I just don't get the sense that Apple's PC sales are high enough to support an R&D operation sufficient to keep it on the cutting edge. I was nervous when they split iPod out into a separate division and made Joswiak head of it (instead of computer hardware), but I thought they might have sufficient depth of talent in reserve that the PC side of things would thrive once they overcame the processor shortfall. Now I'm not so sure. These machines seem targeted at the "replacement" crowd among Apple's increasingly small desktop market. There's nothing that I see Apple marketing that would build market share back to the 10% level, which means that the lion's share of resources will always be focused on the Windows side of the fence. Even if Apple is 8 times as efficient at development as anyone else, that means that there's an edge on the Windows side that will compound until Apple is in the dust.
Ah, we all have our crises of faith, don't we? But this is an odd time for one, nonetheless. This machine is clearly Switcher bait through and through ... it will sell like hotcakes.
As for your worries about market share, my own experience in large and small companies is that total production has an almost logarithmic relation to the size of the organisation. Smaller is usually *much* more efficient.
Why this obsession with upgrading video cards? Some explain, please?
It?s not really an obsession per say, more of a plea to Apple to include some FRIGEN value to my computer! As far as work is related, nuttin, zip, zero, well short of working for a game producer that is. I believe it?s more that Apple is forcing a mediocre two-year-old video card without the possibilities of upgrading on us. This card is valued at less then 30 dollars with an OEM bulk purchase. For a 2000 dollar computer (after an essential memory and wireless upgrade) this seems kind of chinsie. Now you and a lot of other people may not game but quite a few of us do, if not sometime. Which means were force to drop an additional $1000 on a Powermac to enjoy gaming. It pisses us off because for a cost of no more then 50 bucks we could have had a viable graphic solution.
Whew. It's a never ending cycle. The haters whine. Then the zealots bitch about the whining. Then the the complainers retaliate by whining about the bitching... etc.
My take? Everything is as it has always been.
Apple has released a new all in one that costs more than similarly spec'd wintel boxes.
Either the whiners are new to the game, naïve, or enjoy the lifestyle of perpetually ridiculing apple's business model...
As usual, I'll have to see one in person before making a final judgment. But from what I can tell, it looks to me like an excellent machine.
I have to say, I'm getting better at prognosticating. I called the general design, and the advantage (which a lot of people are overlooking, but it's right there on the iMac's page) that you can pop off the back and there are all the components laid out right there for you. I'm not sure why someone upthread complained about upgrading the drives, because (again, from what little information is out there now) it looks like that's easier than it would be in the average minitower. 256MB RAM is not great, but the claims that it's unusable are wildly overstated.
As for the graphics, OK, so they did use the GeForce FX 5200 Ultra. It still has more complete support for programmable textures than the ATI 9600 (future proofing for Tiger, natch, and also for games like DOOM 3 that explore the dusty, unused corners of most GPUs). It's still a decent GPU for a machine in its price range, as several posters have demonstrated. The GPU might yet be upgradable, if not user-upgradable. It depends on whether the iMac uses the GPU daughtercard developed for the big PowerBooks. If so, the few and the brave could attempt it themselves, and some others could ship their iMacs off and have, say, MCE attempt it for them.
Furthermore, the FX 5200 appears not to have been much of a bottleneck in the older iMac. Apple is claiming "three times the frame rate as the previous iMac in Unreal Tournament 2004," which, if it's even half true, means that the upgrade to the G5 and its associated architecture should make a big difference in games.
The price at the low end is OK. The prices at the mid and high end are better than I expected. They did, in fact, shave hundreds of dollars off the price of a computer with a 17" LCD. And they finally have all preconfigured iMac prices comfortably below $2000 as is Right and Proper. They didn't get it down to $999, but then they might have better luck scaling this design down.
VESA mounting, combined with the built-in computer and power supply, is a bonus that will not be lost on enterprise. Talk about saving desk space. The optical drive-less edu iMac is also going to be an excellent enterprise — well, I suppose it's still a desktop — at a very good price, with peerless ergonomics. Remember, when you consider the enterprise market and large edu institution purchases, they're buying in lots of thousands or tens of thousands, and they aren't paying anything near retail. The profit for the seller is in the multi-year support contracts.
Looks-wise, I think they did a great job. It does conjure the iPod in more ways than one. It's the perfect hub for your Digital Spoke! It's clean, friendly, it doesn't have the awkward proportion between the screen and the body that the 15" iMac did, and (with the wireless kb and mouse) it only has one cord. As my boss said of that last feature, it's about damn time.
I think this will do very, very well. I might think that because this is the computer that I really wanted when I bought my Cube, but I really believe this will take off. The 20" iMac is calling my name.
Some comments I've read from the Expo say that the screen is much brighter then the current LCD iMac. When comparing off the shelf computers these new iMac's stack up very well as Bancho shows. We know that the iMac has never been a game machine. But doesn't Quartz Extreme help the video processor get more bang for the buck? I'm not technical, but comparing the way the iMac uses its CPU and other components to a PC is somewhat unfair.
Most people are not tinkerers. When their monitor won't come on they don't check to see if it's plugged in, they take it to the nearist pc shop to see if it needs serviced.
Though a headless Mac would be a great idea, but an AIO has it's market too.
Yeah, great. Let's see, my father's monitor's goes out, I can quickly get him a temporary replacement while he waits for his to be fixed. My mom's iMac's monitor goes out, she's out of a computer for a week (if she's lucky) waiting for it to get fixed.
Oh, that's right, people want computers to just send pictures to grandma (ignoring the fact that most grandma's don't use computers). Oh, and the people who just want a computer to download their pictures aren't the type to spend $2000 for a computer when they can get a cheap one from Dell (forget your stupid-assed 'similarly spec'd' machine, because what does a picture downloader and email care about such specs?). They're the ones who buy the Wal-Mart computers.
And for you bashing the video card bashers, keep in mind that OS X actually uses the video card itself very heavily, as would do any of the things you say people will use it for. Putting older, slower cards in the computer slows down the interface as you're trying to edit video or just see a slew of pictures. Video cards aren't just for the gamers.
Speaking of gamers, you all are right. There's no market for games on computers. No one buys computers to play games, and no one buys games. In fact, that's why when you go to Best Buy or CompUSA, you're lucky if you see a couple of shelves for games. [Yes, and for you mentally challenged, I was being sarcastic. The problem you all don't understand is that while not everyone plays games, the gamer market is one Apple should be going after, as they're the geeks who'll spend $3000 on a new computer, or $500 on a new graphics card. Why shouldn't apple want to go after that market? And shouldn't people ask "Why aren't they?"]
Some comments I've read from the Expo say that the screen is much brighter then the current LCD iMac. When comparing off the shelf computers these new iMac's stack up very well as Bancho shows. We know that the iMac has never been a game machine. But doesn't Quartz Extreme help the video processor get more bang for the buck? I'm not technical, but comparing the way the iMac uses its CPU and other components to a PC is somewhat unfair.
Actually, Quartz Extreme uses the video card to offset some of the display processing. So the more powerful card, the better the experience.
I think when it comes to the home theater / airtunes, and wanting to control music in any room in your house...or wanting the perfect machine for the kitchen, this imac hits right on the button. I think the mistake they made was advertising it as a gaming machine on the website, I do hope it wasn't thier intention to make this thing game orientated. Simply an advertising error is all...(fingers crossed)
I like the new iMacs. I would recommend the two lower end models. Probably would not recommend the high end 20" model. Comparing to the old iMac G4:
Code:
version G4 G5 G4 G5 G4 G5
screen 15 17 17 17 20 20
CPU GHz 1.0 1.6 1.25 1.8 1.25 1.8
Bus MHz 167 533 167 600 167 600
mem type PC2700 PC3200 PC2700 PC3200 PC2700 PC3200
mem MB 256 256 256 256 256 256
Graphics GF4MX 5200U 5200U 5200U 5200U 5200U
Grph MB 32 64 64 64 64 64
HD Dr bus A/100 SATA A/100 SATA A/100 SATA
HD Dr GB 80 80 80 80 80 160
Optical combo combo 4x SD 4x SD 4x SD 4x SD
Price 1299 1299 1799 1499 2199 1899
This looks like Apple made some really nice improvements here. Hitting a 1299$ price point with a 17" LCD was what Apple needed to do, and dropping the price points for the 2 models upscale by 300$ was also good. These machines are very close to being twice as good as the previous models.
On the low end model, Apple increased the performance 50% on integer, probably 150% on FPU, increased the performance of the graphics, increased the performance of both the front side bus and memory, increased the performance of the hard drive, and increased the screen size to 17". All for the same price. I think that is very good.
The next two models also have nice performance improvements along with a $300 drop in price.
And of course, Apple can't just make everyone happy by simply offering build-to-order graphics and CPU options. That and a cheap headless machine would make everyone so much happier.
Yeah, great. Let's see, my father's monitor's goes out, I can quickly get him a temporary replacement while he waits for his to be fixed. My mom's iMac's monitor goes out, she's out of a computer for a week (if she's lucky) waiting for it to get fixed.
Oh, that's right, people want computers to just send pictures to grandma (ignoring the fact that most grandma's don't use computers). Oh, and the people who just want a computer to download their pictures aren't the type to spend $2000 for a computer when they can get a cheap one from Dell (forget your stupid-assed 'similarly spec'd' machine, because what does a picture downloader and email care about such specs?). They're the ones who buy the Wal-Mart computers.
And for you bashing the video card bashers, keep in mind that OS X actually uses the video card itself very heavily, as would do any of the things you say people will use it for. Putting older, slower cards in the computer slows down the interface as you're trying to edit video or just see a slew of pictures. Video cards aren't just for the gamers.
Speaking of gamers, you all are right. There's no market for games on computers. No one buys computers to play games, and no one buys games. In fact, that's why when you go to Best Buy or CompUSA, you're lucky if you see a couple of shelves for games. [Yes, and for you mentally challenged, I was being sarcastic. The problem you all don't understand is that while not everyone plays games, the gamer market is one Apple should be going after, as they're the geeks who'll spend $3000 on a new computer, or $500 on a new graphics card. Why shouldn't apple want to go after that market? And shouldn't people ask "Why aren't they?"]
Sure, *everyone* has spare monitors lying about waiting to be used as temporary replacements.
The low end iMac is $1299, not $2000. Apple is not competing with the Walmart machines or the dregs of what Dell offers. You really *should* compare similar specced machines to be fair. Apple offers similar value to the Dell for $1299. Apple offers *superior* value to the Sony offerings.
As for the video card Amorph has given examples where the 5200 would actually be a better choice than the ATI 9600. OS X relies on OpenGL which is better supported by Nvidia than ATI.
I won't argue the games and I didn't in my post above. I don't think it will be the atrocity people are making it out to be though. I'm pretty sure Apple is way down on the list for hardcore gamers and a non-upgradeable machine would not suit them anyhow.
This new line of iMacs is going to get those 13, 14, and 15, year olds excited about getting a Mac, as well as those college bound teens who need a computer, but don't want a laptop for one reason or another. Also with the recent deal between Duke and Apple the future for total university Mac saturation is coming. Soon Schools will be using Xservs as servers and PowerMacs in their high end labs, and the new iMacs in their libraries. If teens and twenty-something?s buy this as their first Mac to compliment their iPod!!! Whoa they will never go back to the noisy dusty beige box again! The next few years should be big for apple, because they will be establishing the next generation of Mac users in a never before seen way.
I didnt see anyone else mentioning this but I appoligize if I missed it...If heat was the issue that held-up the release (along with supply shortages) then is it concieveable that the crappy video card selection is the result of additional heat reduction? I think they probably stuck this $16 card in this machine as an initial offering to get all the money from people who have been waiting for ever and a day to get the new iMac. This logically buys them enough time to resolve any heat issues associated with a larger video card and then release a revised version in November or December with the option of a more substantial graphics option. This is only a theory obviously but its my only answer to their decision to use such an underpowered video card on their sexy new iMac.
Apple, like every other company looks for the best possible way to cut costs and increase profits by staying competitive. This is an AIO platform, Apple is comparable to price and performance of their PC AIO counterparts, hence their competitive. There will always be something that?s missing from these machines or something not quite right. This is problem that plagues AIO?s in general, if you find something wrong or something lacking then it?s not for you. Where Apple fails is not having a viable solution for us who do see something is missing. A $2000 dollar entry Powermac is not the answer. We need a cheap headless Mac or more BTO options for AIO's.
Apple, like every other company looks for the best possible way to cut costs and increase profits buy staying competitive. This is an AIO platform, Apple is comparable to price and performance of their PC AIO counterparts, hence their competitive. There will always be something that?s missing from these machines or something not quite right. This is problem that plagues AIO?s in general, if you find something wrong or something lacking then it?s not for you. Where Apple fails is not having a viable solution for us who do see something is missing. A $2000 dollar entry Powermac is not the answer. We need a cheap headless Mac or more BTO options for AIO's.
I couldent agree more, but what do you think about the heat issue? I still think this video card is on the low end of what it almost needed to be a consumer level machine these days. I feel like they would have spent the additional $8-10 per machine to put in a better GPU if there wasnt something else hindering the process.
And of course, Apple can't just make everyone happy by simply offering build-to-order graphics and CPU options. That and a cheap headless machine would make everyone so much happier.
Apple always chintzes on BTO when they first release a product, because the mere option of BTO makes a model more expensive to manufacture. Once the kinks are out and the line is running smoothly, they have the option of doing BTO. If they made a couple of choices right, it should be easier on this machine than on any prior iMac, simply because once you pop the back off, the whole machine is right there.
If the new iMac uses the PowerBook's GPU daughtercard, they could offer BTO GPUs just as they do in the PowerBooks. Nothing about this design intrinsically prohibits that. We'll have to wait until some enterprising Japanese person takes one apart. Even if this model doesn't have the daughtercard, it could appear in an update.
As for the "cheap headless box," I have to say that "everyone" does not include me. A cheap headless box is a toy for some geeks (not all geeks, or I'd want one). It's not a consumer product.
Comments
Originally posted by Osakans
I just don't get the sense that Apple's PC sales are high enough to support an R&D operation sufficient to keep it on the cutting edge. I was nervous when they split iPod out into a separate division and made Joswiak head of it (instead of computer hardware), but I thought they might have sufficient depth of talent in reserve that the PC side of things would thrive once they overcame the processor shortfall. Now I'm not so sure. These machines seem targeted at the "replacement" crowd among Apple's increasingly small desktop market. There's nothing that I see Apple marketing that would build market share back to the 10% level, which means that the lion's share of resources will always be focused on the Windows side of the fence. Even if Apple is 8 times as efficient at development as anyone else, that means that there's an edge on the Windows side that will compound until Apple is in the dust.
Ah, we all have our crises of faith, don't we? But this is an odd time for one, nonetheless. This machine is clearly Switcher bait through and through ... it will sell like hotcakes.
As for your worries about market share, my own experience in large and small companies is that total production has an almost logarithmic relation to the size of the organisation. Smaller is usually *much* more efficient.
Originally posted by iMac David
Why this obsession with upgrading video cards? Some explain, please?
It?s not really an obsession per say, more of a plea to Apple to include some FRIGEN value to my computer! As far as work is related, nuttin, zip, zero, well short of working for a game producer that is. I believe it?s more that Apple is forcing a mediocre two-year-old video card without the possibilities of upgrading on us. This card is valued at less then 30 dollars with an OEM bulk purchase. For a 2000 dollar computer (after an essential memory and wireless upgrade) this seems kind of chinsie. Now you and a lot of other people may not game but quite a few of us do, if not sometime. Which means were force to drop an additional $1000 on a Powermac to enjoy gaming. It pisses us off because for a cost of no more then 50 bucks we could have had a viable graphic solution.
My take? Everything is as it has always been.
Apple has released a new all in one that costs more than similarly spec'd wintel boxes.
Either the whiners are new to the game, naïve, or enjoy the lifestyle of perpetually ridiculing apple's business model...
Yep, everything is as it has always been.
I have to say, I'm getting better at prognosticating.
As for the graphics, OK, so they did use the GeForce FX 5200 Ultra. It still has more complete support for programmable textures than the ATI 9600 (future proofing for Tiger, natch, and also for games like DOOM 3 that explore the dusty, unused corners of most GPUs). It's still a decent GPU for a machine in its price range, as several posters have demonstrated. The GPU might yet be upgradable, if not user-upgradable. It depends on whether the iMac uses the GPU daughtercard developed for the big PowerBooks. If so, the few and the brave could attempt it themselves, and some others could ship their iMacs off and have, say, MCE attempt it for them.
Furthermore, the FX 5200 appears not to have been much of a bottleneck in the older iMac. Apple is claiming "three times the frame rate as the previous iMac in Unreal Tournament 2004," which, if it's even half true, means that the upgrade to the G5 and its associated architecture should make a big difference in games.
The price at the low end is OK. The prices at the mid and high end are better than I expected. They did, in fact, shave hundreds of dollars off the price of a computer with a 17" LCD.
VESA mounting, combined with the built-in computer and power supply, is a bonus that will not be lost on enterprise. Talk about saving desk space. The optical drive-less edu iMac is also going to be an excellent enterprise — well, I suppose it's still a desktop — at a very good price, with peerless ergonomics. Remember, when you consider the enterprise market and large edu institution purchases, they're buying in lots of thousands or tens of thousands, and they aren't paying anything near retail. The profit for the seller is in the multi-year support contracts.
Looks-wise, I think they did a great job. It does conjure the iPod in more ways than one. It's the perfect hub for your Digital Spoke!
I think this will do very, very well. I might think that because this is the computer that I really wanted when I bought my Cube, but I really believe this will take off. The 20" iMac is calling my name.
Originally posted by fahlman
Most people are not tinkerers. When their monitor won't come on they don't check to see if it's plugged in, they take it to the nearist pc shop to see if it needs serviced.
Though a headless Mac would be a great idea, but an AIO has it's market too.
Yeah, great. Let's see, my father's monitor's goes out, I can quickly get him a temporary replacement while he waits for his to be fixed. My mom's iMac's monitor goes out, she's out of a computer for a week (if she's lucky) waiting for it to get fixed.
Oh, that's right, people want computers to just send pictures to grandma (ignoring the fact that most grandma's don't use computers). Oh, and the people who just want a computer to download their pictures aren't the type to spend $2000 for a computer when they can get a cheap one from Dell (forget your stupid-assed 'similarly spec'd' machine, because what does a picture downloader and email care about such specs?). They're the ones who buy the Wal-Mart computers.
And for you bashing the video card bashers, keep in mind that OS X actually uses the video card itself very heavily, as would do any of the things you say people will use it for. Putting older, slower cards in the computer slows down the interface as you're trying to edit video or just see a slew of pictures. Video cards aren't just for the gamers.
Speaking of gamers, you all are right. There's no market for games on computers. No one buys computers to play games, and no one buys games. In fact, that's why when you go to Best Buy or CompUSA, you're lucky if you see a couple of shelves for games. [Yes, and for you mentally challenged, I was being sarcastic. The problem you all don't understand is that while not everyone plays games, the gamer market is one Apple should be going after, as they're the geeks who'll spend $3000 on a new computer, or $500 on a new graphics card. Why shouldn't apple want to go after that market? And shouldn't people ask "Why aren't they?"]
Originally posted by Bancho
Dell Dimension 4600
The iMac stacks up well against this for a very similar ot these prices).
Check out those nice *Non upgradeable* graphics Sony offers.
I'm sure with more effort I could find some cheaper ones but overall I picked decent (as decent as PCs get) examples.
Apple is really not asking consumers to pay a whole lot more than Dell or Sony...
Sony's are overpriced...
btw, 256MB of memory standard in all 3 configurations!!! Come on people!!!
Originally posted by MacsRGood4U
Some comments I've read from the Expo say that the screen is much brighter then the current LCD iMac. When comparing off the shelf computers these new iMac's stack up very well as Bancho shows. We know that the iMac has never been a game machine. But doesn't Quartz Extreme help the video processor get more bang for the buck? I'm not technical, but comparing the way the iMac uses its CPU and other components to a PC is somewhat unfair.
Actually, Quartz Extreme uses the video card to offset some of the display processing. So the more powerful card, the better the experience.
ive got a pc for gaming, and a 5200 64meg is still an ok card.
my parents are ordering a 20" one very soon.
version G4 G5 G4 G5 G4 G5
screen 15 17 17 17 20 20
CPU GHz 1.0 1.6 1.25 1.8 1.25 1.8
Bus MHz 167 533 167 600 167 600
mem type PC2700 PC3200 PC2700 PC3200 PC2700 PC3200
mem MB 256 256 256 256 256 256
Graphics GF4MX 5200U 5200U 5200U 5200U 5200U
Grph MB 32 64 64 64 64 64
HD Dr bus A/100 SATA A/100 SATA A/100 SATA
HD Dr GB 80 80 80 80 80 160
Optical combo combo 4x SD 4x SD 4x SD 4x SD
Price 1299 1299 1799 1499 2199 1899
This looks like Apple made some really nice improvements here. Hitting a 1299$ price point with a 17" LCD was what Apple needed to do, and dropping the price points for the 2 models upscale by 300$ was also good. These machines are very close to being twice as good as the previous models.
On the low end model, Apple increased the performance 50% on integer, probably 150% on FPU, increased the performance of the graphics, increased the performance of both the front side bus and memory, increased the performance of the hard drive, and increased the screen size to 17". All for the same price. I think that is very good.
The next two models also have nice performance improvements along with a $300 drop in price.
And of course, Apple can't just make everyone happy by simply offering build-to-order graphics and CPU options. That and a cheap headless machine would make everyone so much happier.
Originally posted by Louzer
Yeah, great. Let's see, my father's monitor's goes out, I can quickly get him a temporary replacement while he waits for his to be fixed. My mom's iMac's monitor goes out, she's out of a computer for a week (if she's lucky) waiting for it to get fixed.
Oh, that's right, people want computers to just send pictures to grandma (ignoring the fact that most grandma's don't use computers). Oh, and the people who just want a computer to download their pictures aren't the type to spend $2000 for a computer when they can get a cheap one from Dell (forget your stupid-assed 'similarly spec'd' machine, because what does a picture downloader and email care about such specs?). They're the ones who buy the Wal-Mart computers.
And for you bashing the video card bashers, keep in mind that OS X actually uses the video card itself very heavily, as would do any of the things you say people will use it for. Putting older, slower cards in the computer slows down the interface as you're trying to edit video or just see a slew of pictures. Video cards aren't just for the gamers.
Speaking of gamers, you all are right. There's no market for games on computers. No one buys computers to play games, and no one buys games. In fact, that's why when you go to Best Buy or CompUSA, you're lucky if you see a couple of shelves for games. [Yes, and for you mentally challenged, I was being sarcastic. The problem you all don't understand is that while not everyone plays games, the gamer market is one Apple should be going after, as they're the geeks who'll spend $3000 on a new computer, or $500 on a new graphics card. Why shouldn't apple want to go after that market? And shouldn't people ask "Why aren't they?"]
Sure, *everyone* has spare monitors lying about waiting to be used as temporary replacements.
The low end iMac is $1299, not $2000. Apple is not competing with the Walmart machines or the dregs of what Dell offers. You really *should* compare similar specced machines to be fair. Apple offers similar value to the Dell for $1299. Apple offers *superior* value to the Sony offerings.
As for the video card Amorph has given examples where the 5200 would actually be a better choice than the ATI 9600. OS X relies on OpenGL which is better supported by Nvidia than ATI.
I won't argue the games and I didn't in my post above. I don't think it will be the atrocity people are making it out to be though. I'm pretty sure Apple is way down on the list for hardcore gamers and a non-upgradeable machine would not suit them anyhow.
Originally posted by trajik78
Sony's are overpriced...
btw, 256MB of memory standard in all 3 configurations!!! Come on people!!!
Oh, so it's not ok to compare Apple to an expensively priced PC but it's fine to pit them against homebuilt or bargain basement ones?
Originally posted by Playmaker
I didnt see anyone else mentioning this but I appoligize if I missed it...If heat was the issue that held-up the release (along with supply shortages) then is it concieveable that the crappy video card selection is the result of additional heat reduction? I think they probably stuck this $16 card in this machine as an initial offering to get all the money from people who have been waiting for ever and a day to get the new iMac. This logically buys them enough time to resolve any heat issues associated with a larger video card and then release a revised version in November or December with the option of a more substantial graphics option. This is only a theory obviously but its my only answer to their decision to use such an underpowered video card
Apple, like every other company looks for the best possible way to cut costs and increase profits by staying competitive. This is an AIO platform, Apple is comparable to price and performance of their PC AIO counterparts, hence their competitive. There will always be something that?s missing from these machines or something not quite right. This is problem that plagues AIO?s in general, if you find something wrong or something lacking then it?s not for you. Where Apple fails is not having a viable solution for us who do see something is missing. A $2000 dollar entry Powermac is not the answer. We need a cheap headless Mac or more BTO options for AIO's.
Originally posted by Relic
Apple, like every other company looks for the best possible way to cut costs and increase profits buy staying competitive. This is an AIO platform, Apple is comparable to price and performance of their PC AIO counterparts, hence their competitive. There will always be something that?s missing from these machines or something not quite right. This is problem that plagues AIO?s in general, if you find something wrong or something lacking then it?s not for you. Where Apple fails is not having a viable solution for us who do see something is missing. A $2000 dollar entry Powermac is not the answer. We need a cheap headless Mac or more BTO options for AIO's.
I couldent agree more, but what do you think about the heat issue? I still think this video card is on the low end of what it almost needed to be a consumer level machine these days. I feel like they would have spent the additional $8-10 per machine to put in a better GPU if there wasnt something else hindering the process.
Originally posted by THT
And of course, Apple can't just make everyone happy by simply offering build-to-order graphics and CPU options. That and a cheap headless machine would make everyone so much happier.
Apple always chintzes on BTO when they first release a product, because the mere option of BTO makes a model more expensive to manufacture. Once the kinks are out and the line is running smoothly, they have the option of doing BTO. If they made a couple of choices right, it should be easier on this machine than on any prior iMac, simply because once you pop the back off, the whole machine is right there.
If the new iMac uses the PowerBook's GPU daughtercard, they could offer BTO GPUs just as they do in the PowerBooks. Nothing about this design intrinsically prohibits that. We'll have to wait until some enterprising Japanese person takes one apart.
As for the "cheap headless box," I have to say that "everyone" does not include me. A cheap headless box is a toy for some geeks (not all geeks, or I'd want one). It's not a consumer product.