Forums | MacLife

Obviously the display in the imac isnt the same quality as in the cineama display, either that the price is really jacked up with the apple logo on it WAIT.... IT IS!

$3,324 if you max out the 24 through Apple.

2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
3GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 1x2GB, 1x1GB
500GB Serial ATA Drive
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB SDRAM
SuperDrive 8X (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Apple Keyboard & Mighty Mouse + Mac OS X (US English)
24-inch widescreen LCD
AirPort Extreme
Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR

This is a well equipped machine with a really nice monitor for the prosumer.  But that price through the Apple store would force the serious buyer to look at the towers.  Although, an AIO kind of simplifies things.  I still think Apple should include a basic LCD with the tower purchase - I know it will never happen, but I can wish...

Pariah wrote:

AIO's will never be suitable for anything approaching serious usage.

I'm running models totalling revenue of over $1,000,000 to my firm on a G5 iMac.  That's pretty serious.

To include an cheap LCD with a tower would be madness.  There is plenty of choice for budget LCDs out there, no point entering a market that has such slim margins anyway.  To do it only with a tower would be commercial suicide.  Anyway, who would want to drop all that money on a Mac Pro and just use a 15 inch or 17 inch screen.

As for the original Pro-sumer question, I would say sort of.  Two hard discs would be great, but external discs are so tempting for many reasons.  The option of a decent (not great) graphics card is good, but there is the issue of upgradability...

I don't really rate upgrades.  Ram and HDD are sort of useful, but a lot of the time it makes about as much sense to get a new machine.  It really depends on the usage, but normally by the time part of a system needs a bump, most other parts do to... 

I think there is a lot of room for a Mac tower, something with 4 ram slots, 2 PCIe, one optical bay, Conroe chipset and 2 or 3 HDD bays.

Although I said I didn't ever want to go back to having two computers, that would tempt me to get a friend for my MacBook Pro.  The Mac Pro seems a bit over the top for many uses, while a Mac Mini is a bit light on. 

Spinner

Last edited by spinner (2006-09-08 6:56 am)

spinner wrote:

To do it only with a tower would be commercial suicide.  Anyway, who would want to drop all that money on a Mac Pro and just use a 15 inch or 17 inch screen.

Someone who can afford the tower, but not a new display and tower and would like to buy the tower now and upgrade the display further down the road.

spinner wrote:

Two hard discs would be great, but external discs are so tempting for many reasons.  The option of a decent (not great) graphics card is good, but there is the issue of upgradability...

With Time Machine, having another hard drive is going to almost be a necessity - unless you can backup to a server (I'm sure .Mac will be an option).  I've heard murmurings that the graphics on the 24" model are actually upgradeable via MXM II.  It would be neat if they did something that Dell is trying - putting a reserve HD in the machine specifically for backups.  If not a 3.5", perhaps a 2.5" would fit as a built-in drive for Time Machine.

spinner wrote:

I think there is a lot of room for a Mac tower, something with 4 ram slots, 2 PCIe, one optical bay, Conroe chipset and 2 or 3 HDD bays.

I agreed wholeheartedly - but Apple and many Mac fans strongly disagree.

ConnertheCat wrote:

People keep crying for the second, cheaper tower.  It's never going to happen, it would just mean lost revenue for Apple.  And yes, Pariah - Apple could care less about you.

No, they couldn't.

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robco wrote:

spinner wrote:

To do it only with a tower would be commercial suicide.  Anyway, who would want to drop all that money on a Mac Pro and just use a 15 inch or 17 inch screen.

Someone who can afford the tower, but not a new display and tower and would like to buy the tower now and upgrade the display further down the road.

More likely it would be someone who would buy the upgradeable low-end tower that so many are crying for, not someone who is in the market for a pro tower.  I don't see Apple offering a free, small, crappy monitor, with a pro tower.  Those deals are only for the teaser type advertising done by the likes of Dell.  Apple doesn't play those games.

Many folks need to come to terms that Apple is catering to the high-end.  They are not going to chase the low-end buyers who are shopping for a free small LCD, or those looking for a bargain-desktop with some upgradeability.  The margins are low on those types of systems, and since Apple is a niche player with such a small market share already, they can not afford to take the risk of moving to systems with such low margins on the hope that it will pay off in market share and higher volumes.  Heck, even if it did pay off with more volume, I don't think they philosophically or culturally WANT to become a low-end, low-margin supplier (and thank God for THAT!!)  It is true - they don't care about you or your desires for a low-end tower or a free monitor - they care about their margins first and growth in marketshare second.  That has to be their focus to fund their OS development, apps and R&D, and that is consistent with their culture and where they want to be in the PC marketplace.  Would you be happy if Apple started catering to the low-end margin systems at the expense of their R&D, OS and software development?  I wouldn't.

BRING BACK THE CUBE with one  PCIe slot