iMacs, never been more pointless...

matsu

With the advent of the new iBook G4 there are so many good laptop options, from iBook 12/14 to PB12 and PB15 (Combo), we might even throw in the 15" Superdrive and iMac "Ultimate" configs just for shits and giggles.



WOW, does the iMac ever look bad today!



It's one iDVD hack away from being completely irrelevant. (DVD burning built-in to the laptop is nice, but with external firewire, it would be much faster and cheaper, COME ON APPLE, fix this, I want my 8X Dual Layer drive by sometime in '04!)



Look at the 15" iMac, 1299. The iBook 933 is absolutely the superior machine. Yes, it isn't as fast overall, but for the same price you give up just a little speed and storage for a portable machine!



Had I a school lab to set up there's no question in my mind that a classroom on a cart would win out over a room full of iMacs. SAME PRICE, most of the performance, and I don't waste a room or have kids running down the hall to "computer class" when I can just have one teacher/aid/secretary wheel the "computer class" to the students! iBook, Brilliant; iMac, BOO... HISS...



eMacs? Cheaper, but even at their cost, they ought to include an LCD by now. If I buy eMacs, I save some money, but I give it back in electricity, I definitely loose a room and have to outlay for special furniture. And, as an added bonus I get to radiate growing students' eyeballs. eMac? For the money, I might get one to send completed iMovie projects to. Prop it on to the cart, and buy a couple of big fast firewire HDD's to shuffle students projects around. If I don't need iDVD, I won't even touch it.



And the situation repeats itself on the higher models. At edu prices, I can get the Combo 15" for 100 (Canadian) more than the 17" iMac. Yes, I lose DVD burning, but I gain portability. If I really want burning built in, I can get a 12" combo and pocket 300 towards an external display (and you can get good 15" TFT's for that money now.)



It's just insane that the AIO desktops offer so little benefit in exchange for tethering you to a desk. Apple is still skimpy on the HDD allotment, comparable wintel desktops offer AT LEAST 120GB of storage and the majority that fall into Apple's AIO price range offer 160+, Apple offers 80 (unless you pay more for the optional higher capacity.



And let's not go too far to the expansion/upgradability/monitor selection woes that define the AIO's major limitations. Well, OK, let's... The AIOs offer no advantage over the laptops in any of those areas while costing nearly as much and sacrificing portability to boot. Apple does not spec them as befits a desktop (or to a level with the competition), where are the 120-160GB drives and 64-128MB graphics as STANDARD ??? For the PRICE those are standards at the PC end of the aisle. As are the ability to add an internal drive cheaply and easily, to swap out the GPU and CPU, and to install regular desktop RAM into user accessible slots!



There's a reason Apple sports such a high percentage of sales as laptops: their laptops are great, but, more tellingly, their consumer desktops grow more pitifully overpriced and underspec'd with every new update to the Apple line.

stupider...likeafox

So those who need portability, even if it means less speed and power, should opt for the iBook. OK, reading you loud and clear on that one.



But:



* Is it really fair to beat up on one product based on a comparison with one that has just been introduced?



* Why does the comparison between portable and desktop matter? If the iMac can't stand on its own then fair enough, but punishing a company for producing a great line of portables that put the rest of the line in the shade makes no sense (other people have been complaining that the iBook also endagers the PowerBook so the iMac is in good company there).



* Why is it good strategy to base pricing on what people want rather than what you can produce for the price?



* I'm failing to see any bright ideas except lower prices. I going to assume that Apple has better data on price elasticity for their products than you. Do you have any reason to think they don't.

matsu

What? Don't be dense. For the money, the iMac doesn't offer any real substantial performance benefits over Apple's laptops. It's not so much faster that you'll notice, it's not cheaper, it doesn't have the whopping storage that consumer desktops now routinely sport, and it has all of the same expansion limitations that a laptop has. What's the damn point? The arm in the case of the iMac? Or in the case of the eMac, the retina searing CRT?



Now, if as everywhere else in the industry, the consumer desktop at least offered a substantial savings over similarly performing laptops, then, mebbe, there might be a point to what is becoming an increasingly niche concern.



At this rate, the laptop in the new AIO, people are voting with their pockets, even Apple acknowledges that much.



The AIO is dead, long live the AIO!

stupider...likeafox

Quote:

Originally posted by Matsu

At this rate, the laptop in the new AIO, people are voting with their pockets, even Apple acknowledges that much.

I was in the middle of a big edit so you may want to reread my edited post above first.



Onto this point: surely consumers buying laptops in droves utterly undermines the complaints of wannabe-prosumers who claim they need expandability etc. Meanwhile the man in the street is looking for a neat little package that is provided by both the iMac and the iBook. Is this not exactly what you are admitting in your quote above.



And yes, the arm (along with the keyboard and mouse) is important if you want to use your machine in some degree of ergonomic safety.

satchmo

AIO's, especially the iMac are ergonomically superior than any laptop. Especially in an office environment, where you don't want to hunch over for 8 hours.



And yes, you can get some contraption to prop up your 'book. Of course, then you'd need a second keyboard.

Is the iMac overpriced? Yes. Is it pointless?...No.

clayton magnet

The 17" iMac still has a nice place in the lineup. I don't have a job where I can use my computer during the day, so portability means zero to me. I'm only using it in the evenings, anyhow.



It has a much larger display that the laptops do (save the 17" PB, which is much more expensive), with a much greater viewing angle. The adjustable display is also much more valuable that you can imagine, if you have never used one extensively.



It can house a 160GB HD, double the capacity you can get in a portable. Whisper quiet operation, 4x SuperDrive... still a very good computer IMHO.



Sure you can get a cheaper system on the Windows side, but for most of us here, PCs don't even enter the equation. It's tough to match the display quality for one thing, since most PCs with a cheap 17" LCD are going to be using VGA to send the video signal. No thanks.



I think the iMac is something you have to use to appreciate.

matsu

Getting the same level of ergonomics from your laptop is just a question of a cheap stand and an external keyboard/mouse, 100 bucks, tops. Or, for free, you can just try sitting and typing properly, ie, NOT hunching over the screen -- something I see people do with both laptops and iMacs.



It's not a question of being a power user or not, the degree of basic expansionand upgradability that Apple refuses to supply to their desktop consumers is present everywhere else in the computer world. People like mobility better than AIO simplicity, portables have that by default, but that's not why they sell. It just highlights that the e/iMac really have precious little to offer over their portable counterparts. No sybstantial savings, none of the traditional desktop advantages, and a comparatively slim performance advantage.



95% of the time, the 'books are just as quiet in my experience.

buonrotto

Don't you ever have anything nice to say, complainer boy? :P



I propose that the issue be rephrased from "iMacs suck compared to the new iBooks and eMacs," to "The new iBooks and eMacs rock!"

satchmo

Quote:

Originally posted by Matsu

Getting the same level of ergonomics from your laptop is just a question of a cheap stand and an external keyboard/mouse, 100 bucks, tops.

For me, it's a question of simplicity. Like a said, sure you can get a stand/keyboard, but that just adds not only physical but visual clutter.

But yes, lets face it, much of the iMac's unique selling proposition is it's industrial design.

So, the point of the iMac really serves a greater role in marketing. It reinforces the image of innovation, outside the box thinking, and is "the face" of Apple.

barto

The 17" iMac is a successful Cube. It's what half of you guys always wanted. Yet some of you guys still complain like jerks.



The other half of you want G5s that cost as much as the amount of pocket money you make in a month. Keep dreaming.



Barto

matsu

Actually, Apple doesn't have better data, just more pervasive dogma. It doesn't take a genius to walk through a computer store and see what people are buying, to look at some substantial school purchases (from the inside) and see what schools are buying and know first hand the rationale behind it.



The genius idea is that while the AIO is neat, it needs to be cheap to make real consumer desktop headway, and also, Apple needs a headless machine that offers more of the traditional desktop advantages (price, specification, expansion/upgradability).



I'm not punishing the iMac because of other models, just using those models to show what an unbelievably bad deal it continues to be. Actually, it seems to get worse as time passes -- trapped in a situation where Apple cannot make it either cheap enough or powerful enough to attract new customers. The AIO values bandied in defense of the machine are not only mostly covered by laptops, but since laptops offer those advantages of simplicity at little extra cost, while proffering the enourmous advantage of portability, the AIO loses still more ground.



Ergos are the only area left and that can be fixed with furniture, when planning out a space. Or, for free, with good posture, or for the nominal cost of a keyboard/mouse/stand.



It becomes increasingly clear, that to succeed in the consumer desktop space, Apple will require something more like what the other 97.3% are buying. Not a tower perhaps, but something headless with a modicum of internal expansion (CPU & GPU, and easily accessible drives.)

thereubster

Ya know Matsu is dead right about this one, Apple have got to meet the market if they want to survive and I think they are threequarters the way there:

1. They need a good value competive portable options - Check

(iBook G4)

2. They need the most advanced and sexy portable options - Check (Powerbook)

3. They need a super advanced, envelope-stretching Pro workstation with the best of everything and able to match or thrash PC's - Check (G5)

4. They need a low-priced consumer desktop option with easily swappable parts and options (like using your own monitor) - Fail, neither the eMac or iMac meet this need so where do they fit?

I can only see the iMac in a small niche, and even then it needs much more power if Apple refuses to lower the price (as seems likely)

The eMac, its got to be cheaper still otherwise they should cut it lose.

Whats missing? The return of the Cube- but this time without the dumb things that messed it up last time, external power supply, no fan, no PCI, no full length AGP, laptop optical drive... Put a 1.4 to 1.8 7457 G4 in one of these, make it Shuttle sized then 6 months later put a G5 in it and Apple wont be able to make enough...

satchmo

Relax folks...all the iMac needs is a slight price adjustment and DVI output.

What other sort of expansion do you folks need with an iMac?

If you need anything other than an extra display connected, I suggest a G4 tower (which is still available, I think) or get the low end G5.

stupider...likeafox

Quote:

Originally posted by Thereubster



4. They need a low-priced consumer desktop option with easily swappable parts and options (like using your own monitor) - Fail, neither the eMac or iMac meet this need so where do they fit?

I'm still not seeing the support for this. Power-users that don't have the budget to live up to their ideas may rejoice but most of the institutional purchases are done as a unit (aren't they?) so what's the point of a detachable display?



You can easily upgrade memory, add an airport card, add a variety of firewire and USB(2) peripherals. So what are the AOL users crying out for? Upgradable graphics cards?

matsu

Every consumer is a budget power user, no need to denigrate them because they are unwilling or unable to pony up for the most expensive towers, they'll gladly take their business elsewhere, and the numbers demonstrate that over the years they have been doing just that. If you don't see the need, then your as blind as Apple. The "need" is whatever customers define by their persistent "want." Consumers buy headless, Apple NEEDS a machine consumers want, regardless of what you think those consumers may or may not need.





I'n not saying they need to drop the AIO format, but they really only need to have one AIO line (Not two with gross overlap) and they need to make that line a LOT cheaper than it currently is -- eMac price levels would be just barely acceptable if the machines came with 15-17" LCDs, with the CRTs they currently use, they cost too much (especially for a CRT display with such bad moire)

cosmonut

There's no way that Apple could make any money on the eMac if it stayed the same price and had any sort of flat panel on it.



I agree that the iMac prices need to come down -- especially since the eMac's price has been dropped. I have a feeling we'll see a price drop fairly soon for the iMac, because Apple's got to realize that they can't keep the prices the way they are with the iBook G4 out now. $200 off the 15" and $300 off the 17" would put them about where they should be.



A scaled-down version of the current G4 towers might be good, but I think it'd confuse the product lines too much. You'd be getting into the territory where the Powerbooks and iMacs would be in major competition against the headless machine.



I personally think Apple just needs to E X P A N D the current iMac line to allow for a Combo or Superdrive version of the 15" and/or a 1Ghz version of the 17" w/ Combo Drive, etc.

the cool gut

This is silly. Our receptionist uses an iMac, there is NO WAY she could use a laptop instead.



a) the iBook keyboard is a peice of shit, to put it nicely. There is NO WAY it could handle being typed on continuously 5 hours a day 5 days a week. Our receptionist has already worn out one keyboard.



b) screen ergonomics. Not only is the ibook screen inferior to iMac's, it only faces one direction, if more than one person looks at the screen, they basicaly need to stand right behind the other.



c) cd drive door is flaky and inconvenient to access. I wouldn't call the Powerbook slot loading drive as "durable" either



You are basically saying, that YOU have no need for an iMac, but there are lots of people who buy them, your thinking is obviously in the minority. I think the iMac can be improved and yes priced better, but Laptops aren't for everyone ... yet.

luca

And, iBooks have 4200 RPM hard drives. That slows down performance by a huge amount. In fact I think hard drive speed is just as important as clock speed and the amount of RAM when determining how fast a computer is.

kraig911

um... the point is ibooks break more than imacs in schools...



the imacs are great machines, they did a lot for apple in terms of press and probably made the rest of the product line seen more now because when people think apple they think of innovation.





laptops are really designed for on the move, kind of lifestyle if you're behind a desk why use one? Its been shown in a desktop environment that if you give people a desktop computer their productivity goes up over.



Dude I think you're just a little more overjoyed about your mobility make it seem cooler than it really is in your mind..



Sure you can get a lot done with a laptop, but ever since I've got one, Its been like i'm handcuffed from never leaving the office at times.

ryaxnb

Especially 15". This is almost funny.

iBook

$1,299

933

Combo

256MB

G4

1024x768

Portable (5.9lbs)

iMac 15"

$1,299

1Ghz

Combo

256MB

G4

1024x768

Not-so-portable (21.3lbs)

Come on ... how many will actually NOTICE the 933Mhz-1Ghz improvment? And the screen is bigger but SAME res.

nwhysee

I had a teacher in high school whos expensive powerbook was stolen from his class. While its true that an iMac is bigger and not portable, it could have prevented such an occasion from happening.