Posted on 12/28/2004 11:09:37 PM PST by HAL9000
December 28, 2004 - With iPod-savvy Windows users clearly in its sights, Apple is expected to announce a bare bones, G4-based iMac without a display at Mac Expo on January 11 that will retail for $499, highly reliable sources have confirmed to Think Secret.The new Mac, code-named Q88, will be part of the iMac family and is expected to sport a PowerPC G4 processor at a speed around 1.25GHz. The new Mac is said to be incredibly small and will be housed in a flat enclosure with a height similar to the 1.73 inches of Apple's Xserve. Its size benefits will include the ability to stand the Mac on its side or put it below a display or monitor.
Along with lowering costs by forgoing a display (Apple's entry-level eMac sells for $799 with a built-in 17-inch CRT display), the so-called "headless" iMac will allow Apple's target audience -- Windows users looking for a cheap, second PC -- to keep their current peripherals or decide on their own what to pair with the system, be it a high-priced LCD display or an inexpensive display. Sources except the device to feature both DVI and VGA connectivity, although whether this will be provided through dual ports or through a single DVI port with a VGA adapter remains to be seen.
The new Mac is expected to have a Combo drive only, but possibly an upgrade path to a SuperDrive at a higher price. It is unclear how big the hard drive capacity will be, although sources indicate it will be between 40GB and 80GB.
Other expected features of the iMac include: * 256MB of RAM * USB 2.0 * FireWire 400 * 10/100 BASE-T Ethernet * 56K V.92 modem * AirPort Extreme support
In terms of software, Apple will include a special iLife suite (minus iDVD) as well as AppleWorks, sources believe.
The new Mac is expected to be introduced by Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs at his keynote address on Tuesday, January 11, but is not expected to be available until later in the first quarter. Sources indicate "issues" have arisen in production of the new Mac, but that Apple never planned on shipping the new device immediately upon introduction. The plan is to air freight the new model from its manufacturing plants in Asia for at least the first three months of shipments, sources report.
The announcement of the new, inexpensive Mac will be a dream come true for Mac aficionados who have begged and pleaded for years to see just such a PC. Until now, the company has downplayed speculation that it would get into the low-end PC market. "In terms of our pricing, I feel very good about where each of our product lines are priced," Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO, said in October. "To date, we have chosen not to compete in the sub-$800 desktop market and have put that R&D investment in expanding our products in the music area, in software, and in hardware."
So what has changed to motivate Apple in producing a low-cost Mac? In a word, iPod.
"Think of your traditional iPod owner," said a source. "This new product will be for a Windows user who has experienced the iPod, the ease of use of the iTunes software, and has played around with a Mac at an Apple retail store just long enough to know he'd buy one if it were a little cheaper."
Apple executives announced on October 13 that 45% to 50% of its retail stores customers bought a Mac as their first PC or were new to the platform in the fiscal fourth-quarter. The company has refused to divulge more exacting figures on iPod buyers who also buy a Mac, for competitive reasons.
According to sources, internal Apple surveys of its retail store customers and those buying iPod's showed a large number of PC users would be willing to buy a Mac if it were cheap enough, less of a virus carrier (which all Macs already are), and offered easier to use software solutions not available on Windows-based PCs. Now, Apple feels they have the answer.
Apple has been working on the low-end Mac for almost a year, sources report. Indications are Apple has been working mostly on finding the right mix of price, performance and features that would motivate Windows users to consider a Mac, and less on the actual engineering of the product. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to design a bare-bones PC," said one source familiar with the project. "What it takes is a team of marketing and software experts to find the right mix to convince Windows users to buy a Mac at a price that is not much more than the cost of an iPod."
Sources familiar with the product cautioned that the low-end Mac will be marketed towards a totally different audience than those who traditionally buy even a $799 eMac. "This product is not going to be about performance," said a source close to Apple. "This is going to be the basics, but with just as much of a focus on software as any Mac could ever be."
Amazing how the prices drop.
eMachines are great computers. Unlike other low-priced models that load up the machine with generic junk, eMachines uses name-brand components for its hard drive, graphics card, etc.
Yep. They do VERY well. My first was an old eMachines 433i, and it lasted from August 2000 to November 2003. Added memory and other stuff, and it did fine.
Then I got a new one. Never really considered another brand.
My previous model was the eMonster, purchased in 2000. First one was defective out of the box. The second model that they shipped worked like a charm until earlier this year, when the fan gave out and the system started to run sluggishly, even after a fresh format of the hard drive.
Yep - this rumor flies every expo - and doesn't appear.
Apple execs have explicitly declared that they DON'T what to have anything to do with the budget PC market.
Apple continues because of the high profit margin (as opposed to other manufacturers) of their product line. Another issue is that the "cheap-o" computer buyers often are the highest technical support expense group.
I just don't see it happening.
Well, for me, it was the need to upgrade - I figured the time to upgrade was BEFORE something happened.
These dissing matches are ridiculous, especially when they are over cheap, bottom-dwelling configurations.
None of you Mac afficionados want that piece of junk (the Apple one) and none of us PC users do either (the Dell and/or Apple piece of junk). I'm embarrased for you guys that you are even acting excited over it, a piece of junk. (Does make one wonder if you've been sneaking a belt or two of the iKool Aid!)
Apple needs to stick to the high end. These forays into cheapness require too much smoke, mirrors, and sticky tape to pull off while maintaining even a modicum of the Mac Mystique. They wind up looking pathetic and, worse, pandering (from their lofty perch).
Reports of your demise were premature, I see ;)
"Won't tell us very much about the G4, will it?"
Good catch.
iKool Aid is some potent stuff, is it not?
People might buy a cheapo PC/WinTel to Surf the web and do some word processing... but what would be the point of buying a cheapo Mac?
Quit twisting words. By "same clock" I mean "clock-for-clock," same thing if you get two at the same clock. And you can. The fastest MPC 7xxx ("G4") that Apple sells is 1.5GHz (not 1.33), and it will absolutely blow away a P4 1.5GHz. Since the original P4 was slower than even a lower-clocked PIII, this latest G4 is probably more than twice as fast as that quite old Pentium chip. But that's not a comparison of what's on the market now, so I'd consider that invalid.
Still, clock-for-clock, a G5 or G4 is faster than a Pentium, same as with AMD chips (I remember an Athlon 1100 trouncing a P4 1.5 in tests). The real reason for this is that when Intel made the P4 they counted solely on high clock speed for performance, for a long time not bothering to improve the microarchitecture to make it more efficient for each clock. This worked well for them for the couple years following the P4's release, but the speed curve got pretty shallow around 3GHz.
Following recent news, including cancellation of the 4GHz P4, Intel has pretty much admitted that this strategy has hit a wall. IBM and AMD (who have a fab technology sharing agreement) already have more efficient designs for their chips, and can slowly bump clock speeds to stay ahead of Intel while they play catch-up.
which claimed "a G4 Mac is typically about double the speed of a Pentium IV with the same clock speed." Sorry, no.
I don't agree with that either. Maybe on very specialized SIMD operations, but otherwise, no.
eMachines suck. I should know, I have one. Never again.
Safety, ease of use.
Never seen anything to substantiate that. Considering that dual 1GHz G4's tend to come up well short against a single P4 2 GHz, I'm not sure that can be substantiated. Yes, the initial P4 was slower than an equivalently clocked PIII - if you want G4 versus PIII, here you go.
It's still a Windows machine.
Good luck with the virii and spyware. I spent a fair amount of time battling them in my day. Now I'm happy to be home getting real work done with my Mac instead.
But if you love to shoot aliens, enjoy. (I don't).
D
For some odd reason, I just don't seem to get viruses... and I don't even use anti-virus software. I do, on occasion, scan my computer with Trend Micro's online virus checker.
In fact, I have read conspiracy theories that it is the virus software that attracts viruses in the first place. I guess I'll put that theory to a test, since I've just purchased Trend Micro's PC-Chilling Virus/Spam/Spyware software.
You're dreaming. For that price, you can buy a Dell with more capability (monitor, more memory, etc).
I think we'll see a lot of Dell monitors attached to those $499 Macs.
Notice in your link that in various tests the slower G4 was faster than a higher-clocked PIII. The P4 is slower per-clock than a PIII. Complete the logic.
In your Digital Video test, the G4 was hampered by a new, unoptimized operating system. In those days the OS's GUI sucked up a lot of processing power, before it was later accelerated using Quartz Extreme. Speed improvements since then have OS X being much more efficient -- they make it faster every release (unlike another OS I know).
But none of this really matters for anything, and can only be guessing. I'd need this Apple machine, a Celeron and a Sempron all together to find out how the Apple stacks up against the competition.
And it really doesn't matter because in this market speed doesn't mean much. Small, cheap, quiet, low-power consumption and able to do basic jobs is what I'd look for.
I'd characterize that page as more of a mixed bag - here are results, IIRC, on that page showing a PIII-500 comfortably exceeeding a G4 at the same speed. Anyway, I don't know how all this got going, but I do agree that this machine is not intended for the speed obsessed. If it turns out to exist at all, that is ;)
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