Apple introduces second generation iMac G5 systems - Page 4

Yeah, they are expensive. However, Apple basically screws over a good hunk of userbase.

Follow: I want a new mac, looking for a desktop machine (I have a 2 year old G3 iBook, which works fairly well for what it is). So, that leads me to mac Mini, emac, imac, or powermac. Now, I already have a nice 20" LCD on my desk, so I don't need a built-in screen (plus, I don't like the whole "your screen dies, so does your computer" philosophy, already had that inconvenience with my iBook, as well as the fact that a good screen should last twice as long as the computer, at least, but with the built-ins, your screwed into getting new screens all the time). Goodbye iMac and eMac. I look at the mini and say "Wow, what an underpowered computer" and I'd prefer not to start buying computers as a 'disposable' commodity, getting one every year because their cheap.

So that leaves a $2000+ tower. And that's how Apple screws over its users. You're either getting semi-cheap computers (iMacs), but upgrading requires continuously buying unneeded parts (screens) over and over. But if you want to bring your own screen, you're left with either (a) a slow and unexpandable mini, or (b) an overpriced tower (sorry, I don't see the 1.8GHz tower as being a compromise, as I've already said, its a joke and nothing more). And when spending $2000+, its going to be a computer that better last me a while (which is why the lack of a real upgrade in April pissed me off to no end). You all do realize the reason people use Macs longer than PCs, right? Its because they've spent so much money on them, they need to use them longer in order to save money to buy their next ones.

Couldn't Apple offer the power of an iMac without the screen? Couldn't they offer a better tower at a cheaper price? Sure, but why should they? It would only offer their users more choice and ability to get the kind of computer they want. And that would just lead to stupid consequences like more sales and increased market share. What's the point in that?

Of course, I could just spend a $1000 on a decent PC system and wait for Apple to offer more choice then what they've got now.

Look, this is what they offer. Your post is your reaction to that. It doesn't mean that they are "screwing over their users". It just means that YOU aren't happy with the choices.

I've stated ever since the G5 Powermacs came out that Apple could have come out with a mini tower version with one cpu for $995. I know that, because I was a partner in a pro/high-end audio manufacturing company and have designed a number of pieces over the years.

Apple chooses not to do that. I'm sad because I think that they are missing a good market segment.

But screwing your customers is different. That's quality, service, follow-thru, etc. Apple is actually very good at these things, so they are not screwing their customers. An individuals' likes and dislikes are what makes them a customer or not. But that's different.

If you don't like the choices a company makes as to selection, don't buy their products. Many are going to find these choices to be just dandy. Chances are that you won't like what Apple will have out two years from now anyway. When the Mini has a 3GHz G5 you will be unhappy because the Powermac will have two dual 4Ghz G6's. So what else is new?

For many years Apple was criticized for having too many choices. Choices that overlapped. Now they don't.

If Apple had more presence in the Enterprise markets they'd likely have more expandable machines. However their sales are still dominated by the consumer channel thus Apple has to make something that appeals to them more than just "another" box.

Here's a strategy I'd like to see Apple offer eventually.

Lowend- $0.00-1299.00

Mac mini, iMac G5

Midrange- $1300.00-1899.00

iMac G5 DP, Powermac Mini DP, Entry level Powermac

High End-$1999.00-3499.00

Powermac Quadra

Xserve

$1499 1U 970MP system(2 drive bay)
$2999 1U Quadra
$3999 2U Quadra

This would allow appropropriate coverage. The Powermac mini wouldn't be aluminum. It'd contain 3 PCI-Express slots and 4 RAM slots and 2 drive bays. The iMac G5 DP would be based on the 970MP chips.

The Quadra powermacs would have two sockets holding a 970MP chip each.

I agree with Louzer that Apple has a gaping whole in their lineup that simply doesn't have to be there. Develop a Powermac mini for $1399 or so. Give people the choice to go with the svelte iMac G5 or Powermac mini.

Just to note, Amazon.com has the last-generation 17-inch iMac G5 1.8 with Superdrive, for $999, after rebate.

It's close to what I said about a $995 mini tower.

I do think that your low price point is just too low. $0.00 doesn't allow much room for manufacturing costs, much less profit.

Apple will always have problems with the enterprise customer. Single sourcing their machines doesn't fit within the model that enterprise works from. They will work their way in very slowly. Enterprise got burned in '95 when Apple looked to be in serious trouble. They started to divest themselves of their Macs then.

I have a little story about that.

A friend of mine was the one in charge of enterprise desktop purchasing at Boeing during the mid '80's through the late '90's. Boeing had built their networks and desktop infrastructure first around PC's in the early '80's. But they then moved away from them and continued their strategy with Macs.

By the time Christmas of '95 rolled around, Boeing had about 34,000 Macs, and about 800 PC's. Numerous other hi-tech companies had similar ratios.

When the disaster of Christmas '95 occurred, the industry was in an uproar. Apple, led by Michael "I don't have to be a visionary to run Apple" Spindler, made several disastrous mistakes in dealing with it.

CIO's went to upper management and told them that Apple was going down, and that they should divest themselves of their Macs.

They did.

When Steve came back to Apple, in a response to a question directed to him about the enterprise customer, which was slowly coming back partly because of Amelio's clone program, he said:

"The enterprise is not our customer".

How stupid.

You NEVER tell a potential customer that. Esp. since they WERE slowly coming back. Cutting off the clones however, ended that movement.

Enterprise doesn't trust Apple, and doesn't like it's secretiveness. They want to know the road being traveled.

I'm sorry for the diversion, but in the talk about new machines and the enterprise, I thought it would be helpful to understand some of that.

Melgross

Hey I'm always in the market for free computers


Actually you're pretty much spot on. Apple is a relative non factor in Enterprise markets. But boy are they missing an opportunity for the Small Biz Market. They could own a far larger share here by growing a pair and going after it.

They may be preparing for this..we'll see. Tiger Server is exactly what the SMB market needs. Now Apple needs a vibrant collection of biz tools. We're slowly getting there with a decent email app, Calendar off of life support, and other underlying technologies. Many more tools needed though. Apple only need provide the basic structure and let 3rd party ISV fill in the cracks.

The iMac could then become quite the biz desktop. Pull it out the box...add a wireless Mouse/Keyboard plug in the gig ethernet install and configure network apps.

I think the iMac makes for the perfect SMB computer. Fast and capable now and very energy and space efficient.

Yes, true.

Go to this link from Computerworld, scroll down past the MS stuff and you will come to Tiger. The three articles you can link to from there are interesting, but the one from Gartenberg is relevant to what you were saying. I've been subscribing to Computerworld for many years, it's a good enterprise publication.

Let me know what you think.


http://www.computerworld.com/softwar...l?SKC=os-74564

I checked them out..well all but the Mercury News report I'll register for that page later.

You know I think that there's this overlying "threat" presence that Mac users have when it comes to Apple and the biz sector.

It's always "What is Microsoft going to do?" Well Microsoft is going to keep making bundles of cash. Their biz app portfolio isn't something that Apple will to compete against for quite some time.

Apple doesn't need much. A groupware app, They have the mailserver tech already(Postfix and Cyrus). And a capable Office Suite. Microsoft Office is going to sell regardless of what product Apple delivers. Some people require that bulletproof compatibility. However some people can easily go another route and leverage the platform agnostic benefits of PDF.

The iMac G5 is a great platform for this. Apple could create an iMac Business. Remove the CD drive and shrink the hard drive down to 80GB. Slap a 1.6Ghz G5 in it and sell it for $999

I think that a slightly lower price iMac would be an excellent business machine. Most machines on desktops don't need upgrading. Few business's actually do upgrade their machines. Good networking ability, the new ACL's, Office, a fairly secure enviornment, and that SHOULD be enough to sell it.

Along with that, Apple should have a small business unit, if they don't already, to cater to these markets. Favorable financing, 24 hour, 7 day help, etc.

i think that is a nice coverage mapping.

personally i feel apple is slowly getting out of what you defined as the mid-range, because that's a very very crowded marketspace and involves potentially high high volumes eg. SME to large enterprise desktop deployment but... here's the "but".... thin profit margin in this space

in 2005 with iPod, Mac mini and iMac g5 new ones released, and soonish, slightly updated iBooks, apple has strong profits and some halo effect happening on the consumer level.

i think they are strongly looking now to shore up the high-end side, with cluster computing, distributed render nodes eg. video production, while pushing powermac for musician/video production stuff...

i think once they are confident about the high-end side being tight then they will "attack the middle" -- kind of a flanking manouvere, from the low-end consumer up and from the high-end-pro down... this is for 2006 though

i believe what you define as "entry level Powermac" or "higher-end iMac" is a space apple is asidiously avoiding right now. IBM is out of there, even despite being able to sell a lot of corporate services alongside it, and HP, well, they've taken a beating in that space.

edit: personally i'd like to see that 'mini-tower' powermac. but they won't do it just yet, you've seen how cautious apple management is. if they do something, they've done their research, know its going to sell by the boatloads, and be 'ultracool' somehow. 2006 along with much more profilgate apple financial and corporate services they're getting close, ever closer to that corporate golden goose that microsucks is strangling

Does anyone know if Core Image supports the ATI 9600?

from everything i've heard, yes it does. no worries

is the ati 9600 considered the next generation up from the ati 9600 xt

any insights appreciated

neither apple nor ati list any details on "ati 9600" just "ati 9600 pro" for example on ati website

I really want to know if that disk performance problem (apparently a hardware bug?) has been fixed.

The xt is the higher clocked 9600. The board might come with more memory. But all features of Tiger are supported on the plain 9600.

We'll find out in a week or so.

cool. thanks for clearin that up

i wonder if new iMac g5s and new PowerMacs, all are plain 9600, for space(no fan on GPU??) and heat issues (lower clocked to keep airflow reasonable and smooth on iMac and PowerMac)

it's overclocking GPU time...1!!!!1!1!1!

if the HD performance has been fixed, and the fan noise bugs worked out, i'd say we have a brilliant machine on our hands.

Re: improved disk performance?

Hopefully sooner, after a trip to the Apple Store here when the updated models arrive.

I would too. We'd like to get one for the kitchen. When we designed it, I had all the walls stripped out, along with the plumbing and electric. I then installed a box with video and Cat 6 over the end of the peninsula.

By cutting out between the studs and reboarding back to give a square cutout, I can put a double folding arm in and hang the 20 off it . When it's back it will be flush. The wireless keyboard and mouse can sit in the cutout when not needed. It can be swung out to cover the whole kitchen.

I did this two years ago, just waiting for the right piece. I think it's here now.

don't forget to post what Xbench score you get on it ...!!?!!



ps. melgross -

Yeah...I have a PC with a USB hub...4 ports are full and I have to unplug one of them every time I want to plug in my webcam or camera (Ext. Soundcard - it's a laptop, cd burner - it's an old laptop, mouse and wacom tablet)

and the usb hub on iMacs?...some people would consider it spoils the look...of course they're also usually the ones who buy the computer for its looks.

It's not just Apple. An article in the NYC Times today was talking about how catalog companies cut the cords off lamps and such because they don't want them to spoil the clean uncluttered look.

Even Anand, in his review of Apple and Dell's 20" monitors said that they can't wait to send back monitors that the've tested even if they did well, if they are ugly. That's about as techy a site as there is. They said that Apple had the best cord management.

Mine is 4 years old (White 500Mhz G3) and although it still runs at a fair lick my Broadband is faster than it is and the Beachball does seem to occupy a lot of my time.

I'm guessing a G5 iMac will last me another 4 years and the only upgrade I'd need is the £40 ($65) Wirelss Keyboard & mouse.

Edit: And my G3's Xbench score is just under 40. I'm expecting the new models to hit 180 maybe (for the 20")??

Do you think that the slot drive and video card in the new G5 iMac's will work in the 1st gen. G5 iMac's?

I would love to at least swap my video card out.

whoa... 100+ i think, not so high at 180... but can't say till the xbench sings... and depends on whether they fixed the hd controller issue to make the most of that 7200rpm baby in there

dude that must be top 3 in the "desired iMac g5 hacks" list
..drop a radeon x800 xt in there and watch it cook

But didn't the old one (1.8MHz iMac G5) get around 150 on Xbench anyway? Maybe I looked at the wrong bits - I only DL'd it recently.

Hacking an iMac's board to accept a different soldered-down chip with different pinouts and (most likely) a different size, not to mention different power requirements and a different heat profile, would indeed be the mother of all iMac hacks. I'd love to see someone try it. Somehow I doubt anyone will.

Until Apple decides to use the big PowerBooks' (proprietary) GPU daughtercard with the iMac's board—or some similar solution—the only way to change the iMac's GPU will be to swap in a new motherboard with a different GPU soldered onto it.

umm yeah check the hard disk overall score and get back to us

When I had my iMac opened up the other day I failed to notice it was permantly affixed.

The optical drive looked replaceable though. I wonder if the new one will work in the first gen. G5 iMac? That would hold me over until someone released a blue ray drive for the iMac.

"IF" it fits, 10.4 has support for far more drives then any previous release ever did, so it's possible. Otherwise you could use Patchburn to let it do at least some of what a native drive does.

A point though.

If you are still using 10.3x then the current Patchburn will be fine. I've used it myself, and it's safe.

But, if you are already on 10.4, or are going to be shortly, then you need the new version that only works on 10.4.

The problem is that he just released an Alpha of it. It's never a good idea to apply an Alpha build of something so low level. You might disable your drive. Wait until it's at least into a beta 2.

This is safety. So please don't anyone write to say about how good he has been in the past. That's why he released this as an Alpha.

Anyone know about the noise yet? Also, can these be mounted to the wall and still access the ports?

I want to put one beside my telephone (mounted to the wall), so that I can replace my telephone books with a web browser and switchboard.com.

Eventually this will all go into a phone booth in my house (one of the red british ones), so it has to be quiet for my application.

NO!!!

It must go into one of the old BLUE ones!

What would Dr. Who say?

Like this? I like the red ones better...



I never watched Dr Who.

Tch, tch. You have no class.

Well 2x 512MB memory in the new G5 gives an Xbench of 180
1x512 gives an Xbench of 165

I guess I was right...

Could you repeat that test? The results are very interesting, and supposedly shouldn't be. Unless certain types of work and files are involved the difference should be negligable. And while those results aren't startling, they are more than I would expect.

Hi. I replied to this thread the other day, but something did not work, so i'll try it again.
I plan on buying a new 2gig imacG5 this week for my son, who says he has outgrown his 12" powerbook and needs more power more then he needs portability.
I plan on upgrading the ram from 512 to 1 gig, by buying another 512 stick.
According to the posts above, are you saying that this will not be sufficient, and I will be disappointed speed-wise in doing this?
I was under the impression that a matched pair of ram was the best....
My son does alot of graphic arts, etc, and we thought that 1 gig of ram would serve his needs......
The upside of this is that his "old man", (me) gets his powerbook, thus freeing up the G4imac I am on now for the rest of the family.
Once this is done, it will be fun switching everything over to the different computers, upgrading to Tiger, etc.

Frank D.

A gigabyte of RAM should be plenty for just about anything your son wants to do. For high end video editing he might want more. Others might have another opinion but as long as you're not running 10 programs at once, that should be enough RAM.