Apple had claimed that they dropped about $200 off the price of the iMac, but that’s only really a half-truth.
Take a look at this example. Obviously, the left side is the previous model, built one day before the new model was made available. On the right is an equally spec’d iMac of the newest generation.
What a difference a day makes. That’s hardly a “$200” difference. That is actually a $699 difference.
I see what they meant by lower-margin product transition.
Of course there is validity to the $200 number, which is much more relative to the product line than it is to the actual specs. Apple is just being modest, which is always appreciated.
Sidenote: Thankfully i was able to wait until this news before i made my iMac purchase.
I’ve had my AppleTV for a number of month now and the thing is really great. No more having to hook up the laptop to the TV, no more bringing in the iPod to listen to music in the living room… It’s a simple solution that takes care of a few simple problems.
That being said, there are still a few problems, many of which could be solved with a software update.
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A couple of rumors have been going around recently. The first, courtesy of Cringley, is that Apple will start including H.264 decoding and encoding hardware to all macs. very compelling, but i’ll address that a little more later. The second rumor, this one from Apple Insider, claims that the iMac is about to see it’s first major redesign since the iMac G5 was introduced. The new design will supposedly “cut the fat from the the current iMac line and outfit a pair of new Core 2 Duo-based models in a form factor that will be both slimmer and sleeker than today’s offerings.”
My guess is that both of these will be turn out to be true, sooner rather than later. Here’s why:
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In response to Cory Doctorow’s “Steve Jobs’ iTunes dance”
While i enjoy boingboing.net, i must say, co-editor Cory Doctorow should probably stick to what he’s good at. He writes a “response” of sorts to Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Music that devolves fairly quickly into a misleading and misinformed diatribe about lock-in.
Here are some price moments:
Although Apple’s DRM is wholly ineffective at preventing copying […]
He’s got a typo, i think he meant to say: “Apple’s DRM is ineffective at wholly preventing copying” in which case he might actually have a point. Apple’s DRM does very well at discouraging casual copying, but it does not completely prevent a determined user (and does not attempt to, in the name of convenience.) Seeing as Apple allows DRM-less CDs to be burned, i don’t think anyone ever made the claim that Apple’s DRM would put an end to piracy.
Every iTunes song you buy for 99 cents amounts to a 99 cent tax on switching from an iPod to a Zune. That’s because your iTunes songs won’t play on your Zune — or on any other player, save those made or licensed by Apple.
And, also, just about every single CD player ever made. maybe worth mentioning. Also, after burning to a CD, you can simply re-encode to whatever Zune-friendly format you want. (…Which is how my cellphone plays my iTunes purchases. an extra step, sure, but it’s still possible, and pretty easy, without any 3rd party apps involved.)
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First of all, i want to clarify that iTunes versus Pirating was not meant to be a scientific in-depth review of the entire iTunes store versus all the possibilities of pirating copyrighted material. It was simple a specific example, that of ABC’s “Lost” from the iTunes store compared to the most easily accessible pirated version.
This was no means supposed to be an anti-Apple rant; i still use and love the iTunes store. I also want to apologize about the server outage: i’ve complained to my host (1and1) and am pretty disappointed with them right now.
There were a ton of good comments on digg as well as some nasty ones, which i’m going to address here. Before i get to that, though, i’ll address the basic issues.
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