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Will Apple release a regular Desktop PC??
- Thread starter toomuchstereo
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Spanky Deluxe said:
Beautifully said...
I don't know why you guys are saying the prosumer market is small... on the windows side of things it's huge. If you want those people to switch you're going to have to give them expandability options at a lower price. Not to say the Mac Pro is to expensive, because for what you get it's an incredible deal. But most other PC users are going to want something they can upgrade and will run them about 1200-1400 without the monitor.
stevo86 said:
Its true that the prosumer market is definitely there on the PC side although I don't think it has such a big standing in the Mac World, for a midi sized machine that is. The ones that switch are generally people who see the ease and beauty of OS X and want to use it, or they see the simple beauty of their machines and want one. These people would all be fine with an iMac or a mini. Its the people that build their own pcs that are the main candidates for a midi line. QCassidy352 got it right about the profit margins imo.
Edit: Cube, just because Sun says that their servers are faster than the competition doesn't necessarily mean they are. I sometimes say that I can dance but I most certainly can't to any degree of common acceptance.
cube said:
every real world app benchmark and every other place which has SPEC figures show woodcrest dominating, stop with the brand loyalty and use whats best, i have cpu's in my house made by intel AMD motorola and IBM and they were all fastest when i bought them.
Sorry to batter you cube, but here's the final nail in the coffin: http://www.digitmag.co.uk/reviews/index.cfm?ReviewID=664
A comparison of the Opteron 2000 series chips (that are in the Sun system you linked to) compared to Xeon 5100 series chips.
A comparison of the Opteron 2000 series chips (that are in the Sun system you linked to) compared to Xeon 5100 series chips.
QCassidy352 said:
i completely disagree with this...
Apple definitely isn't making a big chunk of money off you up front on these Mac Pro's... My guess is they're making very little considering you can't build a computer that is equally spec'd without it costing you a few hundred more.
and as for turning to 3rd party vendors for upgrades... you can turn to just as many 3rd party vendors for the upgrades for the Mac Pro. And the only real upgrade you would even consider from Apple would be a video card upgrade. Not many people are going to buy Apple RAM or hard drives - Mac Pro or midi Mac Pro.
and just out of curiosity, does anyone know their actual profit margins on each computer? Just because the Mac Pro costs more doesn't mean the profit margin is bigger than that of the Mini.
Spanky Deluxe said:
At a minimum you have to shell out $300 to upgrade the memory to 2GB - that makes your bare minimum reasonable Mac Pro come in about $2800. The graphics card is a piece in terms of the prosumer market, where someone might want to boot into Windows and play a game, or simply be prepared for future off-loading of Core Animation (etc.) onto the GPU. Yes, you could 'upgrade later' - but it's still going to be $400+ then.
You could downgrade to the 2GHz, but that's already showing signs of being significantly slower than the 2.66 - if you want this to last four or five years, the 2.66 is a must.
Bluetooth and wireless are also legitimate needs for home users - that's $80 or so.
Which Dell home/office desktops are sold with AGP?
NYC Apple store
Cube.
New headless Imac (remember, original imac became emac, then new imac g4)--Cube form factor as base for plug-ins, attachable to new isight equipped, cinema displays 17"/20"/ 23"; ; pizza box unit for tv accepts plug in computer; available before Christmas.
Cube.
New headless Imac (remember, original imac became emac, then new imac g4)--Cube form factor as base for plug-ins, attachable to new isight equipped, cinema displays 17"/20"/ 23"; ; pizza box unit for tv accepts plug in computer; available before Christmas.
This seems bizarre to me, since Apple specifically caters to the prosumer market with a lot of their software, e.g. all the "Express" titles. Not quite Pro, yet not iLife either...Spanky Deluxe said:
B
AvSRoCkCO1067 said:There was a tower below 2000 - which is what the poster said he wanted...
Is $1999 really THAT much below $2000 to qualify as a mid-range tower?
It seems a few people have Mac Pro dreams on Mac Mini budgets. Get over it. The Mac Pro is priced extremely competively. If you desperately need those features, then buy a Mac Pro. You can pick them up for just over $2100. If you cant afford it, buy a crappy Dell. Then you can struggle with poor quality, viruses, all the upgrade costs, and end up with a machine that isnt 1/10 of what a Mac Pro is. But a least you save a few hundred dollars.
The current set up and price point for Macs are great. More and more people are switching because the Mini and iMac are just want people want. They cover all the important bases. Macs arent for everybody, they are just for most people.
The current set up and price point for Macs are great. More and more people are switching because the Mini and iMac are just want people want. They cover all the important bases. Macs arent for everybody, they are just for most people.
milozauckerman said:
Any mid range machine that Apple were to sell wouldn't come with 2GB memory, nor would it come with a top of the range graphics card, it'd probably be an option just like the Mac Pro. So you'd have to add on that $400 to any Mac Midi machine too, that's why your reasoning seemed a bit of a moot point, a mid ranged mac isn't exactly going to have higher spec than the pro machine after all. 7300GTs would probably be standard, if that and they could even come with just 512MB RAM as standard.
The dell desktops that I mentioned not having AGP is because of the plethora of machines that Dell at least used to sell that didn't have an expansion slot for graphics cards. Mid sized desktops with the AGP slot not soldered on.
Personally I would love it if they released a mid sized mac but I wouldn't expect it to be anything amazing. A 2.0Ghz Core 2 Duo processor, maybe 2.13Ghz, 512MB RAM, 7300GT, 250GB HDD etc for $100 or so below the 20" iMac. A lot of people on here would definitely be interested in that although the majority of people in the real world wouldn't care.
Ballamw, by prosumer back there I meant prosumer in the hardware point of view, as in the type of person that's willing and would want to open up their machine once in a while, if you see what I mean.
I'd buy something like an headless iMac. My PPC Mac Mini is 50%-100%underpowered for my use patterns, and the new ones seem to be as well, so there's no way I'll buy another.
Maybe I'll get an iMac but: I want to be able to have two internal drives and 4 GB ram for digital photography; I have a good monitor; I don't like the current, sealed design of the iMac; I really don't want built-in speakers.
Something around 12-1500 bucks would be fine.
Design? Cube or pizzabox. I liked my old LCIII's design a lot, and the cube was a handsome artifact. Or a mini Mac Pro tower, since then i could tuck it under the desk.
As to whether or not Apple will build the machine-in-the-middle...pure speculation. I can wait 'til fall for an upgrade, since at that time I can tell myself that my mini is "almost 2 years old".
I'll definitely wait until iMac is updated/rev.2'ed.
ps. The guys arguing about CPUs on this thread probably have tiny wangs and should take their squabbling outside.
Maybe I'll get an iMac but: I want to be able to have two internal drives and 4 GB ram for digital photography; I have a good monitor; I don't like the current, sealed design of the iMac; I really don't want built-in speakers.
Something around 12-1500 bucks would be fine.
Design? Cube or pizzabox. I liked my old LCIII's design a lot, and the cube was a handsome artifact. Or a mini Mac Pro tower, since then i could tuck it under the desk.
As to whether or not Apple will build the machine-in-the-middle...pure speculation. I can wait 'til fall for an upgrade, since at that time I can tell myself that my mini is "almost 2 years old".
I'll definitely wait until iMac is updated/rev.2'ed.
ps. The guys arguing about CPUs on this thread probably have tiny wangs and should take their squabbling outside.
stevo86 said:
Well stated!!
As more and more people become computer savvy (ie. kids growing up), the prosumer market just keeps getting bigger. A prosumer probably doesn't want to open up his tower and tweek the jumper settings on whatever, the most he would ever want to do is install his own hard drive, RAM, and the occasional PCI card as he creates more and more projects. And he'd probably like to change or add monitors to his setup at least once before he moves on to his next model.
If the prosumer market was small, why make software specifically for them? eg. Final Cut Express, Logic Express, Photoshop Elements? Shouldn't iLife be enough for everybody?
Spanky Deluxe said:
Makes you wonder why it isn't here on the Mac side, doesn't it? Maybe because Apple hasn't, or won't embrace it. Most PC users are attracted by the operating system (seriously), but the hardware really turns them off. You can configure a VERY nice machine for $1200 in the PC world. You couldn't even touch that on the Mac side. The iMac is great, but what happens when the newest games come out and you want to upgrade the graphics card? Or when a sweet new color-accurate LCD comes out? The rate of innovation is too great to get stuck with an all-in-one.
BlizzardBomb said:
God no, not in my opinion - I was just agreeing with the poster
!The fact is - Apple created an even larger hole between the iMac and the Mac Pro / Mac Pro and Mac Mini than was there beforehand.
9Charms said:
which is exactly why i ordered the Mac Pro, coming from a windows box. sure it was more expensive, and sure it's over kill for a lot of my needs. But, i feel a whole lot safer knowing i can add another internal hdd when i need it, or upgrade my video card, or even switch up my displays. After giving it some thought i couldn't justify getting an iMac. I know i'm future-proofed for a nice while, but i'd rather have a computer last 3 years near the top by upgrading it and then buy a new one for the next 3 years than having a monster of a machine that'll last me 6 years, by which time it will be extremely outdated.
edit: already got burnt once because of no expandability... the dell notebook i'm on now is pretty sweet, 3.20ghz p4 w/HT, 80GB hdd with 250gb external, 1.25GB RAM... but my video card is complete garbage and bottle necks just about everything i do. And this thing is less than 2 years old... can't imagine buying an iMac and having the same thing happen to me again.
I don't think Apple will ever sell a midrange computer because their userbase doesn't require it and it probably wouldn't sell.
Most people on the cheap end would rather purchase a PC over a Mini because they get more performance and specs for their money, as well as upgradability (ie more than a ram slot and hard drive, which AFAIK is all that's upgradable on a Mini). Those same people won't spend the money on an iMac because they don't want to be tied into a monitor type/size/spec and they want the upgradability; remember when PC companies tried all-in-ones in the retail chain? They failed. I purchased a Compaq Presario 520CDS way way waaaay back in the day before getting my LC475 and it was an all-in-one and one of the only Windows-based all-in-ones I've ever seen. Note how they don't sell those anymore because the market isn't there.
Then you have the pro consumer, and those are split into two groups. The "I'm already in Mac heaven and I use x app (ie FCP) so I'll never stop buying the G5/MacPro line etc", and the other group that is indifferent and (much like the cheap end group) says "I can get more bells and whistles for less money if I purchase a PC so I'll go that route".
If Apple sold a midrange, sure, their fans would buy it. Most likely though, there wouldn't be a mass exodus of switchers throwing their Dell Optiplexs and Dimensions out the window screaming "free at last, I'm off to the Apple store" because they have no reason to switch.
Would I like to see a midrange Apple machine? Hell yes.
Will we ever see one? I'll never say "never" because hell already froze over once (when Jobs said they were going Intel), but I seriously doubt it.
Most people on the cheap end would rather purchase a PC over a Mini because they get more performance and specs for their money, as well as upgradability (ie more than a ram slot and hard drive, which AFAIK is all that's upgradable on a Mini). Those same people won't spend the money on an iMac because they don't want to be tied into a monitor type/size/spec and they want the upgradability; remember when PC companies tried all-in-ones in the retail chain? They failed. I purchased a Compaq Presario 520CDS way way waaaay back in the day before getting my LC475 and it was an all-in-one and one of the only Windows-based all-in-ones I've ever seen. Note how they don't sell those anymore because the market isn't there.
Then you have the pro consumer, and those are split into two groups. The "I'm already in Mac heaven and I use x app (ie FCP) so I'll never stop buying the G5/MacPro line etc", and the other group that is indifferent and (much like the cheap end group) says "I can get more bells and whistles for less money if I purchase a PC so I'll go that route".
If Apple sold a midrange, sure, their fans would buy it. Most likely though, there wouldn't be a mass exodus of switchers throwing their Dell Optiplexs and Dimensions out the window screaming "free at last, I'm off to the Apple store" because they have no reason to switch.
Would I like to see a midrange Apple machine? Hell yes.
Will we ever see one? I'll never say "never" because hell already froze over once (when Jobs said they were going Intel), but I seriously doubt it.
Spanky Deluxe said:
Yes, but then you're upgrading a $1500 machine rather than a $2500 machine - and a Conroe box wouldn't require FB-DIMMs.
$1500 + 400 (X1900XT) + $100 (1GB of memory) = $2000. Right in between a well-equipped Mini and a Mac Pro.
My reasoning is that it's well and good to say 'you can get a Mac Pro for <X>' - but that Mac Pro is, essentially crippled and will either not suit your needs as long, or will require more money for updates in the future. The Mac Pro, well-equipped now or piecemeal, is a $3000+ machine - when you factor in extra hard drives, more memory (Leopard will be a hog, rest assured) a second optical drive of some kind, it's more like a $4000 machine.
Yes, Dell used to sell AGP machines - just like Apple (actually, Apple was selling AGP more recently). Then technology moved on, and their core 2 machines (more likely the entire consumer desktop line) are running PCI-E.
milozauckerman said:
Ok, that makes more sense. It just sounded like your original comparison was between an upgraded Mac Pro and a stock theoretical Mac Midi, which wouldn't be a fair comparison.
I know everything uses PCI-E these days, I haven't looked recently into the Dell line whether their basic machines have PCI-E graphics slots or not though, that was always what irritated me. I know a handful of people that got the low end Dell machines a couple of years ago then thought they might like to have a go at the Sims 2 a year later but were left short because Dell wouldn't spend the $2 it would have cost to put an AGP slot in. The solder points were there, the slot wasn't. Dell sold a lot of machines this way.