New iMac Announced

MrGHemp writes "The new iMac with a flat panel has been offically announced, and can be seen on the Apple website. According to Steve Jobs the top 3 things we asked for were put into this new design. 1. Flat Panel screen 2. G4 processor 3. Superdrive (DVD burner on one of 3 models)... Apple also announced other new products like a 14' display on some iBooks, and iPhoto - the iTunes of digital photos." It's definitely unique looking ;) Update: Slashdot author ChrisD was there and has a report too.

Linux and the Macintosh are very different things. I don't want to bore anyone with poor analogies, but when Macintosh has glitz, Linux has power. This isn't about Linux though, it just kept on striking me how much Linux lacks in the desire department.

Steve Jobs is terrific at just that, Creating Desire. This is no surprise to us, for sure, but nothing drives it home as much as sitting in the audience and watching him speak. I could tell you how wonderful an orator he is, and how groovy his products are, but I really want to hear what the Slashdot user communtiy has to say about that. I want to talk about what Apple is doing technically.

First: The new iMac is very attractive. It's cool, it's neat. It will be a very popular machine. It's got a good price/feature spectrum and it looks like a pretty decent machine for the consumer. It isn't, in the end, a machine for the linux die-hard, but that's okay. It's slick, it ships with a bunch of very decent apps to manage your digital media. I want one, it's a cool machine. I don't know what I'd do with it (which is the problem), but it's cool looking. It's not particularly a good deal, I mean, you can pick up 200$ 15" tft displays at Fry's and lets get real, the G4 (Excepting the velocity engine stuff) isn't that fast of a chip at any available speed compared to the x86 world. But boy, this is one slick machine. But we know that already from the previous story. I do worry about it overheating, as I did flash back to the cube's cracking problems a bit.

Second: Photoshop for OS X will be coming out "soon". That was the big news. They had a very impressive working demo, I hope to learn more tomorrow on the expo floor.

Third: iPhoto is a decent cataloging program, and one designed to be used easily and generate more revenue streams for apple in the form of booklets and print costs. But it looks very polished and useful.

Superdrive: You'll see the superdrive in the new imac finally, which is nice. Note that this is not the superdrive that everyone remembers from the 80s' :-)

That's about all. The keynote was terrific, but in the end, not so outstanding. I'll post pictures soon. I'm sure a lot of /. regulars will be doing the same. More Tomorrow!

Re:More information from the keynote

Yeah, but what this misses is the whole Digital Hub philosophy. And no, that's not just the latest marketing catch-phrase. Apple seems to have remembered that the idea behind computers is to make all our lives easier and more enjoyable. They're trying to do it by streamlining things that we already do (or would like to do but didn't feel like dealing with the hastle). And I think they do a fantastic job of it with their Digital Hub software/hardware. I have an iPod and I think it's great. Jobs wasn't just blowing smoke when he quoted all the reviews saying it's the best digital music player ever. And the integration with iTunes is not a small part of that. iTunes is an extremely easy to use, yet flexible app. The integration with iPod is seamless. The iMovie tutorial I did was pretty cool, and I can't wait to play with it when I actually have some video I want to mess with. I haven't used iDVD yet (probably won't happen until I make my iMovies). I can't wait to use iPhoto. One of the reasons I don't use my digital camera much is that it's just so much of a hastle actually making anything of the images I take. Sure, I can drag and drop them onto my Wintel machine and then I can edit them with some other utility. But iPhoto appears to share one of the greatest features of iTunes...its library function. Sure, functionally it's not a whole lot different from what you can normally get from the filesystem. But it does add a LOT more convenience and accessibility.

Right now Apple's concentrating more on useability and convenience than sheer power. And at the moment, that's most of what I'm looking for. Yeah, I'll probably always keep a Wintel machine to play games on. But to an increasing degree, that's ALL i'm doing on Wintel. The user experience on the Macs is hard to leave behind. And that's really where Apple's adding the value. Not simply in the basic power of the hardware. Though the hardware isn't all that bad either (especially when "Velocity Engine" comes into play).

Re:More information from the keynote

And isn't it a shock that for $1300 you can build yourself a top-of-the-line athlon box with tons of ram and a geforce 3?

Yes, for $1300 you can do that. However, people who would do that are not part of Apple's target market. People keep forgetting that Apple is a premium brand. They aren't competing with people who would order their own parts and build a box. With a $1300 entry price they aren't even competing with Compaq etc in the bargain market. Your same argument can be used to take a knock at Sony's PCs as well. Point is, for a premium brand like Apple, you pay a premium price.

it's a breast implant dammit!@!@#!

that's all i needs to say.

Re:it's a breast implant dammit!@!@#!

Hmmm, that would explain that quote from Steve Jobs about wanting to reach out an touch it.

Re:it's a breast implant dammit!@!@#!

That's why I'm buying two of them!

Steve Jobs is a genius.

Here's hoping

Here's hoping that with all the R&D and user testing involved, this one will finally come with a decent mouse...

My thoughts on the whole thing

There where times when the Keynote really blue me away. After it was over I did feel a little cheated though. iPhoto looks like a great application. I downloaded it allready, but didn't have a chance to try it out yet. You can get it here [apple.com]. Download size is 13.4 MB.

The new iMac looks amazing and has great specs. It is "Flat out cool". A bigger screen iBook is another great addition to the apple product line. What worries me, is that there have been no changes to the professional line. The PowerBooks got a Combo drive just a couple of weeks ago so that is okay. But having PowerMacs and iMacs with the same processor and more or less identical clock speeds seems like a strange move to me.

This is beyond the rumour sites. All of them that I looked at swore that the gigahertz barrier was to be broken. At this Keynote it wasn't. And I don't think that Apple would just put faster PowerMacs in stores without having at least one Photoshop shootout on stage first.

It was an okay keynote I suppose. But after all that hype some people seem to have expected iTransporter, iEndofworldhunger with iWorldpeace thrown in. And all that running 3 ghz.

sebi

Re:My thoughts on the whole thing

I agree with you. However, Macwork Tokyo is just 2 months away. They revised two of their lines of computers (with the iMac being a MAJOR revision). Introduced iPhoto, which is waaay cooler looking than i had imagined. If the updated their pro lines, what would be left for Tokyo?

It's possible that the G5 can be ready in time for Tokyo, in which case they don't want to take any attention away from the iMac if they don't have to by offering minor speed increases to their pro line.

Just my thoughts.

Looks dorky, but makes a great hat!

http://sakots.pekori.jp/imgboard/imgs/img200201071 62803.jpg [pekori.jp]

Re:it's like the lottery!

So if you gather three of these on a store shelf and select a box, then the clerk opens one of the other two and shows you that it does NOT have a burner, should you buy the one you're holding or take the final box to the register?

Mount on wall

I wonder if Apple will start selling wall mounting kits. Then you would take up zero desk space.

Re:Mount on wall

And when you eject a disk - bluuurp, drop.

Re:Mount on wall

Actually, what would take up even less space is putting the thing inside your desk with only the monitor pivot sticking up through a tiny hole. Might have heat issues though.

Re:Mount on wall

During the keynote, Jobs mentioned that the optical drives run slower if they're vertical. So he wants to keep them flat. Thus the blob on the desk.

Re:Nice Stuff...

I just bought a Sony Cyber Shot DSC P50 for $300 (for my girlfriend, actually)

You bought a camera by trading your girlfriend???
Dude, if you are one of the /. people that actually has one you should know that they are worth a heck of a lot more than just $300.

Cute, but ...

I keep expecting it to start hopping around like the Pixer desk lamp! ;)

iMac availability

Note that on apple's purchasing site (store.apple.com [apple.com]) the lower end new iMacs aren't available until March. The only one available in January is the top of the line $1800 one with the Superdrive (DVD writer & CD-RW). The other new item which I saw (didn't see the Keynote, so don't know how much attention was paid to it) is the 14.1" screen on the new top end iBook.

You're going to be waiting a while...

Until Apple makes a 1.5Ghz G5, they won't get me as part of thier market share.

You're going to be waiting a while, since Apple doesn't make CPUs of any speed -- that's Motorola and IBM's job.

14' display!!!

Apple also announced other new products like a 14' display on some iBooks

Wow! a 14' display, and my laptop only has a 14" display. Just imagine playing your favorite video game on a 14 ft display.

While many business application users will not enjoy having a 14 ft screen, I think this will be great for gamers.

I wonder what the max resolution on that will be... 1,280,000 x 1,024,000 pixels?

that's the crappy part

the 12" model is 1024x768. I bought the 12" because it crammed those pixels into a smaller area.

the 14" model is 1024x768. They seem to expect people to buy a computer just so it will take up more room in their briefcase/backback.

I was hoping the 14" would be at least 1280x1024 or something: it's really not out of the question.

Cooling this thing?

How are they cooling this new one? It's got a G4, a SuperDrive, a GeForce2 MX, and the power supply, all inside that base, and there's no airflow from the bottom to the top? (There's a cover over the bottom, where the ram chips and Airport card go.) I can't believe this thing isn't going to get toasty-hot. The Cube didn't have a fan, but it had an external power supply, so they were kinda cheating.

I'll be watching the whole deal just to see how they pull that off. If they can cool that thing without a fan, I'll be impressed.

Re:Cooling this thing?

the answer should be obvious:

iCe.

Thank you, be sure and tip your waitress.

Re:Cooling this thing?

There is a "rosette" pattern of perforations on the top of the base unit, and a ring of closely spaced slots around the base, under the bottom lip. A single fan draws air from the base trough the top of the unit cooling all internal components. The fan, according to the Apple website, runs at about the same db level as the hard-drive (~25db) so it should be very quiet.

I trust that this provides adequate cooling and depending on the environment the iMac is used in, won't get fouled by dust and crap, as packing all that kit into such a small package means the chances it will clog up over time are quite high. At least in my beige box there's room for that crap to accumulate without adverse effects to my components.

Bullfrog