“Apple Computer is working feverishly on the design of a new Macintosh computer that the company hopes will strengthen its position in the education sector when it goes on sale later this year,” Kasper Jade reports for AppleInsider. “The new low-cost PC, which will act as a replacement for Apple’s now defunct eMac line, appears to be on track to catch the latter half of the 2006 educational buying season.”
Jade reports, “In keeping true to its roots of designing educational Macs as plug-and-play solutions, people familiar with Apple’s product roadmap say the company is building the new Mac around an all-in-one enclosure. Though unlike the eMac, which employed cumbersome CRT-based displays, the new educational computer will follow a design pattern similar to the company’s LCD-based iMac Core Duo desktops, these people say. The departure away from CRT displays and towards pricier flat-screens means that Apple will have to carefully balance its component costs and shave as much as possible off the computer’s bill-of-materials if it plans to hit a home run with educational institutions.”
“The computer’s new industrial design is expected to eliminate some of the financial complexities of the eMac. One of the pitfalls Apple discovered while building the unwieldy CRT-based Mac was that its bulbous enclosure quickly became one of — if not the most — expensive part of the computer to manufacturer,” jade reports. “In using its new iMac design as a blueprint for the eMac replacement, Apple will also save on freight and packaging costs that will result from the computer’s substantially smaller footprint and lighter weight . It’s also believed that the Mac will borrow industry standard components already employed by Apple’s Mac mini and MacBook line of consumer PCs, enabling further cost reductions… It’s still unclear whether the computer will be made readily available for purchase by the average consumer.”
Full article here.
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