Posted on 12/28/2004 11:09:37 PM PST by HAL9000
December 28, 2004 - With iPod-savvy Windows users clearly in its sights, Apple is expected to announce a bare bones, G4-based iMac without a display at Mac Expo on January 11 that will retail for $499, highly reliable sources have confirmed to Think Secret.The new Mac, code-named Q88, will be part of the iMac family and is expected to sport a PowerPC G4 processor at a speed around 1.25GHz. The new Mac is said to be incredibly small and will be housed in a flat enclosure with a height similar to the 1.73 inches of Apple's Xserve. Its size benefits will include the ability to stand the Mac on its side or put it below a display or monitor.
Along with lowering costs by forgoing a display (Apple's entry-level eMac sells for $799 with a built-in 17-inch CRT display), the so-called "headless" iMac will allow Apple's target audience -- Windows users looking for a cheap, second PC -- to keep their current peripherals or decide on their own what to pair with the system, be it a high-priced LCD display or an inexpensive display. Sources except the device to feature both DVI and VGA connectivity, although whether this will be provided through dual ports or through a single DVI port with a VGA adapter remains to be seen.
The new Mac is expected to have a Combo drive only, but possibly an upgrade path to a SuperDrive at a higher price. It is unclear how big the hard drive capacity will be, although sources indicate it will be between 40GB and 80GB.
Other expected features of the iMac include: * 256MB of RAM * USB 2.0 * FireWire 400 * 10/100 BASE-T Ethernet * 56K V.92 modem * AirPort Extreme support
In terms of software, Apple will include a special iLife suite (minus iDVD) as well as AppleWorks, sources believe.
The new Mac is expected to be introduced by Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs at his keynote address on Tuesday, January 11, but is not expected to be available until later in the first quarter. Sources indicate "issues" have arisen in production of the new Mac, but that Apple never planned on shipping the new device immediately upon introduction. The plan is to air freight the new model from its manufacturing plants in Asia for at least the first three months of shipments, sources report.
The announcement of the new, inexpensive Mac will be a dream come true for Mac aficionados who have begged and pleaded for years to see just such a PC. Until now, the company has downplayed speculation that it would get into the low-end PC market. "In terms of our pricing, I feel very good about where each of our product lines are priced," Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO, said in October. "To date, we have chosen not to compete in the sub-$800 desktop market and have put that R&D investment in expanding our products in the music area, in software, and in hardware."
So what has changed to motivate Apple in producing a low-cost Mac? In a word, iPod.
"Think of your traditional iPod owner," said a source. "This new product will be for a Windows user who has experienced the iPod, the ease of use of the iTunes software, and has played around with a Mac at an Apple retail store just long enough to know he'd buy one if it were a little cheaper."
Apple executives announced on October 13 that 45% to 50% of its retail stores customers bought a Mac as their first PC or were new to the platform in the fiscal fourth-quarter. The company has refused to divulge more exacting figures on iPod buyers who also buy a Mac, for competitive reasons.
According to sources, internal Apple surveys of its retail store customers and those buying iPod's showed a large number of PC users would be willing to buy a Mac if it were cheap enough, less of a virus carrier (which all Macs already are), and offered easier to use software solutions not available on Windows-based PCs. Now, Apple feels they have the answer.
Apple has been working on the low-end Mac for almost a year, sources report. Indications are Apple has been working mostly on finding the right mix of price, performance and features that would motivate Windows users to consider a Mac, and less on the actual engineering of the product. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to design a bare-bones PC," said one source familiar with the project. "What it takes is a team of marketing and software experts to find the right mix to convince Windows users to buy a Mac at a price that is not much more than the cost of an iPod."
Sources familiar with the product cautioned that the low-end Mac will be marketed towards a totally different audience than those who traditionally buy even a $799 eMac. "This product is not going to be about performance," said a source close to Apple. "This is going to be the basics, but with just as much of a focus on software as any Mac could ever be."
Rodney, Apple IS NOT SELLING A COMPUTER WITHOUT A KEYBOARD, MOUSE, or HARD DRIVE... so your hypothetical is just hot air.
The question is, what is a computer? The consensus here is that a "computer" does not need to have all the neccessary parts. So I am just trying to figure out where to draw the line.
Don't get me wrong, David, I want this to happen. I still prefer my MDD g4 to the g5 they got me at work. But his rumor appears every year. Heck, I remember the rumor that a "dumbed down" version of my Q950 would come out under $2,000. Such deals!
I bought lower than I sold, but it stayed so low so long that I couldn't see letting the money just sit there with such a low return.
I'm not. My claim was that a G4 is faster than a P4 at the same clock, and that's true. The G4 line will never be able to make up for the clock speed difference between it and the faster Pentiums and Athlon/Opterons -- that's why we have the G5.
But it is cheap and runs very cool, so it has a good place in the small, cheap computer market. About coolness, the 7488 (if they use it) has a thermal dissipation of 10 watts at 1.4GHz, vs. a Celeron at 2.2GHz (likely comparable performance) taking 57 watts.
You're right. I loved the little pause "... These go to eleven." I don't think either fully understood the other's point.
A good, reasoned response. Thanks.
For this market I think the least we could expect would be case, power supply, motherboard, memory, processor, hard drive, optical drive, video, the standard ports, and OS.
Keyboard and mouse are optional, although included ones are so cheap that they should probably ship with any new system just in case the buyer doesn't already have them (I'm not dumping my Logitech keyboard/mouse for what comes with any new computer, even a Mac). Monitor is definitely optional, as lots of people are just replacing their current machines, and it's easy to order a monitor with the computer.
Jobs is about 20 years too late.
Apples are ok but not flexible enough for me.
true but that was when it crashed from $80
That's a Celeron from WallyWorld with XP home.
Well, no, that's not true either, and even if it was, it's sort of moot insofar as the fastest G4 is clocked at 1.33 GHz, whereas the slowest P4 was introduced at 1.4 GHz. In any case, to revisit the record, the post I was responding to was #43, which claimed "a G4 Mac is typically about double the speed of a Pentium IV with the same clock speed." Sorry, no.
I would look at this...
Sounds like Apple's business plan is going back to the future
In 2001, Tech TV did a p4 vs. G4 shootout. It found Apple's 867 MHzG4 running about even with Intel's 2 GHz P4 in their attery of tests, and quite a bit faster than the Pentium in some Photoshop tests.
Wxcerpt from http://www.macobserver.com/article/2001/08/28.6.shtml: "But the disparity in chip speed doesn't necessarily translate into better performance for Wintel machines. In fact, the latest Macs are faster than the higher-megahertz PCs when it comes to such tasks as compression and running multimedia software, due to Apple's chip architecture. Unfortunately for Apple, the consumer hasn't always understood this difference, and according to Eric Ross, an analyst with Thomas Weisel partners, the megahertz benchmark has hurt Apple's sales and kept the company from gaining market share.
After this story, Brett Larson, the Mac guru who has long been a part of Macworld Magazine, ran some benchmarks for a 2 GHz P4 and an 867 MHz G4. Those tests showed that some Photoshop tests were about 20-30% faster on the G4. Tests also showed an RGV to CMYK conversion with the G4 stomping the P4. The time savings for this one test more than outpaced the time savings for the other tests, something which Apple capitalized on in the MACWORLD shootout. The tests did not us the dual-800 MHz PowerMacs, nor did they use a dual-processor P4. The testing team concluded that MHz ratings do not matter.
My son, an Apple user for his photography business, says you could certainly use this system as a digital recording studio. He knows guys with 1.25 MHz chips in G4 laptops who are doing very intensive stuff with Pro Tools, Peak, Reason, etc. You will need to invest in more RAM to do these tasks with the speed you desire, as the Mac OS does like to chew through tasks in bigger chunks if possible, so more RAM is needed to keep the machine from having to ask the hard drive for more info, which really slows things down. This goes double for doing high resolution Photoshop or video.
One of the things he really likes about the new G5 iMac is the ability to load it up with up to 2 Gigs of RAM. If this bargain Mac will take i Gig of RA< or greater, he says you should be able to run a pretty nice Pro Tools home studio easily.
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