Way back
in Volume One,
I admitted that I'm going to have to snare myself a new Mac
sometime within the next six weeks, without the benefit of
having done so at any time previously in the current century.
And last time around in Volume
Two, I
jettisoned the idea of attempting to go with anything from
either of Apple's professional lines, largely for the altogether
inglorious reason that even the rebuilt-from-junkyard-parts,
low-end scraps of the pro lines are not in my budget. I didn't,
however, throw away the idea of a laptop entirely. The iBook
could always step in and save the day, if need be. But today,
it's time to take a look at Apple's consumer desktop lines.
Before we
go any further, I should point out that I did just happen to
catch Apple's little announcement Tuesday morning that vaguely
might have had something to do with new eMacs, but I'll get
to that later. And even though I don't necessarily expect any
of the current iMac models to still be the current models by
time time I go to make my purchase, I'm going to look at them
anyway. Nothing like a good hypothetical exercise to help me
figure out what I'll want to do when I get to the real thing,
right? Either that, or I'll just manage to confuse myself entirely,
and that could be fun to watch. Let's take a look, shall we?
The first
thing to note when looking at Apple's consumer line is that
it wasn't supposed to be this way. I mean, once upon a time,
the line didn't suffer from an astonishing fit of irony
when it comes to model names. For years, there was only one
consumer line, and it was called the iMac, and it had a 15
inch CRT monitor built into it, and that was that. Along the
way, the iMac saw several revisions that allowed it to keep
up with the times (the slot-loading iMac that I'm typing this
on could eat the original iMac for breakfast, for too many
reasons to list here), but eventually it was time to do something
about the one specification that defined its form factor: the
monitor. Many voices called out for Apple to go ahead and build
some kind of a giant iMac-on-steroids that would somehow manage
to pack an entire 17 inch monitor into an enlarged iMac shell.
But Apple's thinking was far more progressive.
As the
flat-screen LCD market continued to come down in price, Apple
felt that instead of bulking up (and ugly-ing up) the iMac
by moving to a 17 inch CRT, it was safe to go ahead and allow
the iMac to evolve into a beast with a 15 inch flat-screen.
I say "evolve" because LCD prices weren't quite to
the point where Apple could offer one in a sub-$1000 machine. So
in order to bridge the gap, the old iMac remained in production
and quietly filled the low end gap as the "new" iMac was
born with all its LCD-on-a-moving arm glory.
It was a
good plan, I suppose. But seemingly all plans are made to be broken,
and as such, instead of continuing to drop as they should have,
LCD prices actually began increasing,
meaning that Apple was moving farther away from being able
to toss the old CRT iMac overboard. Plus, representatives from
schools (including me) were more than a little wary about putting
adjustable flat screen computers in classrooms (gee, what could
go wrong?). So Apple decided to give schools their very own
computer model, which went ahead and packed a
17 CRT monitor into an iMac-like shell after all. But since
there were already two entirely different products on the market
called "iMac," Apple figured that the new beast
should probably be called something else. And since it was for
the education market, it picked up the name "eMac" (see if
you can guess why, before the end of the next paragraph).
The upshot
is that the eMac was very successful, so much so in fact that
when LCD prices never did come back down, Apple was compelled
to make the eMac available to the general public. Apple was
then able to phase out the "old" iMac line entirely. The
kicker, of course, is that Apple now has two consumer lines,
called the eMac and iMac, whose only substantive distinctions
are the type of built-in monitor, and the widely differing
form factors that came about as a result. The iMac is a thing
of beauty and has a screen that you can adjust to almost any
angle. The eMac is stationary, and butt-ugly by Apple design
standards, but it's cheaper and the screen is bigger (more
on this last part later). Most people walking into an Apple Store
these days in their local shopping mall probably have no idea
that the "e" in eMac stands for "education" or the fact that
the "i" in "iMac" stands for "internet." If you guessed correctly,
you get a prize. The prize is that you get to go to your local
Apple Store and quiz the salespeople on this who, unless they're
regular billpalmer.net readers, probably have no idea what
the "i" stands for. It's such an arcane piece of trivia, in
fact, that I'm a little embarrassed that I knew the answer.
Okay, history
lesson over. Flash forward to the present twin consumer lines
with the non-representative names, and let's see where they
currently stand. While it's important to know the history behind
what you're buying into (so as to be able to predict where
it's headed), you must keep in mind at all times that you are
in fact buying what is on the market now, not what used to
be on the market or what will be on the market in the future.
Unless, of course, you buy a closeout model, in which case,
you are in fact buying what used to be on the market. Or you
wait until the next revision of the product, in which case
you will in fact be buying what will be on the market in the
future. Or, as in my case, Apple just happens to announce new
models while you're in the middle of writing a column. Alright,
I'm confused, anyone who's not, raise your hand. Hmm, I don't
see any hands raised. But then I can't really see any of you
right now.
Moving on.
I'll make a note to the gallery that, thanks to Apple's amazingly
altruistic timing this morning, this next paragraph is the
one that had to be rewritten from scratch. See? I knew I'd
have been better of procrastinating, but no, I just had to
go ahead and try to write the column a day ahead of time. That's
the last time I ever do anything in advance. So anyway, here's
what the eMac line looks like now, as opposed to when I first
started writing this column:
The eMac
currently comes in two models, which both sport the same 17
inch CRT monitor but vary in price by $200 (yesterday it was
$300). So what do you get for your extra two hundred bucks?
Let's see, an 80 GB hard drive instead of 40 GB, for one thing.
Apple has finally corrected what I considered a long-standing
flaw by finally including 256 MB of RAM in both the high-end
and low-end models (instead of paltry 128 MB that came with
the low-end model until today). But the hard drive thing appears
to be rather inconsequential, because you can build-to-order
the low-end eMac with the 80 GB hard drive for only $50 extra
through the online Apple Store. In any case, neither 128 nor
256 MB of RAM comes even close to meeting my needs (if you
do web design and you've ever tried to use Dreamweaver at the
same as you're using any other software, you know what I mean),
but that's another issue for later. For now I'll just note
that I have to leave room in the budget for some extra RAM.
So what is
it, exactly, that you're paying extra for when you opt for
the higher-end eMac model? Well, it's the SuperDrive, silly.
The low-end eMac only comes with a Combo Drive (someone please
explain to me why SuperDrive is one word, while Combo Drive
is two?), meaning that while you can use either model to play
CD's, burn CD's, or play DVD's, only the high-end model can
burn DVD's. This is, of course, all about iLife. Windows users
who have shelled out for a DVD burner have essentially flushed
their money down the toilet (it's like buying a car in a land
where there is no gasoline), but if you've got a Mac then you've
got iLife, and if you're into it at all, you're going to want
that DVD burner. So I ask myself: am I into iLife?
Well of course
I am. iTunes is everything to me, but for that you only need
a CD burner (or an iPod, which I've already got). And I manage
to get a surprising amount of mileage out of iPhoto, considering
the fact that I don't own a digital camera. What can I say?
I'm not into photography as an art form, and I don't have kids
or anything else that I feel I must take pictures of on an
ongoing basis, so I've never bothered to shell out for my own
camera. All of the photos in my iPhoto library were either
taken by someone else, or taken using someone else's camera. And
considering that fact, I have a surprising number of them.
But not to the point that I need a DVD burner to help me store
and/or present them.
So that leaves
me with iMovie. I really do love iMovie, but I have to admit
that I used to use it much more often back when I worked at
the school, where there were things to actually make iMovies
about (and people to teach iMovie to, for that matter). An
iMovie is barely worth making if you can't turn around and
cut it to a DVD, both because nobody wants to crowd around
your computer in order to watch your iMovie, and because you
generally can't store more than one or two of them internally.
It's one of the very few times in which offloading your work
to external disc and then wiping it from your hard drive is
warranted. But do I use iMovie enough to warrant the DVD burner?
I don't know. If I were giving advice to my mother, yes. My
sister, yes. Anyone with kids (or adorable pets, for that matter),
the answer is yes. But for me? Let's just say that while I
had been fairly sure that I needed to find a way to squeeze
a SuperDrive into my budget, I'm now officially leaning the
other way. Fortunately, I don't have to decide at this moment. But I do
have to wrap up this column.
But before
I go, I do want to point out that these new eMacs are some
sweet, sweet upgrades. Twenty-five percent faster processor
than their predecessors, stupendously faster RAM, upgraded
video card, more RAM on the low end, price drop on the high
end, internal Bluetooth option, and if that weren't enough,
the eMac is now officially the only computer, Mac or otherwise,
to sport an 8x DVD-R drive. It's so new that they don't yet
make blank discs that can even be burned at that speed. [Hint
to the gallery: the eMac being the only Mac with an 8x DVD-R
can't possibly last long; this is the dead giveaway that new
models are coming, soon if not sooner, across the entire desktop
spectrum.]
Look for "Bill
buys a new Mac, Volume Four" soon, in which I'll sneak
a look over at the iMac side of the fence (provided that it hasn't
been completely revamped by this time tomorrow) and
strive to solve my desktop equation once and for all.
No
Panther user should be without:
