TS reports on new imac specs - Page 4

I just got the latest Dell Catalog in the mail. And I looked through all their desktop offerings.

The truth is.... as painful as it is for me to admit, the graphics chip is not the problem. If those specs are accurate, Apple competes amazingly well and if the 17 inch truly is 1299, it'll be a very good deal. it's near impossible to find a desktop with similar specs and also buy a 17 inch Dell LCD for 1299.....In fact, I can't.

The bigger issue i see is processor speed. Apple finally has clockspeed at their use....but are opting for 1.6 and 1.8. if they went for 1.8 and 2 they'd not only be comparable on other specs but also on processor speeds....which would be a first in many years.

Still hoping for 1299 to include superdrive.

Again, they do come with AGP slots, so you can easily and cheaply upgrade. The iMac needs either an upgradable GPU (which is exceptionally unlikely), or a decent one out of the box.

Interesting, all this discussion of the new iMac's price/value ratio...

Yet not one word devoted to ergonomics or form factor?

Speed is increasinly trivial to many consumers. While I agree that the iMac2 and possibly the iMac3 are overpriced, it seems that the problem is overstated. People purchasing botique machines (like the iMac2 and iMac3) are likely more impressed by design than teraflop mongering.

Discussion of the iMac's price/value is useless unless the form factor is factored in.

i don't think i can agree with that. the original imac was adorable....but it had the best price/performance ratio of any mac available at the time. it was quite an amazing little computer.

the iMac LCD never had that bang for the buck appeal.

All of Apple's products are visually appealing. Looks work for things that don't involve cracking open the savings account. The iPod mini sells on looks. a 1500 dollar computer only has looks as a factor....not the deciding one. Every person I talk to, who doesn't own a mac, says they are too much money and underpowered.

Applenut I just have the same revelation this morning. It was an "oh shit" moment when I realized that the typical PC that had what I wanted was $1499 and that was using a 5200fx. I do agree though on the processor speed. Apple could have utilized 1.8 and 2Ghz speeds because while the G5 is fast it cannot beat out a P4 system running twice its clock.



Yeah I know but at $1300 I question about how important that really is. These computers are tossers in 2-3 years. In that same timeframe it's likely that you've spent more money on your cable connection than your iMac G5.

Apple is suprisingly competitive at this pricing and that is unique because they're not shipping commodity boxes. This is custom design for a small pittance increase over a ATX PC. That's impressive.

It doesn't matter if PCs come with a spectacularly underpowered card, they have an AGP port. If the user doesn't like the graphics card, he can switch it with a better one.

With these iMacs, you can't be skimping on parts like the graphics card, the user can't do anything about it. Sure, the 5200 is sufficient for a poor user that only wants to check his email and play some tunes. But the poor mac fan that has an ambition to play a game or two of today and the future on his shiny, new iMac - he's got no choice but to pick the PowerMac or ... a PC, which 98% of the population is choosing.

I suggest you do a little waking up yourself. This is the computer Apple is trying to take over the world with. Will they succeed with a computer that doesn't fit buyers? This should be the "one size fits all" computer, but it doesn't get any better than the weakest part it has.

Skimping on the GPU when they say the GPU is the future themselves, it's just saying "We're not really interested."!

Looks? Form is not synonymous with looks.

Fixation upon looks and speed is common amoung youth and lessons with age. At a certain point in life, usability and ergonomics overtake speed and looks as the paramount criteria.

The same phenomenon is true amoung car buyers. Youth make decisions based upon speed and looks while elderly are more concerned with seat comfort and cup holder placement.

I think the demographics here tend to skew our eveluations toward the gamer and spec whore perspective.
(myself included)

Most people don't Zap. Apple sells almost a million computers a qtr so imagine how many PCs are sold per qtr but not even half of these people upgrade their cards. Macintosh is admittedly not a platform for games so the whole "rush" to get the latest graphics card isn't really prevalent.


Again you're revising reality to meet your needs. My links previous showed adequately that both Dell and Gateway heavily utilize the 5200fx. Are PC user not as ambitious for gaming. Id guess many are MORE apt to play game yet they will find a 5200fx in computers up to $1800. Hence Apple is "skimping" no more than the worlds largest computer manufacturer(Dell).



Apple never said they were going to take over the world. They simply make cool products and make a profit doing so. They must be suceeding as they turned a nice 60 million profit last qtr. They have money in the bank. You know what. For the first time I think I realize that it is some fans that have the Reality Distortion Field.

The RDF on this board is amazing. I mean i'm being told that 98% of PC users want fast graphics yet most have the same damn card. Where's the "scratching my head" emoticon for these moments.

the original imac was one of the worst ergonomic computers you could buy. it sold 6 million. the imac lcd 2 is a very good ergonomic computer. it's sales sucked

people really dont care about ergonomics when buying stuff. even though they probably should. face it, its only nature for humans to get into the "mine is bigger and better than yours".

The sales volume of those two product lines were a result of price. The iMac2 was definately priced out of many consumers' budget.

However, this doesn't suggest that ergonomics is irrelevent. Just that it was priced to high for the market.

Keep in mind that user demographics are rapidly changing. Web (home computer) users are suprisingly old when compared to just a few years ago. Yes, the elderly are taking over the web. It's just easy to miss this phenomenon since we don't visit their sites.

But Applenut...mine really "is" bigger than yours!


Thinksecret left some wiggle room on the pricing. I sincerely hope that Apple does not ship iMac G5 non edu model without a superdrive. The reasoning is simple. People want to burn DVDs even if it is just data and backing up. Second iDVD doesn't work with external drives so now the user is locked out of iDVD.

Apple would be better just to increase the price rather than try and hit a pricepoint by cutting out a Superdrive.

As for the graphics we still don't know if the card is not upgradable. %80 chance that it isn't but there is always that slight possibility that the iMac G5 ushers in a GPU on a daughtercard. This benefits Apple just as much as it benefits the end user. Cross your fingers. Apple might now do this until they go PCI Express but we can always hope.

The last time TS posted specs on an upcoming device, they were not completely accurate. The recently 4G iPod comes to mind. They spoke of a 60GB with color screen, iPods in various colors, etc. I suspect that at some point they'll do an Update and make some changes. I also checked a Dell mailing I received a few days ago. Although there are cheaper machines available, when all is said and done a fully loaded Dell competing even with the current iMac is practically at the same price point . Yes CPU speeds are higher, but hasn't this MHz myth been debunked recently. The PC world thinks so, but not the Mac world. Anyhow, I think the new iMac is going to be beautiful and an eye opener. Anyone want to bet on the "shipping" date? I believe the 17" models will be available "immediately" with the 20" ones available at the end of September. I'd think the edu model will not be listed on the Apple Store page. Perhaps the top end will also have several built to order options? 2 1/2 weeks.

Didn't my post earlier in this thread count?

If the best video Apple can muster for its consumer line is fx5200 then Apple has a problem. Not having a better video option will kill this thing just as it did the iMac G4. Every thing that killed current imac is still here except for the cpu&neck The consumer wants video options but Apple doesnt listen well to consumers unless you are talking pods pods and more pods. consumer computers?Apple has been lost for awhile on that one. holding onto this all in one crap is killing off their consumer market and keeping with the lowest videochip with no upgrade path continues this market loosing philosophy. you want to use garbage fine but give the consumer the option of letting that fx5200 find a drawer to collect dust bunnies in. I wouldnt buy this thing on the fx5200 alone and many will do the same.

All those game companies like aspyr,macsoft,feral must be wondering what the heck is Apple doing?

Ati must be wondering why make and sell Mac video cards when only 1 model can even use them.

Aurora


Thanks for giving us a dose of your RDF. Much appreciated.

Some very lively talk here. Good, nice to read for a change.

Every time I sat in an Apple/reseller store and toyed with an LCD iMac, the graphics seemed quite slow. No matter if it was a 700MHz 15" model or a 1.25GHz 20" model. They just seem slow when using them.

And configuring an IBM, HP or Dell at or near the 17" iMac with Superdrive comes in around $1399 or so (with the obvious DVD writing/Movie editting software packages) and DVD writer. iMac is $1799. With those others though, I can upgrade to an ATI 9800Pro. And that is not a cheap upgrade - $150-$200.00 depending on vendor. The 5200 blows.

True that. \

I've had my iMac since 1999. The wideband is killing me. The iMac is a steal.

Ah, finally, one of these threads gets some perspective.

At least you're getting an FX 5200 standard in PCs now. Intel integrated graphics used to be available well over $1K. Sure, you can get an AGP card (sometimes) and go into driver update hell if you want, but this is suboptimal. Why should you have to bring your PC back to the store (because Joe Consumer does not crack the case open and add cards) and spend a significant amount of money just to get basic functionality?

The FX 5200 is pretty much the worst case for the iMac. I wouldn't be surprised if they ship something better, at least on the 20". But even if they don't, they're par for the course. If a significant percentage of PC buyers bought aftermarket cards, the industry would be wildly more profitable than it is. As it is, ATI and NVIDIA both still make most of their money from OEM sales, so most people must not upgrade the card that ships in their machine. Therefore, whatever Apple ships looks like it'll be at least par for the course. Some people won't be happy, but they're the sort of people to whom Apple's approach isn't appealing in the first place.

Now Amorph that's the kinda RDF I like!

Yep. But at least the Cube had an upgradable video card.

I'm glad I got my 1.6 tower, even though it's as big as a small refrigerator. I've already upgraded the video.

People having a shit-fit about the GPU are misplacing their anger.

An AIO is an AIO is an AIO. You ain't gonna upgrade much, unless the CPU is on a daughtercard and the GPU is on one of those mobile style-card-socket-thingamabob standards that some GPU makers are using for mobile products -- which it may be if this iMac turns out to be the PB G5 in a few months time.

Anyway. It's the bleeding price folks! 1299, and no superdrive, which should be standard at that price, and only 256MB of RAM, a figure which every single manufacturer doubles when we're talking about systems over 1K.

A combodrive 17" model has no business costing more than 999. That ain't no loss leader either. G5's are at least as cheap as G4's, and 17" panels barely cost more than 15"ers.

I sure hope think secret is wrong about the prices.

That's why you spend the extra money. There is no free lunch you $cratch the vendors back with some moolah they provide you better hardware. Circle of business...mutual beneficiaries.



Not the point of view. Rather than take a holistic approach to viewing the situation the closet Mac Hater takes a passive agressive stance by failing to acknowledge the unique design of Apple products as a potential positive thus, they wish to strengthen their negativity via lies of ommission.

Seeing only have the story means you are blind to the other %50. How many here want to give up one of their eyes. Not too fun is it?

Are you implying that you get driver update hell automagically for a GFX card upgrade?

I have to be honest, it's the first time I've ever heard of such a thing. And me and my friend do change the GFX card of our computers, though not very often. And this is one thing that has never given us trouble, be it on a OEM computer or a "homebuilt" one.


Does this OEM sales figure include buissnes sales? Or is it just sales to "regular consumers"? </curious>

He's talking about winning contracts for their products to ship in computers from the

Dells
IBMs
Apples
Compaqs
HPs

That's where the money is. 3dfx died because they had cool stuff that gamers loved but gamers aren't enough to keep your coffers ringing with money. You need your graphics shipping in every product you can. Concrete deliverables.

Gamers are best suited to buying configurable computers. If that isn't Apple then that's the way it is because Apple doesn't promote gaming that much. A SFF PC with a nice card would be a nice little gaming box to go along with a Mac or a console computer.

The 5200 fx doesn't knock your socks off but in the scheme of what Appe wants to do with Tiger and other apps it works.

Who's the closet mac hater? Hugs 12" powerbook, thumbs 30Gb iPod, and heads out of the office. I've always said Apple makes some good stuff, unfortunately it's been a long time since they made any of it for the consumer desktop -- at least not at a reasonable price.

Wow. I've owned half a dozen Macs, recommend them every chance I get, and because I observe that a non-upgradable 5200FX is a joke in a machine at the iMac's price, I'm a "closet Mac hater"? Yes, design is an important advantage of Apple's products. But we've seen what a unique design combined with lousy price/performance results in, with both the cube and iMac2.

I love the angst in this thread! Any excuse to get one's knickers in a twist!

Hey! Whatever happened to bus speed? A few months ago, all I read about here was that Wintel PCs had bus speeds that kicked Apple's butt, and that a faster bus was the main thing holding back Macs. Now that iMacs are possibly on the verge of 800/900 MHz buses, where are the yawns of relief?

When people claim that current iMacs are dogs at playing games, is it entirely the fault of the video card? Is the bus saturated? Is the CPU pegged? Is the software port just poorly coded? Some or all of the above?

All the concern about the video card reminds me of the comments when the original iMac Rev. A was introduced: "What are they thinking? How much could it have cost to put in a #@$& floppy drive?" "USB? There aren't even any USB peripherals out there!" "What? A 15-inch display? That's so bogus: they easily could have fit a 17-incher in there!" "No one will ever buy a computer with a round mouse," "Blue? Yeah, like I'm gonna use a toy-colored computer!" "Where's my paper clip? [OS 8 joke]"

Let's see: 278,000 sold in 6 weeks....

agreed, the imac is a botique computer, nothing more, thus leaving a huge market unserved, the non-pro who wants a desktop, not an inverted cerial bowl with a display on top.

I have given up on the dream of a $999 headless mac but they sure could revive the single cpu PM and toss in a combo drive, an agp, and one pci slot and a 5200 for like 1599$ and fill the niche quite well.

Now from what I've read the so called "enthusiasts" market has seen an exponential growth over the last few years. So then question that then would arise [if my source is correct] is how much money is in this market segment, and if it's growing exponetially, how much will there be in it in a few years?

And for that matter didn't DELL start a "gaming line" or some such of there computers?

Not that I want the iMac to become a 1337 gaming rig though, it's a small formfactor computer, and thus it's limited in it's choice of both GPU and CPU, even if I feel that they could have found a better GPU then the 5200. (you don't see Mini-ITX boards with nVidia 6800 Ultra GPUs )

But a choice in this regard would be nice never the less, like a single CPU Power Mac perhap?

Sorry sometimes I just get swept in the drama. I'm just making hyperbolic statements for fun really. We've all been posting on these boards long enough to get a feel for each other and dammit I look forward to "ribbing" Matsu every now and then

hehehe let's be honest it was getting quite boring around here. Trust, if I've actually offended anyone when in Seattle look me up and I'll buy you a quality beer.


No you musn't give up on this dream. You just have to realize what must happen to this to come to fruition. The reason why HP, Dell and other can sell lowcost computers is because they are looking to sell the whole widget. HP and Dell don't derive their profit from selling $499 computers. Those are loss leaders. HP and Dell want to sell you an infrastructure. Both companies have Server lines and Switches and Printers. They want to own the whole shebang.

If Dell pitched their lineup at you(the business or school) and you said "Nahhhh I think I'll pass on the Poweredge Server and Switches but we'll keep the $599 client boxes"

Dell would say

"Nice try sparky, the deal is for the whole enchilada"


What does this mean for you and your headless Mac? It means we're not going to see one until Apple can offer a much better "full meal deal" which includes Xserves, Office Suites , switches etc. Yes Apple will likely need to buy into a networking(someone like Asante) and rebrand to Apple. Then Apple could use a loss leader headless Mac to get more Xserves and Switches into the biz and edu.

Eric_Z

Apples reluctance to embrace gaming on Macintosh is legendary. That and their refusal to license the OS have to be some of the biggest blunders Apple has created.

I sold Macs for a while and I lost far more Mac sales to people over gaming versus say price. I saw kids give their parents the iciest looks because they wanted a PC for the gaming. Many parents cave and go buy the PC.

Gaming also ensures that you have an OS tuned for multimedia. Apple's ill fated Quickdraw 3D had to be the dumbest thing. They develop a 3D API yet Apple doesn't support it with games based on the technology or apps. So it dies a neglected death as Directx and OpenGL become the tech used. Apple wasted all that time and resources.

Bungie was loved by Mac users. Why did Microsoft see the potential that Apple didn't? Probably because Microsoft see's many things that Apple doesn't hence they have %97 share and Apple has less than %3.

I think Steve Jobs will be able to take Apple up to a point but I think he has a ceiling and beyond that point you need vision coming from a different point of view. If Steve can hang on for say 7 more years and turn Apple into a 20 billion a year company then it would be ready for someone that can tone down the glitz a bit but increase the power.

Where did "automagically" come from? You certainly can end up on a driver update treadmill, dealing with conflicts, etc.


Consider yourself lucky. I know people who switched to Macs and stayed there in no small part to get some respite from video driver hell. It's what happens when you have third-party drivers for third-party hardware that the original manufacturer didn't and couldn't test being pushed out at a tremendous clip to compete in the high-end gaming market. If you've managed to avoid it, great.

I think it's less of a problem on home-built PCs, just because those tend to have much less unnecessary gunk in software and higher quality hardware components overall. But that's mostly a hunch.

I would think that "lucky" is a tad on the strong side, unless you are talking about finding Linux drivers for newer GFX cards

It really depends on what kind of LCD monitor. If it is an analog 17" LCD, the price should be in the $1000 to $1200 range. If it is a digital 17" LCD, than I don't see Apple, or any big manufacturer, selling it for less that $1300. If Apple is able to sell a digital 17" iMac for $1300, it'll be very impressive.

It really just comes down to price and the inflexibility of Apple's consumer systems. If the iMac starts at $1300, it won't be a big seller, and many people will have to settle with an eMac, with some chagrin probably. The other problem is inflexibility. People with less than $2000 to spend on a computer, virtually everybody, don't really have any options in the CPU, display, and graphics they can have. If Apple offered CPU and graphics options in the iMac, many of the complaints go away.

For instance, I'd like a large monitor, with a middle-of-road GPU and lower end processor. If Apple offered a 20" iMac with optional 1.6 GHz G5 and 64 MB GPU, instead of the standard 1.8 GHz G5 and 128 MB, with appropriate price reductions, the iMac could be a more attractive buy to me. Though I imagine a 17" one with faster CPU and GPU options would be more popular.

regarding the iMac specs (especially the video specs):

"these are not the droids you're looking for... move along."

na

A consumer computer purchase is driven by want, not need. It's not like they are going to use it for work or anything.

If a consumer wants something, they will buy it; even if they will never use it. I'm sure you all have friends that bought a Superdrive and never used it after the first month. I have friends who spent extra money for a PowerMac just because it has PCI slots although they never used any of it. The FW 800 and Airport Extreme were deciding factors when I got my PowerMac G4, but I have yet to use it.

If Apple had a AGP slot, it will increase sales. Never mind how many people will actually take advantage of it. The comfort of knowing that you can upgrade will make people feel at ease with the purchase.

At the very least, even without the AGP slot, Apple needs upgrade the graphics for the top-of-the-line iMac to something better. It a non-issue if it's needed. It's the perceived need thats important.

BTW, why are people being satisfied by the fact that the iMac is fairly competitive with the PC side. I thought Apple wanted to increase marketshare. They need to be better than the PC counterparts.

They are. It's called MacOS X.

Unfortunately, the spec whores will ignore that.

Ever notice that Mike Matas doesn't hang around anymore " "jacking jaws" about specs and all. Maybe it's because he

has a freakin JOB!

and actually does something with his computer rather than sit around counting framerates and envying PCs. No he's creating something. Mac users used to create stuff...now they sit around and bitch and moan because PCs have 64 more megabytes on their graphics card.

There's nothing in the iMac preventing you damn disgruntled people from running your own frickin' company with an iMac. Don't like it don't buy it. Let the next Mike Matas come in and actually do something with the iMac more useful than fragging some virtual character.

Macs and their software are a testament to those who want a better computing experience in hardware and software. Decide what side you want to be on folks. Quality always cost more.

Fixed! You're welcome!

nice post and gets right to the heart, no agp slot and the cheapest chip from nvidea. not middle or high but the lowest form of video chip except for onboard memory garbage. Apple is about class. fx5200 is not.like using a 4 cylinder in a cadillac. enough said.