I can
only hope that all you readers out there have had as enjoyable
Thanksgiving as I have. Family, turkey, and Miami Dolphins
football -- can you ask for more? Well, perhaps. It's been
a landmark week for billpalmer.net, having
managed to make the front pages of Low End Mac, iPodLounge,
allosx.com, and MacDevCenter, all in the same week. The billpalmer.net
discussion boards managed to rack up more than two thousand
visitors in their first week of operation, and the Internship
Program launched as well. Now, let's see what popped into the
inbox this week:
In response
to the article "Panther
can have your old blueberry iBook purring like a kitten again", Brandyn writes:
"I'm
a Mac consultant in the Des Moines area, and I just did the
same update
for my wife including the HD upgrade. I had a 12GB laptop drive
from a
defunct Compaq laptop to add to her aging blueberry. I've field
stripped
about five iBooks and its never a fun process. Keep an egg carton
or tackle box handy for the variety of screws. The Swiss Army
Cybertool is really handy for most Mac repairs."
So what you're
really saying is, "Bill, quit twiddling your thumbs and put
a new hard drive in that iBook of yours!", right? All in good
time, my friend. And yes, I love the irony of the fact that
you pulled a good hard drive from a dead PC laptop and gave
it a home in your still-kicking four year old iBook.
In response
to the article "No,
Virginia, there is no headless iMac", Jonathan
writes:
"I am
not one who has been clamoring for the headless iMac, but
my aging
G4 533
minitower is showing it's age these days
and I am considering replacing it. The problem? I have a lovely
17" Samsung flat panel monitor that I would prefer to keep
in service. Why should I replace
a perfectly good monitor just because my CPU is creaking?"
If "headless
iMac" is the phrase that sets off all my buttons, then "perfectly
good monitor" has to be the corollary. I have one word of advice
for what to do with your Samsung monitor: eBay. It's just a
screen. Get rid of it. Wanting to keep your existing Mac around
would be one thing, but a monitor is just a box with pixels.
Dump it and get that iMac.
From the
"perhaps I'm hearing an echo" department, Chris pleads his
case for a headless iMac:
"Right
now, there is the eMac, and the flat-panel iMac. That means
if you
want
to spend little money, you get the $799 eMac,
and have no choice but to have a 17" monitor. But what if
you already have a perfectly good monitor, and just want a cheap
Mac? I would say that Apple could shave at least $100 off the
cost of the eMac by building it without the monitor, and only
add a VGA port. And for many people, that would be great! A new
Mac to be had for $700."
You've lost
me, Chris. You want Apple to offer the eMac without a monitor
so that cost-conscious Mac buyers can save $100 on the price,
but now they've got to go and find a monitor, presumably from
a third party and most definitely for more than $100. So now
they've had to hunt down a monitor and buy it separately, spend
more money total than the $799 they would have spent on an
eMac, and now they're stuck with an ugly box sitting next to
an ugly
monitor. I just don't get it. I'm going to find the guy who
coined the phrase "perfectly good monitor" and shoot him.
On the same
topic, John writes in to ask:
"You
asked for feedback on 'holes' in the Apple consumer
product line. The hole I'm writing about is a reasonably priced
17" iMac. With the new 20" iMac, didn't the base price
of the 17" iMac go up?"
Not to my
knowledge, John. The 17" iMac is currently $1799; wasn't that
what it cost before the introduction of the 20" iMac? In any
case, if Apple did raise the price, then I agree that they
shouldn't have.
On a slightly
different note, Milt ponders the future of the eMac:
"I don't
want to comment on the headless mac so much as where the eMac
will go next. I run a high school library and can't
imagine using the current iMac with its floating screen. If Apple
does phase out the CRT screen, what other option is there? Would
Apple do a low-end education model with the cpu contained behind
a LCD screen? I noticed that our Dell contract now includes an
LCD screen instead of a CRT screen, so Apple will be left behind
if they don't do something. Just wondered is you have any thoughts
on this."
Milt, it's
always good to hear from an educator. I'm sure you'll recall
that the eMac started life as "a low-end education model".
The eMac
originally
came
into
existence
because
the original CRT iMac was being phased out, and schools didn't
want the flat-panel iMac, and it was only after consumers demanded
it that the eMac became a retail product as well. I don't see
Apple phasing out the CRT-based eMac any time soon.
It's a popular model and it gives Apple the only real opportunity
to compete at the sub-$1000 price point. Apple wouldn't bury
it
unless demand
disappeared,
and even if consumer demand dried up, education customers would
still be clamoring for it. As far as Dell trying to sell LCD-based
computers to schools, it just goes to show how clueless Dell
really is about the needs of educators and students. Any school
that chooses to shortchange their students with PC's when they
could have bought Macs is, in
my opinion, squandering public tax dollars and therefore committing
a crime.
Alright,
enough about headless iMacs and brainless schools. James writes:
"Love
your website. I think it's one of the best on the web for
Mac articles. Your site and MacSurfer's Headline News are my
two 'must see' sites every day."
Wow, that's
really high praise. Thanks, James, I'm humbled. For what it's
worth, MacSurfer is on my list as well. There's seemingly no
quicker way to find nearly all of the latest Mac-related content
out there.
Casey Neistat
writes:
"Apple screwed
us over, we made a little movie about it. We are NYC based
artists."
Oh, wait
a minute, I already wrote about that
one. ;)
On a more
enlightening note, Brevard writes:
"I
have recently discovered your website and as a fellow mac enthusiast,
would like to ask you if you would be interested
in speaking
to our Mac User Group...I too have a blueberry ibook running Panther. I
got a bit adventurous and clock-chipped it to 366Mhz..."
Sure, Brevard,
I'd be honored to speak to your group. I've got to tell
you, you've got more guts than I do, overclocking your iBook
like that. It's good to know that it can be done without catching
anything on fire -- the iBook or the apartment!
On the iTunes
front, a former co-worker of mine recently passed
this along news regarding his local band:
"Plans
are also currently underway to have tracks from the CD available
through Apple iTunes and various
other
e-music
sites, including EMusic and MusicNet."
It's never
a bad thing when the musicians themselves are thinking along
these lines. I think I see a trend
here. It sure seems to me as if the online music scene
is
shaping up to be iTunes first, and the others as an
afterthought.
From the
Department of Coincidence, Zack from MacPulse.com wrote
me to point out that there is an email chain letter going around,
supposedly from Bill Palmer, the founder of AppleBee's
restaurant.
Well, it turns out that even though the chain letter is bogus,
the founder of AppleBee's really is named Bill Palmer. And
no, I'm not him. I'm also not this
guy.
If you would
like to see your question answered, or your comments responded
to, simply send them to billpalmer@mac.com and
you just might be featured in the next edition of Feedback
Friday. If you're
looking for more immediate feedback, or the opportunity to
converse with fellow readers, then I'll
see you on the billpalmer.net
discussion boards.
