Apple has announced that it has run out of iMacs. Huh? What the...huh? I gotta sit down for a minute. This can't be happening. It would be like Chick-Fil-A running out of chicken...like Toys-R-Us running out of toys...like Spiderman running out of spider webs (oh wait, nevermind on that last one). But really, this is heavy. You know, I go out to the movies this evening, and come back to find the entire Macintosh universe lying in pieces. I'm feeling dizzy...I need a glass of water or something.
In case you've been under a rock all evening and have no idea what I'm talking about, Apple has publicly announced that it's halted production of the current iMac and that it's no longer taking orders for the product...and that there won't be a new iMac until September. Sounds like a...uh, I don't know, it just sounds bad. CNET will have a field day with this, in ways that we can only imagine. Paul Thurrott will step up and claim that it's evidence that Apple is getting rid of the Macintosh entirely, so that the company can focus solely on digital music, a market in which he feels that Apple is also doomed. Everyone will get a good laugh out of it. Sadly for Paul, he'll mistakenly think that we're laughing with him.
But raving lunatics aside, this is really a weird move for the company. Delaying a next-generation product until they finally get it perfect? That's nothing new for Apple at all. But killing off the current-generation product months in advance of the next generation's release, and announcing it publicly? Apple just doesn't do this kind of thing. There's got to be something else at work here, and I think I know what it is.
Anyone who's in the market for a new Mac and pays even the slightest attention to Mac developments, already knew long before today that the current-model iMac was on its way out. Despite being probably the best-designed desktop model ever conceived, the current iMac has grown so long in the tooth that it needs dentures. So many potential iMac buyers had assumed that a new iMac was coming, and so many of them had decided to wait for it, that sales of the current iMac had slowed to the point of embarrassment. And for its part, Apple had so thoroughly given up on the current iMac that when it boosted the eMac's processor a few months ago by 20 percent, it didn't even bother to do the same with the iMac...despite the fact that the iMac is the more expensive computer.
But the bottom line is this: for whatever reason, the next-generation iMac won't be ready until September, meaning that no matter what, Apple was facing a summer of selling very few iMacs. So with that fact in mind, why go to the trouble to keep manufacturing more of them? What's the point of making more of a product that you can't sell anyway? I mean, why not just kill it off now?
It fact, given the unfortunate circumstances, this looks like a move of pure genius. Now, Apple won't have to explain why the iMac didn't sell well this summer. Instead, it can just point out that the iMac wasn't even on the market. And when Apple does unveil the next iMac in September, it won't have to risk having the move being seen as a desperate attempt to do something about an over-ripened computer line. Instead, by doing it this way, the new iMac won't be replacing the current iMac. In fact, it'll be replacing nothing, stepping in to fill a vacuum. For the iMac line, it'll almost be like starting over. Apple now gets to spend the next three months increasingly hyping up the "new iMac" before finally unveiling it in what is sure to involve Steve Jobs wheeling something out on a cart and pulling a sheet off of it. And all the while, Apple won't have to worry one bit about how the hype surrounding the upcoming iMac might hurt sales of the current iMac, because as of today, there is no current iMac.
Actually, that last phrase is a bit of a scary thought. Even though this is only a temporary move, it represents the first time since 1998 that Apple has not had a currently-shipping product that answers to the name of "iMac." But that's a bit of a misnomer when you consider just how many different Macs have answered to that name over the past six years: the original tray-loading model, the slot-loading gumdrop model, the flat-panel sunflower model. For that matter, there was a brief period in 2002 when Apple was selling two radically different products, at the same time, both carrying the iMac name. Of course, that came to an end when Apple brought out the eMac...which also happens to be the reason why there really isn't any reason to fret over our upcoming iMac-less summer after all.
Because other than the LCD flat-panel display, the eMac meets or beats the outgoing iMac on every technical specification, including price. In fact, things had gotten rather ridiculous when you could take a look at the $799 eMac and see that it trumped the $1299 iMac's specs across the board. The whole iMac line had simply stopped making sense. If the iMac is going to be that much more expensive than the eMac, then it needs to have clear advantages, such as a G5 processor that will allow it to run circles around the eMac in terms of speed and computational power. And if the iMac is going to continue to sport specs similar to that of the eMac, and continue to be an "eMac with a floating flat-screen," then its price needs to magically find its way down to something that make it look like something other than an overpriced impulse buy when held up against the eMac itself.
So which one is it going to be? Will we see a new G4 iMac with a new cost-conscious design that allows it to clock in at an attractive $999, or a G5 iMac so tricked out that it gets folks opening their wallets wider than they'd been expecting to...or maybe both? Well, I suppose that'll be subject of endless debate across the Mac web for the next few months, and from my end, certainly a whole column unto itself. But for anyone out there disappointed by today's announcement because they want a new Mac and they're tired of waiting, I have only one word of advice for you (and it start with a lower-case "e").
That's right, just go get yourself an eMac. At $799 (or $999 for the SuperDrive model), it's an insane value...by far the best value of any computer on the market today (Mac or PC). And despite the hype surrounding the G5 processor, the simple truth is that the G4 is more than enough for most consumers' needs. This aging G4 PowerBook of mine is more powerful than I need it to be (I spend up to twelve hours a day using it, so you'd better believe I'd be complaining if it weren't up to the task), and the current-model eMac is more than twice as fast as my laptop is. So if you're in the market for a consumer-level Mac, and you're tired of waiting, just go get yourself an eMac and call it a night. You might as well pretend that the iMac doesn't even exist...because for the time being, it actually doesn't.
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