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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ryan Finley who wrote (17628)	9/7/1998 3:05:00 AM
From: Andrew Danielson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213176

<<What has created the buzz surrounding the iMac? The CASE!>> For the most part, this is true. The iMac's appeal is its elegance and simplicity, both of which are apt descriptions primarily because of the all-in-one, translucent case. The other selling point which you overlook, however, is its price/performance ratio. Especially within the context of past Apple offerings and even compared to the PC market, the iMac is unprecedentedly cheap for the raw speed it offers. Andrew

To: Ryan Finley who wrote (17628)	9/7/1998 5:53:00 AM
From: nommedeguerre	Respond to of 213176

Ryan, >>What's missing from the iMac...SCSI, PCI, ADB, Serial Port, Floppy. Considering who the target audience is, these are relatively unimportant. 1) The ADB and serial ports are replaced by the USB port so no loss there. 2) The SCSI has never been a standard on the IBM PC so apparently for most manufacturers it was never considered important by the masses. Most consumer printers, scanners, cameras, etc., do not make use of the full bandwidth of a SCSI connection anyway. The USB is not as fast in the specs but provides decent bandwidth for consumer products. 3) All of the built-in features: Ethernet, Graphics, Sound, Modem, USB are more than adequate for the average user so leaving out extra PCI expansion slots is not that extreme. What would I add? If I have heavier demands then I should purchase a high-end machine. 4) The lack of a floppy is the really debatable question but if they are to put removable media in then it has to be something that supports high capacity (100MB+) otherwise it is a waste. Not sure how much they saved on the CD-ROM, but it may have been both space and cost savings that prompted that design. It would be nicer having a powered drive; but which is more likely to fail and how many times does the user open and close a CD drive? The USB is important in that I can build a device which will work on both a PC and MAC with a reasonable transfer rate (GPS etc.). This should have happened in the '80s. If the following can be connected to the iMAC then the consumer should be in good shape: 1) Decent printer 2) Decent scanner 3) CD-ROM burner/SuperDrive/Zip/Jaz, etc. 4) Digital Camera 5) Cable Modem 6) Midi devices 7) Alternate pointing devices (joystick, trackball, digitizing tablet) With all the current hardware on the iMac I could easily do the following (non-professional capacity): Write a book, screen-play, web-pages, you name it. Design a house, pinion gear, wiring schematic, etc. Run a small business. Create Multimedia CD's Write custom software to do about anything and control anything through ethernet or USB. We have reached that magical point where gains in hardware are not showing equivalent gains in productivity for anyone short of professional power-users. The low-end of today blows away the high-end of only a few years ago. Would anyone trade an iMAC for a CAD-station based on the Pentium 90? Cheap to manufacture and well-marketed is what Apple has needed for the last 10 years, that's for sure. Apple may have a big winner with this thing. Cheers, Norm