Home Page Forums Archives MacMAME OT - Headless low-end Mac...

Spot on Nathan. I'd wager that Apple has designed the xMac after your "friends" sketches to the tee. Re-reading that thread (yes, I know that's pathetic) we were pretty solid on a couple of those guesses. Of course if you throw enough crap at the wall, eventually some if it will stick.

Assuming this is true, all I have to say to Apple is IAFT (its about, er, um, time). Have 2 friends ready to buy one of these out of the chute.

Mike

I don't know. A headless iMac could be pretty useful, a 1.25 GHz G4 seems awfully weedy though. Even more so by the time such a machine (if it exists) is on sale.

Even the lowest end cheapo IBM compatibles take a big old whiz over a 1.25 GHz G4 these days. Using a low end G5 wouldn't make it significantly more expensive.

I bet they skimp on the memory too!

All this talk about mac reminds of the discussion at the ambrosiaSW boards. Someone posted a pic of that mac.



It's actually looks like the drawings that Nathan posted in the other thread.

ooh, pretty. I think that would sell quite well to the PC crowd.

I've decide that it's going to come in the G5 flavor as well... say maybe 1.6ghz.

My main theoretical concern is how to construct my home network. Currently I've got a Netgear DG814 for my DSL modem and I'm using an Airport (snow) as a wireless bridge, so the DG814 is doing DHCP and the Airport just passes on that address. I tried having the Airport run DHCP as well, but that broke a lot of networking stuff. Ideally I'd just set-up a new "server" node the same, but if I want to serve NFS, my sysadmin brain is saying that it should have a fixed IP, but my Appleuser brain is saying that OS X will probably somehow store additional information about the server and create an equivalent hosts entry based on MAC address rather than IP, so it doesn't matter what the IP is as long as it has the same hostname when it reappears. I suppose if I have to I can see if setting the Netgear to issue fixed addresses will work through the Airport bridge setup, but I'd rather not go pissing around with it if I don't have to.

I still don't have my OS X Panther for UNIX Geeks book yet, so I don't know the real answer. Anyone?

Well, instead of starting up a whole new "Expo Keynote speculation thread", I thought this would be a good enough place to see what other supposed goodies you all think that Apple may be announcing next week. There are sure a lot of possibilities floating around the rumor sites.

My guesses for the keynote (no particular order):

• The headless "iMac Mini" with the specs showing up on most rumor sites (1.25 GHz G4, and such). My guess is that it may actually be introduced as the new eMac, and there will be a new low-cost 17" LCD and 17" CRT to go along with it. The CRT will be around $149, the LCD will be $249 - $299. (Do a quick Froogle search, and you'll find monitors in that price range.)
• iWork - the successor to AppleWorks - will be demo'd. It'll ship with Tiger, or be available for purchase then. It'll include Keynote, and some other spiffy new app. Maybe iCook - Apple's recipe organization solution. Or not. :rolleyes:
• The FireWire GarageBand interface will be demo'd by some rock star I've never heard of.
• Steve will tell how many iPods they sold over the holidays. It will exceed their estimates by about 10%.
• They may announce an updated 5 GB iPod mini, but if they do, it will only be in passing. It's not a major revision.
• I'm still skeptical of a flash-iPod. But then again, they're still a big part of the market in some parts of the world. If Apple can do one right, we'll see it, and Steve will rub it in the noses of every other manufacturer on the planet. "We wouldn't do one, unless we could do it the right way." That sort of thing. $149.
• The XSan and new XServes may get a passing mention. If so, some tech geek will demo some sort of XSan thing that looks cool to about five or six people in the audience. But it will look really cool to them.
• Steve will tell us how well the G5 iMac is selling, and that it's above expectations. He will personally thank me for buying one, and tell me that I saved the company from the brink of utter ruin. Well... maybe not. But he still owes me one anyway.
• iLife '05 is coming, with some updated new apps. Probably shipping with Tiger. It would be pass?© to still be shipping iLife '04 in 2005, y'know.
• Tiger will get a big demo, showing off more widgets and a couple of new main features. Steve will announce a tighter guesstimate for a shipping date, if not the actual date. My guess - May 24. (Since they'll want to get it out the door so they can still go see "Revenge of the Sith" on opening day.)
• We'll be told (again) how many songs iTunes has sold, and how big Apple's marketshare is. U2 will be mentioned somewhere in there.
• We'll get an update on how well the Apple Stores did this Christmas. Probably really well, thanks to the iPods.

That's an awful lot of stuff for one keynote, but I think it's pretty likely. Steve will start out with the sales figures for the stores, tunes and pods, possibly introduce the new 'pod, move onto Tiger and any other new apps, and wrap it up with the new eMac/miniMac/PS2.

Either that, or Apple's stock is going to take a major dive on Wednesday.

So... what do the rest of you think?

(And stay tuned... if Apple streams the keynote, I'll have the live play-by-play here on the message board, Tuesday at 9 AM PST.)

I suggest that "some rock star [you]'ve never heard of" might actually be Bono and/or The Edge from U2.

Headless iMac will be the "one more thing".

Who?

Anyways...

It looks like some rumors are on the mark. Apple is bustin\' out the lawsuits against some rumor sites about some of the stories being run.

Should be an interesting week.