Keynote: New iMac and headless (PowerMac) ?
Bidouille speculates heavily into the new iMac (TAM) to be introduced at the Paris Expo
Speculations are based on the Keynote presentation of Spotlight, using the searchwords iMac, Paris and birthday.
Bidouille seems to have missed that Jobs also made the search "Yosemite", after those words above.
From www.apple-history.com (Yosemite B&WG3)
"Although it shares the name of its predecessor, the "Blue" PowerMac G3 is an altogether different animal. Sporting an all new translucent "easy-open" case design (code named "El-Capitan"), the new G3 was the first Apple model to support FireWire, Apple's new high-speed serial standard. It was also the first professional model to include USB, although it also came with a "legacy" ADB port for backwards compatibility. In a controversial move, Apple chose not to include standard serial ports, a floppy drive, or on-board SCSI (Apple instead chose Ultra ATA). An internal Zip was available, however, as were SCSI expansion cards. The G3 was available in a number of configurations, starting at $1599, and rounding out near $5000 for the fully loaded server configuration. In late April, the "Blue" line was speed-bumped by 50 Mhz, bringing the high-end model to 450 Mhz."
Indications of a new headless Mac or Jobs just feeding the rumor-mill ?
Speculations are based on the Keynote presentation of Spotlight, using the searchwords iMac, Paris and birthday.
Bidouille seems to have missed that Jobs also made the search "Yosemite", after those words above.
From www.apple-history.com (Yosemite B&WG3)
"Although it shares the name of its predecessor, the "Blue" PowerMac G3 is an altogether different animal. Sporting an all new translucent "easy-open" case design (code named "El-Capitan"), the new G3 was the first Apple model to support FireWire, Apple's new high-speed serial standard. It was also the first professional model to include USB, although it also came with a "legacy" ADB port for backwards compatibility. In a controversial move, Apple chose not to include standard serial ports, a floppy drive, or on-board SCSI (Apple instead chose Ultra ATA). An internal Zip was available, however, as were SCSI expansion cards. The G3 was available in a number of configurations, starting at $1599, and rounding out near $5000 for the fully loaded server configuration. In late April, the "Blue" line was speed-bumped by 50 Mhz, bringing the high-end model to 450 Mhz."
Indications of a new headless Mac or Jobs just feeding the rumor-mill ?
Comments
Originally posted by Aurora
Though i noticed Jobs play on words at WWDC I think waiting 2 more months to update Imac is discraceful.
With Apple halting shipments of iMacs to resellers almost a month ago and with the channel drying up fast it would be insane to wait until the Paris expo. Note below how the channel is drying up. Would it really take another two months?
I am beginning to wonder whether they have done this to clear inventory or just to screw with the resellers even more. Take the eMac for instance. Supposedly you cannot get an eMac because of large educational/institutional purchases (according to Apple) yet you can get one immediately from the Apple Store.
Something rotten is going on...
Another possibility: Assuming the third quarter (Q3) was dismal as they say. No doubt the new iMacs will be a huge sales boost so why waste it by announcing them now? The quarter ends today so it wouldn't have had any impact anyway. Might as well save it for the fourth quarter (Q4) which starts tomorrow. I imagine they will announce them in two to three weeks, either just before or just after the Q3 conference call. Paris is too late.
Originally posted by chromos
SJ also used 'Half dome' (in Yosemite) as a search term... another indication of the iMac?
Someone at macrumors mentioned that the dates on the files Jobs found for "iMac" had recent revision dates.
Originally posted by TWinbrook46636
Something rotten is going on...
I ordered a Combo drive eMac from Mac Warehouse yesterday with immediate shipping. They had plenty of stock.
"pixar" demoing Finder
"imac" demoing Finder
"paris" demoing AddressBook
"birthday" demoing AddressBook
As a subsearch of "birthday" he entered "next 7 days" and the result had 5 entries. The one that came up (because it was first in the list ) was:
Sonya Barnes
555-782-1108
[email protected]
July 1, 1952
1505 Sutter Street
New York, NY USA
"yosemite" demoing Mail
"keyboard" demoing System Preferences
"desktop" demoing System Preferences
"wallpaper" demoing System Preferences
"airport" demoing System Preferences
"wifi" demoing System Preferences
"802.11" demoing System Preferences
"paris" (again) demoing system wide search
"tiger" demoing system wide search
"halfdome" demoing system wide search
FYI, the iMac's birthday is either May 5 (1998 ) when it was announced or August 15 (same year) when it began shipping.
Hell if I know if this means anything. Now if he would have typed "SMU" or even "Neo2" into one of those search fields.....
Originally posted by newton
Speculations are based on the Keynote presentation of Spotlight, using the searchwords iMac, Paris and birthday.
I would sooooo love it if Steve was clever and sneaky enough to do somthing like that on purpose. However, I think I would go on the rumors of channel supply and EOL status first.
It's the hardest machine in the lineup to get right. And although the iMac 2 came out of the starting gate looking like a contender, it just didn't pan out (the difficulty Apple seems to have updating the hardware certainly hasn't helped). But how do you follow that industrial design while addressing the machine's flaws and lopping US$300 off the price? Sure, Apple has to find a way to do it, and soon, but I have trouble believing that anyone thinks it's been easy.
I'm pretty sure that Apple will do whatever they have to do to get a G5-based board in. While I'm sure the G4 runs Tiger OK, the direction Apple's taking screams for bandwidth, and that's the real strength of the G5's architecture. The GPU will be nVIDIA again, because of their shader support, which is crucial going forward. I think the screens will be shared with the 15" and 17" PowerBooks, because that's an obvious way to cut costs while giving the iMacs nice wide screens (though obviously, because they're desktops, the screens will have brighter backlights).
Beyond that, I really have no idea. The iMac 2 came out of the clear blue sky, although pscates did come close to getting the general form right. Maybe the nifty detachable swivel mounts on the new displays offer a clue?
Maybe the nifty detachable swivel mounts on the new displays offer a clue?
You mean the new iMacs are going to have 30" screens?
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Originally posted by Gamblor
You mean the new iMacs are going to have 30" screens?
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Yeah, a computer that sells for ~$1500 will have a $600 GPU set up and a $3300 screen!
Someone already mentioned that the keynote was 15 minutes short, enough to introduce a new piece of hardware in Mr. Jobs' usual oh-and-one-more-thing style. Though it's possible that the unannounced thing is so huge that they decided at the last minute that it deserves its own public event, I think that's a stretch. Far more likely that they cancelled the announcement at the very last moment. Searches demonstrated by His Steveness would indeed have the most dramatic effect if the one-more-thing turned out to be an iMac 3, <dreaming mode>redesigned from ground up, up to the spec, etc</dreaming mode>. What happened? We don't know for sure, but the last moment cancellation does not really mean the product is not ready. Apple never announces products which exist only on paper. So, I'm going on speculating by presuming the unannounced product exists as a prototype at the very least. Also, I can't recall Apple announcing products without stating exact or approximate release dates. Maybe, the release date was that very problem which made them cancel it? After the 3GHz oops I suppose Jobs does not want to do the same thing again so soon. So they chose not to risk and keep their mouths shut.
There may be a thousand technical reasons why they can't tell when they're ready to ship a product even approximately:
Originally posted by costique
[*]During the preparation for a demo the new iMac fell off the stand and stopped working.[*]etc., etc., etc.[/list]
lmao
Originally posted by Amorph
The iMac has doubtless been giving Apple headaches for the last two years. I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that its design gets more attention than that of any other Apple machine, and that only makes it harder. Think about it: It has to be a flagship, elegant and powerful, the epitome of user friendliness, and yet inexpensive enough to run with completely un-designed boxes that feature fast CPUs on cut-rate boards wrapped in cheap plastic with little to no software bundle.
It's the hardest machine in the lineup to get right. And although the iMac 2 came out of the starting gate looking like a contender, it just didn't pan out (the difficulty Apple seems to have updating the hardware certainly hasn't helped). But how do you follow that industrial design while addressing the machine's flaws and lopping US$300 off the price? Sure, Apple has to find a way to do it, and soon, but I have trouble believing that anyone thinks it's been easy.
I'm pretty sure that Apple will do whatever they have to do to get a G5-based board in. While I'm sure the G4 runs Tiger OK, the direction Apple's taking screams for bandwidth, and that's the real strength of the G5's architecture. The GPU will be nVIDIA again, because of their shader support, which is crucial going forward. I think the screens will be shared with the 15" and 17" PowerBooks, because that's an obvious way to cut costs while giving the iMacs nice wide screens (though obviously, because they're desktops, the screens will have brighter backlights).
Beyond that, I really have no idea. The iMac 2 came out of the clear blue sky, although pscates did come close to getting the general form right. Maybe the nifty detachable swivel mounts on the new displays offer a clue?
Shhh, don't let Apple hear you all off message, they may stop your cheques.
Finally, an admidmission, or as close as we're ever likely to get, that the AIO is the source of Apple's difficulty with this model.
Think about it.
Apple need only do 3 things.
Design a headless iMac with a power plug built in. My 7 year old PC has a socket for monitor power, it's not that hard.
Take one iMac 20" and subtract the cost of the panel. What's the worth of a headless superdrive iMac? 799.
Introduce a widescreen 17" Al ACD at 499.
Problems solved.
Want a cheap entry point? 799 is great for a full featured machine. You worry about your own bloody monitor.
Want a competitive mid to high level consumer machine? 1299 buys you a headless iMac with a 17" display.
Want a big screen consumer desktop? 2K buys you a iMac plus 20" bundle.
Done. You cover all the points, you lower manufacturing costs, and also combat the perception of value proposition that keeps so many consumers away.
Originally posted by Matsu
You cover all the points, you lower manufacturing costs, and also combat the perception of value proposition that keeps so many consumers away.
And in doing so, eliminate the eMac altogether. Even more cost savings. It just makes sense.
Originally posted by Matsu
Take one iMac 20" and subtract the cost of the panel. What's the worth of a headless superdrive iMac? 799.
Agreed - and perhaps even less than $799 given that the eMac (with more expensive casing, a 17" CRT, and reportedly more expensive G4 processor) retails at this level