Top 3 changes to the iMac Rev

jasonpp

I know it's early, but we could see a refresh in July so it's not too early to let Apple know what we want. Here's my specs needed for Apple to get my money:



1. 17" 1600x1200 LCD or 1400x1080 15" WITH DVI SPANNING PLEASE!!



2.Geforce 4 Ti 4600 (I don't care if it's BTO)



3. Bluetooth built in with BT mouse and keyboard

cosmo

User accessable ram slots (both of them). And only one kind of ram, please. Better graphics chip (only if it doesn't raise the price too much). Faster g4 (1ghz) cut prices across the board (a bigger cut than just returning to the original price points).



Since i don't own an imac those are the only real problems that i have with it.

cdhostage

Take out the 56K modem. Those are so five years ago, man.

carbon3

July is way too early for an iMac update, considering that some of the models are finally shipping right now. Also, the prices of the iMacs were raised because of rising LCD and DRAM costs, so a 17in model seems unlikely.



Because of these factors, I wouldn't expect an iMac update until about January 2003, when LCD and DRAM prices are expected to fall.

bozo the clown

[quote]Originally posted by cdhostage:

<strong>Take out the 56K modem. Those are so five years ago, man.</strong><hr></blockquote>



&lt;sarcasm&gt;Yeah, the iMac is targeted at too wide of a market. Let's exclude the 2/3 of the population without broadband. That really should help Apple's marketshare.&lt;/sarcasm&gt;

satchmo

How about for Rev. B, they just work to deliver them on time.

pscates

[quote]Originally posted by Carbon3:

<strong>Because of these factors, I wouldn't expect an iMac update until about January 2003, when LCD and DRAM prices are expected to fall.</strong><hr></blockquote>



Man, I hope so! Having just bought mine a couple of weeks ago, that would be SWEET! I'd love to spend about 10 months being "king of the hill" and avoid being "yesterday's news" as long as possible!







I always seem to luck out in that regard. My last iMac took me through about 8 months with no updates. And when they DID update them, it was with the new colors (Indigo, Ruby, Sage, etc.).



Yes, here's hoping for a MWSF 2003 iMac update. And then, only 50MHz and a 2GB larger hard drive!

macgregor

1. BTO graphics card

2. The above with an adapter to make everyone's old CRT iMac a second monitor...or spanning capability. That would eliminate the need for the 17" screen on the swivel if it is a problem. Macs have always been elegant about multiple monitors but they don't capitalize on it in a reasonable way for consumers.

3. Metallic colors

serrano

[quote]Originally posted by JasonPP:

<strong>I know it's early, but we could see a refresh in July so it's not too early to let Apple know what we want. Here's my specs needed for Apple to get my money:



1. 17" 1600x1200 LCD or 1400x1080 15" WITH DVI SPANNING PLEASE!!



2.Geforce 4 Ti 4600 (I don't care if it's BTO)



3. Bluetooth built in with BT mouse and keyboard</strong><hr></blockquote>



i <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> at your Ti dreams and BT mouse and keyboard, built in maybe, but not a wireless mouse and kb <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> ... as for that 1600x1200 17" lcd i you.



this is a lot to expect from apple, a company that seems to pride itself on its looooooong product cycles.

semiconductor

[quote] Originally posted by Bozo

&lt;sarcasm&gt;Yeah, the iMac is targeted at too wide of a market. Let's exclude the 2/3 of the population without broadband. That really should help Apple's marketshare.&lt;/sarcasm&gt;

<hr></blockquote>

Make it BTO, I don't believe 2/3 of all iMac owners are using an analog telephone line.

BTO:

a) internal 56k modem

b) internal ISDN modem

c) internal broadband modem



That should make everybody happy <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />



Bye

SC

macgregor

That is an interesting point about the use of analog telephone lines and Mac users. I wonder what the data really is, because I would bet it IS over 50% and that doesn't include all of the people who you want to get by the iMac as a FIRST computer. They may not even know that there is anything other than modems out there and I bet they would like the instant gratification of the internet "out of the box" without having to wait a month for DSL or cable modem service...even if it WAS available to them. Whatever Apple does with the iMac, it shouldn't take more than "3 steps" to set up.



Another reason Apple shouldn't listen to people on these boards as a barometer for the average CONSUMER customer.

max8319

what if you're using broadband (so you didn't get a 56k modem) and then you decided to move and didn't have access to a high speed connection.



then you're f*cked



the way they built the imac leaves out the ability to just simply ad in the modem at a later time.



it's just too soon to leave out the 56k modem.

gametes

Or, they could have only the ethernet port, and sell a separate modem adapter for the port.

I think it is always a good idea to sell the bare minimum as standard at lower cost, then charge people extra for buying extra. "Sell'em what they want, charge'em for what they get!" I always say.

matsu

1.)PRICE DROPS!



2.)PRICE DROPS!



3.)PRICE DROPS!



It is supposed to be a consumer computer! Move component construction to Malasian sweat-shop/psuedo-slave-labour camps if need be. Come on Steve, kids need jobs too! Just get the damn prices down.



PS. Murbot, My Bot alerted me to this thread.

majuki

I think we'll see an off-MW/Apple Event upgrade with the iMacs sometime in August. I'm waiting for the iMac to have user accessible RAM (both slots) and a 133MHz bus. I assume the next revision iMac will have 800MHz low end and 1GHz top end.

junkyard dawg

1. 17" LCD display.

2. GeForce 4 mx.

3. Price drop on the low end models w/ 15" LC

matsu

JYD, those are all reasonable. Nv17 is designed for laptop use, thus, it's cool and efficient enough for the tight confines of the iMac. At the high end price, there ought to be a larger display option. Fact is other LCD vendors still sell high quality LCD's about a third cheaper than Apple does. They could do a 17" for 1899, those who say otherwise are just blind apologists.





What Apple really needs to do is a vast overhaul of the MoBo architecture of ALL Apple models. DDR266 (min), AGP 4X (iMac is only 2X), Firewire 2 and USB2.0. They are the only viable expansion options for 3 of 4 Mac product lines: they need to be the fastest available and as up-to-date/future proof as possible considering you'll never be able to upgrde them. Though it pains me to say it, especially in the case of USB 2.0. A lot of scanner and printer manufacturers may end up using USB2.0 for it's backwards (although only 1.1 speed) compatibility. Having USB 2.0 keeps peripheral options open. Having faster firewire (up to 1600Mbps) makes it ideal for fast external hard-disk RAIDS, and multiple bandwidth hogging devices like the aforementioned RAID, sound cards, video capture, and other outboard processors. Furthermore, gigabit ethernet on all macs (OK, maybe not on the iBooks). Again, future proofing, but also acknowledging that a lot of iMacs are going into professional and educational/research networked environments (like Genentech) gigabit ethernet wouldn't hurt here.



Earlier in this thread someone mentioned a kind of display sharing between macs. There ought to be a way to use firewire to enable a sort of "Target Desktop Mode" wherein two machines can virtually share a desktop through control of both machines resources from one keyboard. If someone has two macs, they could say launch photoshop in one machine and drag windows and platelettes acroos the screen into the other desktop. Each machine keeps track of what the other is doing over firewire, but each machine draws it's own screen (reducing video overhead). Also, you should be able to launch any app from either machine into a virtual dual processing environment. Not multi-threading exactly, but lets say I'm rendering something in photoshop on machine A, rather than have machine B (which is also drawing this 'unified' desktop) just sit idle, I could either launch something else on it (still from the same keyboard and within this siamesed desktop) or have computer A farm out some rendering to computer B. It wouldn't be as fast as a big render farm, but it'd be better than using two machines seperately.



Think of it as a highly integrated use of two seperate machines, on one level, to draw a bigger desktop, and on the other to use available processor resources to farm rendering work out very intuitively and unobtrusively out across a mini unified desktop.



It's not really so far out there, and it's actually a good strategic move. Right now people buy cheap x86 boxes and extra HDD's and ethernet to set-up cheap render farms. Apple doesn't see any profit from such an arrangement.



If I could use my two powermacs, or combination of powermacs and iMacs, or two iMacs, or Powerbook plus iMac, etc etc... in a much more sophisticated/elegant 'render farm come desktop' extending arrangement, I might just buy more macs instead of buying more peripherals for my one mac.



Owners of powerbooks for instance, if they were looking at buying an external superdrive, a big external HDD, and a second display, could easily spend 1500. Likely, Apple wouldn't see a dime of that money. But if they could use the iMac as a rendering helper in addition to being a 2nd display/HDD plus superdrive, they'd probably go for the extra proccessor. Kinda a universal mac desktop docking/resource sharing solution.

satchmo

[quote]Originally posted by Gametes:

<strong>

I think it is always a good idea to sell the bare minimum as standard at lower cost, then charge people extra for buying extra.</strong><hr></blockquote>



Sure, but the addition of the internal modem probably adds no more than $25 to the overall price.



Not bad for a backup connection when broadband is down.