Apple's New iMac Computer Is All Display

[ducks]

Apple's New iMac Computer Is All Display

story.news.yahoo.com/news...le_imac_dc

Tue Aug 31,10:06 AM ET Add Technology - Reuters to My Yahoo!


By Astrid Wendlandt

PARIS (Reuters) - Apple Computer unveiled, after a two-month delay, its new iMac desktop computer on Tuesday which integrates disk drives and processors into a flat display less than two inches thick.

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"Now we have the world's thinnest desktop computer," Phil Schiller, head of worldwide product marketing, said in a keynote presentation at the annual Apple Expo in Paris.

Shipping from mid-September, Apple said the computer would be available in versions with a 17-inch and a 20-inch display, with a wireless keyboard and mouse.

Apple said in July the launch of the new iMac would be delayed until September. It put a dent in the share price of the company which has been at the forefront of computer innovation for decades, but whose global market share has been eroded to less than 5 percent amid compe ion from lower-priced PCs running on the Windows operating system from Microsoft.

Retail prices of the new iMac will start at $1,299 for the 17-inch model, or 1,399 euros in Europe. The slightly thicker 20-inch model will cost $1,899, or 2,049 euros.

"This is a much more affordable line (of personal computers)," Schiller told a cheering audience of Macintosh (news - web sites) users. He declined to give sales targets.

The model will take over from the current iMac, which created a buzz when launched a few years ago with its minimalist design featuring a thin display perched on a stainless steel pole above a white hemispherical base.


IMAC NEEDED A BOOST


Sales of the iMac have slowed in recent quarters, but Apple's portable notebook computers have still been doing well.

"7.5 million iMacs have been sold over the last six years. It's time for an entirely new iMac," Schiller said.

Analysts agreed the iMac had been in need of a makeover. The new design would take less space on a desk and this would push existing Apple users to trade in their old iMac. But the new design would not be enough to convince Windows users to switch, they said.

"These devices are all about software. There's nothing here that addresses the compatibility issues," said analyst Brian Gammage at Gartner, referring to the fact that existing software running on Windows cannot be swapped to an Apple computer.

The new model, designed by the same team that developed the iPod portable music player, works on G5 microprocessors.

With the iPod, Apple broke into the consumer electronics market and has come to dominate the portable music segment where it claims 58 percent of the U.S. market for MP3 players.

Schiller also drew attention to Apple's newly developed business of selling songs online through its iTunes Music Store. Stores that were opened to German, French and British customers 10 weeks ago have already sold 5 million tracks, he said.

A fourth European iTunes store would open in October, which would give consumers in all other countries access to the catalog, in English, Schiller told Reuters in an interview.

Worldwide, Apple has sold more than 4 million iPods and sold more than 100 million songs in the United States since it was launched in April last year.

The success of iPod and iTunes, by far the most popular online music store, has pushed Apple shares up from a six-year low of $12.92 in April 2003 to over $35 this week.

Schiller reiterated that 49-year old Chief Executive Steve Jobs (news - web sites), who in the late 1990s came back to rescue the company which he had founded, was making a good recovery from cancer surgery. "He's doing great. We really look forward to Steve coming back to work in September," Schiller said. (Additional reporting by Lucas van Grinsven in Amsterdam

[ducks]

cheap pcs are cheap
you can get a cheap emac that just burns cds for cheap but you pay for what you get

Why in the world would anyone buy a PC over this new iMac? Apple is putting out products that are so superior, it's becoming ridiculous. Here's what the new iMac (and all new Macs) offer:

Functionality: This thing does exactly what most people use PC's to do. The iLife apps are awesome, email and instant messengers are great, the Safari web browser is everything Windows users WISH Internet Explorer was.

Security: There are so few viruses written for the Mac, most Mac users don't even use an anti-virus program. We don't have annoying pop-ups, trojans, or spyware. It's not just a matter of popularity. The Mac has solid security. Most apps require a password to execute.

Stability: I have been using OSX for over 2 years, and the OS has never crashed. Not once, not ever. A program will occasionally take a dive but the OS itself has never crashed. And I run my Mac 24/7 for months at a time.

Performance: Windows people will try to make hay of the clock speed issue. It's pure bunk. Intel has for years sacrificed efficiency and heat management for clock speed. Consequently, a 3 Ghz Pentium is no match for a 2 Ghz AMD much less a PowerPC (G4/G5). Because Apple is only company that builds the OS and the computer, they're so tightly integrated and achieve performance levels impossible for the Windows world. To top it off, Windows is busy. All the time. Lots of stuff is running in the background, leeching processor resources. Macs don't do that. The same elegant simple design of the computer is present in the software and hardware architecture, making a hyper-efficient machine.

Quicktime: For me, I chose a Mac because of one Apple program - Quicktime. Apple defines industry standards in video, music, graphics and photography through Quicktime. While Microsoft is trying to figure out the next barely legal way to force the world to use Media Player, Apple is using Quicktime to innovate everything from DVD's and web video, to film, television, and music. If you enjoyed the Lord of The Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter, CNN, or The Black Eyed Peas, you were enjoying products of Apple's Quicktime based technology.

Innovation: Apple has been Rudolph's nose for the technology industry for decades. Everything from the graphic user interface, to Firewire has come from Apple. It's such a long list I don't even know where to start. from it's inception, Windows has been a cheap copy of what Apple did last year. Microsoft has invented nothing, innovated nothing and pioneered nothing except how to skirt the law, steal without consequence, and destroy ethics in corporate America.

Price: The common saying is that Windows is much cheaper than Macs. That's a myth. I went to Dell and spec'ed out a 4600C to match the new iMac (mid range model). 80 GB drive, DVD burner, 17" Flat Panel, 64 MB nVidea graphics, Firewire/USB 2.0 with Windows Plus! & Media Edition (most similar to iLife). The iMac is $1499. The Dell was $1692. In Total Cost of Ownership, with Windows you also have to figure for down time, virus damage, and repair costs.
So if you want a computer that is cheaper, more stable, more secure, easier to use not to mention a beautiful design, get an iMac. Or you can take the advice of the Windows repair guys who make their living fixing broken systems and get the Dell.

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[E20]

PC's are better.

[baseline bum]

Why in the would I want a computer that's impossible to upgrade? Buying computers in packages is stupid IMO - much worse than using a preconfigured OS like Windows. Also, if I'm going to leave the easy world of Windows it'll be for open source instead of making a different company rich.

[baseline bum]

Performance: Windows people will try to make hay of the clock speed issue. It's pure bunk. Intel has for years sacrificed efficiency and heat management for clock speed. Consequently, a 3 Ghz Pentium is no match for a 2 Ghz AMD

What are you talking about? I know the IPC is lower for P4 Williamette and Northwood vs Athlon because Intel's branch predictor isn't as good and the pipeline is deeper, but that doesn't offset a difference of a clock rate being higher by 1GHz. Also, Intel chips have performed much better than AMDs in applications that stress the CPU most due to better SIMD instructions. Maybe AMD has closed this gap in their newest chips (I haven't followed it closely lately), but it was huge in the Northwood vs Thoroughbred days.

[ducks]

I am not sure I like the new imac

the old one bb you can upgrade and alot of people have it
basically you have to go to apple or apple retailler if something goes wrong with that imac
t