Apple. 97.7% of the computer buying public affirms that reality every quarter.

Well, if you're trying to predict what Apple will do, it's not entirely ridiculous.


Actually, you could swap "want" in for "need" in my posts and nothing would change. After all, we're talking about what in world terms are luxury items.





So? Buy what you want and be happy. End of discussion.

But if you want to speculate about future Apple hardware, you do have to start hypothesizing about markets and wants and needs.

I know it galls you that I don't believe people choose towers because they want or need towers, but I do, and I can back it up pretty well. The absolute #1 obstacle to Mac adoption is the fear of learning a whole new system, the fear of not having what all their friends have, of not being able to share documents and use the Web and so forth. I'm quite confident that if Apple could wave a magic wand and dispel those fears, Apple AIOs would sell in droves.

I don't disagree with you about the psychology of platfom adoption. I've had a few people ask seemingly bonehead questions about my PB. "Is it compatible?" Though the answer is not always a clear yes, "YES, it runs Office, and even XP in a pinch," I have to tell them.

I've even had the idiots at Office Place relucant to sell me RAM, because "You need Apple RAM." That was just last month.

However... When presented with the option, windows users routinely choose a cheaper, better specified tower. And, in what is becoming typically frustrating fashion for Apple, if there is an alternate desktop form factor that's gaining momentum, it's the Shuttle-type (cube-ish) systems, not AIOs.

Good logic and good argument are respectable commodities, but once they fail their empirical tests, we have to reconsider them, though not discard them. Otherwise they become polemics of no greater value than that which they seek to discard.

Except for when they choose the costlier, more anemic notebook.

That's the only metric I consider relevant, because you can 100% rule out the Fear of Incompatibility. Even though there are only two kinds of PC laptops (flimsy and expensive) they're flying off the shelves.

Given what's known about how those laptops are used, I think this trend speaks favorably to something like the iMac. A tower + monitor is hilariously bulky and overdetermined for what it has to do in 99% of cases.


Right. The anti-AIO polemic does not, in my estimation, stand up to observation. That's my argument.

A little sophistic re-assignment of passages there, no? Ah well, by their own words...

I confined myself to PC's, yes, to rule out the fear of incompatibility arguments, but also to limit myself to the question of desktops. Any notebook, while an AIO, is not an AIO desktop. Even the desktop replacement models that you can't really use much when untethered have the advantage of being easily transportable. It's this appeal that drives the adoption of laptops, not their AIO-ed-ness, so to speak, but their mobility. The AIO is sold (or not) on the intrinsic merits of integration; the laptop is sold on the intrinsic merits of mobility, AIO integration is secondary in its case, and should not be taken as evidence of the possible popularity of desktop AIOs. People buying laptops aren't buying either iMacs or towers.

In the case of PC towers versus PC AIOs, towers win by a large margin, and, interestingly, PC makers often run into the same pricing problems afflicting Apple's AIO models -- they can't build 'em to compete with their own towers either. However, since they have very good towers in that space, they really don't need to.

PS, I do prefer to speak of what people want, and I do not assume, if we refer back to laptops, that people really need mobility, but they want it and are willing to trade power to get it. They do not seem to me to be as willing to trade power to get integration.

Clarify?


Do you know this for an absolute fact or do you assume it?

A great many laptops are plunked down on a table, and they stay there.


Funny, I think we've been here before.

Actually, PC AIOs suck so horribly relative to any alternative that I'm still not sure why they're offered in the first place. Their lack of appeal explains itself. The iMac cannot be compared to them, because it actually exploits its AIOness to do something nothing else can do, and it doesn't have a loud fan or "integrated Intel graphics with 0MB VRAM" or any of the other afflictions of PC AIOs. Even the eMac uses its AIO nature more intelligently, though not like the iMac does.

There is no analogy to the iMac on the PC side.


I don't think it's obvious at all that people are only buying laptops to get mobility.

I want a second box for surfing the internet, email and word-processing. I've got a decent 19' monitor. I'm looking at either a $600 Athlon tower or a $1300 G4 tower. Given my needs, why in god's name would I buy an Apple?

The silver-lining for Apple is that the $700 dollars saved buying the Wintel box will allow me to get an iBook G4.

Besides portability, what is one advantage a notebook has over a desktop?

Oh, I don't know. The phrase you ascribed to PC laptops, "flimsy or expensive," suits PC AIOs even better. We've seen the gateway, but there are a few generic models out there with plenty of speed and 32-64MB ATI graphics. Just the other day, I saw one at the local office supply. It had a very nice 17" LCD, a DVD burning optical, 64MB of ATI graphics, 512MB of RAM and a 6-in-1 card reader. The case was a simple slab, not very thick, not really beautiful either, but not offensive looking. Unfortunately it costs as much as a 20" iMac (2999 Canadian). A similar PC tower+monitor would cost just over 2000 Canadian, a big difference.

So, if Apple can do such a good job within the limited confines of the AIO, imagine what they could so with the superior price performance possibilities of a small tower/cube-like machine.

Its size and complexity. Even the big 10 and 12 pound laptops don't utterly dominate the desks they're put down on, and you can take it home, set it up yourself easily no matter who you are, and start using it.

Mobility is some part of the appeal, certainly, but the simple fact is that these days a laptop does everything that the bulk of the population requires of a computer in a tidy package that's easier to set up and use than a traditional PC, and smaller and quieter besides.

As for the secondary web-browsing machine, I'd just get the iBook G4 and pocket the $700. But then, after getting an LCD I wouldn't even consider a CRT. Not even one nineteen feet across.

well i hope the next ibooks and powerbooks have a screen like this. sony aio

It doesn't talk too much about it here but it is a thin LCD with a glossy surface on top...the screen quality is amazing, and replicated in sony's portables.

I'll 2nd that.

If Apple can sell 300K worth of towers. I'm sure they should be selling 600K plus worth of iMac2 or eMacs. But they aren't.

PC towers offer flexibility. Power and cheapness.

We know the benefits of Apple's strengths. But they won't be able to put their case unless they can offer more affordable and flexible desktops.

All the schools I know have pizza boxes or towers. Same at colleges. (I know of one college that has eMacs.)

Two lines of AIOs that are essentially the same is a fundamental flaw in Apple's desktop strategy.

Apple should, in my opinion, drop one of the AIO lines and provide a mini-tower that covers the £495 to £1K mark.

Apple's products are insane. Insanely expensive to alot of customers. Premium on the box then you have to buy a monitor for anything from £200-£1300. And I'm wondering why Apple aint experiencing growth. And if you buy one of their AIOs (because there aint a cheap headless whatever under £998 (still pricey in the UK, folks...) then you have to throw out a perfectly good 21inch D2 monitor (hello Apple!) Then you get into switching software in the hundreds to thousands...(and we wonder why 'Switch' campaign didn't create a seismic shift in fortune for Apple?)

PC land may, like Apple, may be selling 'more' laptops. But the amount of towers sold by Dell, HP or Compaq still dwarfs the total of what Apple spits out a quarter.

I see cheap white plastic towers mimicking the white acrylic of Apple's iMac/iBook designs. They don't look as bad as the old beige designs. And you get a LCD monitor to match. From £600-£995. With 'superdrives', upgradeable graphics slots(!) yadda, yadda... Deja Vu?

And those Pentium 4/Athlons don't melt the plastic.

There's nothing stopping Apple sticking single G5s in white acrylic mini-tower/cube/whatevers and bury the AIO(?) for good. (Personally, I think a cheap mini-tower can co-exist. They do in PC land...choice and all that...)

Towers are what sell most. Everyone I know has a tower. A PC tower, heh. It's common sense.

Unless, 'you work for Apple'.

Lemon Bon Bon

I think that's what I was really trying to say.

Lemon Bon Bon

Let me try and put this a different way. On the PC side mini-towers usually cost a lot MORE then the full sized tower systems. So why in the world would you expect a mini-tower from Apple to be half the price of the full-sized tower?

Smaller foot print = higher price.

No, they do not cost more untill you start adding killer graphics and secondary audio, and overkill overclocking/cooling systems. There are good SFF boards with good (nVidia nForce) integrated graphics and multichannel audio and complete I/O (USB2 and FW400 plus standard A/V) There is literally nothing else to buy and the systems are fast. If you compare to a budget PC, sure tey cost more, but no one here is arguing that Apple needs to make a 500 USD budget machine.

You will find better normal form factor boards at lower prices then the small form factor ones.

I was thinking about building a SFF computer using a shuttle xpc case and motherboard, but it came out a few hundred dollars MORE then building a normal form factor computer.

On the PC side, the computer manufactures charge more for mini-towers, and for build it yourself types the components cost more. So once again, why do people think a SFF powermac would be cheaper the full sized ones? It just does not make sense.

Of course, even is something does not make sense from a manufacturing stand point, it does not mean that it won't happen. Sometimes marketing concerns will override the logic of manufacturing.

apple is not dell... quit comparing the two, I'm sure we all try and not shop at wal-mart as well, to compare prices between rustler jeans and gap ones.

if anything,
apple needs to build boxes with more of the goodies that professionals want.
they dont need to try and compete with dell for the cheapest box.
sheer lunacy.
for instance.
what if apple built a box with fw1600 in it,or fiber channel,or a breakout box?
what,god forbid,if apple built a genuine slot moster like the 9600?
what if they put 4 processors in a box?
this is what people want.
some anyways.

One thing that gets lost here is that you reduce costs by integrating. Something like the eMac is the logical result of a concerted attempt to build an inexpensive machine.

It doesn't have to implement PCI -> cheaper.

It relies on integrated ASICs rather than PCI cards for features -> cheaper.

It relies on an AGP chipset rather than an AGP slot + card -> cheaper.

The power supply can be sized exactly to fit the fixed requirements of the computer and monitor (and it doesn't have to power PCI) -> cheaper.

The whole thing is assembled in one package with extremely high automation -> cheaper to make, cheaper to ship, easier to inventory.

There are no total cost savings associated with a separate box, especially once you add PCI or AGP expansion options. In fact, I'd expect the additional costs of building a low-price minitower from the starting base of an eMac to more or less cancel out the (extremely low) cost of the CRT. If all you did was stick the existing eMac motherboard in a little box with a bigger power supply (not optional) you might be able to price it $50 cheaper, but only by shaving off features like the speakers.

The reason it's possible to build a perfectly adequate machine for very little on the PC side has to do with the economies of scale they enjoy: Their market is 30x larger than ours, so they can absorb the relative inefficiencies of an essentially modular architecture (but even on the PC low end, you see a fair amount of integration now).

For Apple to offer a lean and mean machine, they basically need to go AIO. (I think the main reason that this doesn't work on the PC side has to do with the ridiculous amount of heat spewed by their CPUs of choice - a Centrino-based AIO, now, that could go somewhere. The first PC maker to shoot for that target and hit it just might usher in a new era on that side of the fence.)

That may be, but I hate towers. Wires everywhere, and no good place to put the darned thing! Since getting a PowerBook for home and an iMac 2 (as you call them) for my office desk, I never want a tower, a cube or whatever again. Just my 2¢.

A shame you don't like towers. I grant, alot do look ugly on the pc side and noisy (got an Athlon right here that proves that...). But the G5 is a work of art.

Although I'm critical of Apple's AIO 'ONLY' strategy for consumer desktops, I don't 'hate' them. I just think they need to make their offerings more diverse to give consumers more choice.

Lose the monitor from the eMac and you have a cheaper product. A hundred quid may mean something to a UK buyer. A student. A small business. Somebody.

Towers don't have to be ugly. Look at the G5. Look at the 'mini-tower' Cube. Computers can be gorgeous. See Apple.

But having two consumer lines that offer the same thing, differentiated only by a chrome arm and an LCD monitor? (And a mild spec bump here or there?)

Anybody can use all the lame logic in the world...but Apple's still got two identical products that are hampering their efforts in my opinion.

This is Apple who made the G5. A work of Art.

I can't believe they couldn't do the same for a 'consumer' tower.

Before Apple made their laptops, the iPod and the G5 tower...the Cube, the iMac2...I wouldn't have thought such products possible.

Apple still aint perfect. And their consumer desktops are the weak spot. They should be selling way more. I believe they could do this if they give the Apple (and PC) consumer a choice to use what monitor they want. A choice to upgrade the graphics...if they want. Doesn't have to be a lot...but a little more expandability would be nice. Apple don't have to be dollar for dollar as cheap as Dell. But they need to get closer and THEN let the value added extras do the talking. 'Closer' is a piece of string. You can argue about its length all day. I don't think Apple is there yet...

Is there a need for a 'new' prosumer line. I don't like the thread title. I think there are genuine holes in Apple's line-up. Drop single G5 towers underneath the 'all dual' G5 line and you've got the pro' and prosumer tower market between 1K-2K sewn up.

Make an 'iBook' equivalent for the consumer tower to cover the £495-999 market. I think they'd sell by the truck load. (I don't think this necessarily rules out iMac3 and redesigned eMacs which can be complimentary products to Apple's line.) But it would be interesting to see which sold more...

I guess we won't know 'who's right' until Apple actually do it, eh?

Lemon Bon Bon

See that gorgeous mini-me G5 Cube Tower posted on a Japanese site?

Gosh.

If they did that? Single G5? I'd be there. I would also love to see it in iBook enamel white.

It would make an ace consumer tower. A real answer to the PC Shuttle!!!

Bet it would look gor-geous..!

I think Apple would shift shed loads...

Lemon Bon Bon

There is also photo/video effects shops that like to save money by populating the studio with lower cost "assistant" workstations. Also, the market is showing that basic video editing and photo manipulation are becoming as important as web and email.

Personally, I'd love to see a divide in the PowerMac line, with the lower end machines being smaller, with slower dual G5s, and just one PCI slot. The upper-end would then have the faster CPUs, and four internal SATA "slots."

It would be more economical for Apple to use the same case with a "lite" motherboard which only had one CPU, an AGP slot, and 1-2 PCI slots. That way they at least get a volume discount of the common components, as well as the $ savings from not designing and building a new enclosure, and only have the expense of 2 "similar" motherboards.

Interesting idea, JCG.

Lemon Bon Bon