Back when
this week started, I shared in Volume
One
that I'll soon be bringing a new Mac into the family within
the next six weeks or so, and that surprisingly, it would be
my first in nearly five years. In Volume
Two, I kicked the PowerMac and PowerBook lines to the curb,
citing budgetary reasons that could make a grown Mac user cry.
So I ventured into consumerland in Volume
Three, pondering the two brand new eMac models and concluding
that while I would recommend a SuperDrive to a great deal of
other users, it might not be necessary for my needs. And today
we'll take a look at the iMac, a product line that has grown
so long in the tooth that it needs dentures. I can only hope
that Apple manages to refresh if not completely revolutionize
the iMac before I need to go ahead and make my purchase, but
nonetheless I'm going to take a look at the current models
as if they were indeed my only options. Maybe Apple will be
nice and surprise me.
First let
me say that while I never thought that the flat-screen iMac,
with its swivel arm, belonged anywhere near the elementary
school that I worked at or any other elementary school for
that matter, I
think it's a near-perfect home machine for anyone who doesn't
have little kids. But to be honest, and remember that this
is coming from someone who thinks that the vast majority of
Apple's decisions have been good ones, I think that the specifications
for the current iMac models must have been drawn up on Mars.
Wait, let me revise that. The 17 inch and 21 inch iMac models
are ideal machines that, if not for the fact that they're well
out of my price range, I would be trying to snap up in a heartbeat.
But then there's the matter of the 15 inch iMac, and I don't
know what happened here. It's almost as if Apple taped a sign
to it, reading "don't buy me."
I don't get
it. I don't know what Apple was thinking here. Perhaps it's
that the company expected to be rid of this current lineup
a long time ago, or maybe they really do want to steer people
away from the 15 inch iMac and toward the high-end eMac (I
wonder which one has the higher profit margin?). But regardless
of the reason, here's what's wrong with it: first, and I can't
believe that they did this, the 15 inch iMac does not come
with a SuperDrive, despite being $200 more expensive than an
eMac that does. That doesn't begin to make sense to me.
You
can't built even build a 15 inch iMac to order with a SuperDrive,
meaning that if you want an iMac with a SuperDrive, you have
no choice but to go with the 17 inch iMac, which clocks in
at $1800, which isn't within a country mile of my budget. Now
I'm not one of those crybabies who pouts continuously because
Apple doesn't offer its customers the "choice" of having eight
million confusing models and options and configurations (funny
how they usually do so while chattering brainlessly about "marketshare"
and other words they don't understand the meaning of), but
I can't quite get a handle on why this particular limitation
is in place. Especially considering that the first generation
15 inch flat-screen iMac actually did come with
a SuperDrive. I remember this because we had one of them
back at the elementary school. And now that I think back,
I can recall falling in love with the concept of owning a
flat screen iMac specifically because of the time I spent
using the one we had at the school. The adjustable screen
is just unreal in its usability.
But then
I remember why that iMac was sitting on someone else's desk,
instead of mine: its 1024x768 pixel screen resolution was no
greater than what I had on my little 12 inch snow iBook. Nevermind
that the screen was fifty percent larger, it didn't matter
because you couldn't actually fit more things on it. It was
sort of like looking at a little laptop screen with a magnifying
glass. And it was pointless. And it remains that way to this
day, with the 15 inch iMac still sporting the same 1024x768
resolution. For comparison, even the low-end eMac comes with
1280x960 pixels. You don't have to have full understanding
of pixels, or resolution, or any of it, in order to grasp that
you get more screen room on an eMac.
So as it
stands now, eMac over 15 inch iMac is a no-brainer. A painful
one, to be sure, but when you think it through it's not even
close. So all that's left to do in this case is to wait and
see what Apple comes up with as far as a new iMac, and whether
it happens within my timeframe. What I'd need to see is a flat
screen iMac that clocks in at no more than $999 (compared to
the current $1299), sports a screen resolution of at least
1100x900 pixels (they do it on the 15 inch PowerBook, so why
not the 15 inch iMac?), and if I decide that I need a SuperDrive,
it needs to come with that as well. Sounds like quite a bit
of a long shot, but then again the rumors do all seem to point
to a new plasticized iMac enclosure that will allow Apple to
(finally) price the flat-screen iMac competitively, so maybe
I'll get lucky.
You know,
come to think of it, it seems that the flat-screen iMac has been hindered, handicapped, or otherwise
the victim of bad luck and bad timing, for most or all of
its lifespan so far. And that's such a shame, because I think
it's the best idea for a computer that Apple has ever had.
Maybe it'll finally get untracked in time for me to consider
owning one. But with the iMac's luck, right after Apple
has switched it over to an all-plastic design, we'll probably
see some kind of surge in the price of plastic.
So what do
we know now? The flat-screen iMac, despite being my favorite
computer, is out of the running unless Apple can do something
about both its specs and its price before my time limit is
up. The eMac, by virtue of being such an unflinchingly good
value, is almost literally looking better by the day. We
found out early on that the iBook is my only viable laptop
option (thanks to the reader who suggested going with an upgraded
G3 PowerBook, but that's not something I want to do for my
main machine). But the desktop vs. laptop debate still carries
on in the back of my head, and I'll delve into it next time,
in "Bill
buys a new Mac, volume five." See
you tomorrow.
