Yet more speculation. This time it was caused by a Taiwanese
newspaper, DigiTimes, that
leaked the story that Apple will be using a magnesium
alloy instead of a stainless steel and zinc alloy in its next
iMac.
This might be good news or bad. It would end up reducing the
cost to manufacture iMacs, so perhaps there will be a price drop
when they are released. A price drop would be good news - and
hopefully convince those looking into purchasing an eMac to jump to
the next level and buy a low-end iMac instead.
The quality might suffer, however.
If this rumour is true, the new iMacs will most likely feature
faster processors as well - after all, who doesn't want more
speed?
But if there is a new iMac coming out soon, should you wait
until then to buy a new computer? Or should you buy the iMac that's
currently being offered?
The current iMac is a nice machine; we've got the older
1 GHz 17" models at my school. It runs great - startup is
fast, applications load quickly, and the 17" screen is excellent
for watching DVD videos. I would imagine that the 20" screen is
even better.
If you're looking into purchasing an iMac and need a computer
now, by all means buy one now. If you can wait, you'll most likely
be able to find a very good deal on a leftover "old model" iMac
when the new ones are released. Such was the case when the
"classic" G3 iMacs were discontinued.
Either that or you'll be able to get one of the new iMacs, which
you may not end up wanting if the quality ends up suffering from
these manufacturing changes.
Newton's Successor?
The next rumour that's been floating around on the Internet is
that Apple was working on a tablet computer but decided to halt the
project. Why? Were they concerned that the market for a tablet
Macintosh would be small? Or was it a cost cutting measure, like
the planned change in case materials for the iMac?
I'd like to see a tablet Mac. My 12" PowerBook G4 is very small,
light, and convenient, but it doesn't have a feature where you can
draw directly on the screen, which is something I think many people
- especially graphic artists - would appreciate.
What I would like to see from Apple in this category is
something that is essentially a fully featured laptop, but where
the screen can fold over the keyboard to become a tablet computer
when desired. This would allow you to instantly add diagrams to
word processing documents and draw on presentations in order to
point out key ideas.
The concern I'd have about this would be heat. The 12" G4 gets
pretty hot. It's not unpleasant, but it's enough to cause your
hands to sweat. If a tablet PC got this hot, there is the
possibility that the heat could damage the screen. Apple would need
to work out the details in order to make sure that this doesn't
happen.
Apple's products (as wonderful as the overall designs are) are
well known for small design flaws that later seem obvious, such the
cable on the 13.3" G3
PowerBook running through the hinge (of course it's going to
bend and break in the future), and the iMac and PowerMac G3 with
the slightly hard to use circular mouse that caused
difficulty for many users.
I think that Apple's tower systems have generally gotten better
over the past few years. The overall quality has been good,
performance was good (aside from the point where the G4 was stuck
at 500 MHz), and the price was fairly reasonable compared to what a
tower cost back in 1998 (a desktop G3 was $1,599) whereas for a
while, minitower G4's were selling for the same price.
The iMacs haven't been quite as reliable it seems, but I think
the newer ones are generally a bit better. Since Apple will be
reducing the cost of manufacturing them by switching case
materials, it remains to be seen what the quality will be like.
As for a tablet Mac, we may end up not seeing one for a couple
of years, if ever.
