Apple discontinues eMac, intro's $900 education iMac
 

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/jul/05imac.html

Apple also has a promotion you might want to consider if you're a student. If you buy one of the qualifying Macs you can get a free iPod Nano or a rebate to apply to other iPod models. Unfortunately the entry level iMac isn't eligible however. Full info available here: http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL...ckToSchool2006

$899 is a great price for the imac

Only catch, you have to be a student or teacher. Maybe it'll go the route of the eMac...for everyone! Why was the eMac was history for 6 months before this came out? I read an article that may have hurt Apple a bit.

heath

I kinda doubt that. The eMac was sort of a special case since it was a piece of hardware that could only be bought by students and faculty. Apple got so many requests from others that they finally gave in and offered it to the general public. For years it really was the best bang for the buck in the Apple lineup - we bought one at work. But the education iMac is really just an iMac at a lower price, so Apple isn't witholding a product from the public the way they originally did with the eMac.

BTW, somewhat lost in that announcement is the fact that Apple no longer sells any CRT's.

One more thing, the iMac for schools seems to have some slightly less features, like no blue tooth, smaller drive, etc.

heath

To be honest, as a student, I'd much rather get a regular retail one because unless I need one to do just homework and internet surfing on, I'd be giving up performance in everything else, especially video stuff. Although, it wouldn't be bad to go this route if you were considering a Mac Mini, I'm typing this on my 1.4ghz G4 Mac Mini at the moment and it does just fine for video editing and just about everything else, except gaming of course, that goes to the Intel Macs with Bootcamp.

Also, you may want to look at the summary on the new Educational iMac at www.hdforindies.com and decide if that's really what you'd consider "a good buy".

Same processor, lesser graphics card and smaller hard drive.

heath

You need to put it into perspective though. There's not much you cannot do with this iMac in terms of video. Yes, the card supposedly sucks in comparison to higher-end iMacs, but then again, I used to edit feature films in a 533MHz G4 with no problem. You can edit well on damn near anything these days. ;)

These are education iMacs anyways - not meant for professionals or serious editors/users. But many video classes would love to have them anyway. The old high school class I taught was using a bunch of old eMacs, and they did marvelous work. A class like that would EASILY benefit from iMacs like these. Even if they're a step down from the higher-end, they're still lightyears beyond the kind of old equipment many schools have these days.

Daniel,

I did two or three cuts on Final Cut Pro 1.0 and a G3 400 mhz Power Mac back in 1999 and 2000. By 2001, I was on a G4 733 mhz and FCP 1.2.5 I think. All for a feature film!

heath

Well then you understand as well how easy it is to edit on modern machines. :) I don't like it when people have spec wars over their computers, when I can pull out a film I made five years ago with an old G4 and very old Fina Cut Pro that probably looks better. The movie is what matters!

Might go the other way
 

Well I've been looking at Mac's now that they will run Vegas etc. I'm starting to teeter back and forth about possibly buying a mac lap.

Of course, Daniel, that's something I think most of us say on these boards. Content, content, content. I used to get caught up in the "bigger is better" philosophy until I was broke!

As for a decision, go with a Mac laptop and buy Windows XP Professional and use Bootcamp to boot up into Windows and cut away on Vegas.

heath

Heath, hehe, it's a hard mental switch to think of buying a mac. The main reason would be hardware stability. Certainly Mac has always enjoyed a more stable system. Partly because they dont' have every Tom, Dick, Jane and Harry making parts for them, or i.e. 100000000 drivers etc.

So yeah, I'm several months out from a laptop, so I'm still researching.

Steven,

Plenty of time to research and relax.

heath

Where did Jane come from? The way I always heard it was Tom, Dick and Harry. :)

It's getting even easier than that. Vendors are now shipping Macs with WinXP pre-installed; MacMall has this as an option on all the new Macs for about $150 more. Saves you the hassle of going through the install process. Apple is expected to release MacOSX 10.5 on August 7 at WWDC. That version will eliminate the need for "bootcamp" and include the ability to switch operating system at boot.

I was just reading an article about how Apple is expected to gain market share due to Windows compatibility: http://www.forbes.com/2006/07/10/app...markets07.html

Not a good time to buy a laptop right now anyway... At least not for the next month or so. The Core 2 Duo "Merom" CPU is just a couple weeks from shipping to system integrators. It's nearly 60% faster than current Core Duo CPUs and it has full 64bit support. :)

So, once "Merom" hits we should see some discounts on current CoreDuo notebooks as well as the new more powerful offerings. As for which notebook to get, the MacBooks are where it's at right now and I've researched notebooks to death lately. I'm hoping to buy a 15" MBP with Merom CPU and BluRay drive sometime this fall.

Thanks for that Jeff.

Not only that, but the MacBooks and especially MacBook Pros are buggy as hell. I own a MacBook, and while I like it, it does have some issues that would prevent me from using it as my main system, nor would I trust it with data that was not somewhere else. This is to be expected of a first-line Apple product. These are their first Intel computers ever, and there's bound to be bugs.

The MacBook Pros, however, are worse. Many have issues. I have a friend who brought his in for repair four times and it is still messed up. Apple really wanted to kick them out the door fast in time for MacWorld, and in doing so they left them prone to error. Of course, many of them work fine, but for someone serious about their data, I really wouldn't chance it yet.

I would wait for a revision before buying. I personally will probably buy a Pro when a revision comes out.

Yeah, there's been a lot of reports of bugs/glitches/issues with MacBook and MacBook Pro systems. But it's not quite as bad as Daniel makes it sound. I personally know several people who have bought the new Intel Macs, including myself. I bought a 17" MBP to replace a 17" HP notebook... I don't use it myself, it was for an employee of mine, but he's using it daily for presentations and runs Photoshop and InDesign on it regularly with no issues now after a few months. I also bought a new Intel iMac for my father and he's been [ab]using it for about a month now with no troubles. OTOH, I do have a friend that bought a MacBook for his daughter and it was DOA right out of the box from Apple. I'm assuming they swapped it and it's OK now but haven't really followed up.

But do a search on it or just check out the Apple section over at notebookforums.com. There's links to issues that range from the power connector melting to batteries leaking and GPUs overheating, etc... What can we expect though... New models, rushed out the door, poop happens. Hehe. All the more reason I've been waiting for newer revisions with the Merom CPU. :)

FWIW, Dell and HP aren't doing much better with their new notebooks.

Yeah Jeff,

I'm looking for a portable office that I can do v/editing on. My day job and video job are competing for my brain cells and time more and more, so it's looking like a laptop is in my 2006 future.

And you're right, I don't need one that is going to give me a lot of trouble. So I'll look up that link and start reading.

I'm an artist Mike, I have problems with norms. :}

The stories I've heard about MacBooks and Pros are very isolated. Even Dell is having issues with "bursting into flames" laptops:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/...iness/dell.php

heath

As Heath said, the problems are very isolated. Apple has pretty good support (probably the best out there) and a nice warranty on their systems. Actual failure rate on these MacBook[Pro] systems is probably just a few % with less than 1% being serious issues like parts melting or whatnot. But just like any complex device, there's always that chance something could happen. No matter what solution you finally decide on, be sure to have a good backup solution in place. Laptops used in the field on a daily basis are far more likely to fail than a desktop computer, regardless of who manufactures them or what OS they run, etc.. Also, while I do a good portion of my work from a laptop, I couldn't imagine using it for an all-in-one solution. There are just too many things a laptop or compact computer can't do.

Get this (from macrumors.com):

"Multiple readers report that Apple's $899 iMac has been designated as an education institution purchase only product.

From http://www.apple.com/education/imac/
$899 configuration of the 17-inch iMac is available for education institution customers only.

For the past week, the education-only iMac had been available to both qualified education individuals and institutions. There has been no official explanation from Apple on the quick change."

That stinks! Only schools can get them, not customers!!!! Probably not making much money...But, think of the software!

heath

I never read Apple's official announcement for the $899 "education" iMac, but I assumed this was the case just by how they were announcing/promoting it.

Too bad if it is true, that's quite a bargain, even though it's a very basic config.

That could be right. I just went to one of Apple's educational online stores for personal purchases. The cheapest iMac is $1200.

Yeah, same here logging with my Academy of Art University student id.
I think it used to show the $899 option when this announcement was first released.

Oh well ... I'm still waiting for the workstations. :)

Must say that Apple got nice discounts anyway for students, saved quit some money on my powermac g5 and ipod video :-)

A little off the subject, but here a few years back the county where I lived gave every middle and highschool student a macbook. I heard that the numbers dwindled down to the county purchasing each one for about 100 bucks each. It was crazy, now I think the county has decided to go to pc laps instead. Makes ya want to go back to school.

I've been hearing that those PC laptops have already fallen prey to viruses, etc.

heath

Perhaps it was an iBook? The Macbooks didn't exist "a few years back" :-)

We bought several G3 iBooks at work right after they came out (12" model). They were fine for about the first year, then experienced more and more problems. Out of 6 or 7, only one survives intact and isn't really used regularly. The CD drives were the first thing to fail. Several had the screens fail. The original "toilet seat" iBooks were probably a little more robust (we have one of those that still works) but are really s-l-o-w by current standards. My daughter and her boyfriend each have G4 iBooks and they have held up fine so far.

Of course, no one can put technology (or almost anything) through its paces better than kids! One of my students bought an iBook G4 and her kids pretty much destroyed it within a few months.

heath