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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Diamond Jim who wrote (77521)	4/1/1999 9:39:00 AM
From: Diamond Jim	Respond to of 186894

PC Makers Look But Don't Touch iMac Design News April 1, 07:41 Eastern Time PC Makers Look But Don't Touch iMac Design Mar 31, 1999 (Tech Web - CMP via COMTEX) -- When Apple's iMac burst onto the consumer PC scene in mid-August, analysts speculated major PC vendors would follow suit with innovative designs of their own. But almost eight months later, Windows-based PCs with an iMac design have yet to hit the market. Intel chairman Andrew Grove has said the iMac's arresting design was the future of PCs. And in September, at an industry conference, Intel showed off a pyramid-shaped system that was considered the Intel response to the iMac. But Intel officials said the prototype machine was not a reaction to iMac, but rather a "concept car" for future PCs. "We didn't start this initiative to come out with an orange pyramid-shaped box. It started out to make the PC easier to use and drive the old technology out," said Steve Whalley, manager of Intel's PC initiatives. "It's what we call 'pruning the tree.' We could continue to carry the older technology, but it is a significant factor from an ease-of-use point of view," he said. Like the iMac, which has no external hard drive, expansion slots, and uses USB technology, Intel's prototypes had no ISA slots, and it replaced parallel, serial, and PS/2 ports with USB ports. Apple said it sees the imitation as a form of flattery. "We tend not to focus on what our competitors are doing, but their work does further validate Apple and the iMac," said Phil Schiller, vice president of worldwide product marketing at Apple, in Cupertino, Calif. eMachines, which specializes in very low-cost computers, has announced plans for an iMac-like PC for this summer, but none of the big PC makers have announced similar plans. Both Dell and Compaq declined to comment on any future product plans. Houston-based Compaq has tried the all-in-one PC route before with the Presario consumer PCs in 1995, which were not well-received by consumers. The downfall of the systems was the Cyrix MediaGX chip that had no expandability, according to Kevin Hause, an analyst with International Data Corp., in Framingham, Mass. "Historically, it's been the case that consumers all want the potential to expand and upgrade their systems, although they never do it," he said. "There's still an awful lot of people who are interested in the standard beige box because it fits into any interior." Even Acer America's ill-fated green and charcoal tower PCs, with curved designs, didn't sell well, he said. Beyond the consumer sentiment, PC vendors such as Dell and Gateway like the build to order model and not the assembly-line, cookie-cutter design of the iMac, said Hause.