The 21" Frankenstein iMac 242
webslacker writes "One of the strangest hardware hack jobs I've ever seen: Some guy named Don Hardy decides that he doesn't like the 15" monitor in his iMac and happens to have a 21" Nokia lying around. Does he A) find some clever way to solder a VGA-out from his iMac to his monitor, B) toss them both out, or C) take them both apart and merge them into one unit? "
Now just to get rid of those silly colors (Score:1)
Now THAT's what I call a hack job! (Score:1)
My vote (Score:1)
One more modification needed... (Score:1)
Cool (Score:1)
Ummmm... (Score:3)
Heh (Score:2)
Um... Wow. (Score:1)
Hey, if he'd used one of those huge flatscreens it would have been even cooler!
Still, seems like a waste of a perfectly good 21" monitor. I mean... it's not running X!
Re:Now THAT's what I call a hack job! (Score:4)
Hacking at it's finest (Score:3)
Now, what the hell was this guy doing with an iMac to start with? Better get one of those new G4s.
man behind the curtains (Score:5)
-Jon
Down with beige! (Score:5)
You call that an iMac? You are a tool of the PC imperialist dogs! Vive la France! No WTO! Anarchy!
-konstant
Big Deal (Score:1)
This guy has just put a computer into the same old beige case...Been there, done that [gateway2000.com]
What about the linearity of the montior? (Score:3)
Then again an Imac owner is probably more concerned with the look of the machine then the quality or performance. "I don't want my desk cluttered." or "This matches the decor of my office." Hell none of them match the soldiering iron in mine.
One Year Warranty (Score:3)
The flip side is that there's nothing lost by modifying your Apple hardware after one year. I had a beige G3 233, and I overclocked it to 300 the day before the warranty expired. Apple sticks a big VOID sticker across the jumpers, and also uses a big plastic block of jumpers, so you have to go find some of the right size if you want to modify the settings. When I saw that, it pissed me off so much, I had to overclock it.
---
Ole fashioned hacking (Score:3)
I feel for the guy. On one job I had I ended up splicing a monitor cable extender from Radio Shack onto an old IBM PS/2 monitor because I didn't have any more parts to cannibalize from monitors that were lying around... The guts of monitors are not fun things to mess around with.
--Fesh
Re:One question... (Score:2)
Heh... (Score:5)
Cheers,
Justin
Macintosh (Score:2)
Yes... it is down... Mirror anyone? (Score:1)
slashdotted already... (Score:1)
Its one thing for someones departmental server that happenes to have httpd running be /.ed.. But something like macaddict? Now thats fucked up.
It would be interesting to see if we can get some logs from them in about this time, since there proably a big volume site anyway.
Of course they coud just be running there site off a 5200 or something :)
/. Strikes again??? (Score:1)
A network error occurred while Netscape was receiving data.
(Network Error: Connection reset by peer)
Try connecting again.
***
heh every time I try to access the server I get
this. Too bad, id love to see this beast.
Now if apple only had the sense to do this
in the first place (including using a beige
case...I have such an urge to buy a damned iwhack
just to paint it beige...or better yet...in true
Apple tradition... "Platnum"
Re:is the link down? (Score:2)
And the sad thing is, that's the way things are going. Longer, more confusing error messages, with less information.
Why not use a 21" Color Sync Monitor? (Score:1)
All the iCandy of the iMac with the big screen appeal.
Or, if he was REALLY good, he'd rig one of those Apple Cinema Displays to do a similar thing. How to do this without changing the laws of phyics however is beyond my comprehension.
Re:is the link down? (Score:1)
Sometimes those 386 SX 25MHz Linux boxes with 4 Mb RAM has problems coping with more than a million hits per. second. because the ISA bus run out of bandwidth.
BiGMAC ATTACK! (Score:1)
(perhaps I should trademark this so I can sell it... better yet.. patent "The usage of punny names based on product name in the sale of overpriced proprietary hardware".)
Just wait till the fast food chain and Apple really do match up... will they have the iMac Apple pie?
Perhaps the cashier will ask "would you like linux with that?"
The computers will only come in bright yellow with a big arch over the main screen...
I don't know... A comedian, I am not... I'll go back to programming at my day job now!
Re:man behind the curtains (Score:1)
Pope
Hermaphrodite (Score:1)
Try again :o) (Score:2)
Without the CGI: http://www.macaddict.com/exclusive/9911/imac21.htm l [macaddict.com]
P.U.R.G.E Save my live !
Re:One Year Warranty (Score:1)
Re:Ole fashioned hacking (Score:1)
Tell me about it. About two months before I finally graduated from a 486 to a pentium, my monitor suddenly wouldn't come on. Turned out the one-click-does-it-all power button was stuck in the off position. Opened the case, couldn't free it. So I just shorted around it by soldering in extra wire, and did the on/off thing the old fashioned way: plug in, unplug. Unfortunately, on my first try, it turned out I had shorted the hot to ground. Thank heaven for circuit breakers. :)
Re:Big Deal (Score:1)
Not owning a laptop, and not being willing to leave my stash of computer related Christmas gifts until I get back home after the holidays, I always haul my computer to my parents place. And every year I wish that it wasn't such a pain to haul around all the extra pieces of equipment. If I could get a nice monitor/PC combo, I'd be pretty happy.
-sw
Re:Macintosh (Score:1)
their architecture may have left a thing or two
to be desired (read Alan Cox article in linux
journal about kernel porting where he assets that
part of the reason Apple didin't release all the
specs on some of the old Macs is "Embarrasment")
However, the quality of manafacture always seemd
very high. Their cases have traditionally sucked
to work on (im sorry, I shouldn't need to remove
the power suply to add more RAM) but the actual
logic boards seem to have a very low failure rate.
I have seen 15 year old Macs, still chugging away.
The main problems I have had with Macs have tended
to be stupid shit, like the heavy insistnce on
1 button mice, and their seeming refusal to
participate with open standards.
(for a long time...maybe even today, I don't know
it was impossible to get documentation on the
lowlevel HFS filesystem, unless you were a big
company like symantec and had very deep pockets)
Other than that, their promises of "II Forever"
then promptly killing off the II line by
introducing a great new II, the GS, then killing
it off. Well I didn't like that. I still have my
GS BTW.
Other things I liked about Macs was SCSI, they
always used SCSI (until recently when, and perhaps
once long ago I think they trid an IDE model but
didn't stick with it)
That and the Apple Desktop Buss for both mouse
and keyboard could be chained. That was nice.
Re:is the link down? (Score:1)
-sw
Re:Hermaphrodite (Score:1)
-Ted
Re:One Year Warranty (Score:2)
A few years back it was ruled in court that
opening up a machine and making changes
can NOT void a warrenty.
However it was stated that the user would have to
restore the hardware (ie take out any additions
and replace anything removed) before the company
could be required to honor the warranty.
Of course...they still use the "Void if opened"
etc clauses...mostly because it scares most people
away
iMac case just a rehash of old DEC (vt100?) terms (Score:1)
On topic: Yes, the iMac could do with being a little less sweetshop and more mutant, a 15" and a 17" side by side is very Igor ("yes maaashter, riiight awaaay")
A lot of work for no reason! (Score:3)
* Pull off the case back.
* Unscrew the built in monitor's cable. (Its a standard connector.)
* Connect your big monitor. You may need one of those Belkin MacVGA adaptors.
I have run an NEC Multisync XL on my iMac in exactly this fashion.
Also Griffin makes an adaptor that moves the connector off to the side panel so you can video mirror onto both displays.
Re:What about the linearity of the montior? (Score:1)
At school, saw one image, then site went belly up (Score:1)
Anyway, Nice way to get a biger monitor on a piece of crap. Now its just a larger piece of crap
Silly Computers (Score:1)
Put a PC in the old case... (Score:1)
Look before you leap (Score:1)
SCSI/IDE (Score:1)
The model you're referring to is probably the LC/Quadra 630, which was indeed the first desktop Mac to use IDE. It's not that long ago - as I recall, the 630 came out in '94 or thereabouts.
Re:Big Deal (Score:1)
If that monitor was a 21 inch, you wouldn't be. Get an old 15 inch monitor and stack it at your parents house instead, its probably cheaper than the price/performance difference between PC and Mac.
-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
You know when... (Score:2)
Personally, I think this is cool. Now all he has to do is build a second 17" monitor onto the side, and he's got a stereoscopic display. :)
(Mind you, the magnetic fields must wreck havoc with the computer's internals!)
Re:Whats the point (Score:1)
Re:Ole fashioned hacking (Score:3)
Re:Apple - solid company, give the guy some respec (Score:1)
1996. Great machine.
Course...I never said he can't have his imac.
It was just the II line stuff that pissed _ME_
off at apple (they do seem to shoot themselves
in the foot every few years don't they?)
Hell The GS was probably one of the last machines
to ship with a ROM BASIC. I learned to program on
Applesoft BASIC...then moved up to ByteWorks
Orca/C compiler...got Orca/M just before I stopped
using the GS.
Now if I could only get one of the Linux IIGS
emulators to work...I could hook up my old
SCSI hard drive and have a blast with all the
old Games etc. Not to mention FTA Demos and all
that good stuff.
Bad idea, IMHO (Score:2)
Yeah, and if you leave one of them new iMac's on all day, the rear vents get hot enough to fry an egg! I nearly burned myself touching them in a CompUSA display. Leaving out the fan was a bad idea, IMHO. With the monitor, hard drive, and video card all packed into such a tight space, overheating is going to be a serious problem.
It's not system load, it's all bandwidth. (Score:2)
-A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
Mirror here (Score:2)
Re:Hermaphrodite (Score:1)
Re:Hacking at it's finest (Score:2)
Re:Look before you leap (Score:1)
Things like this are why SGI isn't an admin's favorite unix, and why netscape isn't a dominant server.
-Peter
Re:Silly Computers (Score:1)
Re:SCSI/IDE (Score:1)
Hmmm.. 5 years IS a bloody long time in computing circles. 5 years ago 486's were about the mainstream thing weren't they?
--
Comment removed (Score:4)
Re:What about the linearity of the montior? (Score:4)
-----
Re:Heh... (Score:1)
What a concept... (Score:2)
I wonder if I coudl do this by buying iMac replacement bits and putting them together.. I wonder...
Your Working Boy,
GS Emulation (Score:1)
If your SCSI drive is formatted HFS I think you'll have the double benefit of being able to access it from linux and the emulated GS at the same time
If you can't get it working, drop me a line with any questions. Everyone who wants a GS should have one, IMHO. A2-4ever!
I'd like to see pictures of the inside... (Score:1)
Not Wintel holding them down... (Score:1)
But their management is dumber than your average company. I sell computers at the campus store here, and there's only ONE reason why I tend to push people heavily towards PCs - Macs ar 1.5 times as much as an equivalent PC or more. (Even you yourself admit to them being overpriced.) Apple is just way too greedy, and they're too stupid to realize that their greed is pushing people to PCs. Apple could do REALLY well if they'd only stop shooting themselves in the foot.
(Side note: Powerbooks/iBooks ARE competitive in price with PC laptops. iMacs would be if they weren't so nonupgradable. Towers can't come close.)
Re:One Year Warranty (Score:1)
It's because Apple has a monopoly on Macs. Gateway, Dell, etc. are irrelevant; if you want a Mac, you buy it from Apple and you take whatever warranty they feel like offering. Besides, people buy Macs for religious reasons. Most of them probably neither know nor care what the warranty is like. The important thing to them is that having a Mac is righteous.
How long until (Score:2)
I mean, it's not FCC certified for interference, now is it?
Re:A lot of work for no reason! (Score:1)
nevermind.
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Re:Silly Computers (Score:1)
Re:A lot of work for no reason! (Score:1)
Mark
Re:Hacking at it's finest (Score:1)
and cardboard holding the first
a-bomb together. hackish, and
definitely meant to make a mess of things.
dirk
Re:man behind the curtains (Score:1)
It seems odd that he took so much care with the front and then just hacked/chewed the back side for the ethernet/modem/usb connections.
AND
if you look at the front/head on shots of the machine, the speaker grills have a decidedly white backdrop, almost as if they were simpy flushmounted into a niche carved for them, without anything behind them.
It just smells fishy to me and I can't quite put my finger on it.
oh well.
Re:man behind the curtains (Score:1)
actually what i find interesting is that he spent an entire day getting the cd-rom to look nice but then hacked up the back of the monitor to push out the usb/net ports. if you're going to do it at all, do it RIGHT!
sheesh!
i think he's got a G3 under there somewhere...
that's no iMac (Score:1)
--
macaddict uses IRIX (Score:1)
Enough already! or The MYTH of the Overpriced Mac (Score:2)
I've done several side-by-side comparisons over the years. Price out a Mac and an equally equipped PC of comparable performance*. Yes, the Mac still costs more. How much more? $100 to $200. That's right. I'll say it again to make sure it's not a mistake. $100 to $200 more to buy a Mac vs. a comparably equipped PC.
*By performance, I mean the computer's ability to compute, not the MHz its oscillator runs at.
This has been true at nearly every point in time for at least the past 5 years, maybe 10.
Now... is your time worth anything to you? If that PC costs you 1 work day of support more than the Mac over the lifetime of the machine... bye bye savings! And trust me, it will. Been there, done that, got the Tee-shirt, three times over.
I reboot Windows NT as often as I reboot MacOS. If Linux is your game... I've got a Linux partition on both my Mac and my PC, so there!
Case in point #1: A budget AMD PC. Starts at $670. Sounds pretty cheap. Now add stuff until it equals a $999 iMac 350. Total price: $954. And the iMac is the faster machine, significantly. I'm not making this up, this is a real quote from iDot.com.
Case in point #2: A high-end G3/450. Price: $1800 from Outpost.com. Price of a comparable** 600 MHz Intel PC from iDot: $1774.
**Remember what I said about performance.
Doggone, Macs are a better deal than I thought! The Mac premium has fallen to under $50. I'd better run out and buy one before Apple comes to their senses.
Re:Not Wintel holding them down... (Score:2)
You're ignoring the fact that every Mac ever built will outperform every PC ever built if you compare a set of similar numbers (ie. same #Mhz, same #RAM). The MAC hardware is just beautiful, it's the OS that sucks monkey balls. My personal pet peeve is that the menu bar is permanently docked at the top of the screen and doesn't stay attached to the application that owns it. That's one of many pet peeves really...
Kintanon
Back on Topic now (Was re: Off-Topic) (Score:2)
and soon www.dailymac.com will have Mac news. They tend to update pretty quickly and are a nice looking site...
Kintanon
Re:Ummmm... (Score:2)
>
Ah, yeah, this is a stock system.
Well, I did install this new FUCKING CASE YOU MORON!!
On the other hand... (Score:2)
Comparing different architectures "at the same clock" is patently useless. The reason is that different architectures do different amounts of work per clock cycle, depending on things like the number of pipelines, RISC vs CISC, etc.
The only way to accurately compare system performance (after you eliminate systems that don't do what you want, of course) is by using price-performance ratios. How much bang do you get for your buck?
Given the fact that I can get a damn good PC for less then $300, but have to shell out $1000+ for a Mac, I think I know what I would pick. (Plus, there are too many Windows-only games, so for me personally, I would go PC so I can still boot into Windows to play games.)
My personal pet peeve is that the menu bar is permanently docked at the top of the screen and doesn't stay attached to the application that owns it.
There are advantages to that method: For one, you don't waste screen real estate duplicating the menu bar in every window. For another, it means you always know where to find the menu, no matter where a window is. I'm not saying one is better then the other, just that Apple's method is not without merit.
Re:Down with beige! (Score:2)
This wasn't meant to be an anti-Apple flame. It just seems funny to me that more and more things are being made in transparent plastic varieties. Phones, pagers, you name it... And other than the initial niftiness of getting to see the guts of common household items (which wears off pretty quickly), who really needs a see-through cell phone?
--Fesh
Re:On the other hand... (Score:2)
The only way to accurately compare system performance (after you eliminate systems that don't do what you want, of course) is by using price-performance ratios. How much bang do you get for your buck?
Given the fact that I can get a damn good PC for less then $300, but have to shell out $1000+ for a Mac, I think I know what I would pick. (Plus, there are too many Windows-only games, so for me personally, I would go PC so I can still boot into Windows to play games.)
My personal pet peeve is that the menu bar is permanently docked at the top of the screen and doesn't stay attached to the application that owns it.
There are advantages to that method: For one, you don't waste screen real estate duplicating the menu bar in every window. For another, it means you always know where to find the menu, no matter where a window is. I'm not saying one is better then the other, just that Apple's method is not without merit.
Exactly, which is why arguing that paying 1000$ for a 300mhz iMac that will out perform the 600$ K6-400 you put together on your own time is bad is just silly. (Side not, that sentence was horribly constructed)
For one thing, add in the labor for the machine, if you say... 20$ an hour to put the thing together ('s 15 less than what I charge, and 20 less than what Best buy charges) and it takes you 5 hours, that's 100$ worth of time, plus it's YOUR time. Plus, the components you purchased aren't going to be the best quality and will be more likely to have trouble.
So unless you are a power user (like most of the people reading this) an iMac is an excellent machine to purchase. I recommend them to families all the time.
The Gameing issue is why I'm still using win98 and not yet linux. Waiting for the Q3:A debut.
Oh, and the menu bar is a pet peeve, and I've been told by the chief editor at www.dailyimac.com that it isn't a valid complaint (thpppt!).
Kintanon
There's a flaw in that... (Score:2)
How, though, do you get price/performance if you can't accurately measure performance?
Given the fact that I can get a damn good PC for less then $300, but have to shell out $1000+ for a Mac, I think I know what I would pick. (Plus, there are too many Windows-only games, so for me personally, I would go PC so I can still boot into Windows to play games.)
A "damn good" PC for $300? Don't make me laugh. Yes, you can get a PC for that much. But a damn good one? Mediocre, perhaps. But not damn good by any means.
And I can get my hands on an iMac for about half the price you quoted.
I agree with you wholeheartedly on the menubar issue, though. People forget that the principal interface of any GUI app is its menubar, and the average person can only work in one app at a time (note: that person's computer can run many apps once, but I'd like to see anyone here type up a term paper while playing Quake at the exact same time). The computer itself has no use for menubars, so displaying more than one at a time is pointless (the user can only use the obe belonging to the active app, and the computer doesn't need them anyway). That leaves the question of where to put it, and the top of the screen is a logical place.
Re:One more modification needed... (Score:2)
The keyboards though? Ugh... nasty.
Re:On the other hand... (Score:2)
Ok... According to e-bay I can get an Athlon 550 and Mobo for 450$ (Roughly). Add 140$ for a 15" trinitron (Pricewatch) and you are up to 600$, add a hardrive, the 1000$ iMacs have 4 gig or so I think, that costs 88$ refurbished from Quantum (Pricewatch again), ad an Ati 128 for 70$ (Pricewatch, ATI Rage 128) a keyboard (Microsoft natural kbd) 30$ a mouse 15$, a 24x CD-ROM for 25$ (Pricewatch), and 32 megs of PC100 SDRAM for 35$ (Pricewatch again), and our total comes to... 852$. Now, most people who the iMac is targeted at are going to pay someone 50$ to put it together, so that's 900$, plus an operating system (They aren't likely to be using linux) that puts it right around 1000$. Then you have the headaches associated with an OS that crashes twice/day. Looks like the iMac wins out here...
Kintanon
Re:Ole fashioned hacking (Score:2)
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
Re:Heh (Score:2)
So, by that logic, the parts that _are_ under 1 year warranty are thus because they are not supposed to last the life of the computer? Sounded like doubletalk to me when I first read it.
Re:Hacking at it's finest (Score:3)
From the Jargon file [tuxedo.org]:
Re: Comparing Apples vs. * (Score:2)
When the new models come out (presumably some time soon), the price/performance ratio will be much better, and that will be a smarter time to buy a PowerBook.
Mac prices don't change as quickly as PC prices, so it's generally better to buy Macs when they first come out.
Re:One Year Warranty (Score:2)
Isn't anyone else sick of this thread yet? I mean, get real, there's nothing to disagree on here. The statement that Apple is a monopoly is 100%, no doubt about it, pur, factual, truth. Apple has a monopoly. No one in the legal field would question that.
The point you are all missing is that being a monopoly is not illegal. That is nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with being the only company you are able to buy a product from. What is illegal is *forcing* consumers from buying competitors products.
For instance, if I had a business that needed Mac's, and yet I used PC's for 3/4's of my desktop, and Apple said that wouldn't sell me any Mac's unless I replaced all my PC's, then what would I have to do. If my core business requires either buying Mac's or I go out of business, then I *must* replace all my PC's. At which time, Apple would be abusing their monopoly powers, and the DoJ would likely file an anti-trust suit. However, I know of no case where Apple has done this. Do you?
Compare that to Microsoft, where I can't buy BeOS preloaded on my PC's because MS would revoke OEM's Licensing Agreement. If I need Windows, I'm kind of stuck with getting systems preloaded with Windows only. Same thing with Netscape, and others. *That* is the reason for the anti-trust suit. Not because MS was a Monopoly. Of course, it had to be proved that they were a monopoly first, to prove that they have the power to abuse.
-Brent--
Re:macaddict isnt MacOS X? (Score:2)
D
----
Speaking of flaws... (Score:2)
No, I said that comparing performance "at the same clock" is invalid. Instead, you need to use real-world benchmarks and divide the results by price. That gives you a price-performance ratio, which you can then use for comparison. Read more carefully, please.
A "damn good" PC for $300?
Yes. Around 400 or 500 MHz, 32 to 64 MB of RAM, 4 GB HDD. No monitor, though. Make it $400, then.
Hell, there are companies who will give you a good PC for free, provided you sign up for Internet service with them. That gives you a price-performance ratio so good, it cannot be calculated.
And I can get my hands on an iMac for about half the price you quoted.
I don't get it. You flame my cheap PC prices, but then go on to boast how an iMac does not have to cost list. Just as you can get iMacs for less then list price, you can get very nice Intel-based PCs for less then the $1200 Dell wants to sell you one at.
Re:On the other hand... (Score:2)
If you paid $600 for such a system, you are getting ripped off. I can build you a K6-3 system, at 400 MHz, with 32 MB of RAM, and 4 GB HDD, for around $300 without a monitor.
Compare the two in real world tests, and you will find that system is performance equivalent to the iMac in everything except floating point-heavy applications. (AMD's regular floating point sucks on the K6 line, and they readily admit this. The Athlon kicks butt, but is still rather high in price due to its performance advantage.)
Oh, sure, the iMac does very well on Apple's favorite Photoshop tests -- but those are optimized very heavily for the Mac. Compare generic PowerPC performance to a 3DNow! optimized application, and AMD will win. Let us be fair, in both directions.
And it is worth pointing out that the generic PC has a number of advantages over the iMac. There is more room for expansion. It uses standard components that are easily replaced if something fails or needs to be upgraded. There is more software and hardware available for the PC then the iMac.
I think, in the end, you will find the PC to be a better buy in terms of price-performance. Of course, the iMac's easy-to-setup design and easy-to-use OS may well make it the better choice for the home user who just wants to do email and web browsing (if they afford the $1000 price tag -- a lot of people I know cannot).
add in the labor for the machine, if... it takes you 5 hours
It takes me less then an hour to put together a bare-bones system and test the hardware.
Getting the OS installed is another story. Installing MacOS is very easy. Meanwhile, I think making someone install Windows violates the Genevia Conventions. But then, that is why I use Linux. Let's say I'm installing Linux on both machines, which makes them about equal (actually, the PC is better, since Linux on the PPC is still a little rough around the edges).
So unless you are a power user an iMac is an excellent machine to purchase. I recommend them to families all the time.
No doubt about it, the Macintosh wins hands down in terms of ease-of-use everytime. It has for years. I still find many aspects of the MacOS very elegant.
Re:Not Wintel holding them down... (Score:2)
They rejected it for two reasons:
1. It was harder to move to the menu bar, b/c you had to think about it slightly more than you did when you just went up.
2. It behaved stupidly when the window was very narrow (exactly like Windows handles this)
Additionally, they had also screwed around with round windows, and things like that, but they ended up looking bad. Finding the photos of these things is _hard_. MacWeek ran some in a special 10th anniversary (of the Mac, not MacWeek) issue in 1994. Anyone got scans online?
A good thought, but a little misdirected... (Score:2)
It's not that the technology has become passé necessarily (though that's possible), it's that the technology has now become ubiquitous to a point where the item worries about the fashion statement as much as the device inside the fashion. Think about it. The iMac isn't a computer for everyone (geeks like we
The average Joe-type consumer doesn't care that AMD has a 750 MHz Athlon, though we do. They don't even care if it runs Windows, though they're susceptible to the herd mentality. Computers (in general) have gotten simple enough, fast enough, and cheap enough that they all blur together in many a mind and the distinguishing selling characteristic becomes "How cool is it? The iMac is a decent computer for the price - not a great one. But it oozes Cool to the consumer.
In my home, I have a few PC's and they're all beige powerhouses I built myself. Two run Linux and one runs Win98 (games, games, games). But when someone comes to my house and needs to use a computer, they're drawn to my wife's iMac. I bought an iBook to replace my trusty old PowerBook 3400 (overclocked to 270MHz, in case anybody wants to buy it?), and people stop to stare at it and touch it when I pull it out of the briefcase.
When technology is all the same to people, design becomes the differentiator. Consumer products companies have known that for years - the computer industry is just catching on. Right now most of the Wintel boxes trying to play in this space are iMac knock-offs, which plays into Apple's hands. When the Wintel shops start to do interesting and different things with their designs, the sales will reflect it.
Right now Apple is winning the consumer war - their model outsells any other individual model of Wintel system (and the iBook is doing the same against laptops) at retail, and the Wintel vendors are changing their design models to imitate. Right down their alley.
- -Josh Turiel
Re:On the other hand... (Score:2)
And who would buy a athlon and only put 32M/4Gigs in it? And only a 15" monitor? My Athlon has 128Megs ram and 30Gig (compUSA $299) HD. 40X cdrom. When ram prices chill out a little i'll up that to 256Megs. And with a little 17" Trinitron monitor it comes out to a little over $1500. That beats ANY mac in bang for buck AND raw power. Took me about a hour and a half to 2 hours to put the system together and slap Slackware 7 onto the HD. Looks like AMD wins here...
That's why no one is trying to market the iMac to YOU. The iMac is marketed at families who don't have the knowledge and experience to pick out quality components and put them together. If they did, then they wouldn't need an iMac. They'd be getting a G4 tower, which will whip the ass of the Athlon (Note: I LOVE Athlons, but Motorola makes a processor that will eat AMD alive).
The system I was putting together was one that was equivelant to the 300mhz iMac in every way possible. And the iMac wins there. If you build your own out of quality components you may come out a little bit ahead, but that slight advantage isn't going to be enough to convince most people that they need to go do 3 weeks of research to figure out what components they need and how to put them together.
Kintanon
Re: Comparing Apples vs. * (Score:2)
Still, it seems to me that it'd make sense to lower prices to attract non-Mac users. But hey, the company is making lots of money, and I'm sure Fred Anderson understands the economics of the situation far better than I. =)
Someone vs. Radio Shack (Score:2)
The back, etc. (Score:2)
The front parts (speakers, CD-ROM), are flush with the front plastic, so it might be possible to do it with them again in this task, assuming that the curvature is similar.
(and the CD isn't put in _that_ well...look at the enlarged picture of it closed, and you'll see it's not that straight of a cut that he made)
The rear ports on a normal iMac, for those that haven't looked, are behind a curved plastic privacy panel. They're not meant to be flush mounted.
(I'm not saying that it definately _is_ real, hell, they could even be doctored photos, I'm just saying that the previous reasons for it not being real, if anything, show that it's more likely to be legit.)
Oh...and as to 'hacking up' the back-- as he doesn't have the capability to flush mount the rear ports, it makes perfect sense that he'd have to cut away some extra so that he could easy grasp at connections.
Re:Ole fashioned hacking (Score:2)
I always wondered why they had scorch marks on the etching!
Olivetti/AT+T used to make one based on a Herc chip that was infamous for going up in smoke. The manual for the 3836-16 even has a step in the setup proceedure where you pop the case open and check for smoke. Thankfully, they only ever shipped 'em on Unix boxes, so the operator was a little more prepared to deal with a flaming computer than most.
Re:One Year Warranty (A secret of retail) (Score:2)
I think it was somewhere in the range of 1-2% of the total price...can't remember exactly, as I never bought one.