Reading this thread I have agreed with your line of thinking Amorph, but here is a statement that, in my book, doesn't seem right. Could you explain to me how the current iMac, in your book, is not eye-catching? I would think that the current design is the most eye-catching of all Apples computer designs.
Partly it's my own impression - the LCD iMac is a striking machine, but not like the ruby iMac upstairs in the local bookstore. That thing grabs your eyes from across the room. It's not just beautiful, it's bold. The iMac is matte white, and it's not so much a unified, organic shape.
Also, I'm looking at sales. The CRT iMac, despite having many of the same perceived flaws that the current iMac has (there were zillions of "headless iMac" threads then, too), it outsold the current model by more than two to one. So I'm looking at the differences. Price is obviously one; the CRT iMac hewed closely to the "sweet spot" price. It was also updated regularly - the LCD iMac has an even worse update schedule than the PowerBook, and except for the new monitor sizes there is nothing to distinguish the updated models. The CRT iMac had a choice of colors, like almost every other appliance, and a bold, eye-catching design.
Apple Turns is strongly hinting at G5 iMacs in April. When Jack makes statements like these he's rarely wrong. The "slap a G5 in the iMac and call it a day" plan is getting more likely.
"Oh, and hey, it gets even better: the move of Apple's G4-based Macs to honest-to-goodness G5 chips may happen sooner than many of us expected. Everyone knows that Apple hopes to have a PowerBook G5 ready by the end of the year (and questionable reports of an unveiling as early as "spring" are still making the rounds), but what about the consumer side of the coin? Well, don't forget that rumors of a 20th-birthday iMac Special Edition with a G5 thumping away in its frosty white dome were pretty trendy leading up to January 24th. Sure, they all turned out to be wrong, but just because the iMac G5 didn't arrive on the Mac's birthday doesn't mean it isn't coming soon. In fact, we're getting increasingly excited about the possibility that the "something huge" coming in April which we mentioned a week or two back might in fact turn out to be the G5ing of the iMac line. Fingers crossed!"
The LC was the ideal computer for certain segments fo the market. Apple realy needs to look at why the LC sold well and approach the market from that angle again.
There will always be a market for a low cost machine, there is no reason why Apple can't make a profit selling into that market. The trick of course is to build a machine that supports what the user wants and nothing more. Such a machine would ideally be a single board computer with possibly just a hint of expansion capabilities.
The whole idea in my view, is that anybody selling a Tower or like wise buying a towers expect to have expansion capabilities. Unfortunately the G5 tower just barely meets those needs with respect to expansion. This condition does not hold for a low cost machine. Expansion is not an overriding concern here but performance is.
The extreem popularity in the i86 world right now for mini and compact computers pretty much confirm that there is a market for such devices. Apple could take a few clues form this market and produce a machine with the same popularity as the LC and still make a good profit. The trick of course is not to screw the customer on performance. This doesn't mean specs matching the latest G5 Tower but it doesn't mean unnatural limitations either. What it does mean isthat we need a machine with a G5, a reasonably good graphics card/processor, and large memory expansion capabilities.
Thanks
Dave
Quote:
Originally posted by atomicham
You are right that Apple will (IMO) never produce a cheap tower machine. That is not who Apple is and hopefully never who they will be. They can and have produced cheap, headless boxes. The LC was (for a Mac) low cost and sold incredibly well. Educational buyers snatched up a lot of them with monitors. Once it got old and tired, upgrade to an LC III and keep the display and other sundries. I never liked the LC, it wasn't right for me (I had a IIx), but, it sold like crazy.
The LC was the ideal computer for certain segments fo the market. Apple realy needs to look at why the LC sold well and approach the market from that angle again.
Speaking as someone who happily used an LC II for years: Yes, it was a great little machine, but its board was sorely hobbled in a way that Apple thankfully doesn't do anymore (no floating point hardware for you!), and you couldn't purchase just the computer. The monitor was part of the package in every case.
Yes I understand the hobbled issue, but that was a long time ago. With todays technology I could see a LC class machine that offered the user reasonable performance. I'm not talking about exactly the same form factor but the concept of a limited machine specfically designed for a low selling point.
I look at it this way the current G5 tower is fairly well designed for a certain sement of the market. That is people who derive performance from adapting their machine to a specific task. Unfortunately Apple doesn't have a solution for people who are not likely to adapt their machine, through expansion, to a specific task.
In other words I'm talking about the sub $1000 dollar market. The way I see it the technology now exist for apple to deliver such a machine and remain profitable with it. Such a machine should be free of some of the limitations we saw in the older hardware. Of course if past experience is any indicator Apple tends to be a little to cheap in these sorts of hardware introductions but hopefully they have learned from these sorts of mistakes.
Dave
Quote:
Originally posted by Amorph
Speaking as someone who happily used an LC II for years: Yes, it was a great little machine, but its board was sorely hobbled in a way that Apple thankfully doesn't do anymore (no floating point hardware for you!), and you couldn't purchase just the computer. The monitor was part of the package in every case.
Yes I understand the hobbled issue, but that was a long time ago. With todays technology I could see a LC class machine that offered the user reasonable performance. I'm not talking about exactly the same form factor but the concept of a limited machine specfically designed for a low selling point.
Like, um, an eMac?
Quote:
In other words I'm talking about the sub $1000 dollar market. The way I see it the technology now exist for apple to deliver such a machine and remain profitable with it. Such a machine should be free of some of the limitations we saw in the older hardware. Of course if past experience is any indicator Apple tends to be a little to cheap in these sorts of hardware introductions but hopefully they have learned from these sorts of mistakes.
The LC series was never sub $1K. Apple is currently offering a machine under $1K that, like the LC family, has limited expansion options and cannot be purchased without a monitor.
I don't think Apple will have any trouble getting at least one other model below that price point. I think the 12" iBook is headed there, and perhaps the SuperDrive eMac, the iMac will obviously have to be redesigned to get down there, but I'm confident Apple can manage that, too, even if they only get the entry level machine down to $999.
If they only offer a box for under $1K, it would have to come with an ADC connector (or Apple would have a merry time explaining why you need an adapter to connect an Apple box to an Apple monitor), and the total cost of the system would be higher than it is currently, and makes buying the system that much more involved - and that's going the wrong way in both cases.
I'm afraid no-one's sold me on the supposed ubiquity of mix-n-match systems, and if it's not what most people do then there's no real point trying to accomodate it. Apple is already selling into a niche as it is.
Speaking as someone who happily used an LC II for years: Yes, it was a great little machine, but its board was sorely hobbled in a way that Apple thankfully doesn't do anymore (no floating point hardware for you!), and you couldn't purchase just the computer. The monitor was part of the package in every case.
You couldn't buy the monitor separately? But, Apple had several monitor choices at that time starting with that little 13" (I think) going on up. Of course, most people had the 15".
You couldn't buy the monitor separately? But, Apple had several monitor choices at that time starting with that little 13" (I think) going on up. Of course, most people had the 15".
Just for the record, I bought my LC II with a 12" gray scale monitor. There was a choice, but only among Apple displays. I could have used the 13" color display I already had, but this was a second computer so I needed the second display. The LC II with display cost just under $2400. It seemed like a steal back then.
No-- a quick trip to lowendmac.com reveals that the Quadra 605 (the last LC class machine) was introduced at $900.
Quote:
Apple is currently offering a machine under $1K that, like the LC family, has limited expansion options and cannot be purchased without a monitor.
This sentence isn't clear, but are you implying that LC's could only be purchased with a monitor? I assure you that's not the case. I had a friend who purchased an LCII when they were just introduced without an apple monitor-- he bought a generic Computer City 14".
Quote:
If they only offer a box for under $1K, it would have to come with an ADC connector (or Apple would have a merry time explaining why you need an adapter to connect an Apple box to an Apple monitor), and the total cost of the system would be higher than it is currently, and makes buying the system that much more involved - and that's going the wrong way in both cases.
One problem with this reasoning: The Powermac G4's are only a couple hundred bucks from being sub $1k, and they are bundled with video cards that have ADC connectors. And that's in an enclosure that was never meant to be low cost, as well. How much could Apple save over the Powermac by designing a machine to be low cost from the outset? As for the argument that ADC would add a great deal to the cost-- I don't buy it. It's just a DVI connector with power & usb thrown in. It's not like it requires herculean amounts of engineering to redesign an existing video card to support it.
Nope not at all. I'm talking about a machine that brings us 970 class performance in a low cost box. That is not to slight the eMac which is a nice machine for certain markets and probally would be even nicer if it was updated.
What I'm talking about is a Mac without a monitor, that supports a 970 or derivative running at a reasonalbly good clip, say 2GHz. A 32 bit processor could fill the role also if the clock rate would hit similar levels, but I do believe that the role of 32 bit processors in the PC world is quickly coming to an end. This mythical machine only needs to be able to support memory expansion and a good video card.
Quote:
The LC series was never sub $1K. Apple is currently offering a machine under $1K that, like the LC family, has limited expansion options and cannot be purchased without a monitor.
I don't think Apple will have any trouble getting at least one other model below that price point. I think the 12" iBook is headed there, and perhaps the SuperDrive eMac, the iMac will obviously have to be redesigned to get down there, but I'm confident Apple can manage that, too, even if they only get the entry level machine down to $999.
Well I'm not to sure how much money I would expend to redesign the iMac. It has already earned its reputation better to approach the market from a differrent angle. While I'm not suggesting that Apple leave the all in one market they do have to consider that an all in one limits customer choice and just that limitation alone is reason enough for people to look else where.
Quote:
If they only offer a box for under $1K, it would have to come with an ADC connector (or Apple would have a merry time explaining why you need an adapter to connect an Apple box to an Apple monitor), and the total cost of the system would be higher than it is currently, and makes buying the system that much more involved - and that's going the wrong way in both cases.
I'm afraid no-one's sold me on the supposed ubiquity of mix-n-match systems, and if it's not what most people do then there's no real point trying to accomodate it. Apple is already selling into a niche as it is.
Well here is where I disagree. I think it is fair to say that the vast majority of the PC sales are the result of systems that have had their components mixed. Sure the big discount retailers may not ship a lot of individual components but get outside that environment and things change rapidly. Heck even at work the normal course of action is to buy a PC and fit the best candidate monitor to it. By not having a low cost headless option Apple can't even compete in that market place.
I understand the G4 tower is still available. But lets be frank here who is going to suggest the purchase of a machine that is that far behind the technology curve? This is especially the case when the entire industry is transitioning to 64 bits. I'm convinced that any low cost option must be a 64 bit platform and that it must provide reasonably good performance.
Look at it this way a fast CPU and good graphics are the only things needed in an environment where data is stored on a server. Local I/O needs are limited. Sure not all users fit this scenario, but a good number do and would have no need for an expensive iMac. Without such a machine Apple has litle chance at all of cracking the corporate desk top market.
With a little effort I believe that Apple can deliver a desktop box that more or less fits the ideas expressed above and hit a price point well below the $1000 mark. Frankly they need to be well below, as close to $500 as they can get it. This would open up doors for Apple.
Comments
Announcing the G5 Mini. A big Mac in a mini case.
(especially if Apple introduces it in the next year!)
Originally posted by tak1108
And one more thing:
Announcing the G5 Mini. A big Mac in a mini case.
Originally posted by KANE
Reading this thread I have agreed with your line of thinking Amorph, but here is a statement that, in my book, doesn't seem right. Could you explain to me how the current iMac, in your book, is not eye-catching? I would think that the current design is the most eye-catching of all Apples computer designs.
Partly it's my own impression - the LCD iMac is a striking machine, but not like the ruby iMac upstairs in the local bookstore. That thing grabs your eyes from across the room. It's not just beautiful, it's bold. The iMac is matte white, and it's not so much a unified, organic shape.
Also, I'm looking at sales. The CRT iMac, despite having many of the same perceived flaws that the current iMac has (there were zillions of "headless iMac" threads then, too), it outsold the current model by more than two to one. So I'm looking at the differences. Price is obviously one; the CRT iMac hewed closely to the "sweet spot" price. It was also updated regularly - the LCD iMac has an even worse update schedule than the PowerBook, and except for the new monitor sizes there is nothing to distinguish the updated models. The CRT iMac had a choice of colors, like almost every other appliance, and a bold, eye-catching design.
I figure the answer's in there somewhere.
Originally posted by quagmire
The imac will die. Death is indevitable. But it will be replaced by a better machine. Probaly smaller and faster and with the headless option.
Ohhright!
"Oh, and hey, it gets even better: the move of Apple's G4-based Macs to honest-to-goodness G5 chips may happen sooner than many of us expected. Everyone knows that Apple hopes to have a PowerBook G5 ready by the end of the year (and questionable reports of an unveiling as early as "spring" are still making the rounds), but what about the consumer side of the coin? Well, don't forget that rumors of a 20th-birthday iMac Special Edition with a G5 thumping away in its frosty white dome were pretty trendy leading up to January 24th. Sure, they all turned out to be wrong, but just because the iMac G5 didn't arrive on the Mac's birthday doesn't mean it isn't coming soon. In fact, we're getting increasingly excited about the possibility that the "something huge" coming in April which we mentioned a week or two back might in fact turn out to be the G5ing of the iMac line. Fingers crossed!"
There will always be a market for a low cost machine, there is no reason why Apple can't make a profit selling into that market. The trick of course is to build a machine that supports what the user wants and nothing more. Such a machine would ideally be a single board computer with possibly just a hint of expansion capabilities.
The whole idea in my view, is that anybody selling a Tower or like wise buying a towers expect to have expansion capabilities. Unfortunately the G5 tower just barely meets those needs with respect to expansion. This condition does not hold for a low cost machine. Expansion is not an overriding concern here but performance is.
The extreem popularity in the i86 world right now for mini and compact computers pretty much confirm that there is a market for such devices. Apple could take a few clues form this market and produce a machine with the same popularity as the LC and still make a good profit. The trick of course is not to screw the customer on performance. This doesn't mean specs matching the latest G5 Tower but it doesn't mean unnatural limitations either. What it does mean isthat we need a machine with a G5, a reasonably good graphics card/processor, and large memory expansion capabilities.
Thanks
Dave
Originally posted by atomicham
You are right that Apple will (IMO) never produce a cheap tower machine. That is not who Apple is and hopefully never who they will be. They can and have produced cheap, headless boxes. The LC was (for a Mac) low cost and sold incredibly well. Educational buyers snatched up a lot of them with monitors. Once it got old and tired, upgrade to an LC III and keep the display and other sundries. I never liked the LC, it wasn't right for me (I had a IIx), but, it sold like crazy.
Originally posted by wizard69
Apple realy needs to look at why the LC sold well
That's easy: Even the crippled IIsi was as expensive as a DP 2GHz G5 is today.
Originally posted by wizard69
The LC was the ideal computer for certain segments fo the market. Apple realy needs to look at why the LC sold well and approach the market from that angle again.
Speaking as someone who happily used an LC II for years: Yes, it was a great little machine, but its board was sorely hobbled in a way that Apple thankfully doesn't do anymore (no floating point hardware for you!), and you couldn't purchase just the computer. The monitor was part of the package in every case.
Originally posted by Amorph
....... The monitor was part of the package in every case.
Arrrggggggh, and the legacy continues w/ the AIO's
I look at it this way the current G5 tower is fairly well designed for a certain sement of the market. That is people who derive performance from adapting their machine to a specific task. Unfortunately Apple doesn't have a solution for people who are not likely to adapt their machine, through expansion, to a specific task.
In other words I'm talking about the sub $1000 dollar market. The way I see it the technology now exist for apple to deliver such a machine and remain profitable with it. Such a machine should be free of some of the limitations we saw in the older hardware. Of course if past experience is any indicator Apple tends to be a little to cheap in these sorts of hardware introductions but hopefully they have learned from these sorts of mistakes.
Dave
Originally posted by Amorph
Speaking as someone who happily used an LC II for years: Yes, it was a great little machine, but its board was sorely hobbled in a way that Apple thankfully doesn't do anymore (no floating point hardware for you!), and you couldn't purchase just the computer. The monitor was part of the package in every case.
Originally posted by wizard69
Yes I understand the hobbled issue, but that was a long time ago. With todays technology I could see a LC class machine that offered the user reasonable performance. I'm not talking about exactly the same form factor but the concept of a limited machine specfically designed for a low selling point.
Like, um, an eMac?
In other words I'm talking about the sub $1000 dollar market. The way I see it the technology now exist for apple to deliver such a machine and remain profitable with it. Such a machine should be free of some of the limitations we saw in the older hardware. Of course if past experience is any indicator Apple tends to be a little to cheap in these sorts of hardware introductions but hopefully they have learned from these sorts of mistakes.
The LC series was never sub $1K. Apple is currently offering a machine under $1K that, like the LC family, has limited expansion options and cannot be purchased without a monitor.
I don't think Apple will have any trouble getting at least one other model below that price point. I think the 12" iBook is headed there, and perhaps the SuperDrive eMac, the iMac will obviously have to be redesigned to get down there, but I'm confident Apple can manage that, too, even if they only get the entry level machine down to $999.
If they only offer a box for under $1K, it would have to come with an ADC connector (or Apple would have a merry time explaining why you need an adapter to connect an Apple box to an Apple monitor), and the total cost of the system would be higher than it is currently, and makes buying the system that much more involved - and that's going the wrong way in both cases.
I'm afraid no-one's sold me on the supposed ubiquity of mix-n-match systems, and if it's not what most people do then there's no real point trying to accomodate it. Apple is already selling into a niche as it is.
Originally posted by Amorph
Speaking as someone who happily used an LC II for years: Yes, it was a great little machine, but its board was sorely hobbled in a way that Apple thankfully doesn't do anymore (no floating point hardware for you!), and you couldn't purchase just the computer. The monitor was part of the package in every case.
You couldn't buy the monitor separately? But, Apple had several monitor choices at that time starting with that little 13" (I think) going on up. Of course, most people had the 15".
Originally posted by atomicham
You couldn't buy the monitor separately? But, Apple had several monitor choices at that time starting with that little 13" (I think) going on up. Of course, most people had the 15".
Just for the record, I bought my LC II with a 12" gray scale monitor. There was a choice, but only among Apple displays. I could have used the 13" color display I already had, but this was a second computer so I needed the second display. The LC II with display cost just under $2400. It seemed like a steal back then.
The LC series was never sub $1K.
No-- a quick trip to lowendmac.com reveals that the Quadra 605 (the last LC class machine) was introduced at $900.
Apple is currently offering a machine under $1K that, like the LC family, has limited expansion options and cannot be purchased without a monitor.
This sentence isn't clear, but are you implying that LC's could only be purchased with a monitor? I assure you that's not the case. I had a friend who purchased an LCII when they were just introduced without an apple monitor-- he bought a generic Computer City 14".
If they only offer a box for under $1K, it would have to come with an ADC connector (or Apple would have a merry time explaining why you need an adapter to connect an Apple box to an Apple monitor), and the total cost of the system would be higher than it is currently, and makes buying the system that much more involved - and that's going the wrong way in both cases.
One problem with this reasoning: The Powermac G4's are only a couple hundred bucks from being sub $1k, and they are bundled with video cards that have ADC connectors. And that's in an enclosure that was never meant to be low cost, as well. How much could Apple save over the Powermac by designing a machine to be low cost from the outset? As for the argument that ADC would add a great deal to the cost-- I don't buy it. It's just a DVI connector with power & usb thrown in. It's not like it requires herculean amounts of engineering to redesign an existing video card to support it.
Originally posted by Amorph
Like, um, an eMac?
Nope not at all. I'm talking about a machine that brings us 970 class performance in a low cost box. That is not to slight the eMac which is a nice machine for certain markets and probally would be even nicer if it was updated.
What I'm talking about is a Mac without a monitor, that supports a 970 or derivative running at a reasonalbly good clip, say 2GHz. A 32 bit processor could fill the role also if the clock rate would hit similar levels, but I do believe that the role of 32 bit processors in the PC world is quickly coming to an end. This mythical machine only needs to be able to support memory expansion and a good video card.
Quote:
The LC series was never sub $1K. Apple is currently offering a machine under $1K that, like the LC family, has limited expansion options and cannot be purchased without a monitor.
I don't think Apple will have any trouble getting at least one other model below that price point. I think the 12" iBook is headed there, and perhaps the SuperDrive eMac, the iMac will obviously have to be redesigned to get down there, but I'm confident Apple can manage that, too, even if they only get the entry level machine down to $999.
Well I'm not to sure how much money I would expend to redesign the iMac. It has already earned its reputation better to approach the market from a differrent angle. While I'm not suggesting that Apple leave the all in one market they do have to consider that an all in one limits customer choice and just that limitation alone is reason enough for people to look else where.
Quote:
If they only offer a box for under $1K, it would have to come with an ADC connector (or Apple would have a merry time explaining why you need an adapter to connect an Apple box to an Apple monitor), and the total cost of the system would be higher than it is currently, and makes buying the system that much more involved - and that's going the wrong way in both cases.
I'm afraid no-one's sold me on the supposed ubiquity of mix-n-match systems, and if it's not what most people do then there's no real point trying to accomodate it. Apple is already selling into a niche as it is.
Well here is where I disagree. I think it is fair to say that the vast majority of the PC sales are the result of systems that have had their components mixed. Sure the big discount retailers may not ship a lot of individual components but get outside that environment and things change rapidly. Heck even at work the normal course of action is to buy a PC and fit the best candidate monitor to it. By not having a low cost headless option Apple can't even compete in that market place.
I understand the G4 tower is still available. But lets be frank here who is going to suggest the purchase of a machine that is that far behind the technology curve? This is especially the case when the entire industry is transitioning to 64 bits. I'm convinced that any low cost option must be a 64 bit platform and that it must provide reasonably good performance.
Look at it this way a fast CPU and good graphics are the only things needed in an environment where data is stored on a server. Local I/O needs are limited. Sure not all users fit this scenario, but a good number do and would have no need for an expensive iMac. Without such a machine Apple has litle chance at all of cracking the corporate desk top market.
With a little effort I believe that Apple can deliver a desktop box that more or less fits the ideas expressed above and hit a price point well below the $1000 mark. Frankly they need to be well below, as close to $500 as they can get it. This would open up doors for Apple.
Thanks
Dave
Quote:
there it is
picture 2
Reduce the size of your photo before you post it, 'cause the mods will take that one down. It's too wide.
Originally posted by iDave
For all the jokes about the iMac looking like a desk lamp, that one looks like a table lamp!
Reduce the size of your photo before you post it, 'cause the mods will take that one down. It's too wide.
its a good picture eh?
Originally posted by hack4ev3r
pressenting the new imac g5
there it is
picture 2
Not bad. I like your idea of the headless mac integrating with the monitor, but without the expense or need to "unscrew" it.