Apple to drop sub-$500 Mac bomb at Expo

ThinkSecret.com ^ | December 28, 2004 | "Nick dePlume"

[Swordmaker]

Well, if there was no keyboard, mouse, or hard drive would you still say that "Apple was selling a $XXX computer"? If you got one of these "computers" for a kid for christmas, would the kid think that you had gotten him a computer?

Rodney, Apple IS NOT SELLING A COMPUTER WITHOUT A KEYBOARD, MOUSE, or HARD DRIVE... so your hypothetical is just hot air.

[Rodney King]

Rodney, Apple IS NOT SELLING A COMPUTER WITHOUT A KEYBOARD, MOUSE, or HARD DRIVE... so your hypothetical is just hot air

The question is, what is a computer? The consensus here is that a "computer" does not need to have all the neccessary parts. So I am just trying to figure out where to draw the line.

[Question_Assumptions]

Watch iBook and eMac prices when they release new models. Both can and do drop below $800 every now and then to clean out old stock. The iBook is highly recommended.

[noblejones]

Don't get me wrong, David, I want this to happen. I still prefer my MDD g4 to the g5 they got me at work. But his rumor appears every year. Heck, I remember the rumor that a "dumbed down" version of my Q950 would come out under $2,000. Such deals!

[cowboyway]

If it's any consolation, Jobs himself has been known to sell at or near the bottom

I bought lower than I sold, but it stayed so low so long that I couldn't see letting the money just sit there with such a low return.

[antiRepublicrat]

You're shifting the goalposts - I don't blame you, but the original claim was that a 1.25 GHz G4 would match a 2.5 GHz P4. Sorry, but no.

I'm not. My claim was that a G4 is faster than a P4 at the same clock, and that's true. The G4 line will never be able to make up for the clock speed difference between it and the faster Pentiums and Athlon/Opterons -- that's why we have the G5.

But it is cheap and runs very cool, so it has a good place in the small, cheap computer market. About coolness, the 7488 (if they use it) has a thermal dissipation of 10 watts at 1.4GHz, vs. a Celeron at 2.2GHz (likely comparable performance) taking 57 watts.

[Psycho_Bunny]

Why Apple still hasn't released an inexpensive, entry-level computer is one of the great mysteries of the IT revolution.

 

[antiRepublicrat]

Actually, I didn't -- isn't this what the guy asks? (With the follow up response something like "but... this goes to 11!")

You're right. I loved the little pause "... These go to eleven." I don't think either fully understood the other's point.

[Zechariah11]

A good, reasoned response. Thanks.

[antiRepublicrat]

The question is, what is a computer? The consensus here is that a "computer" does not need to have all the neccessary parts.

For this market I think the least we could expect would be case, power supply, motherboard, memory, processor, hard drive, optical drive, video, the standard ports, and OS.

Keyboard and mouse are optional, although included ones are so cheap that they should probably ship with any new system just in case the buyer doesn't already have them (I'm not dumping my Logitech keyboard/mouse for what comes with any new computer, even a Mac). Monitor is definitely optional, as lots of people are just replacing their current machines, and it's easy to order a monitor with the computer.

[VeniVidiVici]

A $499 Mac. Apple will sell tons of these things.

Jobs is about 20 years too late.

Apples are ok but not flexible enough for me.

[jordan8]

I bought the folks an HP 2.93 GHz computer with a 17" CRT monitor for $468 this Christmas.

[Just Dan]

true but that was when it crashed from $80

[jordan8]

That's a Celeron from WallyWorld with XP home.

[general_re]

My claim was that a G4 is faster than a P4 at the same clock, and that's true.

Well, no, that's not true either, and even if it was, it's sort of moot insofar as the fastest G4 is clocked at 1.33 GHz, whereas the slowest P4 was introduced at 1.4 GHz. In any case, to revisit the record, the post I was responding to was #43, which claimed "a G4 Mac is typically about double the speed of a Pentium IV with the same clock speed." Sorry, no.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I would look at this...

[joesnuffy]

Sounds like Apple's business plan is going back to the future

[olde north church]

I made "the switch" June '02 with a 15" G4 Titanium. I'm only a lowly web developer not a "real IT guy" but one thing I have noticed, few if any Apple users suffer from PC envy.
Since my first mac, I sold the Titanium to get the 15" G4 aluminum, have had it for about a year, since first introduced. I was one of those people who stood in line, sort of self-consciously, when Panther was released. I have a 12" iBook G4, and a 17" studio display, and purchased both Apple Works and Keynote and received a 20 GB iPod for Christmas.
I never drank Kool-aid in my life that tasted so good that I would keep spending money on an inferior product. I researched Apple stock when it was ~24 and go up. I didn't buy it because decisions like that I make with my wife and she really didn't want to go for it. I was following the first rule of smart investing though, I liked the product and saw other people liked the product.
That product was the iPod. You couldn't walk down the street or into an Apple Store without 2 or 3 of them being bought for birthday or corporate gifts, personal satisfaction prizes and the like.
Stop and think about it, all iPod is, is a portable hard drive that plays music or shows pictures. There's nothing that prevents them from being plugin, on-the-go work stations.
Go into a kiosk, pop in the iPod, find, upgrade, or transfer info.

[kittymyrib]

In 2001, Tech TV did a p4 vs. G4 shootout. It found Apple's 867 MHzG4 running about even with Intel's 2 GHz P4 in their attery of tests, and quite a bit faster than the Pentium in some Photoshop tests.
Wxcerpt from http://www.macobserver.com/article/2001/08/28.6.shtml: "But the disparity in chip speed doesn't necessarily translate into better performance for Wintel machines. In fact, the latest Macs are faster than the higher-megahertz PCs when it comes to such tasks as compression and running multimedia software, due to Apple's chip architecture. Unfortunately for Apple, the consumer hasn't always understood this difference, and according to Eric Ross, an analyst with Thomas Weisel partners, the megahertz benchmark has hurt Apple's sales and kept the company from gaining market share.
After this story, Brett Larson, the Mac guru who has long been a part of Macworld Magazine, ran some benchmarks for a 2 GHz P4 and an 867 MHz G4. Those tests showed that some Photoshop tests were about 20-30% faster on the G4. Tests also showed an RGV to CMYK conversion with the G4 stomping the P4. The time savings for this one test more than outpaced the time savings for the other tests, something which Apple capitalized on in the MACWORLD shootout. The tests did not us the dual-800 MHz PowerMacs, nor did they use a dual-processor P4. The testing team concluded that MHz ratings do not matter.

[kittymyrib]

My son, an Apple user for his photography business, says you could certainly use this system as a digital recording studio. He knows guys with 1.25 MHz chips in G4 laptops who are doing very intensive stuff with Pro Tools, Peak, Reason, etc. You will need to invest in more RAM to do these tasks with the speed you desire, as the Mac OS does like to chew through tasks in bigger chunks if possible, so more RAM is needed to keep the machine from having to ask the hard drive for more info, which really slows things down. This goes double for doing high resolution Photoshop or video.
One of the things he really likes about the new G5 iMac is the ability to load it up with up to 2 Gigs of RAM. If this bargain Mac will take i Gig of RA< or greater, he says you should be able to run a pretty nice Pro Tools home studio easily.