is it time for an emac funeral

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
Well over the course of this year

1. powerbooks were refreshed with usb 2

2. imacs were refreshed w/ usb 2

3. of course the g5 has usb 2

4. ibooks have usb 2



The only products without it are the powermac g4 and the emac. We all know that the g4 powermac is dead, or at least end of lifed.



But the emac was refreshed, but not redone with USB 2. The only logical conclusion is that the emac must be disappearing or maybe replaced with a new form factor. Otherwise it would have been refreshed with usb 2. Hopefully Apple is making way for a g5 cube!
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 40
    perhaps not...



    eMac has a home in education...
  • Reply 2 of 40
    m.o.s.tm.o.s.t Posts: 255member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by jade

    Well over the course of this year

    1. powerbooks were refreshed with usb 2

    2. imacs were refreshed w/ usb 2

    3. of course the g5 has usb 2

    4. ibooks have usb 2



    The only products without it are the powermac g4 and the emac. We all know that the g4 powermac is dead, or at least end of lifed.



    But the emac was refreshed, but not redone with USB 2. The only logical conclusion is that the emac must be disappearing or maybe replaced with a new form factor. Otherwise it would have been refreshed with usb 2. Hopefully Apple is making way for a g5 cube!






    I for one think Apple will fade out the CRT all-in-ones over the next year or so



    For now: I don't think they are going to retire the eMac just yet... look for an upgrade in January: All new case/form factor G4 1.25Ghz + ??



    G5 Cube? -- I wish... with heat issues, I don't think they could pull off a G5.....upper G4 speeds maybe. With a 20th Anniversery Product comming soon- I'd bet it's a Newton/Tablet-like product before they would bring back the cube idea..



    Apple does need a 900$ tower-like product- I don't think the cube is going to be it. I think if any tower-like products comes to market it will be like the other posters "X-Station" idea
  • Reply 3 of 40
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    Also note that it didn't take a change in form factor for the iBook or the iMac to get USB 2.0. They just got it after a while. Next refresh of the eMac should have it.



    It's certainly not the "only logical conclusion" that the eMac has to get a totally new form factor in order to get USB 2.0. However, based on what configurations you can get, the eMac does seem to be on the way out. Same thing happened with the CRT iMac - first it was three models, 500/600/700, then they cut it down to 500 and 600 when the iMac G4 came out, and finally they just made it all 600 MHz with the only difference among the models being the amount of RAM they shipped with, and made the only available color Snow. It seems to make sense that the eMac will be going sometime fairly soon because it's getting simpler and simpler. Before long it'll be a single model, which will eventually get phased out.
  • Reply 4 of 40
    jginsbujginsbu Posts: 135member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by shabbasuraj

    perhaps not...



    eMac has a home in education...




    I agree. The REAL question is what product will Apple introduce for that market (and the low end market the eMac also serves) that will make it possible for them to phase out the eMac? Until you can come up with an answer to that question, you should consider the eMac here to stay. It was the needs of the educational market that got us the eMac in the first place after all.
  • Reply 5 of 40
    bartobarto Posts: 2,246member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by jade

    The only products without it are the powermac g4 and the emac. We all know that the g4 powermac is dead, or at least end of lifed.



    No we don't.



    Quote:

    Originally posted by jade

    But the emac was refreshed, but not redone with USB 2.



    Whoop-de-do. Apple is probably transitioning the eMac to the newer chipset as seen in the PowerBook, iBook and iMac, and skipping a major motherboard revision this time around.



    Quote:

    Originally posted by jade

    The only logical conclusion is that the emac must be disappearing or maybe replaced with a new form factor.



    Look, there is NO logic in there AT ALL. How on Earth did you arrive at that conclusion?



    Quote:

    Originally posted by jade

    Otherwise it would have been refreshed with usb 2. Hopefully Apple is making way for a g5 cube!



    You can't just swap individual features in and out, and how the hell does "if it doesn't have USB 2, it's dead" make sense? If it floats like a duck, it must be a witch!



    And if the eMac died, NOTHING would replace it. The eMac is the last CRT Mac, and will probably be around for a few more years until flat panels are ready to be the only type of screen.



    "jade", you either misunderstand the situation or you're a troll. I'm going you the benefit of the doubt, and assume you are just plain wrong about this.



    Barto
  • Reply 6 of 40
    Quote:

    Originally posted by jade

    But the emac was refreshed, but not redone with USB 2.



    Which part of Firewire don't you understand? The eMac has 2 Firewire ports.



    Please tell us what your application is.



  • Reply 7 of 40
    709709 Posts: 2,016member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Barto

    If it floats like a duck, it must be a witch!



    ...Well, she turned me into a newt...
  • Reply 8 of 40
    Quote:

    Hopefully Apple is making way for a g5 cube!



    No way! The eMac is a great buy at US $799. retail, Panther included! Its AIO form factor is perfect. Apple should just keep making incremental improvements without increasing the price.



    Two things I'd like to see improved:



    1) A quieter fan.

    2) A wide-screen CRT, 1280-by-854-pixel resolution.
  • Reply 9 of 40
    Quote:

    Originally posted by heaven or las vegas

    No way! The eMac is a great buy at US $799. retail, Panther included! Its AIO form factor is perfect. Apple should just keep making incremental improvements without increasing the price.



    Two things I'd like to see improved:



    1) A quieter fan.

    2) A wide-screen CRT, 1280-by-854-pixel resolution.




    i dunno about a widescreen crt, that would jack the price for sure...
  • Reply 10 of 40
    eMac is great for school.

    One of my school lab has ~25 eMac (700Mhz, 256MB RAM, and Jaguar).



    eMac is here to stay.
  • Reply 11 of 40
    jadejade Posts: 379member
    The USB 2 ports and firewire are unrelated. None of you find it strange that ......



    Without a form factor change the powerbooks and imacs all received new USB with the slight refresh. The emac has new configurations (just like the imacs and powerbooks) without featuring USB 2.0. If Apple bothers to change the low end emac to a combo drive...they should have added the USB 2 card.



    Old line up of emacs

    800mhz/128mb/40gb/cdrom

    1ghz/128/60gb/combo

    1ghz/256/80gb/superdrive



    new

    1ghz/128/40/combo

    1/256/80/super





    The top end emac is the same hardware specs, but the low end model had its guts changed, so it would have made sense to add an additional change in the port type. Since they already had to swap the hard drives. (or the processors or optical drives, whatever they did)



    It is very simple: Pretend you are washing your tires and you notice you have a flat tire. Doesn't it make sense to fix the flat while you are down there, instead of waiting until you get gas next week. The only reason you would ignore the flat, is if you are buying new tires tomorrow. It would be like apple refreshing the ibooks and not adding support for airport extreme. A waste of time and effort.





    Although firewire is standard for apple computers and very useful, USB 2 is becoming more and more plentiful and is an important addition across all of of apple's future product lines (it is slightly faster than firewire 400, and yes i realize ones of firewire's main advantages is the ability to provide power.)



    I believe some of you are approaching the emac from an apple-centric perspective and not a personal computer industry perspective. If you look at the price points and features of other manufacturers like HP, Sony, Dell and so on the emac doesn't always look like a great deal. At least for the target markets.



    People looking for a low end computer would also be content with a cheap fully-functional tower. This would also open up a larger opportunity for apple to grow business and switcher marketshare. These target markets most likely already have a monitor on hand that can be used with a new computer. The same is also true in the education market.



    I am sure many of you have schools in your area that made the switch from apple to pc. Well, it will be pretty hard to justify to their accounting departments switching back to apple if some the investment in pc hardware can not be utilized (keyboards, mice, monitors etc). In most cases people replace their towers (non apple users without all-in-one systems). There is absolutely no need for an all-in-one CRT when CRTs can be bought for $100. The low end mac market could use a tower.



    And I do know Apple has set a goal to have all g3/g4s to be replaced with g5s. That cannot happen with only one g5 product in the lineup. I am not saying the g5 cube will appear tomorrow, but is is more likely than using the slow/old leftover motorola g4 chips (1.42 won't cut it). I do know one major retailer has emacs designated closeout in their internal inventory systems.



    A new chip architecture is on the way within the next 3 months. Apple cannot leave the emacs the same for the next year and a half to give the schools cheap product. School boards want bang for their buck, and it can be an increasingly difficult arguement to counter for the windows favoring majority. Why do you think emachines sell so well. If you can odrer a Dell with a flat panel for $499-$599 an emac looks pretty darn expensive.





    Apple should be able to easily manufacture a superdrive equipped tower for $900-1100 depending on specs and a combo-drive tower for $600-800. These models should feature a non-replaceable video card, 1 pci slot and hard drives of 160 at the high end, 80 at the low end. The video card would not support dual displays. This machine would not cannabilize the powermac market because many of those users would need more expansion and higher end video cards, but it could attract the lower level creative types who switched to windows due to hardware cost.



















    PS: Can someone please explain how concluding that emacs are headed to the apple historey museum in the near future due to lack of new features corresponds to trolling? I would love to hear your explanation.
  • Reply 12 of 40
    bartobarto Posts: 2,246member
    You just don't get it. You can't just add a feature to a computer (at least not an AIO computer like the eMac). You need to upgrade the chipset, design a new motherboard, to one that supports that feature. NOT a trival effort.



    USB 2 isn't a must have feature, so it's not surprising Apple is waiting a revision before upgrading the motherboard to the newer "Intrepid" design. The eMac is value for money (and the margins are thin enough) as it is.



    "A new chip architecture is on the way within the next 3 months." Bullshit. Where's your hard evidence?



    "Although firewire is standard for apple computers and very useful, USB 2 is becoming more and more plentiful and is an important addition across all of of apple's future product lines (it is slightly faster than firewire 400, and yes i realize ones of firewire's main advantages is the ability to provide power.)"



    There are myriad FireWire devices out there and despite the peak bandwidth figures FireWire 400 is not only more versitile but FASTER than USB 2.



    "I believe some of you are approaching the emac from an apple-centric perspective and not a personal computer industry perspective. If you look at the price points and features of other manufacturers like HP, Sony, Dell and so on the emac doesn't always look like a great deal. At least for the target markets."



    TROLL TROLL TROLL TROLL TROLL. You asked how you are trolling. That's how you are trolling.



    Barto
  • Reply 13 of 40
    jadejade Posts: 379member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Barto

    You just don't get it. You can't just add a feature to a computer (at least not an AIO computer like the eMac). You need to upgrade the chipset, design a new motherboard, to one that supports that feature. NOT a trival effort.



    USB 2 isn't a must have feature, so it's not surprising Apple is waiting a revision before upgrading the motherboard to the newer "Intrepid" design. The eMac is value for money (and the margins are thin enough) as it is.




    Well the USB2 controller/chipset is the same as the usb one. It has been official since 2000. Not like it was just availible in June with the g5. and the ports are the same...it wouldn't be the worst fix in the world. Like I said it was added into other products wit no form factor changes. No need to add the change if the product is going away.



    Quote:

    "I believe some of you are approaching the emac from an apple-centric perspective and not a personal computer industry perspective. If you look at the price points and features of other manufacturers like HP, Sony, Dell and so on the emac doesn't always look like a great deal. At least for the target markets."



    TROLL TROLL TROLL TROLL TROLL. You asked how you are trolling. That's how you are trolling.



    Barto





    Apple has no need for the CRT business. Other manufacturers will be able to do it cheaper and faster. Let someone else sell it. Just like the CD-ROM drive, apple only offers it on a built to order education machine. Good way to guage demand and discontinue it easily if there is low demand by controlling inventory. CRT is pretty legacy technology and could easily be discontinued by apple with no ill-effects (see floppy drives)





    Personally I will not be surprised if the emac fades away with out any major upgrades for a small cheaper tower.



    I think over the next year we should see some pretty interesting things from IBM/Apple to contend in the enterprise market. Panther is already adding enterprise level features (file vault, secure erase, x11, windows networking, exchange support in mail, rendezvous technology) that will make it pretty compelling for corporate users to transistion. I am looking forward the "The year of the enterprise and increasing marketshare"
  • Reply 14 of 40
    bartobarto Posts: 2,246member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by jade

    Well the USB2 controller/chipset is the same as the usb one. It has been official since 2000. Not like it was just availible in June with the g5. and the ports are the same...it wouldn't be the worst fix in the world. Like I said it was added into other products wit no form factor changes. No need to add the change if the product is going away.



    The eMac has the same chipset seen in the PowerBook G4 Titanium and Power Mac G4 (pre DDR). USB 2 will certainly be in the next eMac revision.



    Quote:

    Originally posted by jade

    Apple has no need for the CRT business. Other manufacturers will be able to do it cheaper and faster. Let someone else sell it. Just like the CD-ROM drive, apple only offers it on a built to order education machine. Good way to guage demand and discontinue it easily if there is low demand by controlling inventory. CRT is pretty legacy technology and could easily be discontinued by apple with no ill-effects (see floppy drives)



    While half of computers sold have LCD displays, half STILL HAVE ye ol CRT displays. It's NOT YET LEGACY. And who the $$$$ are you to decide what markets Apple should and shouldn't be in?



    Quote:

    Originally posted by jade

    Personally I will not be surprised if the emac fades away with out any major upgrades for a small cheaper tower.



    Towers are great for expansion. They aren't great at all for consumers, enterprise and education. These people buy towers because that's ONLY WHAT'S OUT THERE, not because it's the best option. Apple has been making AIO Macs since, um, THERE WAS A MACINTOSH. The eMac will most probably be the last Mac in the long line stretching to the original 1984 Mac, but it will be around for a few more years yet. Apple needs an inexpensive AIO Mac. The eMac, like it or not, is that Mac.



    Read some Apple history, get an IT job, and you too can find a clue.



    Barto
  • Reply 15 of 40
    Seems simple to me...



    Apple's market research shows them that *most* eMacs sold never get a peripheral plugged into it in its life. It's an AIO, for the typical lab (or general purpose office) environment there's no demand for it. Eventually I'm sure that USB 2 will find its way onto the eMac eventually, but the priority on that project is way low compared to all the other stuff they have been cranking out most recently.



    I'm told that the eMac is one of Apple's most consistent selling machines, and the customers buying a dozen at a time are *not* asking Apple for USB 2.



    -Gator
  • Reply 16 of 40
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by jade

    If Apple bothers to change the low end emac to a combo drive...they should have added the USB 2 card.



    Old line up of emacs

    800mhz/128mb/40gb/cdrom

    1ghz/128/60gb/combo

    1ghz/256/80gb/superdrive



    new

    1ghz/128/40/combo

    1/256/80/super





    The top end emac is the same hardware specs, but the low end model had its guts changed, so it would have made sense to add an additional change in the port type. Since they already had to swap the hard drives. (or the processors or optical drives, whatever they did)




    Actually, the low end model was dropped, and the midrange model became the low end model. The only change was to put a smaller hard drive in the new low end model.



    There are two kinds of changes you can make to a machine like the eMac: One is a peripheral change. Anything attached by a cable - such as a hard drive or an optical drive - can be changed at the drop of a hat, because the sizes are standard and the connectors are standard, and they can be attached during final assembly. The other is a board change. Anything involving the board requires the attention of an engineer. In a highly integrated machine like the eMac, there is no "card" you can "add" to get USB2. To keep costs and size down, there's a single big chip that supports all different kinds of I/O. To change it, you have to redesign and reintegrate it, test it, fabricate it, and revise the motherboard to include it. It's a far more difficult process than merely swapping in a hard drive or a combo drive, so if you're going to do it you might as well just roll it into the overall machine refresh cycle.



    As it happens, the eMac didn't get a refresh in engineering terms. They just dropped the low end, dropped the prices on the top two, and changed the hard drive in one. That's trivial. And it suggests that Apple is either planning a major refresh or a sailing off into the sunset (which would also imply either a new model to replace it or an iMac revision, because there's no obvious successor to the eMac now).
  • Reply 17 of 40
    peharripeharri Posts: 169member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Powelligator

    the customers buying a dozen at a time are *not* asking Apple for USB 2.

    -Gator




    Erm, aren't these the wrong customers to ask? "We see you're happy with the eMac, so happy you want a dozen of them. So, what makes eMacs suck?"
  • Reply 18 of 40
    jadejade Posts: 379member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Amorph





    As it happens, the eMac didn't get a refresh in engineering terms. They just dropped the low end, dropped the prices on the top two, and changed the hard drive in one. That's trivial. And it suggests that Apple is either planning a major refresh or a sailing off into the sunset (which would also imply either a new model to replace it or an iMac revision, because there's no obvious successor to the eMac now).






    Makes sense to me.



    As much as I loved to be called a know-nothing troll and clueless, why don't we talk about something more interesting, like....what will apple use to replace the emac in the low end when the time comes.
  • Reply 19 of 40
    jadejade Posts: 379member
    I spend a lot of time selling computers...and my opinions are shaped by what customers look for when they talk to me. And of course looking at other products in the market place. I don't build them and I have no desire to, but i do get to do a lot of hands on market research. There are always a number of users who pick up a computer with no sense of information about them or with a list their computer expert friend gives them to look for. (And I have made a ton of those lists) Overwhelmingly people want to get the newest stuff in their computer seeing as it is a large investment, even if it will not serve any use for them. USB 2 makes it easier for them to compare apples to apples. The low end shopper looking at cheap computers compares a few specs: ghz, mb, gb and the type of optical drives and the importnant ports. If average Joe Consumer sees that a potential computer doesn't match up with those raw #s it gets eliminated. ANd in my experience it happens a lot when I try to sell emacs. Apple can't make cheap, affordable apple computers, it needs to meet those requirements when compared to all computers.





    And one thing I notice: most people want either flat monitors or cheap monitors. But many people buying Apples want an LCD, and they buy the emac because it is cheap. Those same people would happily buy a compact tower and other manufacturers cheap display to save a little money. All-in-ones are great for some users, but a lot of people are unwilling to give up their existing peripheral hardware.







    AS I mentioned, what I'd like to see over the next 6 months:

    a low end tower.



    Single processor (g5 if cheap enough or newer better g4s), replaceable hard drives, 2 accessible slots for RAM, and replaceable optical drives. Video cards with single display support. DVI is not a necessity, but could be bundled with the top ones and left out on the cheapest tower.



    This would be perfect for a number of the low-end apple customers.



    1. Small/medium businesses who need a desktop clients on the cheap. Combined with rendezvous, apple's ease of networking and stability of OS these customers will have a perfect desktop machine in a typical office environment. In this case towers are easier to service than all-in-one machines. CD or DVD-Rom is all they need.



    2. switchers: most have monitors and speakers up the wazoo! They just need to replace their tower and recently upgraded to a new latest and greatest monitor. They could buy a nicely equipped box for $1000 for superdrive



    3. education: Apple has been known for all-in-ones and in many cases these are great, but schools seem to be utilizing labs annd notebooks. The labs would have space for a tower and monitor, and could end up being cheaper when it is time for component replacement. Easier for a windows-based school to swallow the transisiton, instead of trashing all the other hardware they have. And we all know on a component based comparison Apple's towers are priced competitively (excluding the g4 powermac). Also gives schools more choices: small all-in-one (imac) supercomputer towers (g5) and the cheap capable tower (the new cube). Schools have no qualms about mixing vendors and they could use apple for the box and software and Samsung for CRTs (or what have you). We don't see apple as a display maker yet, and maybe this will give apple more opportunity to sell displays separately. (provided the connector is easily availible cross platform)



    4. some professional users: many peopl have moved to PCs due to cost. Theoretically you can get a cheaper PC to due the stuff you need to with good performance... And with the recent comments by Adobe people about how PCs are faster thant the macs over the last few years (which was certainly true prior to the g5s) Many of the mac creative-types bought windows boxes. Now they have a perfect reason to come back with a cheap tower. All the benefits of apple, but friendlier on the pocketbook. These people are the ones least likely to use or desire an all in one machine.





    And the imacs would hopefully be able to a more moderately priced position in the apple lineup. (because they are looking steep these days)
  • Reply 20 of 40
    USB 2 is actually really not doing real well and in real world tests its half as fast as firewire 400 in all but data bursting. Also it sucks as well as you have to hook it to a pc with a usb controller, no device wire device connection like firewire unfortunately. I've heard stories that manufactures aren't happy with it. I had a friend getting into digital video awhile back and he got a usb2 camcorder and well he could only capture from the camera BUT he could not go back to tape.



    back on topic - m y v o t e - eMac is here to stay! its just too awesome. I'm sure if they changed it'd still be called an eMac anyhow.
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