<strong>I think they should have options for different cards BTO. Fact is, the vast majority of people who use iMacs don't need ANY graphics card, or at most the 4MB Rage in the original.
They should have an option to pay $1-200 extra to get gaming graphics. That way, most of the iMac buyers will get a cheaper machine, but if you want to use it for games, you have that option.
Remember, many of the low-end Wintels have "integrated graphics" (i.e., no video card).</strong><hr></blockquote>
And game developers hate that, because it means they have to code for the case where someone runs their game on a machine with "integrated graphics."
Believe it or not, the iMac is an attractive (if not incredible) machine to developers because it
has an almost console-like level of hardware consistency across most of the line (the Rev A and Rev B models tend to be left behind, but other than that, they're astonishingly similar). Not only is a non-trivial level of acceleration guaranteed, but the vendor is too - the APIs are backward compatible, the hardware and the driver are known problems. This makes things much simpler for the game programmers (including porting houses like Westlake), and when you're a minority platform trying to make yourself look attractive to them, this helps a lot.
If Apple ships the next iMac with an nVIDIA chip instead of an ATi RADEON (which I doubt, but it could happen) they'll break that consistency to some extent. Apple might be able to get away with it anyway, but they have to be careful, because every bit of complexity in writing to the Mac platform is one more reason not to write for it or port to it. That's part of life as a minority platform, alas.
[quote]I Imagine that the new iMac is so small and efficient, that some enterprising company will make a briefcase like enclosure for it that houses an integral battery, keyboard, trackpad, and second hardrive. Taken all together in this durable case, the new iMac desktop will weigh about as much as a dell 8100 laptop! HAHAHA...<hr></blockquote>
I love it!
You know, I was thinking along these lines earlier: What if, in a way, the new iMac replaced the old iMac and the Cube?
If the iMac is a slightly pudgier 15" LCD, then why not a slightly pudgier 17"? 19"? 22"? Imagine walking into a whole room full of whisper quiet 22" Cinema Displays - no video cables, one power cord per machine, no network cables. No towers.
These would be great prosumer and professional client machines. They would also be a good answer to the huge, bulky "portable desktops" that PC makers offer, like the Dell 8100, and the "slimtop" desktop machines as well. Ports would be much easier to get to than they are on either the Cube or the towers.
The downsides would be: non-upgradeable graphics and a lack of internal expandability, but those aren't fatal. The monitor would be a known size (and with LCDs, the resolution would be known as well), so the video card could be tailored for its monitor. OS X's realtime kernel, 800Mb/s FireWire and Gb Ethernet built-in would moot most of the need for PCI. Of course, these would cost considerably less than a tower + a monitor of the same size.
People who needed or wanted all-out performance (including dual-processor configurations) and/or maximum upgradeability would get the towers.
the super drive can not go into a G3, it needs AltiVec to make the dvd compression work faster! <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
I'm REALLY excited about MWSF because (as I said in another thread) I'll actually have the money to buy something IF a new iMac is unveiled AND it's all I want it to be: native 1024x768 (either a 15" LCD or 17" CRT), DVD/CD-R combo drive and at least 800MHz.
Even if it's a G3, that doesn't bother me at all. A G4 will be just a nice little icing on the cake. But all the other features above?
<strong>the super drive can not go into a G3, it needs AltiVec to make the dvd compression work faster! <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
Yeah but if all you want is to burn your home movies to dvd wouldn't a little longer wait be ok? Especially if it can be done in the background.
I think they could probably get away with a 1799 17"LCD version. It's not out of the question, take the price difference between a 15 and a 17, factor in 999 worth of guts and add a little for Apple margins, and you have a killer 17" LCD computer. I'd consider it. It's a little expensive, sure, but I bet a lot of people would find it hard to walk away from a 17" Apple display with a computer built-in. There may even be room for a cut-down, cube style, AGP slot (standard pinout, but only a half card space).
What they need is some kinda fast bus to replace PCI. Maybe this is Gigawire. I recently read that the firewire b spec is not limited to 800Mbps but actually can support 1.6 to 3.2 Gbps over short distance connections depending on the cabling that is used. That's a max of 400MB/s, which, if I recall, is faster than PCI. Now you could plug in sound cards and video boards via an external bus, without ever opening the machine! I think Gigawire is going to be a much faster version of firewire than anyone expects. Imagine being able to link your macs into a very fast multi-processing cluster. Got two LCD iMacs? Working on some video effects? Hook'em up and let one render while you prepare another cut scene. Both of em sync, and work on packets of the same file.
Edit: Amorph, you're right on, it would make a great client machine. In the scenario I just described you've got a dual display, multiprocessing cluster, all controlled by one keyboard and mouse. It'd be brilliant for anyone that buys, or plans to buy over the course of a few years, multiple macs.
The leak could be a form of damage control. What's the status of iMac inventory at the moment? If it's getting low, and production stops at some point in the next month, this leak only helps them. The stock price buzzes, consumers tempted to go PC might just hold out a bit (provided they can sell this thing in Jan.), and it diverts attention from the G4 - G5 stuff going on. At this point everyone is panting for G5's, fast ones at that. If Apple can't deliver, a month or so of climatic iMac speculation followed buy a truly WOW product in the consumer space might keep everyone off their back about the state of PPC for another quarter -- or long enough to launch the PowerMac everybody wants.
edit: WTF? Somehow this got posted way down on the page??? <img src="confused.gif" border="0">
---I Imagine that the new iMac is so small and efficient, that some enterprising company will make a briefcase like enclosure for it that houses an integral battery, keyboard, trackpad, and second hardrive. Taken all together in this durable case, the new iMac desktop will weigh about as much as a dell 8100 laptop! HAHAHA...---
i've been thinking along the same levels---some sites are saying, why buy an imac, get an ibook instead...and that apple shouldn't even redo the imac,,,that they should let it die and move to an ibook only consumer platform...and i think ibooks are great for students and many others....but i use my computer in a computer room at home on a desk....i probably will always like using a computer at a desk or table with a bigger keyboard and a mouse and nice speakers etc....but a new, thinner, lighter imac?? i can see using that 90% of the time at home in my computer room, and then 10% of the time taking it on the road to work or a friends (make a apple display with a handle on top)...after a while i may use it more and more on the run, but it still will be mostly an at home system because that is the place and the time that i can still sit down and work or play or search on the computer...i don't have time driving to and from work to play on a computer, i don't have time at work or lunch...so evenings and weekends are my computer time and the ibook is too small for me (though my kids would love one for school...and probably will get one the spoiled little brats ) ....and an at home system should be bigger and easier to use than an ibook....but an imac that is basically a fatter 15" or 17" display could still be both an at home and slightly mobile system (hell, when the imac first came out there were websites that sold carrying cases for it to be taken portable....don't think too many were sold, but i bet the new imac would travel more).. the future might not only be portable computers like laptops, but home computers that are portable...like the new imac may be...g
I just had another thought, with all three of these products being assembled in different facilities -- The iMacs in Ireland by Apple, the iBooks by AlphaTop (in Korea?) and the new iMacs by Quanta -- doesn't that leave space for the leak to be true, and yet not be too much of an issue for current sales. What if Apple keeps the current iMac in the line-up as the bottom end machine for the next 6 months? Take the 600/700, strip out the Hdd and CDRW in favor of a smaller 20 GB unit and a CD-rom and sell it at 599. It's assembled in a different plant anyway so once the supply of parts runs out they can decide to kill it at any point.
[quote]The leak could be a form of damage control. What's the status of iMac inventory at the moment? If it's getting low, and production stops at some point in the next month, this leak only helps them. The stock price buzzes, consumers tempted to go PC might just hold out a bit (provided they can sell this thing in Jan.), and it diverts attention from the G4 - G5 stuff going on. <hr></blockquote>
I think it could be a move to appease jittery investors who are probably not thrilled with the fact it's the height of the holiday shopping season and Apple is selling the basically the same iMac model they introduced in the fall of 1999 as a "cutting-edge" computer that fewer and fewer people are interested in.
I mean come on......it isn't even remotely competitive. And the sales figures show that people are all too aware of this fact.
Comments
<a href="http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1811687&a=14083711&p=57163295&Sequence=0&re s=high" target="_blank">http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1811687&a=14083711&p=57163295&Sequence=0&re s=high</A>
The Screen section slides un and down to adjust the angle.
[ 12-07-2001: Message edited by: Outsider ]</p>
[QB]Here is a quick sketch I made of an iMac idea.
<a href="http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1811687&a=14083711&p=57163295&Sequence=0&re s=high" target="_blank">http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1811687&a =14083711&p=57163295&Sequence=0&res=high</a>
The Screen section slides un and down to adjust the angle.
you can't link directly to Photopoint pictures anymore, take the URL of the html-page that contains the image
BTW,
Are you the Alter_ego of days past, and if so I want the password please.
PS.
your link doesn't work.
<strong>I think they should have options for different cards BTO. Fact is, the vast majority of people who use iMacs don't need ANY graphics card, or at most the 4MB Rage in the original.
They should have an option to pay $1-200 extra to get gaming graphics. That way, most of the iMac buyers will get a cheaper machine, but if you want to use it for games, you have that option.
Remember, many of the low-end Wintels have "integrated graphics" (i.e., no video card).</strong><hr></blockquote>
And game developers hate that, because it means they have to code for the case where someone runs their game on a machine with "integrated graphics."
Believe it or not, the iMac is an attractive (if not incredible) machine to developers because it
has an almost console-like level of hardware consistency across most of the line (the Rev A and Rev B models tend to be left behind, but other than that, they're astonishingly similar). Not only is a non-trivial level of acceleration guaranteed, but the vendor is too - the APIs are backward compatible, the hardware and the driver are known problems. This makes things much simpler for the game programmers (including porting houses like Westlake), and when you're a minority platform trying to make yourself look attractive to them, this helps a lot.
If Apple ships the next iMac with an nVIDIA chip instead of an ATi RADEON (which I doubt, but it could happen) they'll break that consistency to some extent. Apple might be able to get away with it anyway, but they have to be careful, because every bit of complexity in writing to the Mac platform is one more reason not to write for it or port to it. That's part of life as a minority platform, alas.
[quote]I Imagine that the new iMac is so small and efficient, that some enterprising company will make a briefcase like enclosure for it that houses an integral battery, keyboard, trackpad, and second hardrive. Taken all together in this durable case, the new iMac desktop will weigh about as much as a dell 8100 laptop! HAHAHA...<hr></blockquote>
I love it!
You know, I was thinking along these lines earlier: What if, in a way, the new iMac replaced the old iMac and the Cube?
If the iMac is a slightly pudgier 15" LCD, then why not a slightly pudgier 17"? 19"? 22"? Imagine walking into a whole room full of whisper quiet 22" Cinema Displays - no video cables, one power cord per machine, no network cables. No towers.
These would be great prosumer and professional client machines. They would also be a good answer to the huge, bulky "portable desktops" that PC makers offer, like the Dell 8100, and the "slimtop" desktop machines as well. Ports would be much easier to get to than they are on either the Cube or the towers.
The downsides would be: non-upgradeable graphics and a lack of internal expandability, but those aren't fatal. The monitor would be a known size (and with LCDs, the resolution would be known as well), so the video card could be tailored for its monitor. OS X's realtime kernel, 800Mb/s FireWire and Gb Ethernet built-in would moot most of the need for PCI. Of course, these would cost considerably less than a tower + a monitor of the same size.
People who needed or wanted all-out performance (including dual-processor configurations) and/or maximum upgradeability would get the towers.
Thoughts? Yea? Nay?
[ 12-07-2001: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
I'm REALLY excited about MWSF because (as I said in another thread) I'll actually have the money to buy something IF a new iMac is unveiled AND it's all I want it to be: native 1024x768 (either a 15" LCD or 17" CRT), DVD/CD-R combo drive and at least 800MHz.
Even if it's a G3, that doesn't bother me at all. A G4 will be just a nice little icing on the cake. But all the other features above?
I'm in!
<strong>the super drive can not go into a G3, it needs AltiVec to make the dvd compression work faster! <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
Yeah but if all you want is to burn your home movies to dvd wouldn't a little longer wait be ok? Especially if it can be done in the background.
What they need is some kinda fast bus to replace PCI. Maybe this is Gigawire. I recently read that the firewire b spec is not limited to 800Mbps but actually can support 1.6 to 3.2 Gbps over short distance connections depending on the cabling that is used. That's a max of 400MB/s, which, if I recall, is faster than PCI. Now you could plug in sound cards and video boards via an external bus, without ever opening the machine! I think Gigawire is going to be a much faster version of firewire than anyone expects. Imagine being able to link your macs into a very fast multi-processing cluster. Got two LCD iMacs? Working on some video effects? Hook'em up and let one render while you prepare another cut scene. Both of em sync, and work on packets of the same file.
Edit: Amorph, you're right on, it would make a great client machine. In the scenario I just described you've got a dual display, multiprocessing cluster, all controlled by one keyboard and mouse. It'd be brilliant for anyone that buys, or plans to buy over the course of a few years, multiple macs.
[ 12-07-2001: Message edited by: Matsu ]</p>
edit: WTF? Somehow this got posted way down on the page??? <img src="confused.gif" border="0">
[ 12-07-2001: Message edited by: Matsu ]</p>
[quote]Originally posted by Matsu:
<strong>I think the 14" rumor was with a manufacturer named Alpha-top, no? I don't remember, to be honest, could they be a part of/afiliate of quanta?
BTW,
Are you the Alter_ego of days past, and if so I want the password please.
PS.
your link doesn't work.</strong><hr></blockquote>
i've been thinking along the same levels---some sites are saying, why buy an imac, get an ibook instead...and that apple shouldn't even redo the imac,,,that they should let it die and move to an ibook only consumer platform...and i think ibooks are great for students and many others....but i use my computer in a computer room at home on a desk....i probably will always like using a computer at a desk or table with a bigger keyboard and a mouse and nice speakers etc....but a new, thinner, lighter imac?? i can see using that 90% of the time at home in my computer room, and then 10% of the time taking it on the road to work or a friends (make a apple display with a handle on top)...after a while i may use it more and more on the run, but it still will be mostly an at home system because that is the place and the time that i can still sit down and work or play or search on the computer...i don't have time driving to and from work to play on a computer, i don't have time at work or lunch...so evenings and weekends are my computer time and the ibook is too small for me (though my kids would love one for school...and probably will get one the spoiled little brats
I think it could be a move to appease jittery investors who are probably not thrilled with the fact it's the height of the holiday shopping season and Apple is selling the basically the same iMac model they introduced in the fall of 1999 as a "cutting-edge" computer that fewer and fewer people are interested in.
I mean come on......it isn't even remotely competitive. And the sales figures show that people are all too aware of this fact.
I wonder if the G5 will be coming out....