http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/07/live-from-wwdc-2006-steve-jobs-keynote/
Live from WWDC. Schwing! $1000 cheaper than comparable Dell? Available: Today!
And I bought an iMac. Where’s an emoticon when you need it?
Will there by any upgrades to the iMac line?
I’m pretty close (as in today) to ordering one for a family member.
I would think not, but who knows. The keynote is on right now.
It should be announced within the hour – they will almost definately receive a bit of a speed bump, if not a full upgrade to Core 2.
It’s too bad the base install on the 2500 dollar system is pretty slick across the board, but then cheaps out with a 7300.
What I really want is something about the power/price of an imac, but in a regular style case so that you can swap out the video card and whatnot. I don’t need a 2500 dollar computer – I need a regular old system with some slots and without a build in LCD.
Yea, there were even forum posts describing how they popped in a Core 2 cpu manually. So it should be easy for Apple.
But how soon and how much - if the upgrade happens at all - is the real question. Mobile Core Duo’s are, according to Anandtech, not really all that badly off compared to Core 2s. Only around 5-25% slower in most apps, and for other applications it’s a virtual tie.
Yea, i don’t know if i can swallow a 2500$ computer that doesn’t even come with 2 gig o’ ram standard. Eek.
Is it just me, or does the name look like a new type of razor?
Keynote’s over. That’s all on the hardware front.
Pretty boring keynote. Other than the new towers they just demo’d some new features of the next OS, Leopard. They had a System Restore clone called “Time Machine”. It looks cool, and is a bit more full featured than MS Sys Restore, but not that exciting. Some improved Boot Camp and virtual desktop integration, but otherwise…bleh.
I configured a similar Dell for about $2900, but it includes an NVIDIA Quadro. It’s not a high-end card, but as far as I can tell it’s about $100 more than a 7300.
So that makes the price difference about $300, not a thousand. Unless he’s using a different starting server as comparison.
Still, cool machine. I wonder if they’ll better fill out the gap between the iMac and this.
Maybe I’ll get one after my 20" iMac (maxed out with everything but the hard drive) becomes too slow to play the few games that I play these days.
Now that they have Intel pumping out newer, faster CPUs at a faster rate, I wonder if Mac owners will get that irrational need/desire to frequently upgrade that afflics PC owners.
- NOBODY is cheaper than dell with coupons. Nobody even comes close.
- why would you want to pay the woodcrest and FB-RAM premium sfor a desktop? A high-end workstation yes, scientific visualization yes, but not a desktop. Apple doesn’t have a targetted desktop offering now, only the ultra low-end unexpandable mac mini, unexpandable imac with a built-in monitor, and ultra high-end mac pro. Also the core duos pretty much suck these days now that conroe (core2duo) is out.
- Again they cheap out with the videocards. Geforce 7300 is crap.
I understand that they want to strongly differentiate their professional offerings from their consumer ones, but this is just stupid. Quadcore won’t make sense until kentsfield comes out, and probably not even then for most of the market.
Aside from non-casual gamers, who needs more than what an iMac gives you at home?
I don’t see this hole between the mini/iMac/Mac Pro you speak of. At least a hole with a market worth pursuing for Apple.
Hmmm, it would be nice if Apple put out an expandable desktop in the Imac price range. I really don’t NEED a $2500 monster. Oh well, I can always mess around with the wife’s 17" imac… (I’m typing this using Firefox in Xubuntu.)
17" iMac on order. That hurt.
Just for fun, two identically specced machines both with the top-end Quadro 4500 graphics card and dual 3GHz woodcrest. Dell: Windows XP Pro, non-x64, Precision 690. Pretty much the same ingredients (ignoring the much more cheaply-made Dell case, single Gigabit port (vice 2), and lack of Firewire 800 or optical audio ports in the Precision that is, while the Apple lacks integrated low-end (RAID 0/1) SAS support).
Apple: $4874
Dell: $5963
- dual 3.0 Xeon 5160
- DVD ± RW / CDRW
- no wireless
- single 160GB 7200 RPM HD
- 667MHz DDR2 FBD RAM (1GB)
- no floppy
- USB enhanced keyboard w/ 2-port hub
- optical mouse w/scroll
Adding some options:
- Bump the RAM to 4GB (4x667MHz DDR2 FBM)
- 4 * 500GB 7200 RPM Hard Drives
Apple: $7449
Dell: $8790
I can only come to the conclusion that both companies are nuts!
You don’t get to use coupons with workstation orders, you get to haggle with your rep.