Oh wait...I can play good games for $99. It's called a console, chachi.
The thing is, there are certain games that just play better on computers. The Sims is just painful in my Xbox. Sim City 2000 and Warcraft were a joke on PSOne.
Doom 3 would do pretty good on a console though. Quake 3 Arena was perfect for console gaming.
But yeah, if your thing is games, buy a $99 Gamecube. It's a steal.
How so? I would debate you over any issue, any time, anywhere. On iChat audio even (or video) and record it. We could see who knows their shit and who has their head together. Wanna?
Just to clear this up once and for all. The only reason I have a dual account is because I do not know the password for my one account, so I registered this one while I was at the University and with the PSU email account. I'm not trying to pose as someone else or something stupid like that, I simply forgot the password for my normal/main account.
I guess a 13-year-old could *use* a G5 if they were into serious video editing, intense games, etc. No, I don't think 13-year-olds *need* a G5, but if that is the case, I don't *need* one either. However, I do want one.
Wow you are sheer genius! You mean you ALONE thought Alex would be wrong? Who didn't think the iPod would be a huge success? Who the hell is businessweek to make such stupid predictions. I think everyone would have told you the iPod mini was going to be a huge success. Anyone who properly researched drew the proper "guesses."
Let me one up your prediction:
I predict (just like you) that the iMac will sell millions of units I also predict that there will be 500,000 that will feel frustrated trying to play the latest games, or upset at the video card in the computer. The iMac is the perfect family home machine, it will be used for games. I'm not asking for a $500 video card to do workstation quality graphics. I'm asking for something that will work well with say doom3. Let me put it this way, to step up to a bitching video card will cost apple around an extra $60 per unit. If apple offered (NOT BTO) option of iMac with crappy card, or nice card for $100 more do you think anybody would buy the crappy card computer? That's how you know what people want. I don't know one person who wouldn't shell out $100 more for a superior card when they are already dropping $1300. And that price margin is if apple wants to make a nice profit from the video card...
Think about it.
The LC I bought back in the day was a smashing success, but it was the only one in the line to offer only 256 colors. Apple took it on the chin when inside details were discovered showing that it was SUPPOSED to ship with thousands of colors but was dumbed down at the last minute because they wanted to save $30 on manufacturing costs. Everyone I know would have gladly paid the extra $50, or even $100 to have a machine with thousands of colors. (just an example)
Quote:
Originally posted by Messiahtosh
Do I have a history of predicting product successes? Probably more than most of you. I had the balls, in the face of Alex Salkever of business week (who said the iPod mini would flop, to say that the iPod mini would be a smashing success. Most people on these forums just unloaded their disatisifcation about the pricing and how it $249 was such a huge mistake...CHECK THESE LINKS OUT.
Why am I being so obnoxiously in your face about this whole thing? Well, to prove that I know what I'm talking about and that some of you need to get a reality check. I don't mean to honk my own horn here but...beep beep!
Well I managed to get through the whole thread and there are a few things I would like to comment on. I'm not going to go back and pull quotes, so I'll just jump to the subjects:
Apple's fiscal health
Someone stated earlier that the interest on Apples 5 billion would only amount to a few million per quarter. I'm not sure what rate Apple is getting, but at only 5% the interest would come out to 62.5 million dollars per quarter. Which would mean that Apple did not make a lot of money this past quarter selling computers (or even iPods).
I think that the situation makes two things clear:
1) The current offerings form Apple are unappealing not only to switchers, but also to faithful Mac users.
2) Apple cannot afford to cut margins by a significant amount (they are barely making a profit at the current level).
So Apple needs to to make their offerings more appealing to the masses (to increase unit sales) without decreasing the profit made on each unit sold. A difficult, but not insurmountable, task. Which brings us to Apple's solution:
The New iMac
Assuming that Think Secret's iMac specs are correct Apple will ship a new armless, components behind the screen all in one iMac with the following specs:
$1300.00 - $2200.00
17 or 20-inch widescreen LCD
1.6 -1.8GHz PowerPC G5 ( bus speed ???)
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra (64MB DDR) video memory
256MB DDR SDRAM (2GB max)
80GB - 160GB Serial ATA hard drive
Combo or SuperDrive
AirPort Extreme Ready
10/100BASE-T Ethernet
2 FireWire 400 ports
3 USB 2.0 ports
(Note: I left out the bare bones "education" model to concentrate on the consumer offerings.)
Now, while the above specs are better then the current iMac's (which was selling so poorly that Apple discontinued them two months before the replacements were ready because they were not worth keeping in stock) the new iMac is not quite what one would expect for machine made to breathe new life into a failing line.
Besides the ridiculously low amount of standard ram, which is almost forgivable, the main complaints are the CPU, GPU, and price.
The new iMac's CPU
A single G5 processor running at 1.6GHz is not going to keep up with the 2.4GHz Athlon 64s or the 3.4GHz HT P4s that you are going to find at the mid to upper end of the iMac price range, nor will the 1.8Ghz G5 fair much better. Even at the low end of the iMac price range 2.8GHz or faster P4s are the norm. Apple really needed to put in a 2.5GHz G5 as their top end iMac, but a 2.2GHz would have been acceptable. Even a 2GHz G5 might have drummed up some enthusiasm -- but 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz? The low speed is bound to impact sales. Of course, this is not as big a problem as the GPU
(Now it might not be Apple's fault, it could be that IBM just cannot produce enough of the faster G5s, if that is the case we should see speed bumps relatively soon. If it was just a marketing decision, we can expect to have underpowered iMacs for life of the new line.)
The New iMac's GPU
This is where Apple's skimping is truly unbelievable. The video card in the new iMac is the extremely anemic NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra with 64MB DDR. It is a very poor card by current standards, and it would cost so little to put in a much more powerful graphic card that it does not make any sense. For about $40 more they could have stuck in a 128MB Radeon 9600, or an NVIDIA 5600FX. I would be more than willing to spend that much (or more for an even better vedeo card), and so would a lot of other people. I bet that, if given a choice between a $1700 iMac with 64MB GeForce FX 5200 or a $1765 iMac with a 128MB Radeon 9600XT, that the latter would outsell the former by quite a large ratio.
Some people pointed out that you can get a Dell in the same price range as the low end iMac with a GeForce FX 5200 Ultra in it, but they failed to mention that you can also get a Dell in the same price range with a Radeon 9800 pro (or at the cost of a mid-priced iMac you can even get a system with a 256MB PCIe ATI Radeon X800 XT).
I know it is doubtful, but I hope that Apple will have a build to order version of the new iMac with a good video card.
The New iMac's Price
The only way Apple can afford to cut down on the iMacs price is for them to somehow reduce the manufacturing costs. The design for the last iMac was expensive to manufacture and until we see the new one we can't even speculate whether or not it will be cheaper to make.
The iMacs prices need to come down, and think that Apple should pay a little more attention to the bottom line manufacturing costs and less to industrial design awards.
Good points. However inflation is 4% so if your making 5% (a damn good return on money just sitting around in a savings account, which it's not ;-) Then your profit is 1%.
On a side note if your relatives, parents or anyone ever tells you to put money in a savings account I wouldn't listen. most savings accounts are 1% (if your lucky) If inflation is 4% that means you're losing 3% of your money ever year by letting it sit....
Res still has a nice post and agree with almost every word, heck you can get a base Alienware system with 9600xt and monitor for under 2 grand and upgrade the thing all over the place in the future. does it have Mac osx? no it doesnt but unless Apple can fix its poor tier structure and the constant crippling of its all in ones i dont see many Pc users running to mac over its consumer models. Apple needs a consumer tower and it has to stop crippling its products for powermac.
;-) Notice today the updated delays on the 6800 video card? It's not delays it's just that Apple annouces them in advance, when they know they won't be able to fill the orders.
;-) Notice today the updated delays on the 6800 video card? It's not delays it's just that Apple annouces them in advance, when they know they won't be able to fill the orders.
It does seem to be a regular pattern for apple doesnt it, announce something,say when it will ship but then ship it months later. perhaps they are adding up orders before actually placing that order for the parts they need. not a good business model and sure does little to get new customers.
It does seem to be a regular pattern for apple doesnt it, announce something,say when it will ship but then ship it months later. perhaps they are adding up orders before actually placing that order for the parts they need. not a good business model and sure does little to get new customers.
This is what is so annoying that Apple does isn't it? EVERY time they seem to do this, and they kill the momentum of having a product release. How much you wanna bet that even though we've waited two more months, when the iMacs are announced, only the lowest model will be shipping and then the other two will be quoted as "end of september" or something like that. And then the news around mid September will start pouring in that the high end will be pushed back to mid to late October.
So if we look at this in this scenario, that means an intended product meant to be introduced sometime in June is pushed till sometime in October. That's about four months, almost the length of some of Apple's product cycles. Which means of course, with the low specs gleaned from Thinksecret, that these products by the market will be outdated within three months or so after their introduction.
Come on Apple where's that competitive spirit? I know it has to do with processors from IBM, but this seems to always happen.
Speaking of which, my powerbook died and I need to get another one very soon, should I wait (because of the evidence found in the 10.3.5 kext files)? Or should I get another g4?
Comments
Originally posted by Messiahtosh
I predicted the success of the iPod mini back on 02-12-2004 10:22 PM.
Right here and now I predict that the next iMac will outsell the original, meaning more than 6 million units in its life span.
Oooh, thank you. That little bit of back-patting really sold me.
Originally posted by NittanyLionTosh
What would a 13 year old do with a G5? (I know one kid on this forum has one but seriously)
Play Doom 3? No, wait...
Originally posted by NittanyLionTosh
What would a 13 year old do with a G5? (I know one kid on this forum has one but seriously)
Post to online forums under 2 or 3 different usernames?
With all of that processing power you could have multiple windows open and make 20 or 30 more nicknames. Fun!
Originally posted by audiopollution
Post to online forums under 2 or 3 different usernames?
With all of that processing power you could have multiple windows open and make 20 or 30 more nicknames. Fun!
Hilarious.
Go back to dellinsider.com or something.
Originally posted by NittanyLionTosh
Hilarious.
Go back to dellinsider.com or something.
Dude, you're getting bipolar.
Originally posted by NittanyLionTosh
Oh wait...I can play good games for $99. It's called a console, chachi.
The thing is, there are certain games that just play better on computers. The Sims is just painful in my Xbox. Sim City 2000 and Warcraft were a joke on PSOne.
Doom 3 would do pretty good on a console though. Quake 3 Arena was perfect for console gaming.
But yeah, if your thing is games, buy a $99 Gamecube. It's a steal.
Originally posted by audiopollution
Dude, you're getting bipolar.
How so? I would debate you over any issue, any time, anywhere. On iChat audio even (or video) and record it. We could see who knows their shit and who has their head together. Wanna?
Really.
Let me one up your prediction:
I predict (just like you) that the iMac will sell millions of units I also predict that there will be 500,000 that will feel frustrated trying to play the latest games, or upset at the video card in the computer. The iMac is the perfect family home machine, it will be used for games. I'm not asking for a $500 video card to do workstation quality graphics. I'm asking for something that will work well with say doom3. Let me put it this way, to step up to a bitching video card will cost apple around an extra $60 per unit. If apple offered (NOT BTO) option of iMac with crappy card, or nice card for $100 more do you think anybody would buy the crappy card computer? That's how you know what people want. I don't know one person who wouldn't shell out $100 more for a superior card when they are already dropping $1300. And that price margin is if apple wants to make a nice profit from the video card...
Think about it.
The LC I bought back in the day was a smashing success, but it was the only one in the line to offer only 256 colors. Apple took it on the chin when inside details were discovered showing that it was SUPPOSED to ship with thousands of colors but was dumbed down at the last minute because they wanted to save $30 on manufacturing costs. Everyone I know would have gladly paid the extra $50, or even $100 to have a machine with thousands of colors. (just an example)
Originally posted by Messiahtosh
Do I have a history of predicting product successes? Probably more than most of you. I had the balls, in the face of Alex Salkever of business week (who said the iPod mini would flop, to say that the iPod mini would be a smashing success. Most people on these forums just unloaded their disatisifcation about the pricing and how it $249 was such a huge mistake...CHECK THESE LINKS OUT.
Why am I being so obnoxiously in your face about this whole thing? Well, to prove that I know what I'm talking about and that some of you need to get a reality check. I don't mean to honk my own horn here but...beep beep!
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...ht=iPod+future
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...ight=iPod+mini
I predicted the success of the iPod mini back on 02-12-2004 10:22 PM.
Right here and now I predict that the next iMac will outsell the original, meaning more than 6 million units in its life span.
Apple's fiscal health
Someone stated earlier that the interest on Apples 5 billion would only amount to a few million per quarter. I'm not sure what rate Apple is getting, but at only 5% the interest would come out to 62.5 million dollars per quarter. Which would mean that Apple did not make a lot of money this past quarter selling computers (or even iPods).
I think that the situation makes two things clear:
1) The current offerings form Apple are unappealing not only to switchers, but also to faithful Mac users.
2) Apple cannot afford to cut margins by a significant amount (they are barely making a profit at the current level).
So Apple needs to to make their offerings more appealing to the masses (to increase unit sales) without decreasing the profit made on each unit sold. A difficult, but not insurmountable, task. Which brings us to Apple's solution:
The New iMac
Assuming that Think Secret's iMac specs are correct Apple will ship a new armless, components behind the screen all in one iMac with the following specs:
$1300.00 - $2200.00
17 or 20-inch widescreen LCD
1.6 -1.8GHz PowerPC G5 ( bus speed ???)
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra (64MB DDR) video memory
256MB DDR SDRAM (2GB max)
80GB - 160GB Serial ATA hard drive
Combo or SuperDrive
AirPort Extreme Ready
10/100BASE-T Ethernet
2 FireWire 400 ports
3 USB 2.0 ports
(Note: I left out the bare bones "education" model to concentrate on the consumer offerings.)
Now, while the above specs are better then the current iMac's (which was selling so poorly that Apple discontinued them two months before the replacements were ready because they were not worth keeping in stock) the new iMac is not quite what one would expect for machine made to breathe new life into a failing line.
Besides the ridiculously low amount of standard ram, which is almost forgivable, the main complaints are the CPU, GPU, and price.
The new iMac's CPU
A single G5 processor running at 1.6GHz is not going to keep up with the 2.4GHz Athlon 64s or the 3.4GHz HT P4s that you are going to find at the mid to upper end of the iMac price range, nor will the 1.8Ghz G5 fair much better. Even at the low end of the iMac price range 2.8GHz or faster P4s are the norm. Apple really needed to put in a 2.5GHz G5 as their top end iMac, but a 2.2GHz would have been acceptable. Even a 2GHz G5 might have drummed up some enthusiasm -- but 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz? The low speed is bound to impact sales. Of course, this is not as big a problem as the GPU
(Now it might not be Apple's fault, it could be that IBM just cannot produce enough of the faster G5s, if that is the case we should see speed bumps relatively soon. If it was just a marketing decision, we can expect to have underpowered iMacs for life of the new line.)
The New iMac's GPU
This is where Apple's skimping is truly unbelievable. The video card in the new iMac is the extremely anemic NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra with 64MB DDR. It is a very poor card by current standards, and it would cost so little to put in a much more powerful graphic card that it does not make any sense. For about $40 more they could have stuck in a 128MB Radeon 9600, or an NVIDIA 5600FX. I would be more than willing to spend that much (or more for an even better vedeo card), and so would a lot of other people. I bet that, if given a choice between a $1700 iMac with 64MB GeForce FX 5200 or a $1765 iMac with a 128MB Radeon 9600XT, that the latter would outsell the former by quite a large ratio.
Some people pointed out that you can get a Dell in the same price range as the low end iMac with a GeForce FX 5200 Ultra in it, but they failed to mention that you can also get a Dell in the same price range with a Radeon 9800 pro (or at the cost of a mid-priced iMac you can even get a system with a 256MB PCIe ATI Radeon X800 XT).
I know it is doubtful, but I hope that Apple will have a build to order version of the new iMac with a good video card.
The New iMac's Price
The only way Apple can afford to cut down on the iMacs price is for them to somehow reduce the manufacturing costs. The design for the last iMac was expensive to manufacture and until we see the new one we can't even speculate whether or not it will be cheaper to make.
The iMacs prices need to come down, and think that Apple should pay a little more attention to the bottom line manufacturing costs and less to industrial design awards.
Just my 2 cents.
On a side note if your relatives, parents or anyone ever tells you to put money in a savings account I wouldn't listen. most savings accounts are 1% (if your lucky) If inflation is 4% that means you're losing 3% of your money ever year by letting it sit....
Originally posted by inkhead
;-) Notice today the updated delays on the 6800 video card? It's not delays it's just that Apple annouces them in advance, when they know they won't be able to fill the orders.
It does seem to be a regular pattern for apple doesnt it, announce something,say when it will ship but then ship it months later. perhaps they are adding up orders before actually placing that order for the parts they need. not a good business model and sure does little to get new customers.
Originally posted by zenarcade
...
I have an iMac450DV+ , and everyone who sees it for the first time, have to touch it. They shake their heads, with a smile and a laughter.
The iMac is not a pc, it is something more than that. We all know this, let´s hope Apple knows it too !
Zon
The iMac is not a pc, it is something more than that. We all know this, let´s hope Apple knows it too ! Oh damn you said it above
Originally posted by Aurora
It does seem to be a regular pattern for apple doesnt it, announce something,say when it will ship but then ship it months later. perhaps they are adding up orders before actually placing that order for the parts they need. not a good business model and sure does little to get new customers.
This is what is so annoying that Apple does isn't it? EVERY time they seem to do this, and they kill the momentum of having a product release. How much you wanna bet that even though we've waited two more months, when the iMacs are announced, only the lowest model will be shipping and then the other two will be quoted as "end of september" or something like that. And then the news around mid September will start pouring in that the high end will be pushed back to mid to late October.
So if we look at this in this scenario, that means an intended product meant to be introduced sometime in June is pushed till sometime in October. That's about four months, almost the length of some of Apple's product cycles. Which means of course, with the low specs gleaned from Thinksecret, that these products by the market will be outdated within three months or so after their introduction.
Come on Apple where's that competitive spirit? I know it has to do with processors from IBM, but this seems to always happen.
Speaking of which, my powerbook died and I need to get another one very soon, should I wait (because of the evidence found in the 10.3.5 kext files)? Or should I get another g4?