![]() With the engineering brilliance demonstrated in the iMac G5, Apple could build an extremely small machine and price it in the $500-$700 range. I would call this machine the Xmac, which fits perfectly in the naming scheme with Xserve, Xserver RAID, Xsan, and Xgrid. A lot of people already have LCDs or monitors that work perfectly fine (ugly as they might be). I believe Apple is leaving a lot of money on the table by not having a stand-alone consumer/busines computer without LCD. He loved the look and styling of the iMac, but price is a sticking point. ![]() That said, a friend is in the market for a new computer, and I mentioned the new iMac. There is no premium price in the iMac compared to PC box builders all-in-one machines, look at the Gateway Profile Apple pricing the iMac extremely competively. I have seen this proposal time and again, here is the latest at The Mac Night Owlįirst off, I love the new iMac and intend to get one as soon as all my old PC components are sold on eBay. I am not the only one, I am starting to get questions from users on this too. Quick recap: I patched everything up, and the GDI+ Detection Tool still tells me I am vulnerable, but I am left with no instructions on how to fix it. ![]() I have nothing left to do because I am on Windows XP. Office Update tells me I have no patches to install, so I go back to the GDI+ Security Update page and I read it again. Step 1 on the page above is to run Office Update How to Update Your Computer with the JPEG Processing (GDI+) Security Update When you click on the "Yes" button, the user expects they will see what they have to do to cleanup the latest security mess. I just ran this tool and told my system is vulnerable, here is a UI fragment: On, there is an open letter to Microsoft about how poor an implementation the GDI+ detection tool his. Windows XP SP2 fixes the hole in Windows, but it seems like the afflicted DLL, gdiplus.dll, is everywhere. MS04-028 is perhaps one of the worst security vulnerabilites discovered in the recent past. I am not saying Apple is doomed if they don't get into the low-end market with a more PC-like headless machine, but I don't see them achieveing significant share gains without it. A large percentage of growth in the PC market is coming from the low-end, and though a $1299 iMac is close, sub-$1000 is the magic number. Apple needs to maintain existing app develeopers and expand the pool. If Apple can get their share above 5%, the positive feedback loop of share driving software development decision efforts will guarantee the continued existance of the Mac platform. Growing share diffuses one of the main criticisms from PC partisans, and it's also a defensive strategy as Linux desktop share grows. The point of a low cost Mac is not to maintain profit margins, those will have to be sacrified somewhat, but to grow market share at the expense of profits. I expand on that a bit in the comment, reproduced here, that I posted on AppleMatters in response to how unlikely they view the "headless" Mac:īut I disagree with your conclusions. I recently posted why I Apple needs a sub-$1000 Mac. Chris Seibold on AppleMatters recently wrote why we won't see a "headless" Mac.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |