Will Apple ever make this machine? - Page 8

It's not just a matter of adding slots. The mobo would have to be larger, which means greater cost, etc.

The motherboard needs to be big enough to hold the components, but no bigger, regardless of case size. However, even if the motherboard were bigger, board square inches cost very little more without added components.

I'm not advocating a case larger than necessary, but a case with room for easy air flow. When air flow is restricted, the fans or blowers must produce higher pressure to move the same volume of cooling air, which is noisier.

You know, it's one little thing here, and one little thing there.

A bigger board would cost a few bucks more, the two extra sockets would cost a few bucks more, inserting the sockets would cost a few cents more, a slightly larger power supply for them would cost a bit more, a bigger fan would cost a couple of bucks more, possibly a slightly bigger case would be needed, costing a few bucks more. It would all weigh more, costing more for shipping, the packing would be larger, and cost more, fewer boxes would fit on a pallet, etc.

It could easily end up costing Apple $30 more. That translates to at least $60 retail, possibly $80.

You would be surprised at how much must be taken into account when making a change as small as that may, at first, seem to be.

When we changed our designs we had to take all of that into consideration.

I'll chime in and say this.

I got fed up waiting for this computer to come out. So I built it myself. Before I built it, I had a 2.33mbp. Great machine! But it isn't a work station / server computer. Which is what I needed. There is no way in hell I was going to pay 2500+ (gotta have more than a 7300gt) for a freaking computer. I needed something that was fast, had desktop components, dual dvi for dual 20" lcds, could hold more than 1 harddrive, could expand to more than 4 gigs of ram (since the imac and mbp can't even hit 4 gigs), had a faster graphics card than a x1600 or 7600gt (256bit at least), had eSATA, had a regular mic input, etc etc etc

I am one of the people that built his xMac. I am running 10.4.9 with the 8.9.1 kernel and loving it. I have hit 1 tiny issue so far, and that was with CS3.

................. Long story short this machine screams. Is rock solid stable, and does everything I need it to...........................

This is my comment to apple. If apple released a similar machine under 1500, I would purchase it from them. I'm not about to shell out 2500+ dollars for a machine that fits me perfectly for 1500 less. Obviously not many people have done what I have done, but apple needs to consider how many of us they have lost because of their gapping hole in the product line up. It's ignorance as far as I'm concerned. So many people on forums and irc related to hackintosh have admitted they would purchase from apple if they made it available.

Apple needs to wake up, because this community isn't going to disappear. It's not extremely easy setting up these machines. You have to know what you're doing. So if this many people are doing it, imagine how many people aren't doing it because they don't know how, yet they aren't buying machines from apple because apple doesn't offer what they want.

For now I'm perfectly fine with what I have. My mbp is a great machine and goes with me wherever I go. This hackintosh is my main work machine and runs 24/7 as a web server for my clients. It's time for a change apple.

To put it in perspective, if what I want is not an AIO Mac, these are my options:

Mac mini
1.66GHz Intel Core Duo
\t512MB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x256
\t60GB Serial ATA drive
$599.00

Mac mini
\t1.83GHz Intel Core Duo
\t512MB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x256
\t80GB Serial ATA drive
\tSuperDrive 8x (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
\tMac OS X - U.S. English
\tIntel GMA 950 graphics
$799.00

The least expensive tower I can get is this:

Mac Pro
Two 2.0GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
\t1GB (2 x 512MB)
\t250GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
\tNVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB (single-link DVI/dual-link DVI)
\tOne 16x SuperDrive
\tApple Keyboard and Mighty Mouse - U.S. English
$2,200.00

From where I stand, there's something missing here. There's no valid "excuse" for this missing mid range tower. End of story.

Yeah, I know. I did that for a living for too many years.




Sockets are likely machine inserted, almost no added cost over the socket cost. A couple more square inches of a raw board is likely less than a dollar. Larger power supply, if it's needed for the addition RAM strips, would be the most costly item in your list.




A bigger fan would not be need for a couple RAM strips, if there is enough cooling for the much hotter CPU and graphics board. Actually, when the case is large enough for generous air space, the job of cooling becomes easier, and the fans are less taxed.




To build a mini tower that looks professional does require a larger case, no doubt about that. Those tiny towers look like a toy, as does the Mac Mini. In addition to a good prosumer mini tower, Apple needs to redo the Mini too.




The little effort it takes to add two ram strips to the motherboard is trivial, when compared with the manufacturing cost of a single Xeon Mac Pro for the prosumer market.

I think the Mac mini tower should also have at least two PCIe slots, in addition to the graphics card slot. Also, it needs two HDDs and two optical drives. We may agree on that. For a long time I figured one optical drive was enough, but after reading what other say, I changed my mind. It means a slightly bigger case, but almost no cost involved.

Lets not forget about Time Machine... if you thought that you were on the front of a storage crisis with your content libraries, lets take the potential storage black hole of Time Machine.

I think a headless mac somewhere between the Mac mini and Mac Pro needs to come into play.

Perhaps...

1 or 2 HDD bays
1 Optical Drive
Single Processor
1 expansion slot for Graphics Cards
1 PCIe slot

It would be appealing to see a desktop that was more capable than a Mac mini (faster / larger HDs, expandability etc) but something simply smaller in size. Not everyone needs 4 HDD bays, 2 optical drive bays, 8 DIMM slots, and 4 PCI Express slots.

Then again if Apple were to do this, I'm sure it would cut into the Mac Pro sales and would allow for less frequent upgrades of systems than current desktop users. Be it Mac mini users who do not have much room for significant upgrades and will most likely move on to a newer machine when ready, or be it Mac Pro users who are more likely to upgrade to a bigger and better behemoth for sheer power reasons.

They are machine inserted. That's why it only costs a few cents to do it. Auto insert was the way our equipment was made. every component on the board cost extra. Some think that auto insert is no big deal, but it is. Every time a program change has to be made, it costs thousands of dollars. Every surface mount resistor, diode, and cap costs money to insert. The assy line is custom made for that particular product. It is then broken down and re assembled into another configuration. Adding two more sockets also involves adding other components. It isn't just a matter of adding sockets. As many as a dozen more steps may be involved, and that costs money, as well as adding to the time of assembly, and to the extra testing steps involved. I may have been low in my estimate.


A couple of extra 2 GB DIMMS can easily add 3 amps to the power draw. They can put out a lot of heat. don't kid yourself about that.


I agree with that.


It would still add $60 to $80 to the final cost of the machine.

No way that a Xeon would be used for a single cpu machine. There are no advantages, and several disadvantages.

The first is cost. The second is the more expensive memory with the greater latency.

FB-DIMMs are simply not needed on a machine like this. The advantages of them can't be utilized. The greater latency slows memory access, and with less memory than a Mac Pro can handle, the greater amount of memory the FB design is intended for isn't being utilized.


Again it depends on the cost, and the more you add, the higher the cost.

Just remember that for every slot you add, you have to increase the size of the power supply. The same thing for extra memory, and again, the same for an extra optical slot. The Mac Pro has a 980 watt supply. The only difference between what that is and what you want is two estra drives 4 extra memory slots and the additional cpu.

Now, I know that it sounds like a lot, and it is, but using some knowledge of the power requirements of the components, I estimate that removing everything from that machine to get to yours would still require 600 watts. Going with two slots, two memory slots, and one optical drive, we can get to 425.

It would also cost a good deal less.

This idea reminds me of my old beloved IIci. It was such a workhorse. A computer like that with a modern CPU and gfx would be perfect. It would need slots - that is the one thing that bugs me about the iMacs.

I have one simple question... Why does Apple force me to spend over $2000 on a system just so that I can have the option to upgrade my video card sometime down the road? I really don't get it. Especially when this option is available pretty much on any $500+ desktop PC out there.

apple does not want to be "any $500+ desktop PC out there".

That's not so simple a question.

Apple was accused, in the mid to late '90's, of having too many models. It was confusing the consumer, so it was said. When Jobs came back, he reduced the models to consumer desktop and laptop, and pro desktop and laptop lines. One line of each. Now, of course, he added the Mini.


Now, I'm not saying that I agree with Apple on this, but their concept is what they are, so far, going with.

Apple figures that if you are a real pro, you will need, and not mind spending the money for, a Mac Pro.

They also figure that if you are not, and most are not, then you won't get one for both reasons. Therefore, an iMac is just what you need, and for the low end, a Mini.

Again, I'm not saying I agree, but that's what they think.

How many sales are they losing because of this? Who knows?

Some will spend the big bucks, and go for the Mac Pro. Some will stick to the iMac, and some will either buy a used Mac Pro, or evenbuy a PC.

If Apple figures they are losing too few customers to matter, and that the machine you and others want wouldn't bring them enough sales, they won't come out with it.

It would take much more than a few people on fan websites whining about it to change their minds. That's for sure.

And while I don't want one for myself, I might get one for my daughter, though my wife prefers the 24" iMac.

Therefore, for that, and other reasons, I include myself as one of the whiners.

No one outside of Apple really knows.

Apple goes back and fourth on this. The common denominator seems to be this, every time Apple switches processors the base tower model gets dropped.

This happened from the G3 to the G4 transition, from the G4 to the G5 and now from the G5 to Intel. Every time! It's just a transition stage best I can see. That's all it is.

The "excuse" is that Apple really sees very little difference between towers and AIOs. They recognize that most people who use computers are using email, youtube, myspace, iTunes, and p2p networks. Every Mac sold today is more than capable of handling those tasks. They don't see the need for a mini-tower to compete directly with the iMac.

I'm sure they've conducted many internal studies on the feasibility of having two products compete at the same price point. Given that they continue to let the iMac remain in the lineup unchallenged, it would seem to me they've decided it's not a good idea for the products and/or the bottom line to go this route.

To me it's pure and simple arrogance. Jobs thinks he's right and the 97% of desktop owners who don't want an all in one are wrong. If they can't see the difference between all in ones and desktops, this company is going to continue to grossly under perform according to their talents. Then again why make billions per quarter when you can make millions instead. Four things are holding this company back from major marketshare.

1. No 15" or 17" entry level notebook. Apple's portables are doing great without an entry in the most popular notebook category. Try to imagine how well they'd be doing if they had one.

2. The absence of a competitive Mac Mini. Yes we know it's all small and stuff and Mac user will buy it simple for the Apple logo on top. Make it competitive and so will a lot of other people.

3. Lack of a mid to high end tower. There is no way in hell you're going to get prosumers to buy into the Mac OS as long as the options you give them include a xeon workstation or a laptop connected to an expensive, but out of date 24" display. They're to intelligent for that. Converting them will have more effect on converting those around them than all the get a Mac ads in the world.

4. Lack of full media center capabilities. Let me get this straight, Apple wants to risk a close to $2000 computer sale and possibly an iTV so they can sell me an episode of bones that I missed instead of me taping it? Just buy Elgato for peanuts and be done with it.

You keep saying that without a shread of evidence. In fact, the only evidence we have is the relatively large increase in market share for Apple laptop sales, until the most recent quarter, may indicate that it may indeed be possible to sell enough towers in the $799 - $1699 price range.

I changed the price range to reflect the reality of the price range for a single Conroe processor tower as they are currently being marketed. In fact, I may have shorted them, I have seen them priced at above ~$3000.

All I know is this I can get a computer that does what I want it to from a quality PC maker (I'm not talking HP or Dell here) from under $1700. If I buy from Apple I can either spend $2600 plus $120 for a external DVD burner and $150 for eyeTV or a Mac pro for $3100 plus a $150 for eyeTV. If Vinea is right and OSX isn't any better than windows vista (which we know it is), what incentive does that give us to buy from Apple? You get the same "BMW factor" as he likes to say, you get the same quality, VM's Lian-Li towers look a lot like Apple's but take up less space. I'm willing to pay more for Apple. But over $1000 more than a hand built premium PC is beyond nuts. The last time the price/performance ratio was this bad, Mac users were defecting in mass to Power Computing.

This is a little overdramatic I think. You make it sound like the sky is going to fall if Apple doesn't offer the Mac you want.

Meanwhile, Apple just posted a record $770 million profit for the March quarter and sold over 1.5 million Macs. http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/04/25results.html

60% of those were laptops and nearly 100% of the gains came from the laptop market where the machines are in line with customer expectations. Also a lot of that $770 million came from the iPod ranks which are also in line with customer expectations. So, in other words Apple makes lots of money on the products users want to buy. On the products that the users don't want to buy (the desktops), they are stagnate. Makes you wonder how big that profit would be if the desktops were in line with Apple's other offerings. I don't think 1.5 billion is that far out of reach.

That was written unclearly...you can read it two ways but the way I meant is was if you lower your ASPs by introducing more popular items that take away sales from your high priced items without also increasing volume then your profits go down.

There should be no controversy with that statement.


I have never said this. I'm bowing out of this thread because it's just tiresome but don't put words in my mouth because I'm leaving. I said that OSX is better but not enough to make a significant difference because XP and Vista are "good enough" for most folks.

I'm still reading the thread because melgross and I have been exchanging PMs and I was curious what he was saying. Beyond that (and this clarification) y'all enjoy the thread.

Vinea

That is true.

Let's look at the price ranges for the current iMac
$999 to $1999

The current price range for single Conroe towers
$799 - > $1699( some at ~$3000)

The $799 model is bare bones low end with no monitor, integrated graphics, 512 MBs ram and 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo. Adding a graphics card ups it ~$120.($799 + $120 =$919). Bump the ram to 1GB add ~$90($919 + $90 = $999).
Well, there you go, you're at the base iMac model price. And since these do not have a monitor as do the iMacs, I'd venture to say Apple could make similar if not greater margins.


Sorry to see you go.

the $999 imac has the gma 950 and 512mb with a cd-rw
you can get a system with 1gb of ram, DVD+/-RW Drive, a real video card, free Display.

apple should have a low cost keyboard + mouse for the mini as a add on $78 is too high.

I haven't been able to find a Windows tower with a real video card, 1GB ram and a monitor for $799. Then again, I just go to Intel's website and go to the where to buy section and enter the price range at $669 - $999.

Mac ally does make a really good combo set, but I do agree.

You can BTO, but still it isn't anything great.

the systems out there at the mini price range come with gma x3000 or gma 3000 video 1gb or more of ram and a dvd-rw drive with a slots for video and other cards.

Looks like PC Magazine is asking the same question now as well...

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,13...s/article.html

"Neither the Mac Mini nor the iMac accepts internal upgrades beyond more memory, so to get a system that will accept additional components later, you'll have to spring for a dual-processor Mac Pro, which starts at a steep $2200." \

One thing that the Mac Pro has in its favor for some of these applications (where it's really too much, but no other Mac is enough) is that it is silent. I hadn't realized HOW quiet it is until last week, because I had only used them in rooms with other computers. Using a Mac Pro in a room with no other computer, I was amazed that it has no noticeable fan noise. This is very different from any other tower I'm aware of (except for specialized audio editing computers), and goes a long way towards counteracting the size issue (doesn't do anything about the price, though!).

-dan

Don't see how it counteracts anything. The Mac Pro doesn't fit some of the brackets that people attach to desks to hold towers. People would need to place it on the floor, where it's vulnerable to children, pets, water.

Others want a cube / maxi-mini. They don't want a computer under the desk at all. The Mac Pro would look very conspicuous standing on the desktop.

Keep the pressure going guys. Apple may finally release an "iMac" with upgradeable graphics in addition to RAM. Was not the Cube the last non-Power Mac Macintosh that offered that option?

The cube was a PowerMac

Let me rephrase: non-Power Mac-sized Macintosh.

Brackets have nothing to do with it.

When a computer is in a bracket, it is subject to children, pets, and water. Anytime you have enough water in your room that it threatens the computer, you're in trouble anyway.

Most of us with large computers put them under the desk.

To be perfectly honest, at this point, I'd pull the trigger if they offered the MXM solution in the 20". I just need something at this point. Windows is not an option.

Obviously, the larger size means greater air space inside, so fans can turn slower. Cooling the same power components in a small enclosures requires higher air pressure to deliver the same volume of cooling air, resulting in noisier fans.

I saw this over a week ago somewhere else, Anand's, I think, and posted it.

I'm posting it again, but from MacCentral, as they are now out.

How long will we wait for Apple's version?

Will Apple skip the current Core 2 Meroms?

Will we wait until Penyrn?

http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/05...rosa/index.php

PowerPCs may be dead but they still have a very happy four or five years ahead of them. A g5 will be supported for a long time to come. And the Classic Mac OS is supported on them, not to mention other fun projects.

You are describing the economics of a modification, but we are discussing a new product. All manufacturing procedures must be set up initially for the first pilot run. There is no added cost here.



So less than 10 Watts for two extra DIMMS and maybe 90 Watts for a second optical drive and PCI card. That would up your 425 Watt supply to 525 Watts. Still a long way from the 980 Watts of a Mac Pro.



I believe you are overlooking the fact that the Xeon and its memory draw higher current than the equivalent desktop CPU and memory. I like my 525 Watts better than your 600 Watt estimate that you got by working down.

The point is, I wouldn't like to see Apple cut out too much on a prosumer Mac tower. It needs at least 2 PCIe cards, in addition to the graphics card. No one will object to having one or two more slots than they actually need, or an extra optical drive bay. The place to skimp would be a low end Mac Mini replacement.



The cost of 2 RAM socks, one PCIe socket and a cable to an empty optical drive bay is trivial. The bulk of the cost would be going from your 425 Watt supply to a 525 Watt supply. That would likely add less than $40. But even if it were an $80 price increase, I think that is not too much for a prosumer Mac mini tower, provided Apple improves the Mac Mini.

The upper end Mac Mini needs higher performance graphics and CPU, plus a full size desktop drive and optical drive.

[QUOTE=snoopy;1080021]You are describing the economics of a modification, but we are discussing a new product. All manufacturing procedures must be set up initially for the first pilot run. There is no added cost here.

no, these costs all exist from the beginning. It's costs extra for the extra programming time to set the lines uop for extra components, and it costs more to insert them.

You are in denial here.


Try 50 to 100 watts for two 2 GB DIMMS.



You might like it, but it's too low anyway.


Your first mistake is in calling this a "prosumer" machine. It's not. It's just a lower cost mini tower.


You're just guessing. Come up with prices on those sockets, and then find out what other components are rrquired, and price them out as well. You'd be surprised at what they cost.


That's a different story.

Go back and read what you wrote. You said, ". . . Some think that auto insert is no big deal, but it is. Every time a program change has to be made, it costs thousands of dollars. . . The assy line is custom made for that particular product. It is then broken down and re assembled into another configuration. . ."

Here it is clear to me that you are speaking of changing the auto insertion program, which is what happen when a product is modified. However, our discussion is a new product, and insertion programs must be set up in the beginning for all new products -- the ones you describe as well as the ones I describe. I had said in my reply to you, "All manufacturing procedures must be set up initially for the first pilot run. There is no added cost here."

Why is this point confusing? I thought it was clear and simple.




I was using your numbers. "A couple of extra 2 GB DIMMS can easily add 3 amps to the power draw. . ." Did you mean 30 Amperes? Power = Voltage * current. Looks like it's your error.




Why? It has a high performance CPU and would be capable of running most professional software. It's between low cost computers and workstations. If it's not a prosumer machine, then what the heck is?



I don't design computers, but I've always thought that additional RAM sockets simply attached to the memory bus. LIkewise, a second PCIe card slot connects to a controller chip. These sockets don't require added parts. The Intel chip-set takes care of them.

If I'm wrong, I'd welcome an explanation -- as a chance to learn something new.