As we already mentioned yesterday, now from MacMinute: “Apple today announced a new Spring line of iMacs, a new 17-inch widescreen model featuring a 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processor and 133 MHz system bus; 256MB of Double Data Rate (DDR) memory; a faster 4x SuperDrive for playing and burning CDs and DVDs; and internal support for AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth, for US$1,799. The new 15-inch flat panel model features an 800 MHz G4 processor and is now priced at $1,299. Apple also announced lower pricing on its line of eMac computers, dropping the prices to $999 and $1,299.”
Apple Unveils New iMacs, Lowers eMac Pricing
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The economy sucks so this makes sense on apples part. I just don’t know how much of an impact it will have. Again the economy sucks. People and businesses seem to be putting off major purchases (except homes due to the low rates). Worse yet, dell and the pc boys are cutting cutting cutting so apple’s cuts don’t seem so great.
Nonetheless, if apple sweetens the deal a little more then i might have no choice but purchase a G4 desktop. I doubt by the way that the PC cuts will last. My guess is that DELL and HP/compaq are just waiting for the day that the economy improves (and they’ve killed off as many tier 3 pc makers as possible) so that they can up the prices on their pcs.
the true price for PCs will level out again at 800 – 900 as the companies need to begin making a profit on them.
I agree.
I make the comparison between hardware (with the exception of the processor) and I can build the same for half the price. I know this is an old and dead argument, but it still stands. I am not a marketing guru but they really need to try to compete head to head more with the big guys like HP and Dell. I do think they could good very well. They have a quality line of products and there are millions of us out here that would jump at the chance to own a Mac only if we could afford it.
I love OS X and I would love to have a mac of my own. I just can’t bring myself to shell out the bucks for a Mac.
I can’t wait for the day when Apple finally ports OS X to the x86 arch. If it ever happens….but one can dream.
Eugenia, this is SO wrong in so many ways.
What the heck is the point of Apple rumors, hints, secrets and foreshadowing if they’re even CLOSE to being correct? Everyone knows that historically Apple rumors are so far out in left field that if they’re an indication of anything, it’s where Apple is not going.
So here you were, premonishing that Apple was coming out with lower prices and what not. I immediately thought “Let’s see…apple…lower prices…what could this REALLY mean?? The Cube returns? The Apple Tablet? iTivo?”.
I mean, it can’t really be THAT mundane, can it?
So, in the future, please only print crazy schemes and wild speculation in the form of Apple rumors. Followers of Apple and OSNews will be much appreciative.
…here are the old arguments again:
“Dell’s (or whoever) PCs are faster than Apples at a lower cost”.
The same goes for the automobile business.
You can get a japanise car that fitts/topps all/most of the features of a Mercedes C-Class (for example) at a lower cost. But people still by Mercedes.
The same goes for Apple in the computer business.
That’s the way it is.
P.S. Don’t wait for OS X on x86. It’s waisted time.
it’s all about the eXPerience with a mac. you pay more but you get a better resale value
. Also your equipment isn’t as dated as quickly as the pc side because Apple is very slowly releasing faster machines. So you can be assured that the PowerMac you bought 6 months ago is still top of the line and at the same price to boot.
Just poking a little fun. Yay for apple btw for pushing bluetooth finally. It’ll be what like 2 years before a majority of pc’s come standard with it?
>Followers of Apple and OSNews will be much appreciative.
If they will ever be… 😉
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=2725#70611
Yes people, our “rumors” posted yesterday came out to be correct. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have post them in the first place. 😉
it is a tired arguement. and wrong! please find me a laptop that has a CDRW/DVD and 5 hours battery and wireless, etc. etc. for the price i got my ibook. i tried. you can get close, but you can’t get there. then ask them to install software even close to what you get from apple. yeah right.
and don’t tell me the chip is too slow. i tried little things like cd ripping and page display on several laptops side by side. the old slow G3 ibook was as fast or faster every time.
put that old story to bed already…..
The car comparison is a relatively good one. But even Mercedes is offering lowering price cars now to compete with the japanese luxury and non-luxury offerings. Plus Mercedes does not need an army of third-party software developers to continue to justify the existence of their platform.
Actually, i don’t think all of apple’s product line is overpriced. The notebooks are quite reasonable as are the emac and the new imac. The old imacs should go down a bit or they should be outfitted with better processors but its still pallatable because its under $1000.
Its the desktops that are my main complaint. I think we’ll see apple’s prices on the consumer/office oriented machines come down a lot (emacs, imacs, desktop power macs) as/if apple can break into new markets via the X serve and/or 64 bit computing. Really the future of apple’s expansion in the desktop will depend on its ability to create other high-end, high margin user segments. Right now that high end is the creative (visual/audio/video) type.
If apple can execute on its new target segments then you’ll see an opportunity for a major (and lower priced) push into the desktop and then we might not be having these discussions anymore. Instead we might be saying “remember when apple’s cost a lot more than PCs?” Wow now they are only a little more.
Yes people, our “rumors” posted yesterday came out to be correct.
I think most people are wondering where the $999 iMac is
I don’t know how this is going to work out in the US but in europe very soon the prices are going to rise and its something they cannot stop either.
The EU want to enforce laws that deal with the recycling of pc’s and its up to the dell’s, hp’s to cough up when paying for this. So prices might have to rise and its going to be hard following the current trend of things where the biggest and fastest is cheapest.
However apple is always seen as more costly, it might work in their favour because they could soak up these costs in the short term with their higher profict margins. I don’t know.
I don’t know, Bascule, but it looks like the $999 eMac is, in essence, Apple’s $999 iMac 🙂
The full blown, fully loaded 17″ iMac is pretty compelling (at least to Mac people). I know that, with a 1GHz G4 and lots of RAM, OS X is much more responsive. And, on top of Bluetooth, AirPort Extreme and 4x SuperDrive, we now have a nice 64 MB graphics card built-in.
the bottem line is you get what you pay for and Apple’s service is second to non. They(Apple)beat dell and others every year.
>I think most people are wondering where the $999 iMac is
I don’t think they are. In yesterday’s article, there were a zillion other things mentioned (which came true). And Nick said that the announcement would come out today, and it did. No other site had such info, and as I said, I was able to verify most of what he wrote. Nick really has some good sources and I have a few of my own too. Neither ThinkSecret or osnews are writting cr@p as some other “macrumors” sites do… 😉
LOL! One of the main ones hasn’t even acknowledged the Apple announcements yet. It’s latest supposed info is about some new builds of Safari.
Argh! Now I see that $999 that I wrote about iMac. It was a bad copy/paste from thinksecret’s article as I put it on a different context as it should have been. 😮
Nick correctly wrote that imacs will be from $1299, I was the one who messed it up when I created the story yesterday. 😮
So, Nick was 100% correct. 😉
OOOOOO….I know that hurt. Gulp…swallow!
🙂
Acrually, I just went to apple’s site, and iMac’s start out at $799.00
does the keyboard & mouse work wirelessly and if not, then do you think they will add this in a future version???
No, but if you add Bluetooth support (they are “-ready” which means they have an antennae, but they need the Bluetooth adaptor still), you can add your own wireless keyboard and mouse.
Hopefully, they will never add this. It’s a pointless security risk that forces you to swap in and out batteries. If you want to do this, you should have to add it yourself as an aftermarket purchase.
Others may disagree, but I would imagine that Apple’s own thinking is much closer to mine than it is to your’s.
The major reason why Microsoft is where it is in the market is because of the Business need to use M/S Office. Apple users & PCwannabees keep hesitating over using macs for business because of Macs apparent dependency on Microsoft releasing the latest version of MSOffice.
I don’t know if anyone at Apple reads these emails, but I would like to suggest a way around the problem as well as that of market penetration.
As by way of a double strategy, I think there is merit in Apple buying up Connectix, thereby bundling “VirtualPC” into all future Mac machines. So even if Microsoft decides to dump future Mac versions of Office, Mac users could easily use a PC version of the same software via the Connectix software.( Apple should do this B4 M-Soft pulls the plug thereby driving the Connectix share prices up ).
In consequence Apple would no longer have anything to fear from M-Soft.
Just imagine the advertising, Apple reads Linux, classic, Windows and X11 etc etc etc. Multi-platforming, Multi-tasking, Multi-OSing in any enviroment. Mac the Highway
Look at what you’ve written, look at what EVERY Mac-head writes when he tries to defeat price/performance: Never within the last year this agrument has been challenged other than with the one or other LAPTOP comparison, but the general understanding of “PC” doesn’t generally refer to laptops. It is only where you flee to because you know you are dead wrong. Laptops won’t save Apples ass sales-wise. I’ll have the pleasure and copy/paste the true state of affairs for you from hardocp:
“Apple is trimming prices and products in an effort to…well….do something. As it sits, after price cuts, you get half the machine for twice the price. For the same price as a 1GHz iMac, you can get a fully loaded 2.8GHz machine from most of the leading manufacturers.”
A loaded 2.8GHz system w/ DVD-R and 17 LCD from Dell costs over $3,000.