Apple Unveils 24" iMac

beren12 writes "Apple today announced a new model in the lineup of iMacs, a new 24" HD model. It comes with a 1920x1200 LCD, 2.16GHz or 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1-3 GB Memory, 250 or 500GB SATA Drive, NVIDIA GeForce 7300GT or 7600GT with 128MB GDDR3 Video card. Also posted is a new lower end iMac, which looks very similar to the education iMac. Also available is a small speed boost to the Mini line, which now sports a Core Duo 1.83GHz Processor. "

Let me be the first to say:

Oooooooh, shiny!

Right then...

Oooooooh, shiny!

Anyone who says "Oooooooh, shiny!" again - Can bite my shiny metal ass!

Re:Right then...

Shiny metal ass? Oooooooh, shiny!

No Link?

At least provide a link to the iMac page [apple.com]

Re:No Link?

Halt!

You're under arrest by the Slashdot police for violating section 4, subsection 2 of the Slashdot charter!

"Slashdot articles and comments shall contain no relevant contextual links. In their stead, links to advertising-laden blogs, spam-logs, or useless commercial sites may be used."

Re:No Link?

Old Mac mini: $500, Bluetooth and Airport for $100 more

New Mac mini: $600, Bluetooth and Airport included!

Brilliant!

(Yes, yes, I know... the new Mac mini also includes other new features too)

Makes you wonder...

I ordered a 17" MBP about 10 days ago, and the ship date was going to be on the 13th despite being "in stock and ready to ship."

Perhaps a MacBook Pro upgrade next week, as well?

FW 800 included

And it has FireWire-800 too (in additon to FireWire-400).

I'm not sure I understand Apple policy with FW800. Used to be there on the PowerBook... removed in the MacBook Pro (except the 17"). And it's never been in an iMac.

I like FW-800 but odds are E-SATA would be more useful in future. I have seen profesionnal cameras using the FW-800 interface (Allied technologies), but never heard about mass market ones...

Re:FW 800 included

Apparently they weren't able to satisfactorily cram the FW800 controller into the 15" Macbook in time for launch. Someone at Apple has said this, either officially or semi-officially. I'm hoping the next Macbook revision will include it.

All Mac Mini now have Core Duo inside...

Previously, the cheapest model had a Core Solo inside.

Now, all macs have dual core processors

Wow

That's one Big Mac !

Re:Seperation is needed

There's a video out as well, so you can make due for a bit if the display goes out. And personally I'd just pull the drive before sending it back - or better yet, encrypt it on the volume and rely on your backups.

You are keeping backups, aren't you?

Apple made that mistake once

When the iMacs where still somewhat new, there was a vocal crowd yelling "we want an iMac without a monitor!"

There were a lot of people saying it, and they were all very vocal. "We're not buying until we can get a headless iMac with a G4" they said

So Apple made one, and it was called the Cube.

And all the people who said they would buy a machine if this was available (the specs were pretty much exactly what was asked for), suddenly clammed up, and slowly backed out the door with a myriad excuses why they suddenly had something else to do.

I think Apple learned an important lesson that day. The most vocal group of people demanding a specific product and promising to buy it will usually not actually buy what they say they want. They are just looking to get something they can't have, and when they can have it, they don't want it anymore.

Why the cube failed

The cube wasn't an iMac without the monitor. It was a PowerMac packed into a very small case.

Why it failed:

Price... period.
You could buy a cheaper and faster PowerMac for $200 less (with expansion bays [still important in 2000], space for a 2nd [or third] HD, space for a full sized video cad, etc. etc.) Benchmarks showed that the singe 400MHz PowerMac was faster than the 450MHz cube [Macworld]

In my humble opinion, the cube would have sold much better if it had been $1199 ($100 less than the iMac of the time) while having the same feature set and a nice mini-tower type enclosure. It was VERY difficult to justify the price of the Mini in contrast to the PowerMac.

Re:Wrong implication

The Apple Store also says its 128. Even though they may now come with 256, it seems the ones Apple are using still have 128.

The highest card you're seeing in the "preconfigured" bundles is the 7300GT with 128MB, however select that and update the details -- you'll now have the option of choosing the 256MB 7600GT.

These are amazing prices for extraordinary levels of power. While I still need my Windows box (and no I wouldn't get a Mac as a Windows box), this would definitely serve as a very useful second PC. I think it's time that I'll take the plunge, maybe writing it off for "cross platform testing".

Re:Wrong implication

Well, considering that the monitor alone is somewhere around $700-$800, then I'm not sure where the huge price premium is. If I were trying to cut corners, no, I wouldn't buy a Mac (in any circumstances). But if you're willing to pay the premium and trade money for time (presuming that owning a Mac results in a better experience and fewer headaches -- anecdotal evidence goes both ways, but seems to skew towards saying Macs are 'better' in this measure).

I'm still not buying one, but boy am I trying to get my relatives to buy them -- no more PC support questions for me, thanks.

Re:Wrong implication

I'm still not buying one, but boy am I trying to get my relatives to buy them -- no more PC support questions for me, thanks.

I told my Mom to buy a 20" iMac to replace her aged Win 95/Pentium 200. Instead she bought at 17" intel dual core, but all my tech support calls just went away apart from getting email setup (the server settings).

Then, visiting home I showed her how to use the iMac as a DVD player, and when she saw this, and how it was better than her regular TV and DVD combo, she ran out and bought the 20" on the spot! So, I ended up with a 17" intel iMac that she no longer needed. I have not touched Mac OS X for years (apart from Darwin in a server environment) but all I can say is "wow". Aqua for 10.4 is how X11 should work for Linux. Everything you need is at your fingertips, and almost every mistake I have made has been because I was over thinking a solution. Mac OS just works, and is simple to use.

And then, for us Unix geeks, there is Terminal, which brings the Bash shell and the assorted Unix tools one expects. And the GUI even has a port scanner, finger and whois built into the network settings, so you don't even need to open the terminal for those functions.

So, IMO, tell your family to get iMac's to get rid of the tech support issues, but then try one yourself. If you like Unix, Aqua shows you a Unix GUI done right.

(one caveat, the version of iMac I have before patching had a keyboard issue, so that is the first bug I have dealt with, fixed in the updates though.)

Re:Wrong implication

...so is it really worth an extra $1000 to buy the 24" screen and OSX?

It all depends upon what you do with it. For me the cost savings from using OS X over Windows is significant. The cost of using OS X over Linux is very high, since I don't think I can do my job at all without software not available on Linux. I don't know the cost of a good 24" monitor and I'm indifferent to whether on not it is an all-in-one or not. The labor cost of my assembling it all, figuring two hours for assembly, installation, and drivers/troubleshooting is also pretty damn high, considering how much I make hourly. Combined with the cost of the labor every time I do an upgrade of installing an new OS, and moving all my settings, certs, software, licenses, data, accounts, etc. instead of plugging in a firewire cable and having it all automatically migrated easily combines to pay the cost difference (4-6 hours of work usually).

Everyone has different cost/value propositions though.

Re:Wrong implication

If you want a slick and beautiful GUI environment, Apple's going to be head and shoulders above the competition. I haven't done anything in it, but I can't help but notice that applications done with the Cocoa API all look fabulous. So if you want simulations that are beautiful, the Mac's tough to beat.

MacOS X has all commercial web development apps you need, including Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. Linux doesn't. MacOS X has the video editing market covered with superb applications, from iMovie to Final Cut at the high end. Linux doesn't.

MacOS X has a beautifully designed operating environment; Linux has been gaining, but it's still not there and probably will neverl catch up entirely, thanks to Steve Jobs' relentless attention to detail. There are some things Open source does very well (operating system kernels) and some things they don't (overall user experience). This "dirty secret" is why you see so many open lovers of open source software, including myself, using PowerBooks.

MacOS X can run nearly all Linux applications. I think with X-Windows installed there are very few that couldn't be run. I use mysql, Ruby on Rails, Perl (much less now that I've discovered Ruby), emacs, etc. There's even a nice gui Emacs nowadays.

Incidentally, in the grandparent's price comparison, he forgot to pay for Windows XP or Vista. Sure, you could put Linux on it, but let's compare two commercial OSs here. Apparently at retail it would cost an amazing $200 to get even Vista Home Basic on the machine, and then you've almost hit the price of the 20" iMac. Dell's 24" monitor is $791.10 at the Dell store, so it looks to me like once you add it, you're pretty close to the price of the 24" iMac, and you haven't even taken the time to set up and install stuff.

As someone who owns an Apple Cinema Display 23", I can say that it's worth every penny of the $1,700-odd I paid for it. I'd probably go for the 30" display now but I'm just a glutton for screen size. The 30" display costs exactly the same as the 24" iMac.

D

Re:Cool... dammit... cool... dammit

Why do Apple magically release bigger, faster, shinier versions of things right after I buy something?
 
Because you don't study the buying guide [macrumors.com]. Unfortunately, in a non too informative manner, it usually tells you to wait.
 
Curse the continuous flow of new technology, and the insatiable curiousity of the human mind if you wish.

Re:Man Mini was updated as well

1.66Ghz Core Duo in the low-end, 1.83Ghz Core Duo in the hi-end. No pricedrop though :(.

If you look at look at Apple's recent history, then you will see more often than not feature upgrades with maintained prices. Apple usually only drops prices on products they want to clear from the inventory. If you want a cheaper version of the Mac mini, they buying a recent one second hand is probably your best bet or seeing if anyone has discounted the previous model (assuming they have any left).

Re:No Apple Remote?

An interesting point is that the base 17-inch model no longer comes with an Apple Remote by default, you have to cough up another $29 to get that bit of Apple goodness.

The other 17" model does come with the remote, and that's the one that used to be the base model (it has an ATI X1600). The base model you're referring to now is the stripped-down model (Intel GMA950) that was previously sold only in the Apple Store for Education, and it didn't come with a remote back then either. So nothing has been done to the lineup remote-wise, it is just that the stripped-down model is now available to everyone instead of just students.

Re:iPod

That's the first time I've heard someone ask "where is it" about something on a map site. Just zoom out.

Re:I'm a pretty big Mac fan, but...

The important thing to remember is: this is not an announcement. This is HALF an announcement.

Apple has already invited the media to a special event [appleinsider.com] on September 12, where it is widely expected to announce two things [appleinsider.com]. The first is that the iTunes music store is now going to sell feature-length movies. And the second thing is... well, nobody is quite sure, but it is rumored to be something major. Like, for example, an new version of Airport Express [apple.com] that allows you to stream video as well as music. This would be a big step on the road to making an Apple a true media center.

The fact that Apple has announced its widest-screen-ever iMacs with so little fanfare is a sign that the rumor is true--that Apple does, indeed, have something pretty big up its sleeve. If Apple is indeed about to make a big step forward towards being a media center, a 24-inch iMac suddenly has a new use: it's big enough to start serving as a genuine TV replacement.

Oh, and I'm going to add one more speculation to the mix. When Apple announced that some of the features of its upcoming operating system were "Top Secret", the explanation given was that they didn't want them copied by Vista. I always thought that was a bizarre explanation--is Microsoft really going to cram completely new features into Vista in the next few months? More likely, I thought, was that these "top secret" features depend on hardware that Apple wasn't yet ready to reveal. Specifically, I hypothesized that they were media-related features that would interface with a Mac-branded PVR. I was probably over-optimistic on the PVR thing, but I may have been right that these unnannounced software features tie into a Mac-branded audiovisual device. If so, expect the announcement of the new video-streaming base station to be accompanied by an announcement of new Leopard features to take advantage of it.

Re:24" cinema display please?

The best thing about the 24" iMac is that it's got a full-HD resolution panel. In fact, if I remember my numbers properly (but I probably don't) the width of the panel is precisely the width of 1080p. It's a little taller, but that's not as bad as not using the full width of the panel. The MBP doesn't even have full-HD. (The Compaq nw9440 I use now has the same size/res panel as the MBP, but at least HPQ offers a higher-res panel. Same size though, and a couple hundred more, so I didn't get it.)