New iMacs/Minis Tomorrow?

Prices are a bit steep. Obviously recession induced but it's also self destructive to a degree. Even here in the Mac forum most people are complaining rather than getting ready to upgrade. And these upgrades were delayed for way too long.

- No LED displays in the iMacs is quite a disappointment.
The display IS the computer on these things. I'll keep my old one and buy some ram from a third party. Maybe others will do the same given the prices.

- Speed bump on macbook pros. This is actually fairly neat.

- Mac mini. Not enough ram. Too expensive. Will probably pick up in sales after all the complaining dies down. To the detriment of the iMac sales probably.

- Mac Pro. Still love the case but wow at the poor ram and video card options.

All in all, belated updates that are behind the curve and will cost you too much.
They still look great and the OS is decent but the margins on this junk must be huge.
Probably a case of "supply some required speed bumps but don't spend too much as sales will be crap anyway this year".
 
Are they really selling a £1,899 computer with an 512MB nvidia GT 120, equivalent to a 9500 GT?

Oh I see you can upgrade to a 4870 for a mere extra £160... still only 512MB though.

How come they charge £160 for each additional 640GB SATA hard drive? I wasn't aware hard drives were that expensive, funny that.

Or £240 for a 1TB hard drive. Jesus - I mean how can anyone excuse this blatant profiteering?
 
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I won't be rushing to buy a new mac at these prices - I've had macs since a performa 475 and currently use a macbook pro, but the current specs and costs would make me think twice before buying another mac.
 
Jesus, that's a rip off - I mean, The 8 core Xeon mac pros were £1556, and this one starts at quad nahalem at £1899?? Man alive!
 
Feek said:
I'm not up on video cards, how much of an improvement over the 8800 is the 4870?

I need to know how pleased I should be.
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2. KUDOS TO APPLE FOR CHOOSING THE RADEON 4870 AS CTO
Our tests with the Radeon 4870 running under Windows Vista 64 showed it to be as much as 60% faster than the GeForce 8800 GT when running 3D accelerated games. Running 3DMark06, the fill rate was 132% faster and the particle shader was 86% faster. And when we tested the retail Radeon 3870, it was superior to the GeForce 8800 GT when running GPU intensive Pro Apps like Motion and iMaginator.
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Source: http://www.barefeats.com/nehal01.html
 
Fillado said:
Well, you haven't taken into account VAT for a start...

The point still remains: The Mac Mini has never been as low as £352.50 (to be exact) using the exchange rate of $2 to £1. They were screwing us over then but using the "cost of business" excuse, but now they've made it look like they aren't by apparently removing said cost of business.

My problem isn't with the current price, it's what it should be!* It's with Apple making up fake excuses for jacking up the price in previous years.

*In comparison with the US... but it's still expensive for what it is.
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I can include VAT if you want, the numbers are much the same. VAT on the old model was £60, on the new model it's £66 or so. £340 in USD at $1.8/£ is $612, £430 at $1.4/£ is $602.

US unit cost remains roughly the same, put VAT back to 17.5% and it's close to exactly the same.

What you're saying beyond that is your opinion, not fact. Another way of looking at it is, apple had to put up the prices to take account of exchange rates (obviously, provably true), but to help out people they cut their margins to keep the increase to a minimum. You'd have to be mad to buy that but the truth is somewhere in the middle.

This is business after all, they can charge whatever they want, you think it isn't good value then don't buy it. Personally I think it's ludicrous people get so worked up about apple prices. It's not budget, it's a lifestyle brand and it's not cheap. You want cheap then look elsewhere.
 
yashiro said:
Prices are a bit steep. Obviously recession induced but it's also self destructive to a degree. Even here in the Mac forum most people are complaining rather than getting ready to upgrade. And these upgrades were delayed for way too long.

- No LED displays in the iMacs is quite a disappointment.
The display IS the computer on these things. I'll keep my old one and buy some ram from a third party. Maybe others will do the same given the prices.

- Speed bump on macbook pros. This is actually fairly neat.

- Mac mini. Not enough ram. Too expensive. Will probably pick up in sales after all the complaining dies down. To the detriment of the iMac sales probably.

- Mac Pro. Still love the case but wow at the poor ram and video card options.

All in all, belated updates that are behind the curve and will cost you too much.
They still look great and the OS is decent but the margins on this junk must be huge.
Probably a case of "supply some required speed bumps but don't spend too much as sales will be crap anyway this year".
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No LED displays is interesting. I guess one option is the panels are in short supply or considerably more expensive, they have the tech from the cinema display now so adding it to the imac should be child's play. Unless they have a design revision coming along, which I don't buy. Given apple's green credentials it's also disappointing.

Mac mini I have no problem with, I may yet buy one for acting as another server for some dev work. 1GB of RAM is a bit stingy, most people are going to need to upgrade straight of and unlike every other mac today, it's a home upgrade for experienced and brave users only.

Mac Pro, well it's still a professional workstation and still carries a high price, the people complaining are generally the home users who it's never targeted at (how many people have a Dell precision or HP xw series workstation at home??). It's more a sign that apple need a halfway house between consumer and business - with a quad core processor.

Speed bump on macbook pros is appreciated, a 2.66Ghz macbook pro is probably going to be in the post to me someday soon. Expensive but it's a fantastic bit of kit.
 
bigredshark said:
It's not budget, it's a lifestyle brand and it's not cheap. You want cheap then look elsewhere.
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This happens everytime Apple has either a product release. Effectively you get a split between the people moaning that Apple either didn't add the pipe dream specs (in this case quad core iMac) or moaning of "poverty" spec computers for top dollar prices.

Well here's some news. Apple have never been cheap, never will be cheap and if you want the product but cannot afford it or don't want it but just want to moan about how overpriced Apple kit is then please do the forum a favour an keep it to yourself as the same old diatribe gets tedious.

I think that overall the refresh was good and prices have gone up as expected but as has been said the pound has tanked so no surprise.

I'll stick with my WhiteBook for the moment although a Mini is tempting now it has a better GPU. Oh and I don't care how much it costs! :p
 
LordSplodge said:
This happens everytime Apple has either a product release. Effectively you get a split between the people moaning that Apple either didn't add the pipe dream specs (in this case quad core iMac) or moaning of "poverty" spec computers for top dollar prices.

Well here's some news. Apple have never been cheap, never will be cheap and if you want the product but cannot afford it or don't want it but just want to moan about how overpriced Apple kit is then please do the forum a favour an keep it to yourself as the same old diatribe gets tedious.

I think that overall the refresh was good and prices have gone up as expected but as has been said the pound has tanked so no surprise.

I'll stick with my WhiteBook for the moment although a Mini is tempting now it has a better GPU. Oh and I don't care how much it costs! :p
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Well put and exactly the point. You don't buy apple to get the latest specs at competative prices, there are heaps of good reasons to buy apple (hassle free computing and decent industrial design being my reasons) but cost is not one.

My macbook pro cost £1600, my new one will likely be more still. I know it's not cheap, or the best specification available, but thats not the point really.

I'm also amused by those comparing the mac pro to i7 PCs, the mac pro is a competitor to the Dell precision workstations and HP xw series machines (along with various other xeon based workstations) not to a home brew quad core desktop. That people do make the comparison is largely because apple still don't have a mid range quad core desktop (or even a quad core imac) but complaining about the mac pro's price in comparison to those sort of machines is silly.
 
Panzerbjorn said:
Well, I folded like a cheap hooker that got punched in the gut.

I have a nice shiny 1TB Time Capsule sat next to me. :D

Panzer
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I want my existing Time Capsule to have the features of the "new" one :(

  • Remote access to HDD via Mobile Me
  • Guest networking
  • Split 802.11n + 802.11g/b simultaneous

I hate you..
 
Sorry mate. :p

I decided to stop whining about it (see earlier post) and just get on with it. Big Red made a very good point about the features you have just mentioned being useful and I decided they were worth the extra £50. I'm sure it's going to cost me more now though because the Mobile Me solution seems very interesting.

Panzer
 
Panzerbjorn said:
Sorry mate. :p

I decided to stop whining about it (see earlier post) and just get on with it. Big Red made a very good point about the features you have just mentioned being useful and I decided they were worth the extra £50. I'm sure it's going to cost me more now though because the Mobile Me solution seems very interesting.

Panzer
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As with all things mobile me though, it depends on whether it actually works.

*I've been using mobile me (and .mac before) for years and love it but it's been fairly troubled especially with the iphone sync etc. I'm glad apple are continuing to add features though, makes it less painful coughing up each year.
 
That's why I've held off until now - i thought that it might be worth it when I got my iPhone but all the reports were that it was broken so I held off. Now it might be worth giving the free trial a go...

Panzer
 
Panzerbjorn said:
That's why I've held off until now - i thought that it might be worth it when I got my iPhone but all the reports were that it was broken so I held off. Now it might be worth giving the free trial a go...

Panzer
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I think it probably is, there are a few issues remaining, of which real push for email is the one which bugs me - it pushes notification of new emails but if you read them in webmail or your mail app then you have to open the client on your phone and let it sync before it clears the new message notification. Most push services do that unprompted.

But that aside it's pretty good. Contacts and calendar sync really quickly now, which is great. Despite having it on my blackberry for years it's still impressive having my personal calendar doing it...

I keep meaning to play with back to my mac as well but haven't got round to it yet.
 
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