Isn't it time for a plain old Macintosh again? - Page 23

Violates the KISS principle. (Keep It Simple Stupid for those who didn't know).

Apple has an $899 iMac. Do you remember Apple's line-up just before Jobs took over again? Something like 14 product lines going on, channel management was hell - they had month long supply queues and it was impossible to sell everything they made. Steve came in and shortened it up to like 3 products and reduced the supply channel to less than 7 days. Apple will offer a lower tower if their research indicates a real demand for it (by real I mean more than just you and the others in this thread). You want to influence Apple's decision to make a mid-tower? Email Apple's suggestion line every few months. You'll see.

Holy Cow! I didn't realize they copied the mini. I wonder how well it sells? I would not have thought there would be much of a market for it, from a purely personal point of view. Not enough panel space for adequate I/O ports for one, and using laptop parts is a cost penalty. It surely isn't the best choice for an entry level computer, but on the Windows side there are other basic, no frills choices.

Now, on the Mac side, the Mini must cover both markets. Apple has nothing else to provide as a basic, no frills computer but the Mini. This casts a different light on Apple making it bigger. Apple created this SFF market and is now, sort of, obligated to continue competing in it. Apple would need to build a larger Mac with a flat form factor, and see how the market respond to both it and the SFF. It's pretty certain that the entry level business would go with the bigger and cheaper of the two, and the SFF business would stay with the Mini.

You speak about sales as though the machine needs to be punished for being expensive or powerful. "Doesn't deserve those sales!" Bad Mac Pro! Bad!

You don't want to play roulette with your high margin, well selling machines such as the iMac. Do you think Apple doesn't do market research to investigate the demand for new machines to add to their line-up? I bet that is exactly how the Mac mini came to be, enough people had spoken to Apple about a low-priced BASIC computer to accomplish their everyday tasks such as email, internet and that sort of thing and Apple delivered. I am sorry that you don't feel Apple currently reaches your market segment but if it makes you feel any better BMW has yet to offer an M3 for $5,000 so I can't go out and buy myself a pair of them ('His' and 'Hers'). \

It's been in the news recently that Apple's problems were much greater than having 14 products in the line up. Apple hired a guy away from Compaq to take over manufacturing and he really did, and continues to do, a good job. Sure, cutting back products helped the cause back then, but it's not going to hurt Apple's bottom line to introduce a new product to see how it sells.




If my marketing manager told me that I'd fire him on the spot. You don't need to do research for something that is plain as the nose on your face. What you are offering are excuses. It sounds good when you are talking to the press of a group of investors. It sounds so much better than, "We don't wanna do it."

Yeah, it was a horrible mess. I have said so many times (including in this thread, possibly more than once). The problem then was that those product lines all overlapped in price and features, making it hard for the customer to know which computer was for them, and hard for Apple to know which machine to recommend.

Apple's line-up is now vastly less complicated. There are two models of portable, three "desktops", and one server. Adding one more desktop model is hardly going to send us back to the "bad old days". The $999 model suggested fits right between the Mini and the Mac Pro price-wise, overlapping with the iMac. However, the features are very different to the iMac - it would be easy for the potential purchaser to tell which was the machine for them. The $399 or $499 versions suggested would replace the Mini.

If it is so plain then why isn't Apple doing it? Do you believe Apple is that ignorant? Seriously?

Perhaps adding one more desktop won't cause major problems in terms of complexity with features but I think you've mis-read the pricing problem. If Apple wants to introduce a headless tower that won't cannibalize their sales of Mac Pros they need to make it fall between the Mac mini and iMac in terms of price and make it less upgradable than the Mac Pro but moreso than the mini. So the iMac starts at $899 so the Macintosh cannot cost more than $999 but should not cost less than $599 or else they won't be able to offer enough feature to make it significantly better than the mini and still earn good margin off of it's sales. Thus the mini needs to fall in price so that Apple will continue to sell those and not wind up with a desktop computer that no one buys because it costs exactly the same as a more powerful, more expandable desktop... in essenence they need to avoid repeating what happened with the Cube whereby they had a machine that cost only a few hundred less than a professional workstation but offered far less expandability.

Let me rephrase it. Steve Jobs doesn't wanna do it.

But who knows? Maybe it will appear one of these days, much to our surprise. I am seriously wondering what Apple will do for a low cost iTV server? MWSF may be very interesting.

Every Mac in your house is an iTV server probably - why would they make a low cost server? Plus that USB port on the back of the iTV may support an external hard drive so you could theoretically have unlimitted storage by adding larger and larger USB hard drives to the iTV. Who knows.

Let me add that Steve just wants to make money and make sweet products. He'll make damn near anything if he can perfect it - remember how he kept saying the iPod video was a product that people didn't want and as soon as Apple had 'perfected' it they released one? Apple knows what people want (Gapless playback was a frequently requested feature, why not make a headless Macintosh one if you really want to buy one?). Trust me - if there is a TRUE demand for a headless Mac (which I don't believe there is) - and Apple designs one that is worthy of Steve then we'll see it.

I was just going by what has been discussed in other threads. Any computer can act as a server for iTV as I understand it. The problem is getting a large enough HDD to hold all your content. 500 GB is a good size, but what kind of Mac can we put a 500 GB drive into. AFAIK, the Mac Pro is it. The dinky drives in laptops, Mac Minis, and iMac don't cut it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've heard that the iMac uses the small drives too.

Here is where Mac users are seriously divided. What evidence do we have for either opinion? First, however, let's get past the trivia. Apple can easily design a mini tower or other headless Mac. Apple's design team is renowned for their talent.

One camp believes there is no demand for say a mini tower, simply because Apple does not make one. The assumption is that Apple would be selling any model that has sufficient demand and will not simply trade sales of an existing model Mac for the new model.

The other camp goes to Comp USA and asks what is selling in the Windows world? The assumption is that what Windows folks buy the Mac community would also buy, that we are not all that different. They also have figured out that if the Windows crowd likes a mini tower, than this is the kind of Mac the potential switcher would like to have.

Who is right? Who has more empirical evidence? I believe it takes less faith to see what is actually selling. My faith is that people using Windows are not all that different when they switch to the Mac, as many of us used Windows at one time. The native Mac users is probably as rare as the native Oregonian. Most of us here moved in from somewhere else, but I did marry someone born here.

The iMac uses standard 3.5" SATA drives. I have 1.3TB of total storage on my 17" iMac Core Duo between internal and external drives.

My wife and I were both born here (but we took a vacation to Canada... and moved thank God). When you go to CompUSA or Best Buy or Circuit City and look at the Windows boxes for sale, how many form factors do you see? 90% are midtower and the other 10% are poorly designed SFF machines or ultra large 'gaming rigs'. When you look at those mid-tower systems in terms of expandability most of them are not as expandable as you'd think: Take the well-selling HP 10xx series of desktops (ones I am familiar with): They were being sold in Best Buy at the same time I got my iMac Core Duo and were a mid-tower that is comparable in overall price with my iMac. The HP desktop was MUCH larger than my iMac, shipped with either 1 or 2 optical drives but only had one hard drive slot inside (despite having 4 SATA headers on the mobo). The other locations where a second hard drive could have gone were occupied by 1) HP's crappy internal USB HDD slot which required you to buy an overpriced HP HDD module to use, 2) a cardreader. So like my iMac this marvel of engineering had but a single internal hard drive. It had something like 4 PCIe and PCI slots but one was occupied by a video card (it didn't have SLI). So what are you going to have to add to that HP to give it the same functionality as the iMac? A PCI wireless card and a bluetooth module for starters, and a gigabit LAN card if you want to compete evenly with the iMac on that field as well. That means you only have one or two slots for expandability - which isn't really that much considering how much current expansion for the home user centers around USB and Firewire add-ons.

Listen, the point of that long tangent is that when you look at all those mid-tower HPs and such that retail boxes are selling, they are just ugly machines that are often less feature filled than the iMac and wind up costing you a lot more in the long run. So why would you opt to buy that over something such as an iMac? A lot of people that I've spoken to at the Apple Stores when I was buying my Apple computers couldn't wait to get those ugly boxes off their desk and replace them with simple AIO solutions that looked nice and were feature-filled. Those that were opting for Mac minis were attracted to it's tiny appearance (My own mother and grandfather couldn't believe there was no 'computer') and to it's low price-tag. That's where I gather my inference that at this time there isn't enough of a market for a headless desktop for Apple to make one. Who knows about tomorrow though - the market is a dynamic place and there may come a time when there is such a ripe market for exactly that machine.

Thanks for the info. That should be quite good for the job.

I think its safe to say Apple has not been interested in a midrange tower and must not feel there is much profit in offering such a machine. Because they don't offer it.

I do believe there is some demand for an Apple midrange tower. It would add some sales per quarter but nothing astronomical.

Apple would not sell such a machine for $999. It would more likely compete and be priced with computers for around $1700 to $2000. If Apple used BTO option like the Mac Pro that would leave room to lower the spec's and lower the cost.

Looking at the Windows world a certain type of all-in-one is actually the best selling computer. The same type of all-in-one that is the best selling computer for Apple.

The laptop.


The 24" iMac can use 750 GB drives.

I don't think there is anything stopping my 17" iMac from having a 750GB drive except my budget. Maybe for X-Mas.

There might be profit in it if anyone would buy it. I think their research probably shows that nobody would buy it. The reason? The iMac is cheaper and has a display. Why would someone pay $1800 for no display when they can get the iMac WITH a display for less?

Maybe. I am not at all sure that any of those clamoring for the xMac would actually buy it. Remember, there is no huge selection of video cards, and virtually no consumer ever puts a second HD in their Dell.

Explain that logic to me. An $1800 no-display machine is going to sell compared to a $1300 machine WITH display? Yes, there might be some who want to use their existing monitor, but paying $500 more than an iMac just to NOT have a display and to change the video card and add another HD, both of which you have to buy separately? Explain that one to me.

Mod note: some forums would declare this type of thread to be "beating a dead horse" and lock it. I think that is bullshit. If people want to discuss, it can go on forever.

Apple would build a much better mini tower. Two hard drives is a minimum, but likely enough in this price range. The motherboard would not be wasteful but have just two SATA headers.




An Mac mini tower would have all the standard features found on the iMac, so the motherboard would need fewer expansion slots, again not wasteful of space or components.




You know a Mac will always be good looking.




And that's why Apple can compete. Why would anyone buy that over a Mac, be it iMac or mini tower.

I think the point I was trying to make is that Apple's iMac competes in terms of price and features against most PC maker's non-AIO solutions and therefore there may be no impetus for Apple to make one as consumers are buying plenty of iMacs and their researchers may feel that because the iMac compares so favorably to these other computers there is not enough of a market to justify it's introduction.

Well, we are buying older Mac towers on eBay now. We would like performance of the new iMacs, but already have, in my case, a 22 inch widescreen, 5 ms LCD display that is almost brand new. So we settle for two or three year old performance for now and are satisfied with the money we save. Regarding graphics card, the older PowerMac seem fine, I bought a ATE 9800, 256 MB for my G5, and the PCIe cards will get straightened out by the time I'm ready to buy.




I don't believe those prices. We hear everything from $999 to $1999 for a mini tower, but let's be realistic. It will always cost just a little more for a mini tower than an iMac because of the added mechanical hardware, like expansion slots. In the end, the iMac will be the better buy for those who need a newer display, and the mini tower a better buy for those who do not want a new display.




Bless you brother!

"I'm getting a Mac." "Which one?" "A Mac." "A MacBook? iMac?" "No, just a regular Mac. Some guy on an internet message board thought it up."

What a stupid idea for so many reasons. I'm really looking forward to a company coming along that actually takes their product lineup suggestions from high schoolers.

Keep your faith in Apple and you will stay happier. I sense Apple may be stonewalling the issue to keep iMac sales as high as possible, or they are in the process of designing a mini tower now, and waiting for the right time to spring it on us. I sure hope it is the latter. I would gladly trade reading this thread for the chance to buy a new mid range tower.

I see no reason Apple cannot sell a mini tower for $999 with the specifications of the $1199 iMac. They would be about equal value. The tower would go on up from there, as it has more opportunities for options.

Would a mini tower hurt iMac sales? A little, which may be why we don't see a mini tower. Yet Apple could adjust the performance and price of the mini tower a little bit, to keep the impact at a minimum.

I respect your point of view. The logic may work for folks who do not have a very good display yet, or want the minimum clutter on their desk. Those of us with excellent monitors are stuck. What do I do with my Viewsonic 22 inch widescreen LCD monitor, which is like new. Sell it on eBay? It works fine with my eBay Power Macintosh however. New hardware will have to wait. When my current stuff is too out of date a few years from now, there will be today's Mac Pro on eBay selling for $1299.

I will not switch to a PC. However, I can be as stubborn as Apple. If Apple doesn't want my business, there are plenty on eBay that are glad to sell to me. I'm not complicated. I know what I want and will buy from those who sell it. Right now that happens to be eBay, not Apple.

That's exactly the way it goes for me right now.
Already looking for a dual core 2.3GHz G5!

Apple should do this.. Apple can't do that.

the iMac is really this.. the iMac really is that...


Apple tried before with the Cube and failed (it was pulled).
The situation is different now. It's not 2000/1 for Apple now.

They have the cool they have their Tiger they have 60M iPod owners. They have serious notebook market share. And they have the latest Intel chips - along with large dollop of Intel help (Not to mention they have Windows!)

They can afford to try again. Simple.

hmm... 1M Mac notebook owners a quarter how much of a halo effect from these when they want to buy their home box/storage base station Mac.. ~10-20+%..?

Alternatives to leech more Market share.
(1) Blam! Cube Mark II
(2) Alternative Mac Pro (not so pro) $1500

Marketing magic.. Hmm... lets say $150 rebates tickets for those that buy MB/MBP's...

The Cube failed because it was more expensive than the PowerMac yet less practical. Since then, the pro machines have gone up $700 in price (while prices on everything else are falling like a rock) and Apple thinks everyone not running Mathematica would be perfectly happy with an all-in-one or are sheepish enough to buy what Apple tells them to.

You know, I think Apple trained us a little too well against group think.


As for clutter, two 5.25" optical drives, an external hard drive, a hub, a card reader, and two 5.25" optical drives seems pretty cluttered to me. With a conroe Mac Pro, most of that would fit nicely under my desk.

Maybe I'm missing something. Repeatedly I hear an xMac will upset Apple's pricing structure??

What's so expensive about adding PCI slots? With the mini, replace the more expensive laptop hard drive, put in a cheaper larger drive and add a couple of PCI slots. A virtual wash in cost. How much more expensive is a Conroe cpu than Yonah? Bump the price - offer both the mini and xMac, see which one makes the most profit.

More like in they're own little version of reality.

It should read, such a Mac could upset Apples own 'artificial' pricing structure. The potential is Mac Pro looks too highly priced and even not necessary for certain Pro applications, The iMac looks like what's the point i've already got a screen etc.

It's cheaper.

Dismissed.

Core 2-Conre/Allendale
X6800 (2.93)- $999
E6700 (2.67)- $530
E6600 (2.4)- $316
E6400 (2.13)- $224
E6300 (1.83)- $183

Core 2-Merom (same price points as Yonah)
T7600 (2.33) - $637
T7400 (2.13) - $423
T7200 (2.0) - $294
T5600 (1.83) - $241
T5500 (1.66) - $209

Chucker & BenRoethig

Thanks for the information. Modified my original statement to:

What's so expensive about adding PCI slots? With the mini, replace the more expensive laptop hard drive, put in a cheaper larger drive and add a couple of PCI slots. A virtual wash in cost. How much cheaper is a Conroe cpu than Yonah? Bump the price and make higher margins - offer both the mini and xMac, see which one makes the most profit.

rickag, Apple could easily add PCI slots to the Mac mini. It would have to be twice as high, but it would be possible. The thing you're missing is: they don't want to.

They don't want it to be expansible beyond the point it currently is.

If Apple wanted to have a low-cost customizable computer, they'd have one.

Well, duh! I believe the main point of this discussion is whether or not Apple's decision not to have a low-cost mini-tower is a good one. Every so often someone pipes up suggesting that the proposed machines can't be done with Apple's usual margins, but this notion is easily dismissed.

I'll add, some say there is insufficient market for the proposed machines, or the proposed Macs would simply replace sales of other profitable Macs, making it unnecessary in the product line up.

Macs: 6%
PCs 94%

Looks like a of marker space to me. What I see is fear. A reluctance to try anything else.

I guess you could call it a fear of sorts. It's a Jobsian fear of being normal..can't possibly do that, no!.

Anything but that. Cube Mark II anybody.