How could they? I thought they'd finally invented the perfect personal computer, and that the 17-inch LCD iMac would never be discontinued. I guess I thought wrong. :(

I can hear it already ...

Teachers with tons of ungraded papers on their desks yelling:

I don't have any room on my desk for a monitor, you insensitve clod!

The last two stories are:

17-inch flat-Panel iMac Dead
MicroBSD 0.6RC2 Released

shouldn't that be:

MicroBSD is Dead (or dying) and
17-inch flat-Panel Released (We've seen dupes, and late posts so why not)

just when you though you got things figured...

They are just too dang expensive.

Drop the price, like a THOUSAND dollars, and I'll bet they move like hotcakes.

Both 19" and 22" iMacs have been rumored. It's MacWorld time.

It's not the end of the iMac. Apple will be in business next month. They will still be selling one button mice. They will still be annoying Wintel gearheads.

good call - the cube was actually withdrawn because Apple couldn't make 'em fast enough...

twat

yep, and Apple would LOSE A THOUSAND BUCKS on each and every one. You're not an MBA by any chance, are you?

unable to order more CRT-based iMacs and eMacs

The CRT-based vi is still available though, right?

It was silent because it lacked proper heat control methods. This is why a number of them had issues with overheating when used in an environment where several of them were needed in close quarters. I'm remembering singed plastic, and the necessity of cooled cabinets for large banks of them.

If I put a fan-less heatsink on my Athlon, removed the case fans, and disabled the power supply fan, it'd run silent, too. Of course, I'd probably have a dysfunctional machine on my hands quite quickly. :p

-Sara

For $1000 I can get a $200 Walmart PC

No one read beyond that line in your post.
Sure, I'll sell you $200 for $1000, dumbass.

Apple are quite a big company, but they are not THAT big - perhaps they should learn from this and the iCube, and plan a little more carefully before they launch certain products?

This won't happen, because "Apple's market research" can be restated as "Steve's design sense", which, in case you haven't noticed, is a measure of how symmetrical something is.

Apple seems to always make marketing blunders when radial symmetry -- the highest order of Steve's Design Sense -- is involved in the design. Examples: the Cube, the round mouse, the new iMac. Steve is obviously brilliant, but sometimes he takes his particular taste a little too far.

I-It's I-always I-easier I-to I-debate I-a I-minor I-point I-than I-address I-the I-post.

I-I I-do I-agree I-with I-your I-points I-despite I-you I-calling I-it I-an "I-Cube"

Uhm, yes, the cube didn't do that (often) which made the heat control a cool engineering trick, I don't see why your athlon melting proves that apple can't design something that works?

Cooled cabinets for banks of them? You had a bank of cubes? Find me a bank of computers that doesn't use some cooling outside the case or extraordinary cooling inside the case.

Finally, the "lack of proper heat control" methods was a feature, no noisy fans or other weird stuff, just good old fashioned voodoo to keep it cool.

Everyone is waiting for the price to go down. Flat panels are way too overpriced. If the average flatpanel prices were cut by 1/3 people would start buying.

Err. I've heard of several people whose cubes went into meltdown. It's not even multiple degrees of separation where it's such and such a figurative person who I've never heard of other than to hear that their cube melted. At most, this is 3 degrees of separation. If it's "rare", then I must know quite a few of the "few".

As for my Athlon melting if I didn't provide it with proper cooling, I was merely saying that I could run my Athlon silently too if I followed the path that Apple went with the cube. It's just not smart to remove all cooling, and the G4 Cube was not a very triumphant success in this area. As for "banks", I meant anything over 3 of them in close proximity, and once again--it wasn't my personal experience, as I never purchased a cube. Merely something I heard from someone whose employer had.

As for the "feature" comment, it's only a feature if it works reliably. If the computer likes to go into meltdown at an oddly high rate, then it's not a feature.

There are athlons that run silently using a combination of a special power supply, quiet HDD, a heatsink with no moving parts, and an aluminum case, THOSE have the "feature". The cube did not.

-Sara

• perhaps we should wait until MacWorld Expo to set straight the rumors, and see if perhap a new/great product will be introduced in its place, or if this will infact happen at all.

Look, if you're going to be reasonable, you can just leave Slashdot right now ...

So here's the big problem with selling designer computers: You can't stop redesigning them.

That's akin to saying, "Here's the big problem with sex. You just can't stop having it!"

To which the obvious reply is: we should all have such problems.

No, we are not doofuses, we are doofii. :-)

Good price beats out good design? Yeah, I hear those Mercedes-Benz folk were kicking themselves over this same issue. Apparently having "a real tough time" keeping afloat.