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Apple Businesses

New iMac Rolled Out 355

Posted by Hemos from the and-with-new-flavours dept.
Ivo writes "Apple just announced a new iMac. The base model starts at $999, and the $1499 model has built-in firewire and DVD. More at Apple's website " Three different models (no fan, better graphics and sub-woofer), and the commercials are online.
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New iMac Rolled Out More

New iMac Rolled Out

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  • That's when I realized there was no fan in the unit

    Bzzzzzt! Sorry, wrong answer. Would you care to try again?

    The original iMac did have a fan. And if you block the vents to the fan on, well anything with a fan, it doesn't work to well.

    -jon

  • If GM says that their pickup truck has the best gas mileage in its class, that doesn't also mean its the cheapest in its class.

    In this case, the devil on your shoulder is supposed to go "the Mac is $200 more" and the Angel goes "but it has better graphics and a faster CPU". Whichever one wins is up to you.
  • Call me skeptical, but I firmly refuse to believe that you could shove anything into a space as small as the speaker ports on an iMac and have it sound good. Apple apparently disagrees with me, though, saying it "stands the world of PC sound on its ear."

    Bose Acoustimass.

    I'd imagine that Harmon/Kardon (who build the iMac sound system) could do a decent job, too. The trick (if I remember correctly) is the distance the air travels, so with enough baffles, you could certainly do it in a case the size of an iMac.

    -jon

  • The 'Save RAM and shutdown' feature of the iBook (and new iMac? Someone confirm please) is incredibly useful. It means (according to how much RAM you, and how many apps you got open) you can boot in a few seconds, and you're presented with exactly the same screen as you had when you shutdown (eg the documents you were working, the browser you had open are just there).

    It will become even more useful when (if rumors prove true) Apple integrates this RAM-saving feature into its multi-user system. Each user could have their own RAM file, so they could 'instantly' carry-on where they left off. No more quitting applications and restarting them after logging on/off, you just go back to where you were.
  • I think the thing they are a
    little short on is hard drive space.

    That's why god invented external drives.

    The top line machine has a 10gig drive. Not bad, but I'd still would want an external for LinuxPPC.

  • The original poster was not complaining that the IMAC was without a floppy, but that Apple was making a brain-dead marketing move by not including some kind or writable/removable medium inside the imac. I would wager a guess that Imation would practically give zipdrives to imac users if it meant the zipdisk became the new definitive standard.

    Yes, I know you can buy a removable drive and many do, but if they already had the drive, they wouldn't think twice about buying media for it.

  • How in the world do you shield that thing? It just seems like a really bad idea to have an unshielded CRT hanging out in the open like that.

    They figured out how to use the clear plastic as shielding, either by incorporating a small amount of conducting material in the plastic itself, or by applying a transparent conductive layer on the inside. This is very neat. It sure takes guts to have your guts in sight like that :-)

  • Re:Bah (Score:1)

    by gig ( 78408 )
    > I am tired of reading here that there
    > are still PC models on the market that
    > can't boot from a CD.

    Often this is because many users don't know how to make their machine boot from the CD. If it's not enabled by default then they have to edit BIOS settings. Easy for some, but impossible or very stressful for most. Also, what CD do you boot up? I've never seen a bootable Windows CD.

    On a Mac, you put the Mac OS CD that came with your machine in the CD-ROM drive and either select it as your boot disk in the Startup Disk Control Panel, or reboot and hold down "C". When it boots, you're running Mac OS off the CD.
  • Okay, maybe my tone was a little harsh in my previous post. Sorry about that. But my point is that Jobs/Apple do infact use misleading benchmarks in the marketing war against wintel. There is no question that Macs are the right kind of machines for graphics production/desktop publishing/ect...

    Wait I'm falling into the same trap again.

    Apple/Jobs uses misleading benchmarks. End of Argument.

    Pete
  • Actually, it's really not meaningful at all, for the following reasons:

    1. The ByteMark processor benchmarks Apple uses are in no way representative of typical performance. In fact, if you look at the numbers, they are downright misleading. This has been hashed over a lot on /., so I won't go into the specifics here (though if someone really wants me to, I will). Those numbers are Apple marketing, not real-world performance.

    2. Apple is not comparing machines of the same class (for purposes of comparison, let's say that the targeted class is consumer machines costing $1299 to $1499). A Wintel system costing the $1299 (or $1499) the new iMacs do would not have an ancient Rage Pro video card, and would probably have a better CPU than a 400MHz Celeron. In fact, for $1299 you can get a PIII/500, a 16MB Voodoo3, 17" monitor, 13 Gig HD, etc etc from Quantex (where I got my computer), which makes excellent machines and has one of, if not the best, tech support staffs of the computer makers out there (important to the consumer class the machines are targeting). I'm sure other PC OEMs have comparable systems/prices, this was just a 30-second lookup on Quantex's website.

    No iMac even compares in performance at a given price point. Clearly the iMac does not have the "best technology in its class".

    3. PC manfacturers do tend to scrimp on their underpowered systems. Thing is, the "underpowered" systems tend to be the sub-$700 segment. Machines that cost $1299 and up are by no means underpowered, generally speaking.


    It seems fairly evident to me that nothing has significantly changed here. Apple still maintains a hefty price premium over machines of comparable performance. And still uses misleading marketing to imply that the performance of their machines is greater when that is not the case. Essentially, you're paying a whole lot of $$ for the privilege of having colored plastic instead of beige.

  • Could shield the parts of the crt that need sheilding (the gun).

    Or could line the case with semi-transparent aluminum (sorry I couldn't resist), or other material.
  • Well, I know for a fact that it's not the first slot-loading CD drive on a computer, (my friend has a Compaq with a slot CD drive) but I'm curious to know if this is the first slot-loading DVD drive on a personal computer. Anyone out there know?
  • Linux does run on it. Check out LinuxPPC [linuxppc.com] and NetBSD [netbsd.org].

  • What's so awful about having different colored computers?

    There's nothing wrong with having several choices of color at all. I just wish one of the colors was a dark sinister Vader-helmet black! Of all the colors, they left out the coolest. Oooh yeah. To some people, you just can't get any more aesthetically pleasing than obsidian. Black is beautiful, baby! MMMMmmmmmmmmm....

    Someone ought to add it to the Hacker Test [armory.com] as a way to lose points: how much performance would you be willing to trade for a black machine? Me? I'de trade about half!! Oooh, there goes my score...


    ---
  • for the price of the new iMacs ($1299 and $1499) I bet you could buy one. Maybe for $999 too, but doubling the score might be hard in that case.
  • Yeesh. You sure took that one personally.

    Anyway as I stated in my other reply, my tone on the original post was a bit harsh. I give you that much. My arguments about Mac vs. Wintel were out of place, but I still believe that the numbers that Apple/Jobs uses are misleading to consumers. Especially the consumers they are targeting with this machine (novice/first time users).

    Pete
  • True, the ATI chipset is hot, and I can't speak much to the CPU utilization of the OS, but I'm not sure what you're referring to on the Powerbooks. One problem recently has been G3 series Powerbooks (Wallstreet, not the new Lombards so much) being warm under operation. That I'll concede to you. But if you're talking about the 5300 series powerbooks that reportedly burst into flames, that wasn't so much a heat dissipation problem as faulty electronics in some of the early Lithium Ion batteries they used (If I recall correctly Apple was some of of the first to use them).

    I think that the most important consideration is how clear users keep the computer, ie, do they drape something over it in an extreme example? Keeping the vent holes open is important. Convection works great, but if you change the route air uses to travel through the computer it's going to get pretty dicey.

    Anyways, that's what I think, and although I wouldn't buy one, I think the new iMacs are quite a great value for what you get.

    Erik

  • Granted I am only a little experience with the macOS, but when I asked our MAC guys if booting from a disk was possible, they told me the system was way to big to do so.

    If you know of a way to boot any modern macintosh with a floppy, please email, although I'm pretty sure it is not possible.

    Can anyone explain the MAC boot up process? How might I boot a MAC off a linux floppy? What changes might I have to make to an existing ext2 formatted floppy which works fine on my i686?

  • I've had one for over a year in my home-built PC...

    You market that machine? Didn't think so! Any other System manufacturer put a slot loading DVD into there systems?
  • Not that you care, but Apple didn't really design the speakers. That was done by a little group called Harman-Kardon. Maybe you've heard of them?

  • Desktop Movie Making. (Score:3)

    by gig ( 78408 ) on Tuesday October 05, 1999 @10:11AM (#1636952)
    One cheap box with everything you need to make and edit home movies except the digital camcorder, and it's easy to use? There's been demand for that for a long time. Too bad Microsoft has been too busy making NT pretty to provide any leadership in that kind of thing.
  • It's also relying on FireWire for its external drive interface, and that doesn't sound so hot to me - Isn't most of the FireWire interface's power needed just to capture the video?

    I'm much curious about this because I'd love to own a machine capable of running Final Cut, since it looks like a really, really cool program. But without the capacity for additional internal IDE drives, it seems like it would be basically a toy in the video editing world.

    Anyone have real world performance in this area?

    D

    http://www.amazing.com/dv/dv-faq.html - my DV FAQ

    ----
  • Wow, gotta love those fruity (literally) colors...I was kinda hoping they'd abolish that...oh well :)

    Anyways, they seem to be semi powerful when you think about it...Firewire and DVD would make one worth buying, if some good OS supported them...but a lack of DVD Support in Linux (only other PPC OS that I can think of) sucks
  • Judging from Apple's policy with the BW G3's, rather than making any deep cuts with the existing Imac Series D, they're more likely to keep them at the same price and sweeten the pot by throwing in a printer and/or memory.
  • :MAC were never able to boot from a floppy

    Um, they used to ONLY be able to boot from floppy. In 1984 hard drives weren't too common on the desktop. Or am I dating myself here.
  • Despite this being an obvious troll, I will answer it.

    The external floppy was included. I had the option of having either the CD-ROM or the floppy built in. It's necessary for the laptop because that CD-ROM cannot be used as a boot device, unlike the SCSI/USB/Firewire devices on the iMac.

    Considering how my floppy uses a special connector, it would only be of use to people with the same type of notebook, who should already have one. Most of the time, it sits (detached) in the travel bag in case I ever need to use a rescue disk.


    --

  • That's pretty cool for iMac - seems a weird decision for HK, though.
  • Sony has a video capture application only. They use a "lite" version of Premiere to do the actual editing. What I hear from users is that the video is captured just fine (which is quite an impressive technical achievement), but editing and playback are very poor. For that reason, I can't recommend those machines.

    The Mac, on the other hand, is the best machine by far for editing DV. I have one; no fuss, no muss, no problems at all. Highly recommended.

    D

    ----

  • Isn't this argument over software subwoofer detection rather lame? After all, this problem was solved in a "plug and play" manner in hardware 40 years ago. (Or was someone too cheap to solder in a $.10headphone jack?)
  • FireWire and DVD are available on the $1299 model as well... Pretty nice deal I think. -n
  • worth buying, if some good OS supported them.

    There's always Mac OS X [apple.com], plays Quake2 better [everythingmac.com] than MacOS. Things will only get better for OS X Client when it appears, as it will have an new PowerPC native microkernel core. OS X should run fine on the new iMacs...
  • To go from $1299 to $1499 you add 64MB more RAM, 3 GB more HD and the graphite color, but all of the iMacs except the base model come with DVD and Firewire.
  • Over the weekend, I added yet another hard drive to my PowerCenter Pro 210. (A Mac clone for the uninitiated.) The PCPs shipped in a mid-tower case with three 5.25" accessible drive bays on the front bezel, one 3.5" drive bay not accessible through the bezel, and a bracket under the power supply that lets you hang two 3.5" drives for internal RAID. Nifty.

    My problem is that I've run out of drive bays. CD-ROM, Zip, Jaz all are in the 5.25" bays with two, 9.1GB UltraSCSI (part of the upgrade...) drives doing the RAID thing, and an old 2.0GB drive in the final 3.5" bay.

    Solutin? Yank the floppy and -- presto! -- one last 3.5" drive bay. I don't miss it at all... I don't even /have/ any floppies anymore. The Zip, Jaz, CD-RW, Travan, and Syquest work quite well, thank you :-)
  • Oops. Guess I'm thinking of the Apple-supplied Network Boot Disk, which gave you the ability to connect to an AppleShare server, which I generally did to do a network installation of the OS.

    In fact, the clouds now clear and I'm certain that this is what I was thinking of. I did have a few floppies that could boot PCI PowerMacs with MacTools Pro.

    I remember hating booting from the MacOS CD-ROM because it wouldn't let you mount AppleShare volumes. It was obviously read-only, which didn't work well with the AppleShare client at the time.

    So thanks /. -- if I ever buy a Mac again, I'll look forward to being able to boot from a floppy.

    Oops, maybe not.

    (And my Zip drive won't work, either.)
  • Actually, I've done some real-world video editing with EditDV on a G3, and in my experience modern ATA [extended IDE] drives work great and is, of course, much more cost-effective than SCSI.

    From the discussion of the Sun SPARC systems with IDE, I have the impression that IDE performance does fall over when you're doing multitasking. Fortunately, video capture doesn't require that - if a system can run a single process fast enough to capture the data, it will work. In my experience, it does.

    D

    ----
  • Bear in mind that Digital Video isn't just about $3,700 three-chip MiniDV camcorders like my Canon XL1. There's a new crop of $1,995 three-chip models, and there's Sony Digital8 (DV format, 8mm tapes) for the sub-$1,000 end.

    There are loads of gadget lovers who are going to love this stuff to death. I bought my beige G3 for basically the same purpose as the DV iMac and it was $ 2,800 plus monitor. This is very impressive work on the part of Apple.

    The only problem is the monitor's a shade small for video editing. They need a 17" model, and then, darn, I might even buy one.

    D

    ----
  • > for booting
    > off a floppy to bypass security measures.
    > The last two can be major problems for
    > sysadmins.

    The last PC BIOS setup that I had a look at had specific options for disabling a floppy boot or disabling the whole drive, as a security/anti-virus measure. In that case, why not make it an external USB device that you can buy if you want to, or not? Disbling a Mac floppy drive means unplugging the USB cable and putting the drive in the closet. If you need it, it's there for you to use the same drive on any number of Macs.

    I don't know how the x86 platform will ever drop a technology. I read that Intel has been trying to ditch the LPT and COM ports but Windows gives you problems on a machine that doesn't have them. Maybe a forward-looking Linux reference spec could drop the old stuff, but in that case, you'd have to ask if you would even keep the x86 processor when Linux runs on so many architectures.
  • This may have been said, but the HP-9000 servers at work had trayless CD drives; most DVD players, as far as I've seen, have this feature.
  • >> Good is Blueberry: 350 Processor, 32 RAM, 6 gigs, USB, Slot load CD, Rage 128 and Harmon/Kardon speakers.

    The $999 machine comes with 64 meg ram. After seeing the hardware Apple has come out with lately, I have a feeling I'll become a mac convert. I've been working with macs at work, and have really enjoyed the experience.

    And, I have to admit that the case stylings are cool. I don't care what all you macho geeky 'computers must be ugly' guys think; a nice package is never a bad thing. So in short, my next computer will most likely be a mac, provided Apple doesn't find some way to kill Linux support on the platform.

    Besides all this, just think what this means for non computer literate family members. My mom, for instance, is almost afraid of computers. iMacs are non threatening, fun looking, and compact. Practically, they're great for internet use, come with a very nice works suite, and have the power to handle pretty much anything your average user will want to do. Plus, I'd have to spend less time maintaining the things.

    --

  • One of the annoying things about these slot-loaders is that you can't play mini CD's in them. I have quite a few singles CD's from Japan that won't go into these slot-loading CD drives. You either need one of the typical tray CD drives (preferrably the kind where you snap in the CD, like on laptops and the old iMac) or you have to put the mini CD in an annoying adapter disc. Oh well, nobody uses the mini CD's in the US, but in Japan it's the only way that artists release singles.
  • > So it looks like we have yet another example
    > of Apple copying something that Microsoft did
    > before them.

    Damn. I missed the other ones. Please detail them here for me.
  • Answers: 1) Absolutely. You've got 11Mbit of wireless bandwidth...make good use of it. You could surely put 20 or 30 against each-other. Just as long as you're within 150ft of the AirPort hub. 2) The only *new* hardware to worry about is the ATI Rage128 AGP/2X graphics card. This should take the folks at LinuxPPC.org a couple of weeks to get functioning. DVD viewing won't work until the rest of the industry has it figured out anyway.
  • And netbios is a great protocol? Atalk is chatty, but it was designed for a pre-90's network, one without system adminstrators, and friggin windows nt boxes.

    AppleTalk worked. You plugged in a laserwriter, and hooked up 20 or 30 macs, and you could print to it. It still works.

    Windows still requires you to install the printer on each machine And Linux requires you to know what the address is.
  • I found a reference that said the G4 could be
    run in SMP systems, although the apple buy
    site doesn't appear to offer SMP systems.

    Can anybody direct me to some more info regarding
    the G4 and SMP?

    This would be appreciated, thanks....

    (Email or reply post is sufficient)
  • >>It's great that Apple finally recognizes their market and has put a big honking subwoofer in the case. Now if they would just strip out all the extraneous electronics in there that spoils the acoustics..

    The new iMacs don't have subwoofers built in; that's an extra $100. They do have improved speakers, though I don't know exactly by how much they've improved.

    --

  • The DV format is about 3.6 MB/sec including sound. My 233MHz Beige G3 does fine _editing_ that, and can supply the data to the camcorder for playback no problem. What it can't do is decompression in software in real-time and pump the uncompressed frames (~25MB/sec) to the screen. I capture video from my Sony DCR-TRV9 over firewire to a cheap maxtor IDE 17.2 GB drive, never losing a frame.
  • It has been interesting reading the various comments on Apple. I have noticed that there has been a change. I see less bashing on these pages. Maybe Apple is doing something right, or maybe we have a better picture of what they are trying to achieve. Probably both.

    Lets face it, the only two things really happening right now is Apple and Linux. They are the ones pushing the technology. sure there are mergers, and some software breakthroughs, but they haven't had the impact that that little blue box and that fat penguin has had.

    Go into an electronics store, they may not have the iMac, but the iMac is everywhere. It doesn't stop there, look at the new Colgate iMac biondi blue toothbrush. I'm not kidding.

    This machine, the iMac has had an impact far beyond and above the computer world. they have put a friendly face on technology, they have ripped it from its beige, stodgy conservative image.

    My wife, a technophobe is now using a green iMac. she has amazed me. She is reading and understanding the manuals. Her eyes don't glaze over when I talk tech to her. She has even learned some email tricks.

    This is the big plus for Apple. they have removed the distance between man and machine. They have made a machine that a person can get emotionally attached to. It's too cute to fear. It has character.

    You may not like the OS, or Steve jobs and some of Apples' policies, but Apple and the iMac could be the best thing to happen to the industry. those cute machines will bring more parents and their kids into the world of computers, and that is what we need.

    Schwinn always emphasized selling that first bike to a kid. You sell him the first bike, and you have him for life.

    I think Apple understands that.
  • I think it's pretty obvious why Apple compares the iMac's G3 and Rage 128 to Celeron and Rage Pro.

    The iMac is Apples low-end machine, and should be compared to other companies low ends, and then especially eMachine's eOne.

    The eOne comes with a Celeron 433 and Rage XL-graphix. I obviously havn't compared the two but I think the iMac will have a fair chance of winning every serious benchmarking-tests.



    - Henrik
  • After Jobs became Interim-CEO-For-Life of Apple, the business press applauded him for simplifying the company's product line. No more fumbling through a soup of model numbers -- there was just the iMac for regular consumers, the G3 for power users, and the G3 PowerBook for people who needed a laptop.

    And now the big news from Apple is ... three new and different brands of iMac.

  • &nbsp&nbsp I don't see how others doing bad things makes it OK for Apple to do bad things. &nbsp&nbsp I think Apple's dishonesty with benchmarks is shameful.

    &nbsp&nbsp I do agree though, that Apple is good about sticking to public standards. &nbsp I guess this is one example of the love/hate response Apple draws.

    --

  • Unless you have your computer completely out of the case, the CPU is STILL getting quite a bit of the air from the fans. And if it is open, well, 'nuff said. And I have no doubt that it has some form of heatsink, if not a massive heatsink...that also keeps it cooler. If I remember, I believe the G3 runs at 72 degrees with a single fan...not sure if it had a heatsink or not, but its still up on the K6...and try to get a K6 (no reason trying on a pentium!) to get below 32 degrees with a simple peltier (spelling???) and water cooling system...I've seen that done on a Mac... Blake
  • I use floppys all the time. When I'm in a computer lab, I just pop a floppy in the computer and keep whatever document I need on it. Then when I'm on my computer at home, I don't need to get on the internet to download something. I do keep a backup of my files on my unix account at school, but it's much easier to keep track of the most up-to-date copy when it's always in the same place. It also prevents having bunches of possibly sensitive documents spread among bunches of lab computers.
  • PCI PowerMacs with Open Firmware (which includes just about anything after and including the era of Mac clones) can boot off nearly anything with the right OF config. The Mac OS has been a little to big to fit on a floppy for several years now, But I know that LinuxPPC and NetBSD/macPPC have both used a boot floppy for installation.
    Joshua E Cook
    sahib@earthling.net

  • Wow, that would kick ass. Gimme analog video in, or some way to convert analog to digital (?) so I can plug it into the firewire port, and I just might buy one.

    Alas, I think it also needs a SCSI port so you can copy stuff to DDS tape. Hard disks still aren't big enough. A gigabyte here, a gigabyte there, pretty soon you're talking real storage.

    But no kidding, they are getting really close to making an appliance that I would buy without regard to hack value.


    ---
  • I'm in college now, and my parents gave me an iMac. I love it, but at first I was very upset that there was no floppy drive. Now that I've been using it for a while, though, I've realized that I don't really need one. I have an account with the Unix server, but I honestly don't use that, either. I think perhaps floppies are becoming obsolete... you can't store that much on them anyway.
  • If it's anything like Final Cut, what you do is capture it at a low quality, do all the editing you want to at the low quality, which is easy for an iMac to handle. When you get the clip edited the way you want, it captures the video again at a high quality, except now it only gets the part you want in the clip, and it renders all your effects at a high quality (you get a low quality preview) and assembles the entire thing at a high quality - it's really pretty cool. I got a demo of Final Cut and I was really impressed.
  • No fan? Convection cooled? Wonder what the projected lifespan is. Coulda fried eggs atop the last FAN-COOLED iMac I had my hands on. Couldn't believe how hot what little air was coming out of it was. A marvel it didn't MELT.
  • No actually. Very few designers will use flatscreens because the colors are not consistant. It's already very difficult to match printed colors to colors on screen, and I for one avoid doing so whenever possible. It would be a damn lot harder if I couldn't shift my head any.

    LCDs will probably never overcome this flaw. I'm hoping that plasma or color-changing polymers or something will work better. Sadly, this means I'm stuck with CRTs for another 10 years at least.

    (also LCDs will always be expensive compared to CRTs because of the difficulty in manufacturing them. LCD plants are built on a 'glass mountain')
  • Alas, maybe here in Australia where the iMacs are around $2500!!! I know nobody who has one, and 100's that have PCS. I know of no school that is buying them (such as secondary, hay don't really seem them at Uni).
    If you can buy a window system for 1/2 the price, who the heck will buy your system? When half the software is not being written for you (so you have Microsoft office, but for how long).
    Hey, I love a mac! But when they are seriously out of my price rang (considering I have to buy new software), and I can get a lot better system from my corner shop for a far less price.
    Sure Macs selling heaps of iMacs for the short term, I don't believe this can substain.. Hopefully I am wrong, but in the end I don't really care as I wont be buying one.. my friends don't have one, I don't use it at work, I don't use it at uni, hay I don't use macs (as there is none around).
  • But without the capacity for additional internal IDE drives, it seems like it would be basically a toy in the video editing world.



    Not to flame, this is true though.
    No one, and I mean No one at all ever has used IDE for serious video editing. You can put 500 TerraBytes worth of IDE drives in a machine and it is still a toy for video editing.

    That is why most macs ever released have had SCSI.

    And now Firewire.

    Also there is NO capture.
    That is what firewire is. Digital Video. It goes from the tape in the camera to ram (or hard drive) no Analog to Digital conversion necessary.


  • I for one think they make great pages. I can't stand reading things that go waaay across the page and only take up three lines with 256 characters per line. Perhaps you're reading it at 48pt.

    Perhaps your web browser window is too wide.

    It's the web browser's job to format text so that you can read it, not the page author's job. When people start treating HTML as a layout language, it becomes impossible.


    ---
  • Anyone who thinks they can get decent video editing quality on this machine is kidding themselves. For base-level quality, MJPEG requires 80kb/ FRAME. That's 2.5 megs a second (sustained, not that bullshit 40 mb/s that people quote, which is burst rate), and 25 megs for a ten second clip. Wanna edit a 20 minute movie? That's 3 gigabytes of data that you need to throw around at will. And remember, the amount of source material is always much more than the final length.
  • Not flamebait.

    I am not saying Mac is crap, far from it!! I would love one, but in the end here in Australia they are far to dear to buy..

    What good is it if your the only one in the street with it? Esp. if you are new to the system. What good is the system if you don't use it at work? What good is it if your friends don't have it? What good is it if you have allready got software for windows?

    Hay, hope mac is arround for another day. But in the end Mac is just a small segment of the market, compared to PC's..

    If your happy with mac good, I hope you stay with them.. But since hardly anyone is using them why the heck buy one?
  • &nbsp Come now, let's not be stupid. One would need at least a 450mhz G3 to smoothly surf the web. Why else would Intel ship chips designed to speed up net access? People must need it, or Intel wouldn't make it. Same for Apple- they know how much horsepower is needed to do what most people need... :-)


    --

  • Re:Bah (Score:2)

    by m3000 ( 46427 )
    Haven't we been over this? I use my floppy drive a lot. Mostly to boot up Linux, and then also to transfer HTML documents and source code from school to home. While floppy are small, they are on almost every computer, which gives it a HUGE user base. I guess for a business it's totally dead, but for the home, well, not quite.
  • Do not mock the mighty beige Mac keyboard. Those things are solid. They feel great. They use reverse wired phone cords, with jacks on the front of the case. They have their own processors.

    Only two keyboards stand supreme above the beige Mac keyboards. The first is the Apple Extended II keyboard (affectionately known as the Nimitz) and the other is the original IBM PC keyboard, which weighs more than many men.

    Microsofts keyboards aren't even made out of solid battleship steel! And people buy that junk?
  • mmmm... Woz IIgs... mmmmm....
  • Performance Comparisons Processor Performance iMac 400MHz PowerPC G3 13.1 iMac 350MHz PowerPC G3 11.5 Pentium III-based PC 550 MHz 7.4 Celeron-based PC 500 MHz 6.7 K6-2-based PC 400 MHz 5.5

    Oh, yes, certainly the new iMac is 2.5x faster at everything than the K6-2 400. These marketroids must be stopped!

    And, I dunno about graphics boards, but they compared the iMac's Rage 128 to a Rage Pro Turbo-equipped Celeron system ... how meaningful is that?

    Note: this post should not be taken as an endorsement of the inherent superiority of the x86 architecture to that of the PPC -- I just hate these misleading benchmarks.

  • Oh the colors. Can we please have black now? Maybe black and grey? Surely it can't be THAT difficult. I haven't owned a mac in my life, but I did use one from 3rd-6th grade one-day a week, I always got in trouble for makin' games and explosions. They were the first machines I programmed on. If my raise goes thru, I'll get one for Christmas...and that new monitor, that thing KICKS ASS! With DVD, and surround speakers, well thats just cool. I'll have to see how it likes my nework. Anybody got one 'o 'dem 'montors?
  • The question now is, how cheap are you going to be able to get the old iMacs for. If these are only $999-$1499, the older models should be downright cheap!
    I don't know to much about Mac's, but if the older version will run Linux... they are going to make, some great, cheap X terminals... One in the Kitchen, one in the Living room to server up MP3's, one in the bedroom as an Alarm clock... Cool!
  • Yeah, but they sure as hell can't boot *Windows* off a CD can they. That's the point. You get a fully functioning OS of a bootable CD on the Mac.
  • Not according to the Apple Store hotline. The new iMacs don't require OS9, and will ship with 8.6 until OS9 releases. One rep told me late October OS9 release. Another said unknown and the only way to be sure was to wait for OS9 release and order then.

    Funny thing is... when I tried to order a new iMac, it told me 20 day wait... which would be late October!

    Anyone know the real answer to whether the new iMac will immediately ship with OS9 (or must we wait)?

  • Re:Bah (Score:2)

    by doce ( 31638 )
    How much does the average (or even high end) user REALLY use removable media, aside from CDs? I haven't used a floppy disk in either my PC at home OR my Mac(s) at work in years even before the iMacs first came out. I have a built in Zip drive in my Blue G3 at work, but I can count on one hand the number of times that I've used it.

    The floppy served us well, but face it, it's DEAD. What fits on a floppy, anyway? Nothing of note, certainly. In the age of File Servers, Intranets, Extranets, and Internets, re-writable removable media isn't all that necesary.

    Our advertising agency does virtually ALL media delivery electronically through AP AdSend or Wam!Net, with a smidgeon of ISDN running around, and all intra-office file sharing is accomplished through our file servers.

    All hail the benevolent Floppy! Her years were long, hard, and well served... but her day is gone.

  • New iMacs (Score:3)

    by Morchella ( 18055 ) on Tuesday October 05, 1999 @10:25AM (#1637106) Homepage
    I watched (okay listened mostly -- slow modem) to the live webcast. Jobs still knows how to manipulate a crowd. The new iMacs are impressive for what they are. The redesigned cases and reformualted colors (more translucency, and brighter (if you can imagine)) are sure to turn just as many heads as the old ones. The new sound system looks good (the sub-woofer is a $99 USB add-on (and really shows how far Apple is able to take plug & play).

    These machines are all convection-cooled. No fan. That makes them quieter than anything on the market. I know a big complaint about the original iMac was how noisy its fan was. Well, the fan is out. (just don't plan on overclocking any of these new iMacs).

    The top-end iMac ($1499) features digital video editing and authoring software built-in, as well as FireWire (the only iMac to have it).

    Upgrading the new iMacs should also be easier, thanks to a swing-down door which gives direct access to the memory and airport card slots.

    But the thing to remember is that this is still a machine sqaurely targeted at the computer/illiterate/phobic. Slashdotters in general need not apply. Might make one heck of a Linux box, though ;-)

  • iBook failure? (Score:3)

    by Millennium ( 2451 ) on Tuesday October 05, 1999 @10:26AM (#1637108)
    How can you possibly judge something to be a failure when it hasn't even been available for a month yet? The only failure I've seen on Apple's part concerning the iBook is the failure to make as many iBooks as people are buying... that's hardly a failure on the iBook's part (if anything it's a great success for the iBook).
  • Wow, 11 replies to my short post. I guess I hit a nerve. :-)

    Well, I have to thank all the Mac zealots out there for educating me on PowerPC power consumption and heat output.

    My turn.

    My AMD K6-II running at 350 MHz never goes above 75 degrees or so. I know: I have a temperature monitor attached to it. The CPU is far from the primary source of heat in a computer.

    The power supply, hard drive spindle motors, and pushing-the-limit graphics hardware are what generate the heat. My hard drives hover around 90 degrees, and that is with two fans blowing directly on them. My NVidida Riva TNT seems to idle at 110 degrees, and gets warmer under heavy use.

    Please go on to tell me how the same PC hard drives and video chipset that Apple uses somehow runs cooler in the iMac?

    As far as the floppy drive is concerned, yes, Apple has sold tons of iMacs without floppy drives. And the number one iMac accessory? You guessed it -- rewritable, removable storage.

    Do not get me wrong -- I am not advocating the venerable 1.44MB floppy disk for modern use. However, I think Apple was wrong to ignore the huge installed base of existing Macs with 1.44 MB floppies. Furtheremore, I believe that providing a system without backup capablility is reckless. Apple should have picked something to take the place of the floppy drive.

    I think the SuperDrive would have been a good choice -- backwards compatability and good sized storage at the same time. Alternatively, the Zip drive has a large installed base, and you can sacrifice backwards compatability. Heck, a combination CD+DVD+CD-RW wouldn't even need extra space.
  • Go back and read my post.

    The microprocessor is not the source of most of the heat in a system.

  • Re:Bah (Score:2)

    by MouseR ( 3264 )
    I have first hand experience with iMacs as NCs. Our iMacs at the office boot faster off the net than they boot off their hard disks.

    I classify that as efficient.

    I haven't used my floppy drive in ages. In fact, it's so much encrusted in dust that it's probably not usable by now, unless I were to give it a really good clean up.

    Be flabbergasted if you will. But more than 2 million people out there seem to think as I do that floppies are out. Just as 5inch floppies were when Apple "forcefully" ditched them for the 3inch floppies.
  • ...and no fan. That's right: No fan. So now iMac is not just the coolest personal computer out there. It's also the quietest. (http://www.apple.com/imac/features.html [apple.com] )

    This makes me worry. The new iMac is a pretty cool design from a pure hardware standpoint. But leaving out the fan might be a bad idea. Half the home-market PCs these days have heat problems with at least one, often two, fans in them. Leaving it out entirely may lead to heat-related failures down the road.

    And still no floppy drive. I mean, okay, I can see that a few people don't use it, and others need more then 1.44 MB. So bundle a SuperDrive on some models, then, and have a low-end unit without the floppy if you want. But having no removable, rewritable media is still a dumb idea, IMNSHO.

    What next, no keyboard? :)

  • $999 or is that $599 (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The iMacs have always been great consumer boxes with one of the big complaints that @ $1199 how can they compete with &lt$1K or lower wintel machines. Alot of those cheap wintel machines get that way via rebates for ISP contracts. Apple finally jumped on that bandwagon. Compuserve is offering $400 rebates [apple.com] on iMacs purchageed through J&R and CompUSA with a 2 year contract. That brings the low end model (enough for alot of consumers) down to $599, the DV down to $899 and the DV SE to $1099. That seems like an excelent pricepoint to me. Hawks (ya know, one of these days I gotta get me a /. login)

  • and now: sound and graphics rule. (Score:3)

    by eshefer ( 12336 ) on Tuesday October 05, 1999 @10:35AM (#1637166) Homepage Journal
    smart desicions in the product design stage - the true reason behind Apples revival (and I don't mean Flavors) I mean strokes of briliance like dropping the ADB bus from the original Imac and sticking on USB - that way USB makers had to make drivers for iMacs (since iMac was the only platform that addopted USB in high numbers). the same tactic Apple is appling to Wireless networking (with Airport - latching on to an emarging standard early, ensuring support from thirs party manufacturers)

    The new design also highlights some interesting design desicions.

    The original iMac was about Industrial design and esthetics (as well as simplicity and access to the net) the new iMac is about sound quality and home digital videos.

    It still remains to be seen if digital Video will become as big as Desk top publishing (which is one of the things Jobs said in his Keynote). Personaly I'm not convinced of this, the prices of Digital cam corders are still too high for it to become practicle in the consumer space, IMHO.

    But the thing that Might actualy work to make the new iMac a best seller, is the sound speaker system cuppled with the DVD drive. I am kind of puzzled why they didn't debut a set of additional speakers for the full serround effect, But I'm sure some fast USB periferal maker will jump on the opertunity soon ennough.

    The fact that the new machine has no fan, and is therfore persumably quite ennough to be concidered a consumer Hi-fi device is also a interesting point. now all thats missing for the collage student is a MP3 player that can get MP3 files from a remote computer using wireless networking..
    --------------------------------
  • Actually, it's plenty meaningful, on two levels.

    Keep in mind: these benchmarks are meant to compare the iMac to other computers in its class (meaning concumer computers in this case).

    Therefore, the benchmarks are revealing on two levels: first of all that this machine has the best technology in its class, and that it's faster than anything else in its class. Part of the point is that PC manufacturers tend to scrimp big time when it comes to their underpowered "consumer" models. The iMac, while it's no G4, is hardly scrimping in any aspect.
  • Heh. I wonder who's decision it was to put "A Bug's Life" by also-Jobs-run Pixar on the top of the stack of DVDs on that page. Was it someone trying to suck up to the Steve or did the Steve himself make it known that he would like it that way?

    -=-=-=-=-

  • Re:... (Score:3)

    by Mister Attack ( 95347 ) on Tuesday October 05, 1999 @10:43AM (#1637190) Journal
    At risk of getting moderated as flamebait, I'm going to strongly disagree with this one. Here goes...

    Oh boy! More fruity goodness from the same people that brought you AppleTalk! *grumble*

    Good Lord! We know AppleTalk sucked, but that's a many-year-old technology. You would have done better to say "Oh Boy! More fruity goodness from the same people that brought you FireWire!"

    Fact is, Apple's been producing lots of exciting new technologies that go way beyond the "sexy look," as you so aptly put it. The sexy look is just Apple's way of catching your attention so you'll take a closer look and (hopefully) say "hey! this looks like a really good deal! I want one!"

    As for something better than a "translucent port-a-potty," why don't you have a look at the new G4's? In addition to a really cool industrial design, the G4 Macs are really fast and (finally!) competitively priced! The Programming Board at Dartmouth* has one or two of these, and they're just incredible. Now, if I can just get them to install LinuxPPC...

    The point is, Apple's come a long way, and they have a lot more to offer than bright colors. I can't wait for the 1Ghz copper G4's!

    *As always, my opinions are my own, and not necessarily those of Dartmouth College or any affiliated organization.

  • Tomsrtbt [toms.net] fits on a floppy. :-)

    ----
  • How about the slot load DC/DVD a la a car stereo CD player? Maybe more to break? Awe, no more drink holder jokes...

    Apple is still obviously trying to drive the USB accessory market by still offering that crappy keyboard and mouse, along with the lack of removeable media. I think they are smart for doing it. The Wintel market is sure not doing much for USB. USB should have taken over already, but it hasn't, except for Apple machines.

    The iMac needs no fan because the PowerPC runs so cool. It is a good chip design, and I wish my computer made no noise. Then I could leave it on without disturbing my sleep.

    The ass shots of the iMac are kinda funny looking, check them out at Apple's site. Their product marketing has gone too far with that one.

    EC
  • The home PC's on the market with heat problems are x86's with big power consumption and CPU fans. Such things don't exist in the Mac world unless you are messing with overclocking. PPC cpus are just much more power efficient. It's a big deal, ESPECIALLY on portables where the PPC architecture has it all over the x86.

    As far as the floppy drives are concerned - the market has spoken - Apple is selling millions of iMacs without floppy drives.
  • Give me a break. When you sell millions of machines per year you are always going to get a few that slip into the cracks. Comprehensive surveys like JD Power always rate Apple service and support very highly.

    As far as speed goes, how the hell can you make a statement like that? The results are so dependent on what application is used that the only thing you can say for sure is that if you want to run MS Office, stick with Windows (big surprise).

  • please remember that Apple didn't create FireWire, they didn't create USB, they didn't create the G4, they didn't create the CODECs which power QuickTime, etc etc etc... don't give them too much credit now. =)
    Also, us nerds should know that the reason they are fruity isn't to impress us. It's to impress the dumb american computer illertate consumer. To make it an appliance to them, and to make it look less intimidating.
    iMacs have nothing to do with us. The G4 Professional on the other hand... =)


    _________
  • But leaving out the fan might be a bad idea. Half the home-market PCs these days have heat problems with at least one, often two, fans in them.

    This is because other than macs all home-market PCs use x86 processors which run MUCH hotter than PPC chips.

    according to http://infopad.eecs.berkeley.edu/CIC/summary/local /
    A PPC G3 typically draws something like 3-6 watts
    a PII something like 7-8 with peaks well above 18
    A K6-III draws something around 12 typically.

    from personal experince, I have been almost burnt by touching an x86 chip -after the computer has been off for a minute or two. With one of the G3s, you can easily open the case and touch the heatsink while the computer is running and feel only mild warmth.

    Also, most PCs come in cases which were not well designed for anything other than being a rectangle. If done properly, convection can be amasingly powerful (If I recall my Tom Clancy, the US Navy uses coolant convection as the primary coolant for its Nuclear reactors on modern subs)

    In sum, the convection thing may work quite well.

    So bundle a SuperDrive on some models, then, and have a low-end unit without the floppy if you want.

    IMHO, the iMac IS the low-end unit. some 2+ million people apparently get along without the floppy, so I think this was a good choice on apple's part.
  • Call me skeptical, but I firmly refuse to believe that you could shove anything into a space as small as the speaker ports on an iMac and have it sound good. Apple apparently disagrees with me, though, saying it "stands the world of PC sound on its ear."

    On one of the pages, they describe the audio system as having "bass performance normally heard only in $50,000 automobiles." Who here uses car stereo technology as a yardstick for audio quality? Then again, who uses SPEC marks as a yardstick for computer quality? Oh, wait, never mind.

    Oh, well. Typical market-speak from Apple. This is about par for the course, I guess.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • I remember seeing a Bose product demonstration where they had two large speakers mounted up on the wall. They started to play some music, and it came out with incredibly realistic sound. Then the saleswoman pressed a button, and the speaker cases folded out to reveal a pair of cubical speakers each about 2" on a side.

    Don't doubt how good small speakers can sound -- especially if you haven't heard them yet. Additionally, Harman/Kardon will be marketing a product called the iSub (groan) for bass, just as the aforementioned Bose stereo system had a subwoofer tucked away on the bottom.
  • ...but it apears that I go to the Apple page to look into the new iMacs and I'm greeted by a crowd of brash, brightly dressed, young computers. And they're mooning me. Hmph. Kids these days.

    :)

  • Too bad... (Score:3)

    by Graymalkin ( 13732 ) on Tuesday October 05, 1999 @11:25AM (#1637236)
    I already have 5 computers. The new iMac is really cool in my ever so humble opinion, it's what most people want a computer to be. You turn it on and it works with no setup and few wires. If you naysay the lack of a fan, stop yourself. The PowerPC chip runs very very cool because it uses this wonderful thing we call copper. Copper lets the chips run on a lower voltage (1.1v) instead of the 3.3v for Intel's chips which means you get alot less heat and alot less powerr consumption. The G3 in my Powerbook is the same chip in a desktop Mac. My powerbook is the only one of my computers that I could leave running alnight without keeping me awake. I think it's also a great idea to include Airport hardware with the iMac, it really looks like technology thats going to beat the pants off phone line and power line networking in the home especially because it uses the 802.3 standard so any device you buy can work on it. iWebpads in the future maybe? I did notice something funny about the iMac though, when you turn it off it wilkl save it's state and whe nyou powerup again you can start where you left off, this is a feature found only before on their Powerbooks (either when you put the screen down or the battery is about to die also when you set it to sleep) up it just puts that info back into the RAM, I'm not so sure if thats so good for a desktop but it'll be interesting to see if it's a featurew we'll see in alot of PC's from now on.
  • If it weren't for the first post b.s. I would have moderated you up for being funny.
  • The new iMac is pretty good, but the OS 9 demo was interesting as well. If you plug in a USB/Firewire device that your computer doesn't have drivers for, it automatically downloads the correct driver. Cool! It's a shame Linux seems to be almost deliberately obtuse when you need to add new hardware. I think I'll get a tangerine DV iMac.

    I can't wait for the ability to plug-and-play RAM, and extra processors, while the computer's still on...
  • I really fully agree with this guy. I can't understand why people insist on creating metaphors in the computer world from things that translate really poorly to the CRT. The Interface Hall of Shame should start cataloguing web sites, too, because this kind of design must be stopped.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • apple may not be doing the right thing with benchmarks, but how do you play fair with the intel/microsoft crowd (the politicians of modern technology)?

    otoh, apple is doing *exactly* the right thing by consumers with the imac... usb and firewire are easy to use interfaces, a dozen removable media *formats* (not just products) will be available if-and-when the new computer user needs heavy-duty archiving. anything other than cd/dvd rom becomes a potential liability.

    if you need scsi, get the supercomputer ;) kuma
  • I run BeOS as my primary desktop OS and unfortunately it does not support playback of encoded DVD movies. This support may appear in R5

    Details may be found here [be.com].

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