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The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

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Re: The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

#71

Post by mechanical_fish »

This is making me wish I'd read the article that went by a couple days ago with a headline like "Are new Apple iMacs a harbinger of the new Apple TV?"

Because if I felt like mongering a crazy Apple-related rumor on a subject which I know nothing about [1], I'd guess that one good way to get a manufacturer to grant you a crazy price break is to tell them that, as soon as they can ramp up production to the necessary levels, Apple will release an Ive-designed Apple-branded TV with their parts inside it and have Steve Jobs stand on stage to promote that TV.

---

[1] Which, according to the empirical evidence of this post, I apparently do. I need to get some more sleep.

Re: The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

#72

Post by harpastum »

maukdaddy wrote: post #66
yardie wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you can. The display port is bi-directional. In a sort of quirky way. Apple has addressed one of the longest lingering questions of the iMac line (and basically all AIO lines). People upgrade the PC but could reuse the display. With an AIO everything had to go.

The one problem, at least environmentally, is that you can't use the display without also having the entire "computer" part running. This means you're consuming XX extra watts the entire time.

I'm not sure of this, but I assume the default behavior would be putting the imac itself to sleep when it was connected to an external video source. This would use a bit more power than a simple display, but not much.

Re: The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

#73

Post by nixy »

[deleted] wrote: post #70
davidmathers wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not following you. $800 for the display $500 for the computer components $100 for the aluminum case $100 for the wireless keyboard and hi-tech mouse $100 for OS X and iLife $100 for beautiful industrial design $1700 sounds like a fine deal to me. I'm tempted to buy one right now, but I'm forcing myself to wait for the first component refresh that will come in 6 or 8 months. Core 2 Duo is about to go obsolete.

[deleted]

No, you get a 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo as standard. The 27" model can be upgraded to Core 2 Duo 3.33 Ghz, i5 or i7. Read the page you linked to one more time :)

Re: The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

#74

Post by eru »

yangyang wrote: post #36
eru wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also Aquamacs. Seems to work quite fine.

Indeed. But it's not like using Emacs on any other platform.

OK. I do not use it myself. But my fiancee has a Mac and seems quite happy with Aquamacs. (She used Emacs on Ubuntu before for some time, to do LaTeX with.)

Re: The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

#75

Post by pfedor »

NikkiA wrote: post #40
jbellis wrote: post #38

Great, a new resolution with even _less_ vertical pixels. I still miss 4:3. Much better for programming.

I disagree, I use emacs with vertical splits (ie 1|2|3 layout) and 16:10 and 16:9 is great for that, also it means that spreading over onto the second (16:10) monitor isn't a change in layout policy. I could never go back to 4:3 layout for programming, as I discovered last year when one of my 16:10s died and I had to use an old 4:3 I had laying around.

In my experience using a small monitor with X configured to use a virtual screen (i.e., the monitor just shows a small part of a much bigger desktop and you can scroll it with a mouse) is just as good as the giant monitors. I don't feel I really gained that much using 30" or 2x24" in comparison with the 15" monitor and 2000x2000 pixels virtual window I used to use in the past. Of course it's hard to argue that large monitors aren't nice, but I think the benefits for writing code are overstated.

Re: The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

#76

Post by davidmathers »

elblanco wrote: post #69
davidmathers wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not following you. $800 for the display $500 for the computer components $100 for the aluminum case $100 for the wireless keyboard and hi-tech mouse $100 for OS X and iLife $100 for beautiful industrial design $1700 sounds like a fine deal to me. I'm tempted to buy one right now, but I'm forcing myself to wait for the first component refresh that will come in 6 or 8 months. Core 2 Duo is about to go obsolete.

Since when is $200 for design figured into the cost equation? And who pays $100 for a wireless keyboard mouse combo? $20 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823164... you are at least $280 off on price.

Looks and form factor matter to me and are something I'm happy to pay for. I'm not saying they should matter you. If you'd rather save $300 and buy a computer in a standard plastic box, with trash peripherals that are only rated 1 egg, then you're welcome to it.

The number of people who spend $300 on just a case + power supply from newegg when doing a custom pc build is not small.

Re: The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

#77

Post by presidentender »

brunoc wrote: post #49
jbellis wrote: post #38

Great, a new resolution with even _less_ vertical pixels. I still miss 4:3. Much better for programming.

I flipped both my 4:3 monitors (19") to display vertically. They are 1024x1080. I don't think I'll ever go back to horizontal.

At my college job, my development machine had one vertical monitor for coding, a horizontal monitor for testing in the web browser, and another horizontal monitor for email, SQL server manager, or word processing. I miss that setup.

Re: The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

#78

Post by acgourley »

gcb wrote: post #68
davidmathers wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price of IPS displays is dropping because LG has developed a new technology called e-IPS that costs much less to make than s-IPS, which it's replacing. The e-IPS displays still cost more than TN displays I think.

And by LG track record, it also saves tons of money ditching quality control completely.

Just curious, what gives you that impression?

Re: The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

#79

Post by randallsquared »

elblanco wrote: post #56
Andys wrote: post #3

I found the price strangely low. As usual with any Apple release, I started some friendly banter with my Apple-loving friends about how poor the value is compared to a regular PC, until I got to the 27" Imac and realised you couldn't buy a screen that good, elsewhere - at any price.

Here are two. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824005... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824176...

No, both of those appear to be 2560 at 30", which is a lower DPI than the one under discussion. Since that's the only way that the 27" screens are better than the pre-existing 30" screens, it must be the metric that was meant.

Re: The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

#80

Post by barrkel »

Tichy wrote: post #44
barrkel wrote: post #27

The Dell monitor pricing he quotes - $1200 for LCD - is pretty gougey too. Dell hardware is generally bad value unless it's on special offer, a bare-bones system (in which case it'll lack extensibility), or part of a corporate purchase.

My 24'' monitor from Dell is great, it was not very expensive, and it has served me well for years now. I think you generalize too much (also, never buy from the consumer section). My X1 from Dell is also great, I love it much more than my generic MacBook.

My Dell 2407WFP is great too, but I bought it at a 40% discount. The price fluctuated between list and discount at seemingly random intervals.
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