“With its new iMac G5, Apple Computer has once again come up with a unique package of design, power and ease of use. But will it be enough? No. Apple has missed the opportunity to stay way ahead of its PC manufacturing competitors by not including Wi-Fi as standard and by failing to catch the early-adopter personal video recorder wave by including a TV tuner card,” Paul Jackson, senior analyst for Forrester Research, writes for CNET. “Better still would have been a software option to turn this machine into a full Wi-Fi access point: Intel’s Grantsdale chipset already promises this functionality for PC owners. The lack of this connectivity means that Apple has missed an opportunity to build on its AirPort Express foundations and rule the roost in bottom-up networking.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If you want Airport, you can easily add it. Why make everyone pay for it on a desktop unit, when everyone won’t use it? Ditto for Jackson’s TV tuner gripe. As for turning your iMac (or any Mac with an Airport Card) into a Wi-Fi access point, Jackson is wrong, it’s already included by Apple:
Sharing your Internet connection with other computers using AirPort: If you have an AirPort Card installed in your computer and you are connected to the Internet, you can share your Internet connection with other computers.
1. Open System Preferences, click Sharing, and click Internet.
2. Select how you would like to share your Internet connection, then click Start.
If you select “Share your Internet connection with AirPort-equipped computers,” click AirPort Options to give your network a name and password.
If you are sharing your Internet connection with Windows or other wireless clients that require an equivalent network password, you can use an ASCII (quoted) or hexadecimal (hex-escaped) password. For example, you can specify “apple” or “applecomputer” as an ASCII password, and $0102030405 or $010203… (26 hexadecimal digits) as a hexadecimal password.
You can share your Internet connection as long as your computer is connected to the Internet. If your computer goes to sleep or is restarted, or if you lose your Internet connection, you need to restart Internet sharing.
As for the TV tuner card, I suppose he’s suggesting an analog one — which would be the LAST thing that an “early-adopter personal video recorder wave” would want. For one thing, cable TV is going largely digital, and satellite is already there — or does Forrester Research think that the early high-tech adopters are getting their TV transmissions with an antenna on the roof…? (They may indeed have an antenna for HD signals, which wouldn’t matter much to a standard NTSC tuner card.) TV transmission standards are in flux right now, with proposed CaleCARD technology on the bleeding edge, and cable providers starting to outmaneuver TiVo and supply their own (HD-compatible) PVRs.
As for myself, I think Apple really missed the boat by not including a telegraph transmitter. Can I get paid to be an analyst now…?
I just can’t believe there is no Ham Radio included. What a disaster for Apple, they really missed the boat.
I can’t believe there is no coffee maker as a standard. I planned to have it in the kitchen and use it as database for all my recipes.
Apple blew it big time.
No coffee? No Juice? No iMac.
I read here that someone plans to put an iMac G5 in their kitchen. Too bad it doesn’t come with a set of Ginsu knives and won’t make Julienne fries!
These PC commentators keep making stupid mistakes because they have never used a Mac for more than 10 minutes.
Senior Analyst at Forrester. Sounds like Senior Analyst at Forrest… Gump Consulting.
Hey Forrester Research, a friend doctor works with idiots (pathological sense). Could I recommend one as Senior Vice President with you? Looks like he has more than minimum qualifications for the job.
I think Apple should include Morse code capability in the mouse.
This Forrester Research analyst fails to consider the half terabyte to 1 terabyte HD requirements of a DVR/personal computer combination. Not to mention the additional cost of an appropriate amount of RAM. Doesn’t one hour of video equate to approximately 13 GB of data? Most people want to watch TV on a big TV. Plus, who’s gonna sit 6-7 feet away from their computer? I suppose Apple should have allowed for another inch in depth to accomodate a FM/TV/HDTV tuner card.
Okay:
1.) WIFI is not hard to add to a Mac.
2.) I don’t know many people who use a TV tuner card from their computer for content. These use this called a TIVO. DUH!!!
3.) The reaction I got: WHOA!!!
This from a friend who works for IBM when seeing it.
Someone please tell me that there’s a microwave included with the iMac. PLEASE!
i second the ham radio comment cause i like bacon
twelveightyone,
If you manage to squeeze your bagel/bread through the slot-loading CD-drive, then browse on safari (read MDN comments) for 10 minutes, the computer will generate enough heat to toast the bagel/bread. Just press the eject button on the keyboard, it pops out. Sorry that you missed this feature.
AT least, we have a toaster, not a microwave.
Glick7 wanted voice recording capabilities in the new G5 iMac… oh…. wait a minute…. it does it.
Oh, OK.
But it really lacks an integral printer…. I remember when Royal put out a computerized word processor with an integral daisy wheel printer.
Apple really missed the boat on this one.
I guess the answer today would be for cable box companies to allow the cable television content to be streamed via 802.11g to registered MAC addresses in a family network. A Dashboard widget would be perfect for displaying that content. Otherwise, the move to make subscription based internet TV should become more of a feasible reality once H264 has become common place. Sprint is already giving cellphone users a means of watching tv anywhere they want. Hopefully as Apple’s Quicktime is adopted by more moble services, broadcasters will take note and realize that the time has come to shed away the propriety cable boxes and satallite systems. The internet will become the vehicle of choice for media distribution. Just as Apple has made it so for music content.
Although a nit-picky article, I think the wi-fi issue is a good one. Bundling it with every imac means you could lower the cost of the wireless unit.
Making it an option that you could take off if ordered online (for a 50$ discount) could sooth naysayers.
Don’t decry an analyst just because he makes a point.
The Mac is all about clean lines and simplicity. If you watched the Expo you saw it emphasized that you could use only one cord, so simple. Or you could pick it up and move it to your kitchen, or your living room or your bedroom.
I don’t know about you, but for most people the longest cord they have is usually the Cat5 cable.
Including Airport would’ve gone quite some way towards adding to the Mac mantra.
He’s right about the Airport Express user base as well. Those without airport Express or Extreme would now be very inclined to get one… to use the tool that came with their mac.
In fact I see this working with executives (who are often computer-illiterate). Once they find out that their new laptop has wireless connectiviity, they suddenly go out and buy a wireless base station. Wireless for desktops hasn’t taken off like laptops (for obvious reasons). Bundling it with a mac would’ve been a good thing.
I’ve posed this question before: “Who the fsck is Forrester Research?”
Seahawk: Forrester Gump! Good one!
Mike
I really think the design is a hit. I can imagine any place where space is a premium, be it office, cubicle, hotel front desk, luxury boat or student desk, this new iMac will be the bomb because it’s minimalistic like the terminals of the ’80 but on steriods! In the schools, offices or any networked environment, it makes it clearer to understand why the hard drive doesn’t have to be that large. However, I do agree that 256 MB RAM is a bit outdated as the minimum for modern computing.
One thing that I have noticed about all the iMac reviews so far: No one has mentioned that the new iMac is $300.00 less than the old iMac.
I guess nobody noticed, because Apple dropped the 15″ version. Either that, or they were too busy looking for things to nitpick about.
OK, I’ve thought this through and Apple already has the answer for the “TV Issue” If the family purchases one xServe and has it as a headless server in the entertainment center, they can have a PCI TV card installed and have the cable box connected to it. Using Quicktime Broadcaster, they can send the cable TV content to anyone in on the network. Of course the control over the content is with he who holds the remote.
De Badd Ass, you are right. I think Phil was mentioning it during the keynote though. The problem is that the Windows world was spoiled by extremely low cost (read low quality) computers and they think that those prices should apply to everything. Apple’s iPod has made people understand that it is worth it to play for what one is really getting. If people come to the new iMac without those Windows World notions about computer prices, and they try out the iMac’s at the Apple Stores, check out how well everything simply works including the latest games, there will be no question that it is definitely worth the price.
The new iMac is awesome for the price. But there are a few gripes that I have. The video card is on the low end, and the whole thing should be brush aluminum like the G5 and 20″ – 30″ LCDs. The aluminum stand with the white facing does not look to great IMHO. The RAM is on the low side…. but it is upgradable, unlike the video card. That is why I bitch about it…. it cannot be changed. Airport can be added… no biggie, RAM can be added, no biggie.
All that being said…. if I did not already have a G5 1.6 and a PCI TV Tuner card, I would jump on a new iMac…. heck.. I am even thinking of eBaying my G5 to get the iMac…. save some space.
The Dude abides.
The included graphics chip + G5= Major performance gains.
http://www.apple.com/imac/graphics.html
Those fps figures are pretty impressive. Remember these games are optimized by the G5 math libraries as well as the Quartz Extreme. Another Apple Advantage! Does anyone know of a good bluetooth gamepad?
Regarding the missing TV tuner card, the writer hasn’t done his homework. A British poster addressed this issue on Slashdot when he pointed out that Brits have to pay for a TV license. Since most people in the UK already have a TV, potential iMac buyers wouldn’t be thrilled about having to pay for a second TV license to use their computers. I think (not sure) that some other countries also require TV owners to pay for a license as well.
You know, I think we (Americans) have waaaaay too many opportunities to criticize anything today. Everyone’s doing it. The new iMac’s a bargain! No, it’s crippled! Yeeesh.
http://www.mac360.com/index.php/mac360/more/new_imac_bargain_power_or_crippled_and_weak_computer_toy/
I, for one, still remember the iPod introduction. Frankly, I thought $399 was a bit pricey for a 5 gig hard drive that stored music (remember, there was no iTunes Music Store then), but I bought one anyway and quickly filled up the 5 gigs with “paid for” music.
Now they’re all the rage and everyone (4 million of us, anyway) has an iPod. And Apple as about 60-percent market share of portable music players and 70-percent market share of legal music downloads.
Did we get an apology for the naysayers for being wrong?
Did anyone notice that the iMac looks like a huge iPod with a screen? And that it’s not an “Apple” iMac; it’s the iMac from the “Creators of the iPod!”
Is that aimed at Windows users, or what?