867 MHz iMac 17"

mw · February 14, 2003 9:30AM

Apple just released the iMac upgrades 10 days ago, a 15" 800 MHz, and a 17" 1 GHz. The 17" 1 GHz is the real "new" machine, with DDR RAM, new audio-in jack and different arrangement of ports, while the 800MHz iMac seems to be just the former top-of-the-line with a price drop (did they put different VRAM in it?)

$1299 is not quite the promised "under-1k-entry-model" , so now there are rumors about 3 new 867 MHz iMacs, the entry model with 15" at $999, and 2 17" models with combo and dvd-r drives.

What are the chances of seeing these 867 Mhz iMacs in the very near future?

(I almost ordered the 1Ghz iMac yesterday before I saw these rumors... should I wait?)

martin

hmurchison · February 14, 2003 9:58AM

Very unlikely I'd say. The eMac is the Sub $1K machine and Apple's not going to cause a Civil War between the iMac and eMac at that pricepoint.

os10geek · February 14, 2003 10:13AM

The iMac was an awesome deal before the updadte, let alone after. Anyway, it has its unique industrial design pulling in switchers from all over country, because that design might be 2x more expensive than the Dell, but, well, Dell does'nt make anything like it. Because Dell has no taste.

matt ft · February 14, 2003 10:33AM

[quote]Originally posted by os10geek:

The iMac was an awesome deal before the updadte, let alone after. <hr></blockquote>

Sorry, but I don't call a GeForce 2 MX in the old iMacs for $1500 a great deal. I would certainly consider buying an iMac 17" if it had a graphics card in it which would last a bit longer...

mw · February 14, 2003 11:11AM

[quote]Originally posted by os10geek:

The iMac was an awesome deal before the updadte, let alone after. Anyway, it has its unique industrial design pulling in switchers from all over country, because that design might be 2x more expensive than the Dell, but, well, Dell does'nt make anything like it. Because Dell has no taste.

<hr></blockquote>

You don't have to convince me ;-) ...used a "Dull" at work for years, and still do sometimes.

I was hoping for more choice than just the 2 configs Apple offers now, maybe a 867 MHz with 17" and combo drive..

...Apple must have some G4 processors left over from the discontinued Power Mac towers...?!?

bauman · February 14, 2003 1:33PM

Check out apple's refurbished models on their special deals page. There's an iMac there for $999! It's the old 700 MHz Combo Drive model, but still, it's a good deal. Check it out. There are other models, too.

snatch909 · February 15, 2003 3:29PM

Get the 1GHz model now... i got mine last wednesday and I love it....

DDR memory, faster system architecture ... super-fast superdrive

matsu · February 15, 2003 3:45PM

Funny, most all the dells I've used have been rock solid. The Black ones anyway. The two beige dell labs that I'd used both had issues, OK they sucked and so did an all Compaq office I worked for 2 years ago. In the case of one of the Dell labs and the office, both networks were an ungodly mess, poorly maintained, abused, etc etc... (and still are as far as I know) The other Dell lab, that replaced a room full of beige PowerMacs is really crappy too, but it works better, it's usable but quirky.

All of the black/grey dells I've used have been great! The labs are quiet, the machines small fast and reliable, and much cheaper than macs. Quite good actually.

The iMacs are a horrible deal and you shouldn't touch them, they put laptop performance and price into a desktop package. What an achievement

snatch909 · February 15, 2003 3:56PM

[quote]Originally posted by Matsu:

The iMacs are a horrible deal and you shouldn't touch them, they put laptop performance and price into a desktop package. What an achievement

<hr></blockquote>

<img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[oyvey]" /> What a nonsense... A 17" Powerbook cost almost twice as much as a 17" iMac with almost the same specs.

mattbr · February 15, 2003 3:58PM

[quote]Originally posted by Matsu:



The iMacs are a horrible deal and you shouldn't touch them, they put laptop performance and price into a desktop package. What an achievement

<hr></blockquote>

matsu, who's selling Lapzilla for 2300 USD ?

matsu · February 15, 2003 4:00PM

12" powerbook.

Don't act intentionally dense.

mattbr · February 15, 2003 4:11PM

matsu, you're wrong. admit it. unless of course the 12' pb is similarily featured to the 17' imac in your eyes, which may make your incessant whining meaningless.

(yes, apple has a desktop priced the same as a laptop. big friggin' news, as i believe this can be successfully demonstrated to apply to most hardware companies around. no, i'm not being intentionally thick. just revealing the weakness of your argument.)

matsu · February 15, 2003 4:42PM

Do I need to make a wintel comparison?

My edu price PB actually comes in CHEEAPER than the imac17" (edu price). Yes it has slightly less performance than the iMac and no DVD burning, but it does have supported monitor spanning and it's extremely portable.

Any desktop that costs as much as a laptop ought to offer twice the performance or just about twice the performance.

I'm not comparing Apple to Apple, I'm comparing Apple to the market. From a price performance standpoint, in that market the PB12 and the iBook12 are very good deals, the other PB's are good-acceptable depending on need. All of the towers are deplorable offerings from a price perfomance standpoint, and the iMacs are nearly as bad.

iMac money buys a stonking PC with loads of easy expansion and a great LCD, not to mention about twice as fast.

Comparing macs to macs, the iMacs offer negligible performance gains over the PB's while NOT having any portability or expansion (beyond what's offered in a PB.) If you have a decent external monitor, there's absolutely no question that the PB12 is not only a better value than the iMac17, it's also the better multipurpose computer (capable of serving as a desktop and a laptop)

iMacs are hobbled laptops and therefore mostly pointless at the prices Apple charges, if they offered a significant savings over a laptop of similar performance or a significant increase in performance over a laptop of similar price, well, that would be something, but they don't, and they aren't.

How can you say they don't offer the "similar" performance and features:

1999 PB INCLUDES a superdrive, virtually identical I/O and monitor spanning plus portability for 200USD more than the iMac. For the same price you sacrifice the superdrive but get faster combo speeds.

The only clear advantage of the iMac is the large screen, but the lack of spanning makes this one a draw in my eyes. The rest of the iMacs advantages are really negligible considering desktops of similar price easily provide more performance.

Apple will NOT have a single price-performance competitive model untill they have 970 based pro machines and the fastest G4's in their consumer machines.

[ 02-15-2003: Message edited by: Matsu ]

mw · February 15, 2003 7:48PM

I already have a PB (a G3 FireWire "Pismo" at 400MHz, 512M RAM, 30G HD, Airport), and am still happy with it, although it is 3 years old now...

I would like to buy a new Mac for my wife, who is still using my old 7200/90 (<-- feel really bad about that ;-). We were at the local Apple store, and she preferred look and feel of iMac over iBook, although she originally wanted a laptop... she doesn't like the feel of the laptop keyboards. Not a big deal, I think, you either get used to it or buy an external USB keyboard (I'm using a macally keyboard right now). Another point that came up during show&tell is the new iMacs audio-in jack... she is a musician and likes the idea of being able to record digitally (there were some noise issues with USB midi devices, that's why Apple added the audio-in on the 1GHz iMac). But, of course there is a chance that she will never use her Mac for recording (continue to use studio & engineers) ...

I think the PB G4 12" is just an iBook with the G4 processor... it actually has 128 MB RAM soldered to the mobo just the iBook does... how much faster than the iBook G3 800 MHz is the 12" PB???

Which brings me to the issue of external screen/extra screens: it works like a charm on my current PB, I until recently used a 22" CRT in addition to laptop screen and had a lot of visual real estate. As far as I know, the iBook can only nirror its screen on an external monitor (?), what about the iMac?

Overall, the iBook 800 MHz with combo drive does look like the best deal to me, personally...

which brings up another question: the iBooks and the 15" PBs can still be booted up in OS 9, the iMac and the PB 12" can't. I'm still using OS 9 on my old PB G3 Firewire, and therefore have no OS X apps... Can you still run all the OS 9 apps under OS X, even if you can't boot up in X anymore? pointers appreciated...

thx

robby · February 16, 2003 12:55AM

what really pisses me of the netry level imacs gone up $100 here in oz! apple just loves nickle and diming it's users.

for $2,695 i would have expected higher resoloution lcd. a 15 .4 inch imac would have been nice. and an 867 mhz with 133 bus. ohh and last but not least a g force 4

and why the **** if apples warrany 100 more expensive. what''s so ****ing good about it

mattbr · February 16, 2003 2:06AM

yes, matsu, the 12'' pb is similarily featured than the 17'' imac.

it's just that it has a superdrive that's a quarter of the speed, 40% less screen estate, no ddr ram, a smaller and slower hard drive, a processor that's 15% slower, less ports, and whatever else i may have missed.

but the performance hit, which must border the 30% mark, is negligeable in your eyes, compared to all-important features like monitor spanning through a vga port and the ability to use the external display you already own...

of course, the imac is expensive, and the towers are overpriced. but the useability on the whole line quickly makes this a non-issue. most people won't see the difference unless they're gamers, and we both know that any gamer in his right mind won't buy a mac..

it doesn't mean the 12'' pb wasn't a good buy for you, matsu. just that you did agree to a performance and feature hit for portability's, and useability's, sake.

and yes, we're all waiting for the next-gen processor. which doesn't mean that right now the range isn't coherent within itself, and that people aren't willing to trade noise and ugliness for silence and beauty at a slight performance hit. just like you accepted the portability in exchange for slower features and less screen real-estate.

(edit : removed the quoting, which wasn't necessary.)

[ 02-16-2003: Message edited by: mattbr ]

luca · February 16, 2003 4:36AM

The 12" PowerBook does use DDR RAM just like the iMac. The fewer ports doesn't really matter, although the iMac has two FireWire vs. one, and three USB vs. two, it doesn't make much of a difference. The iMac doesn't have any type of port that the PowerBook doesn't have.

The 17" iMac is still significantly better than the 12" PowerBook.

To the original poster: there was no "promised" sub-1k model. Apple (or most other companies) rarely/never make promises because they tend to get broken.

EDIT: Now try comparing the 12" iBook to the 15" iMac... the screens are essentially the same since they have the same resolution. Both have combo drives, though the iMac's is faster. Also, the iMac has a larger/faster hard drive. Still, the iBook is portable which is a huge advantage. For the same price, you can basically choose between slightly better performance (G4, larger HD, faster combo drive) or portability. What's the deal with the G4 anyway? Does it cost Apple over $50 to buy an 800 MHz chip? Because it shouldn't.

[ 02-16-2003: Message edited by: Luca Rescigno ]

elric · February 16, 2003 6:07AM

I have the older 17" iMac (800 mghz) and a new 12" PB. The display on the 12" PB is much brighter than that of the 17" iMac. I am actually thinking of selling my iMac and getting either another PB or a PowerMac. Unless you are going to be burning DVDs the 12" PB seems like a much better machine. I like the silver keyboard much better than the black ones on the 15" PB. I am used to using a trackball so its taking some time to get used to the touchpad thingie, more than likely I'll get an apple keyboard and plug a trackball and a printer into it, then I will only have to plug one thing into the PB to use it as a desktop.

matsu · February 16, 2003 7:57AM

I'm talking about the relative price performance hit. Consider that in just about any action, the 800+ mhz PB will be faster than the iMac, and the 867Mhz 12 will be close, closer than 30%, it only gets hurt on HDD tests (as do all laptops) and you see that they're much closer than you imply, especially given standards in the industry.

In the wintel world, desktops are leagues faster than their laptop offerings, especially true laptops and not 12lb portable desktop beasts with desktop parts in 'em (and even those are slower once agressive power saving features kick in. If you take a desktop of similar performance to a mid-top end laptop, it's about half the cost (mebbe 60% if you include a nice LCD). Or if you spend within 10-15% the cost of the laptop you typically get a machine with over twice the performance, and more. With Apple, a comparable desktop mac hardly costs 10-15% less and apart from disc drives you barely get 15% more performance, if that.

Apple's laptops are competitive witht he market in terms of performance and price. G3's even compare well against P3/4M in many interger related tests. But Apple's desktops are a disaster, anyone looking at the bigger picture sees the iMac for what it is, a home bound laptop at a similar price, with similar performance, but without portability.

867 MHz iMac 17"

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