New iMac Announced 1146
Steve Jobs is terrific at just that, Creating Desire. This is no surprise to us, for sure, but nothing drives it home as much as sitting in the audience and watching him speak. I could tell you how wonderful an orator he is, and how groovy his products are, but I really want to hear what the Slashdot user communtiy has to say about that. I want to talk about what Apple is doing technically.
First: The new iMac is very attractive. It's cool, it's neat. It will be a very popular machine. It's got a good price/feature spectrum and it looks like a pretty decent machine for the consumer. It isn't, in the end, a machine for the linux die-hard, but that's okay. It's slick, it ships with a bunch of very decent apps to manage your digital media. I want one, it's a cool machine. I don't know what I'd do with it (which is the problem), but it's cool looking. It's not particularly a good deal, I mean, you can pick up 200$ 15" tft displays at Fry's and lets get real, the G4 (Excepting the velocity engine stuff) isn't that fast of a chip at any available speed compared to the x86 world. But boy, this is one slick machine. But we know that already from the previous story. I do worry about it overheating, as I did flash back to the cube's cracking problems a bit.
Second: Photoshop for OS X will be coming out "soon". That was the big news. They had a very impressive working demo, I hope to learn more tomorrow on the expo floor.
Third: iPhoto is a decent cataloging program, and one designed to be used easily and generate more revenue streams for apple in the form of booklets and print costs. But it looks very polished and useful.
Superdrive: You'll see the superdrive in the new imac finally, which is nice. Note that this is not the superdrive that everyone remembers from the 80s' :-)
That's about all. The keynote was terrific, but in the end, not so outstanding. I'll post pictures soon. I'm sure a lot of /. regulars will be doing the same. More Tomorrow!
iMac availability (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Potential as a good home system (Score:3, Informative)
Now a 700 MHz G4, now that's fast! (All of the new iMacs have G4 processors.)
Re:My thoughts on the whole thing (Score:4, Informative)
It's possible that the G5 can be ready in time for Tokyo, in which case they don't want to take any attention away from the iMac if they don't have to by offering minor speed increases to their pro line.
Just my thoughts.
Another key feature: cost (Score:5, Informative)
I don't ever expect an Apple and non-Apple machine to cost the same, but the more Apple can cut down that difference, the better off they are.
Ugly (Score:0, Informative)
Re:Overhyped? (Score:2, Informative)
Most of these things where possible before, but not this nice. And the program is free. Prints and the Album will cost (29.99 for the first 10 pages, 3 dollars for each page afterwards IIRC)
Re:Nice Stuff... (Score:2, Informative)
It takes high-quality JPEGs, which have excellent quality so far as I've seen and you can fit 20 of them on an 8MB memory stick. If you want to be really anal about picture quality and take all of your pictures in TIFF form, they're 3.6 MB a pop, so you should buy a 128MB memory stick (about $130 I think).
With spiffy battery, memory stick, and all, the thing comes out to about $425.
Now, if only I had a Mac so that I could plug this thing into iPhoto...that would be mad cool (this kind of thinking is just what Jobs wanted, I think).
same DVD-General drive? (Score:1, Informative)
Quote:
From John Gilmore's What's Wrong With Copy Protection [toad.com]
that's the crappy part (Score:5, Informative)
the 14" model is 1024x768. They seem to expect people to buy a computer just so it will take up more room in their briefcase/backback.
I was hoping the 14" would be at least 1280x1024 or something: it's really not out of the question.
Re:Cute, but ... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The one thing I wish macs had... (Score:2, Informative)
Power Mac G4 @867Mhz
http://support.intel.com/support/processors/ctp
Intel® Itanium(TM) @800MHz
Intel Pentium® 4 @2.0GHz
Then use the macally one (Score:2, Informative)
But the macally MicroMouse [macally.com] just came out and seems even cooler. I'm thinking of gettin' me one of those....
Re:Cooling this thing? (Score:4, Informative)
That leaves the power supply, which is only 130W according to the Apple tech specs, and the hard disk, of which there is only one and it's 7200rpm or less.
Given all that crap so close together won't help since there isn't a lot of air in smaller containers to cool with. They may use the metal inside the case to help dissapate the heat via direct contact with heatsinks... like a Dell laptop does.
I also though I saw some small slits in a circular patttern at the top to let heat out, but it may just be me...
Drivers (Score:4, Informative)
Already capable (Score:1, Informative)
Re:same DVD-General drive? (Score:5, Informative)
The "SuperDrive" is not an Authoring burner, no. Those still cost, last I checked, at least $1,000 more than a General class drive, and probably wouldn't be appropriate for a consumer machine anyway. Their primary market is the professional video production industry.
As far as I can tell, the only thing you're really criticizing the DVD-R drive for is that it doesn't let you use CSS encryption on your own discs. If you're against industry copy protection to begin with, then why on earth do you see that as a problem?
And BTW, yes -- if you use DeCSS-derived software on a Mac, you can make copies of commercial DVDs. The only constraint is that the data contained on the original disc must fit within the capacity of DVD-R media, which is not yet as sophisticated as pressed DVDs. Both Authoring and General DVD-R media can only hold 4.7GB of data, which is half the size of a mass-produced, double-layer DVD disc -- the format that most commercial DVDs seem to be shipping on these days.
G4 or G5? Good question (Score:3, Informative)
Architosh [architosh.com] has some interesting info about the PowerPC roadmap.
G4 vs. Wintel Processor Speeds (Score:5, Informative)
For the past 6 mos. I've been using a 733Mhz G4 (OS9.x) and a dual-1Ghz Dell Dimension (Win2KPro) for AfterEffects work, and during renders the single-chip G4 beats the pants off the Dell. Almost twice as fast. So, like Steve is always trying to remind us, all Mhz are clearly not created = =.
Re:it's like the lottery! (Score:3, Informative)
I think that it's the Monte Hall paradox.
For those who don't know, Monte Hall was the host of a gameshow in which the prize was hidden behind one of three doors. They picked one door, another was opened to reveal nothing, and then they were given the option of staying with their pick or switching to the remaining unopened door. It turns out that in a fair contest you should choose to switch; the chance of the first chosen door being right is 1/3 and the remaining door is 2/3 (hence the paradox).
Re:Another key feature: cost (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Another key feature: cost (Score:4, Informative)
colors (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Mount on wall (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Already capable (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Biggest reason desktops will still: the display (Score:5, Informative)
Which is why the iMac line is the consumer one (doi!)
Apple has 4 main lines:
No, they're not to everyone's taste but MacOS X is a great unix and coupled with this hardware it's damn enticing. Besides - it's getting more unix out to more folks then anyone else ever has.
Microsoft's no longer invested in Apple (Score:2, Informative)
Let's look at that clunky 800-MHz G4 (Score:5, Informative)
PowerPC G4 @ 800 MHz: 8.2 million RC5 keys/sec
AMD Athlon @ 1600 MHz: 5.7 million RC5 keys/sec
Intel Pentim 4 @ 2000 MHz: 2.9 million RC5 keys/sec
Now let's talk again about how clunky the G4 is.
Re:iMac is a patent on the future desktop. (Score:1, Informative)
IBM NetVista X-Series [ibm.com]
Use the correct tool for Copy Protection... (Score:2, Informative)
I own DVD Studio Pro and I have access to all of the features that Gilmore says aren't available.
The main difference between the DVD-R for General and DVD-R for Authoring drives is that the DVD-R for Authoring writes an additional lead-in that is required at the duplication plant. With this extra info on the DVD, a DVD-R can be used as the master rather than a DLT.
Note also that Apple did the right thing by using the Pioneer drive as DVD-R and DVD-RW are the only writeable formats endorsed by the DVD Forum [dvdforum.com]. DVD+R and DVD+RW are not sanctioned.
Prices for Germany (Score:1, Informative)
And Apple Germany produces Road Apples again. Heise Newsservice has got the prices for Germany. You can expect the same prices for the all of the Euro-Zone:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/adb-07.01.0
700/CD-RW : 1855EUR (=$1657)
700/DVD-RW-Combi: 2087EUR (=$1864)
800/Superdrive:2551EUR (=$2279)
So don't buy, unless the make fair prices.
"Mac OS X.i is what Linux-on-desktop People Crave" (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Some specs (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, it does have -W support, it's just not advertised. If you're lucky enough to have a SuperDrive and some DVD-RW media, try it
iMac can run *more* operating systems (Score:1, Informative)
That's actually not technically possible, as IQ stands for Intelligence Quotient (meaning divide by the average). So changing the average does not change the scale and thus has no effect
> And not only am I free to install any version of Windows I want,
May your freedom be your own.
Sadly, on a Mac one can not only install but actually run all versions of Windows SIMULTANEOUSLY, even networking them, all on one machine (using VPC). I do admit it won't be as fast
> but any version of Linux.
Not true; _not_ any. You would _not_ be able to run YellowDog Linux on your machine, or LinuxPPC, or mkLinux, or the PPC versions of Suse or Mandrake, and I probably forgot a couple... There are also PPC versions of NetBSD or OpenBSD. On the other hand, many intel versions of Linux *do* run within VPC on a Mac! (Though why bother with native Linux versions available to choose from?)
> Hell, I could throw OS/2 on here if I wanted
Yes; can do on VPC on a Mac as well.
Oh, and you forgot to mention you cannot run OS X. Did anyone say OS 9?
> And tommorow, if I'm sick of any piece of hardware I can just
> as easily go out, buy a new one, and throw it in.
iMacs aren't meant to be expandable internally, Apple has other machines that are.
> It can do everything the iMac can do, cost less, offers more options
As pointed out above, the iMac can actually run more different operating systems than any x86 hardware, so it can do more (maybe not faster).
Re:iMac availability (Score:2, Informative)
Cryptnotic
Re:For Linux Users Have A Look At IBM X-Series (Score:1, Informative)
For $1799, with as similar a configuration as possible you get:
X Series: 20 GB drive
iMac: 60 GB drive
X Series: 48X-20X CD-ROM drive
iMac: CD-RW/DVD-R drive
X Series: ATI Rage 128 Ultra 4X AGP AGP Graphics with 16MB SDRAM
iMac: GeForce 2 MX with 32MB SDRAM
Yeah, looks real competitive there.
Yup, interpolation looks ugly (Score:0, Informative)
I wondered what kind of idiot would pay more for a display that looked 10 times worse, but then it all made sense. The cheap one had a native resolution of 1024x768, and that's what the sales drones set the computer to. The more expensive models were 1280x1024 natively.
The dumbasses probably lost thousands of dollars in sales because they made the superior displays look like shit.
What's with the VGA-out port? (Score:2, Informative)
They do this on the iBook, and now I see it's on the new iMac too. A regular, "PC-standard" VGA would fit fine in the same space!
Now you've got a dongle to remember to take with you and possibly lose. Is there ANY benefit to this approach? WHY WHY WHY?