The new iMac models are primarily speed-bump editions with the addition of Bluetooth and AirPort Extreme support (does not include the cards). The models will range in price from US$999 to $1700. In addition, Apple will not be upgrading the eMac line, but will instead lower prices of existing models to stay more competitive. ThinkSecret also has some exclusive info on the 10.2.4 release.
Apple to Announce Updated, Cheaper Products; 10.2.4 News
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
It will be interesting to see what the base price of the eMac will be. Considering the economy, etc., I think Apple is making all the right moves.
However, these imac are supposed to have BT and AE. I hope they all don’t as i have no need and don’t fancy paying top sterling for something i am not going to use. Maybe hopefully they will have a lower spec model without those features, if not ah well.
Also even if the Emac is alot cheaper i doubt many would buy not with all these crt screens being defective and all, is it really that bad?
Just have to wait and see.
If the iMac supports Airport Extreme, it will be via the miniPCI card that the powerbooks use, and it will be optional, I’m certain. Bluetooth, if it’s included, will probably be built-in, but I don’t think it would add all that much to the price.
But announced as news. Not that OSnews is the only news site that does this, but it’s much nicer when rumors are cleared marked as such.
“The new iMac models are primarily speed-bump editions with the addition of Bluetooth and AirPort Extreme support” makes it sound like they are already released.
I *do not* generally report on “rumors”. But, I know that the thinksecret guy is not like some other Mac sites who imagine things and then they try to make them look and feel real.
What ever this guy from ThinkSecret has written, I was able to confirm with my own sources. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been posted here.
I don’t know if the product releases are going to be tomorrow or next week, but I was able to confirm the features Nick mentions.
Is this going to be a free update?
The fix_prebinding bug, which has been a hot topic on Apple’s message boards, hasn’t even received official acknowledgement from Apple.
For those who don’t know, OS X prebinds (i.e. resolves all library symbols and pre-builds a process image) all executables. Originally (i.e <= 10.1) this would only occur at install time (i.e. during the ‘Optimizing system performance’ stage of the install) In 10.2, mach_kernel checks if an application is prebound and calls fix_prebinding if it isn’t. Prebinding fixes application start up times since a process image doesn’t have to be built each time a process starts.
The problem with this approach is that fix_prebinding seems to be rather buggy, and if it crashes, no new processes can be executed. This results in the “beach ball of death”, where the system goes entirely unresponsive and all you can do is move the beach ball around the screen. You can’t ssh into the system and you can’t run anything from a terminal.
To my knowledge Apple has not provided any official acknowlegement of this bug, and has not provided any workarounds for disabling fix_prebinding. Personally I’d rather let applications run without prebinding than have my system go completely unresponsive every week.
If you’ve ever experienced this problem, or experienced this problem on a regular basis like I do, I implore you to contact Apple and ask for a way to disable fix_prebinding if nothing else.
10.2.x updates are free
Well, 99% sure about that.
Why aren’t these price changes reflected on the Apple website? I’m dying to get me an Apple. Too bad they cost a fortune and the hardware (at least processor) is sub par to any $1,000 2.5GHZ laptop I can get at Wal-Mart. I don’t care about the mhz myth. But there’s no way a 700MHZ processor can be as fast as a 2.5GHZ processor, no matter how different the architectures are.
Didn’t you read Nick’s article?? He says TOMORROW.
I was not able to verify this “tomorrow”, but I was able to verify the features.
Too bad they cost a fortune and the hardware…
I don’t understand why people continue to post that Apple hardware is too expensive. If you feel the hardware is too expensive, don’t buy it; that’s your perogative as a consumer. Apple is a hardware company, and as such it is their perogative to charge as much as they want for their hardware. If you feel a 2.5GHz x86 laptop is more worth your money, then why don’t you buy it instead of bitching on OSnews that Apple hardware is too expensive?
If raw power is all you care about, then why are you even considering Apple? You should be buying an Apple for the user experience provided by owning an Apple system.
You should be buying an Apple for the user experience provided by owning an Apple system.
You mean user expirience as you just described – that beachball of death is so better than BSOD by Microsoft.
Apple is a hardware company, and as such it is their perogative to charge as much as they want for their hardware.
Due to your great insite I just sent Steve Jobs a letter that will outline Apple’s future business strategy: raise the price of all Apple hardware by a factor of 5. This should definitely skyrocket Apple’s sales, increase their market share, and hence make the Apple user experience that much better.
Faster Computers
Lower Prices
More Features
Some people will never be happy.
when you buy a car, do you just want the cheapest? fastest? most features?
When you buy a tv, do you want the cheapest? biggest? most features?
when you a buy a stereo, chepest? most features?
…stove? …dishwasher? …anything? Do you always buy the cheapest, fatest product, or do you consider what you really need… how much value you extract from it, so how much are you willing to spend? etc, etc, etc…
No, it’s way to overstated to say people want the fastest, cheapest machines. I want the best machine for my buck… which by my estimation is neither the fastest nor the cheapest machine.
“I thought this is what people wanted
Faster Computers
Lower Prices
More Features”
Right now, “world peace” is higher up on my list.
When you say cheapest do you mean lowest priced? If so, why not? If I can get the lowest priced fastest/biggest/smallest/loudest/quietest/etc. etc. most featured product, I think I made a wise choice as a consumer. If you mean cheapest as in poorly made that’s a different story. But who’s to say that these Wintel machines are poorly made in comparison to Apple products? Apple has always had a history of bad displays, flimsy keyboards etc. etc.
Money aside, if I were to choose between a Honda and a BMW, I would choose the BMW. Why? Because I know that I purchased a superior engine, superior looks, superior luxury and so on. In every aspect a BMW is better than a Honda, and I would have payed a premium on the superiority of that product.
When I am debating between switching from Wintel to Apple. I know I’d be getting a superior OS, superior looks, but an inferior CPU and sometimes other inferior hardware. I’d love to switch to Apple. Their machines look great, their OS is wonderful, but it ends there. As a consumer I feel Apple products don’t provide a good value. And I know I am not alone in this view.
As a potential switcher, I am ready to dive head first into the Apple world, unfortunately, Apple’s business model is keeping me from doing it.
Why would I buy an iMac when I can currently get the following at Dell for $1797.00
P4 @ 2.4GHz with 533MHz FSB and 512KB L2 cache
512MB PC1066 RDRAM
120GB HD
3.5″ floppy
4x DVD+RW/+R Drive w/CD-RW
Free second 40x/10x/40x Max CD-RW Drive
Keyboard
Optical Mouse
64MB DDR NVIDIA GeForce4 MX™ Graphics Card with TV-Out
17″ flat panel LCD monitor
2 speakers w/subwoofer
Photo cataloging/manipulation software
Movie editing software
WinXP Pro
Virus scanner
56K modem
10/100 ethernet
6 months of MSN, AOL, or Earthlink
Free Tax Software
Office Suite (Word Perfect Suite)
MP3 Jukebox (MusicMatch Jukebox)
I’m serious here, why should I consider a Macintosh when a vastly faster (3x!) P4 machine with equivalent software and hardware, a HD that is 50% larger than the largest one Apple offers, and has a much wider selection of software available is currently $202 less than Apple’s currently listed price for the top of the line iMac? Yes, it will be $97 more than the high end if these price reductions the story mentions are true. But, that amount could easily be eaten up by the cost of a higher-end office suite for the iMac, 6 months of ISP, and a larger HD for it.
The Dell machine is a better bargain all around, imho. So, please, some Mac users, tell me why I should even entertain the thought of purchasing a Macintosh.
I just don’t see it.
I could buy a fully loaded 2003 Corvette for $55,000. I could buy a fully loaded 2003 Mustang Cobra for $35,000. Both are roughly equal in speed. For another $7,000, i could tweak the Mustang’s suspension, masssage some more power out of the engine and outperform the Corvette in nearly everything – but the Mustang still wouldn’t be a Corvette.
There’s some prestige in the Apple brand that no other computer maker has been able to create for their own. When I went to the movies this weekend, the movie I saw had Macs throughout and so did a preview for the new Steve Martin movie. When Apple released the new Power Macs last week, as disappointing as the release was, no fewer than a dozen U.S. newspaper picked up the story. The Wall Street Journal profiled the new Power Books on the first page of the second section the day after they were announced. When Dell, HP, or IBM releases an updated model who cares?
If you don’t feel like paying for Apple’s brand equity don’t. There are a lot of people that will though. Perhaps not enough to boost their market share significantly. But, if everyone drove a BMW, would you want to?
For me I like control of my data, and open formats, and was tired of linux as my desktop. Drm, hidden db and indexes of my data made me switch from windows to linux. OS X + X11 let me switch to a mac. My Ibook 800 is plenty fast for most everything.
http://fuckmicrosoft.com/content/ms-hidden-files.shtml
Not quite, you can’t put both a CD writer and a DVD writer in a dell computer. I know this because the computer I am typing from is close to the same specs as the one you posted. Apple’s SuperDrive does burn both CD and DVD and you can get a 1GHz/512/80G/SuperDrive for about $1,800 + monitor. The PC I am using was about $2300 with the monitor. Not quite PC cost/performance ratio but an improvement. Besides, some people just like something different.
The Dell machine is a better bargain all around, imho. So, please, some Mac users, tell me why I should even entertain the thought of purchasing a Macintosh.
As I was saying earlier, if this is the case, obviously a Mac isn’t the right computer for you.
However, are you going to buy that Dell, or are you just complaining about Apple’s prices?
If you do plan to buy that Dell, I’ll congratulate you on your purchase. I’ve recently purchased a Dell system for a family member and have considered purchasing one for myself.
If you’re not actually planning on purchasing this Dell system, but using it to illustrate the point that “Apple = expensive”, then I’d wonder why you were doing so. I don’t think anyone out there will dispute the fact that an Apple will provide you less price/performance than a PC, so why are you reiterating a point that everyone knows? It just wastes everybody’s time.
I’m not arguing that OS X will provide you greater stability than Windows 2k/XP either (which should be clear from my fix_prebinding post)
Macs provide what I would consider to be the best overall user experience of any platform, especially for graphics/layout/video editing applications.
If you don’t agree, don’t buy a Mac. Simple as that.
“The Dell machine is a better bargain all around, imho. So, please, some Mac users, tell me why I should even entertain the thought of purchasing a Macintosh.”
For me it was simple… I needed 2 pc’s to do what I do with one mac. IMHO, OSX is the best unix client os on the market, has fantastic multimedia and tier one productivity tools… basically 1 mac = 1 linux box + one windows box + a heck of a lot of polish
For my wife, the arguements fall under more traditional “mac” lines. Basically, since switching her to a mac, she is doing more with the computer while asking less questions. The machine may not be as fast as the windows box it replaced, but she is a lot faster with it.
..i wish i could quit computers altogether.
microsoft makes playing in the dominant space entirely unpalatable. between microsoft and george bush, i can’t read the news today (oh boy).
apple is doing great things, but they’re crippled at least through the end of the year. right now they have most of the moral highground (mostly because microsoft’s is entirely under water), but it’s hard to tell if they’re really, really committed to it.
linux, well, what can you say. it’s been changing too much lately, and neither gnome nor kde offer pleasant user experiences. the apps are too immature. if you live in apache, ls and vi (or emacs) life is pretty good on linux. if you got ruined by gui software development tools on either OSX or Win, it’s a really sad world living with the linux gui editors and gui file management tools.
is this just a lament? i dunno. i’d like to think we’re just in a bad spot, but i’m not sure what’s on the horizon. at the ripe old age of 31, having worked my brains out through the dotcom mess, i’m not sure i want to spend enough time in front of a computer to care what it is…
…and with that off my chest, i’ll go back to my acoustic guitar.
i couldn’t agree more.
dear Eugenia,
i’m a linux user since 1997 and i still dont understand the zealotry of the mac-users.
When confronted with the undisputable power of the recent P4s and Athlons, they just say “It’s not about power, it’s about user expreience”. Of course that’s pure rubbish but they refuse to admit it, ‘cos they have spent a fortune in their difficult-to-upgrade “slowermac G4”.
And please don’t bother us with that old story of superior design: computers are NOT armchairs, they’re powerful tools that are suppose to work as fast as they can, and the much faster, the better for your job. That’s simple.
Regards
Luca
@ the dude who was going to get a deal. Lets not forget that any other x86 builder can build that spec as well. When you want to sale that machine on, don’t expect much okay because its value drops as soon as you buy it.
With Apple machines its different and they have a higher resale value and last much longer, you only have to go on ebay or mac forums to know this. Some guys install OSX on machine that are nearly 3 years old and it runs fine. Trying installing XP on a machine from 3 years ago and see what it does.
Apple may have a slower processor but its more than anything you will need to use still. I get by fine on a P3 and an AMD 1600, i have no need to upgrade, everything works fine. Lets not forget that there are other little features and tons more software that you get when buying Apple.
Also another downside to buying an x86 machine is that you get windows XP.
>Also another downside to buying an x86 machine is that you get windows XP.
Why is it that you macfanatics always think that we get windows XP or windows 2k or whatever ms os with an x86 machine?
I run freebsd full time, you run the same foundation on a different kernel.
You can all just as well run linux on your mac, in fact a lot of people do. I like OS X, i really do, but thats as far as it goes.
I run my homebuilt PC in a fulltower ANTEC case. It might not be as goodlooking as your macs, but i’ll bet money, its sturdier and it lasts a heck of a lot longer.
here are my specs compare it to any mac:
MSI KT4 ultra (kt400)
Athlon xp2200
512MB DDR400
RADEON 9000 PRO 128 mb DDR
1 x wd 120gb ide with 8 meg cache
2 x maxtor 80 gig in raid 0
2 x 18.2 gig 10k2 rpm ibm scsi3 drives in raid 0
Tv tuner card, 2 nics, a tv tuner card and some other stuff.
Now let aside the SCSI raid array, i built this system for under a 1000$.
I dare any mac, single OR dual to outperform it.
Take Care
Kevin
I dont have 2 tuner cards
and i forgot
lite-on 56x24x56 burner
Aopen 16x dvd drive
Take Care
Kevin
Why does OS X need prebinding so badly? Symbol fixup is very well optimized these days especially with lazy binding. I can’t see why they need such extraordinary measures to speed this up….. I seem to recall there is a similar thing for KDE, but don’t remember where it’s up to. Could somebody explain this? Is it just a quirk of Objective-C ?
import a movie from a camera, cut it, make some pretty menus and burn it to a DVD.
What do you think who is faster, the one which buys a Mac with superdrive or a PC USer with a computer which is 3 times faster in raw speed ? I would bet the Mac user 😉
Or try it on a cray which is a hell lot faster than a Mac 😉
<blockquote>import a movie from a camera, cut it, make some pretty menus and burn it to a DVD.
What do you think who is faster, the one which buys a Mac with superdrive or a PC USer with a computer which is 3 times faster in raw speed ? I would bet the Mac user 😉
Or try it on a cray which is a hell lot faster than a Mac 😉 </blockquote>
* Plug my JVC GR-DVL510 DV camcorder into the firewire port of my Audigy 2 card.
* WinXP immeidately asks if I want to capture the software.
* Click OK, Movie Maker 2 fires up and the capture dialog appears.
* Set an in-point and an out-point, digitize.
* Put a blank DVD in the in the Sony combo DVD-R/RW +R/RW drive and click Create Movie.
Please explain to me how a Macintosh can make that easier or faster.
Don’t you see the emoticons in this comment..? – Obviosly, he was making fun of his obsolete Apple hardware.. 😉
Seriously, Mac users have to get real – this is not friggin 1982.
I’m not a mac fanatic, i don’t even have a mac, i WANT one because i don’t want to use windows anymore. Plus you are an exception if you built your own pc, not everybody can do it.
But if you can build me a laptop (main interest for switching) without windows then i would buy off you. However since you cannot and apple can, Apple is going to get my money.
“Plus you are an exception if you built your own pc, not everybody can do it”
True.
But: It is also true that YOU are an exception as well in that what you want is veeery specific.
Not really because looking at the apple website, i have got what i want so there
i’m a linux user since 1997 and i still dont understand the zealotry of the mac-users.
I’ve used Linux since 1994 and I still don’t understand Linux zealots. No matter how much they’re confronted with reality the still continue their blind Linux zealotry.
When confronted with the undisputable power of the recent P4s and Athlons, they just say “It’s not about power, it’s about user expreience”.
Yes, it’s nice having an OS where everything works out of the box, with a PDF clipboard which lets you copy and paste images and formatted text between any two applications, and easy drag and drop integration between everything. One where installing a program is as easy as copying its icon from a disk copy image into your Applications folder and uninstalling it is as easy as dragging its icon into the trash. An OS where I have Photoshop and Painter at my disposal, not to mention things like Reason and ProTools. An OS where I can turn on sshd/ftpd by checking a single box. One where I can get access to a great deal of free software through a Debianized package management system.
If you have a Linux system and a Windows XP system, yes you probably have (more or less) all of the above, but it’s spread across two computers.
Of course that’s pure rubbish but they refuse to admit it, ‘cos they have spent a fortune in their difficult-to-upgrade “slowermac G4”.
I have three Athlon systems, one running Windows, one running FreeBSD, and one running Linux. I have no reason to bullshit about my Mac.
Never trust the rumor sites, where is the $999 iMac that both Nick and Eugenia seemed to have ‘verified’? Damn, I had my hopes up too…
I’ve got three computers at home. An Athlon 1600 dual booting Windows 2000(for my wife) and Debian Linux for me. The Windows side has Adobe Premiere 6.0 installed on it for video editing. I have another machine, a Pentium III 667mhz running SCSI. Its running Debian Linux. Its being used as both a desktop and a server. Its got a 60GB drive in it for holding our ogg files, photographs, videos, etc. Finally, I’ve got an iBook 700mhz with a Combo drive. I’ve maxed out the memory on it. Before getting the iBook, I stayed on my Linux box all the time. I set up my wifes computer to dual boot because I wanted to see how much faster her computer was than mine running Linux. I don’t use Windows at all except for Quicken and TaxCut. I don’t like it. Never have. Especially now. I don’t trust Microsoft.
What do I use now? The iBook. Its slower than the other two computers. But it gives me the power of Linux with a more polished and finished desktop. My next desktop purchase will be an iMac. I think they are a great value for the money. More so than the PowerMacs. I’ll probably hold out for the IBM processor though.
//…will range in price from US$999 to $1700…//
Uh .. to us middle-income folks … a thousand bucks isn’t exactly “cheap.”
Nice try, Apple, but still several hundred dollars off.
Just go to http://www.apple.com to take a look
The lowest-end iMac 15″ is now US$1299. eMac starts at US$999. 1GHz iMac is also introduced.
//Trying installing XP on a machine from 3 years ago and see what it does.//
Did it. Added a stick of 256 MB RAM for $25.
Runs plenty fast on my three-year-old Athlon 1.1 Ghz. No problems at all.
Next question?
S_T_O_P T_H_E F_U_D
Well, you needed to buy the ram! ;D
I know it’s fun to argue about Apple and PC’s, but there’s no real reason to. I mean bitter arguing. It’s fantastic that people can get great computers at Dell for $699, there’s no doubt about that. When Steve Jobs came back to Apple, he had to first devise a business plan for survival, Apple was in such bad shape. Now, it seems to have gone into Phase II, expanding outward, step by step. And, the processor problem is hindering them. Hopefully, that will be solved pretty much by the end of the year. As I said it’s fun to argue in a fun way, but these price comparisons are ridiculous – of course you can get good PC’s cheaper. I think it is more productive to see what companies are doing. what they’re striving for. Now there are some great things to debate in that area!
I am NOT an exception. If you can all get together here, and get into all the agonizing non-existent details about why a mac should and supposedly would be faster, then sure you have the knowledge to roll your own pc.
For example, get a cheap ECS mobo, a duron 1200, they have a board with the duron soldered on which i can get for less then 100 euros, and this is belgium, we get ripped off.
Get some ram (50eur for 512 MB of ddr266)
get a case (50eur with a 300w psu)
get a video card (gf4mx440 80 eur) assuming you want better then onboard video
get a hd (for example 70 eur 20 gb maxtor)
get a dvd drive (20 eur).
sound and lan are onboard
370 eur + 120 eur for an adi 17 inch
490 eur + 20 eur for mouse / keyboard + 10 eur for the cooler
520 eur
there ya go
hard isnt it ?
this sys will perform better then a 1.25 ghz single powermac. That i guarantee.
Take Care
Kevin
//this sys will perform better then a 1.25 ghz single powermac. That i guarantee.//
Uh .. you still need an OS, unless you’re one of the many that rip off MS.
And don’t even try to compare any Linux distro to OS X.
Get a dell llaptop in the c600 series, a c610 will even run qnx out of the box, thats with the possibility of a nice 15 inch 1400×1050 or 1024×768 screen. They are decent, last long, and are plenty fast. All you have to do is buy it wihtout a windows license.
even harder
Take Care
Kevin
I am not by any means comparing os X to linux. There is just no comparing them, BUT however, im talking performance here. It IS faster. The only reason you cling to your slower hardware is OS X, and i admit, its worth the effort. Still denying the slowness of macs is just plain ridiculous.
Paying all that $$$ just to be using os X thats dumb. The hw is not only slower, you just dont have a lot of options. I can drop in ANY gfx card i like into my pc, sure some osses might not support it, but hey, the majority works.
Thats the diff between macs and pcs.
macs: controlled closed environment where everything is generally verry well tested with their OWN osses.
pcs: open, fast moving market with a lot of stuff going on everywhere at the same time. Components of dubious quality are often released and shipped (and yes, they even end up in a dell).
Nevertheless the pc is FASTER.
Both situations have their ups and downs, though if it weren’t for os X it would be all down for the mac atm.
I have lots of old mac hw lying around, and yes they were faster / better then the pc. Stop hanging on to that, its not the case anymore. Apple needs to make something happen, FAST.
Take Care
Kevin
I’m sorry, you cant get them without windows license anymore.
Look into Asustek’s solutions. They are light, good and sturdy laptops. They build good mobos, and they build good quality laptops.
Take Care
Kevin
When Intel first released a 100 MHz CPU, I thought that ths speed race would be over. Who the hell would need more than 100 MHz? Really?
Now cheapish computers come with 1 GHz CPUs and more. GHz! It’s so outlandish, we’re using a new unit to measure their clock frequency?
When giga-bloody-herz is part of vocabulary, the word “slow” certainly should have been outmoded by now!
“Slow” and “gigaherz” are mutually exclusive.
you confirm what i think of the mac-zealots.
And don’t remember that osx is just an os.
It’s a UNIX flavour and doesnt have anything more that linux freebsd, ecc (for me it’s worse because it’s based on that crap mach, but that’s my personal opinion and doesen’t matter).
Beside that, maybe you havent notice but windows xp is a modern and stable os, it has preemptive multitasking, protected memory ecc so it has the same principal feature of unix oses. And it’s a bit unix-based too, ‘cos it’s based on revised version of VAX.
So, from a technical standpoint, xp has nothing less than osx.
But the problems is you macheads still think we’re all using windows 3.1.