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Think Secret Predicts Sub-$500 Headless Mac
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Dec 29, 2004 08:03 AM
from the wouldn't-it-be-nice dept.
from the wouldn't-it-be-nice dept.
eadint writes "I have just read an article posted on Think Secret that discusses a
confirmed $499
Apple box sans monitor. According to the article, this has been
under development for almost one year and may be available towards the
end of 2005Q1. The system is rumored to be based on a G4 with 256MB
of RAM , 40-80GB HD with a combo drive (sorry, no SuperDrive). Although Apple has stated in the past that they have no motivation to
compete in the sub-$600 PC market, this system was based on polls showing that more people would buy it after initial exposure
to the iPod." "Confirmed" seems a strong word, but I hope this is more than wishful thinking.
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Finally - make it an impulse purchase (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus, at $500, geeks can afford to buy it and find out if it's easy to get their work done on it. The easier it is to switch my day-to-day work over gradually to an Apple, the more likely I'd be to do it. I'm sure I'll have a couple/few apps that I have to run on Windows, but if you put them both on my desk and let me toy with both, I bet I'd be more likely to run my MS-only stuff on a virtual machine.
Could I get a $500 used Mac with a CRT monitor? Sure, but who wants that big bulky thing around? Instead, give me something I can use with a USB KVM switch, and then I can explore it on my own pace.
Re:Finally - make it an impulse purchase (Score:5, Informative)
I don't want to discourage anyone from doing what you describe, but you might want to avoid the $50 KVM switch.
Sure, back in the old days I used a $30 physical A/B/C/D switch for VGA connections which worked fine with my Amiga (15kHz) and VGA (31kHz), but as soon as you crank the resolutions and frequencies up, the cheap KVMs don't hold up.
If you want to do it right, you need a good KVM. Specifically, you need to look at the specs of the device, and how high a bus rate it can handle; this makes all the difference in your display quality. Personally, I use a Belkin OmniView 4-port PS/2 & USB device (vendor page here [belkin.com]) which has worked great for me. You can get it cheaper, and despite what I found on pricegrabber [pricegrabber.com] about the device (reviews), I have had no problems. Unfortunately, it doesn't QUITE end there, though. You still need cables, and you can't get away with cheap cables; you should really go with the ones that Belkin sells, since they're up to spec. I tried the $15 cables, and your screen ghosts pretty bad.
In the end, total cost for the 4-port KVM I bought? With 2 sets of high quality cables and another set of cheap cables, I ran nearly $190, though I probably could have done better by going online. YMMV.
(note: I don't work for Belkin and have no particular love for the company, its just that I did a little research and found this to be the best product circa early 2002)
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Re:Finally - make it an impulse purchase (Score:5, Insightful)
I still have a Dull running Windows for games, but have pulled all my document, data, movie, and audio files to the Powerbook.
OS X has the most of the features of *nix yet it has very few of the down falls(drivers, okay that's all I can think of).
I bought a lightweight portable computer. It's now very common to see me next to the fire place listening to music and surfing the web for hours at a time. The 4-5 hours of battery life is great. I am getting roughly 4 hours of wireless web surfing. slightly less if I start playing videos. Of course I have also downloaded AND burned a knoppix disc wirelessly and still had two hours to go web surfing with. If Burning a CD isn't power intensive I don't know what else could drain the system.
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Re:Finally - make it an impulse purchase (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Finally - make it an impulse purchase (Score:5, Insightful)
This thing ain't no workstation. Most likely its a "Media Center" with PC capabilities, a place to centralize all your iPod songs, load your iPod, browse the web, edit a document in Office:Mac 2004, sync your cell phone via Bluetooth, etc. So few people really need the heavy lifting of a 3+ Ghz computer.
Heck, the lack of constant spyware invasions are enough to make me think I'd be ahead of the game replacing a few relatives PC's. Those 3-hour spyware removal missions get annoying every three months
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Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it'd be a great decision... lets see how much it canablizes on Power Macs though.
Re:Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
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."
Entry-level Computer: The new MyMac (or whatever)
Workstation for Pros: The PowerMac G5
I don't see how hard it is to realize that they have two vastly different target markets that don't overlap that much; some people will want the experience of using Apple Mail and Safari while others need 8GB of RAM for Photoshop.
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Almost certainly upgradeable (Score:5, Interesting)
Kind of like the Dell machines that start at $400 or so, then by the time you add on the usual needs (bump up the RAM to at least 512) they come out to $500 - $600.
If this is the case, Apple now has a great chance to gain market share. I've wondered for years what would happen if a headless iMac comes out (since everybody already owns a monitor, why buy a machine with another one anyway?).
If it becomes popular, I wonder if more game companies will go the Blizzard route and dual-release their software for both the PC and the Mac. Hm. Well, I've got an hour before I have to go to work - time for a little Warcraft
Hell yes they would sell! (Score:5, Insightful)
Face it, geeks know the power of OSX but Apple hasn't done a great job of selling why a Mac today is differnet from the Macs of yesteryear. People either have ancidotal stories of how Macs don't play nice with Windows (which was never really true) or they have experiences with Mac-snobs or anti-Mac-snobs that have put them off even giving it a chance.
I recommended we look at replacing some of our desktop machines with eMacs or iMacs as a trial last year and senior management looked at me like I was nuts. "But...But...it's not a Dell! And it Doesn't-Run-Windows(tm)! How will anyone get any work done?"
It's harder to convince senior management to put out $20,000 for a ten box trial, but $5000 is much more palatable
So go Apple! Build your boxes; they'll sell like hotcakes (especially if you make a $700 headless mac / iPod bundle).
About friggin time! (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest selling point is obviously security. EVERY average Joe computer user I know is compromised with spyware and viruses (especially those with kids). I tell everyone who'll listen to buy a Mac when they're looking for a new PC, because it'll actually work after two weeks of use. It's nice to see that Apple might actually have something affordable for these folks.
Apple needs to rethink specifications (Score:5, Interesting)
The average Joe's perception of difference between a computer with 40gb of hdd & 256mb of RAM vs one with 80gb of hdd and 512mb of RAM as huge as a "3 megapixel camera" vs a "5 megapixel camera".
Apple needs to understand that underspeccing their computers to make a few dollars more per unit or to have the price slightly lower, actually costs them more than it makes. It furthermore makes people take Apple less seriously - they keep trying to push their out-of-date computers, *and* they're underspeccing them as if they're old stock or they're trying to cut every cent off of costs.
I seem to remember Commodore having a similar over-priced highend + underspecced low-end strategy.
Re:Apple needs to rethink specifications (Score:5, Insightful)
But at a sub-$500 price point, every dollar matters. If these things do sell like hotcakes, Apple needs to squeeze out the biggest margin they possibly can in order to make any money on it. This computer isn't going to be meant for the type of person who reads specs before they buy, it's for the people who just want to try out the new "Internet thingy" they've been hearing about these days. Apple wants people like you to shell out a bit more cash for your computer. I think that in this case, "underspeccing" is the way to go, since they know plenty of people will buy it regardless of specs because they just want to try Apple (if they're high end users) or own any computer at all (if they're low end users).
A great example, have you heard of the low end Palm Zire series? Absurdly underspecced--they even decreased the number of hardware buttons--but they became Palm's best selling unit for over a year. And it's simply because the type of people who bought it weren't power users and didn't demand competitive specs, they just wanted any Palm. For many, it was perfectly adequate, and for others, it whetted their apetite for a more powerful unit (more dollars for Palm)
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Here They Come (Score:5, Funny)
Not for US Market (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the press release [nationmultimedia.com]
Sub-$500 market (Score:5, Insightful)
- with
a monitor for $499. On ebay you can find some pretty nice used machines for under $100.Over $1000 these days is where you can find some really nice machines. But $1000 is no longer the entry point. If you were someone buying your first computer, would you want to plunge right in to a $1000+ Macintosh, or go for a sub $500 PC?
It took long enough for Apple to see this, but they would have to be stupid to ignore it forever. It makes perfect sense to offer an entry point into Apple at the sub-$500 mark. And with the massive amount of cashflow they are getting from the overpriced iPod, they can certainly afford to cut their margins a bit on the low end in order to get the "apple" brand into the hands of the PC using public.
I never really pay much attention to apples, but I love competition in the marketplace, so I hope this is true.
BRING IT ON!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
A 1" thick headless unit fits nicely in my A/V cabinet.
Yeah, you heard me - network connection - audio line out (or atleast USB/Firewire for 3rd party)
This is the new Media server for my den.
Mac Crack (Score:5, Funny)
Apple's answer to Media Center? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's been a sea change in monitors. Back in ye Olden Days, you had a Commodore 64 using a TV for a display. Fuzzy.
Then came RGB monitors, which cost more than a TV, couldn't be used as a TV, but made computer video output much more usable.
Then the monitors developed into hi-rez monsters. They showed TV better than TV sets showed TV.
But now, lookee: hi-end high def TV's can run 1080i, or even 1080p with a converter. We have consumer TV's that can handily act as a not-bad monitor for a PC.
What's an Apple to do with the situation of Microsoft end-running the entire entertainment industry by making their DRM and Media Center the de facto standard? They take the guts of a iMac and make a cheap Small Form Factor computer for cheap. It doesn't have Bill's virus problem inherent in the OS, and, also, most importantly, it doesn't crash.
Run, Steve, run!
Re:If it has PCI-slots I might consider it. (Score:5, Interesting)
There is already NIC, Firewire, USB, Sound and Video cards onboard. I've had several macs, and i've never installed a single addon card in any of them.
The only thing i've ever come up with was to use one as a firewall, in that case a second NIC would be desirable, but otherwise?
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Re:If it has PCI-slots I might consider it. (Score:5, Insightful)
But if you want to use it for office work or internet surfing, it's hard to see why you'd want or need PCI anyway.
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Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
The next slide simply showed a class of 4-to-5 year olds sitting on the floor of a classroom learning how to use some new Macs, they all looked like they were having a great time.
The implication was very clear - either your employees are less capable than the average four-year old, or it's going to be a breeze to train them.
More seriously though, the whole training thing is a bit of a myth in itself - Microsoft has made a habit out of taking something they see on the Apple platform (in terms of GUI innovation) and breaking it just enough to make sure it doesn't look like a complete rip-off of the original. The consequence that I have found in training PC users to use OS X, is that they already understand how a feature is supposed to work except that in OS X, it actually WORKS like they expect it to finally.
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Re:As long as it isn't crippled software wise... (Score:5, Insightful)
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No. (Score:5, Insightful)
500 dollars isn't cheap-o. I'd guess it'll basically be an iBook in a desktop, which can't cost that much.
Don't underestimate how important Apple might view this computer for their business.
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Re:possible pandora's box (shameful pun) (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't you let Apple release a 64-bit OS before you declare the 32-bit G4 and these new switchers "stuck with limited software choices". This is a freaking entry level Mac, not some pro-media editing workstation. It is for people who want to surf, email, IM, listen to music, and open a Word or Excel doc from work. What do they need 64-bit computing for in 2004?
Yeah, it will leave "headless switchers in the dust eventually", but so will a top of the line Apple, or for that matter any PC purchased today. That's just the marketspace.
I am using a 1st generation 400Mhz G4 PowerBook at home and while I wish it had a few of the bells and whistles of a newer system, this thing is totally capable for the tasks i described above. That said, it is my opnionion that the system described by ThinkSecret will not leave any Switcher disapointed in their investment.
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Re:reality check (Score:5, Informative)
- 4 years old
- running nonstop (over 5 mos. this time)
- running no antivirus software and on a university network
- doing everything their new WinTel machines can, only smoothly (OK I've disabled chat services so they'll get some work done; likewise it is game-free)
- stock, but the heart of a productive video editing set-up (despite a wimpy video card)
- only slightly less snappy than the shiny new G5 in the next rack over, which is rated at over 5 times the MHz (well, until they rip or render).
Panther (10.3) actually sped up the 350MHz iBook w/ 384MB of RAM that I use for field work; even on that hand-crank antique OS X is eminently usable, and wows onlookers (although often it's Quicksilver's functionality that's really causing the eyepoppiing).OS X on a cheap G4 will convert people. The only key issues for me are stock RAM configurations and build quality.
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