Reflections on Apple's New Products

Apple released three exciting new products at Macworld Expo SF 2002: the new LCD iMac, the iBook with a larger 14.1" screen and iPhoto. Apple's focus was on its consumer products since the PowerBook G4 recently received a speed bump and a CDRW-DVD combo drive. The Power Macs await the completion of Adobe's Photoshop for OS X and G4 or G5 CPUs that will break the 1 GHz clock speed barrier. Since the $1799 top of the line iMac with an 800 MHz G4, superdrive and Mac OS X 10.1.2 (build 5P63) is more powerful than the $1699 bottom of the line 733 MHz Power Mac G4 with a CDRW drive, we are sure that the Power Macs will be updated in the next few months, maybe as soon as next month at Seybold NYC or Macworld Tokyo.

The new LCD iMac was expected and we were not disappointed, especially since it comes with G4 CPUs. While its design was leaked the night before Steve Jobs' keynote by the Canadian web site for Time Magazine, as we noted last Sunday night, it is no less striking when seen in person. We checked out a top 800 MHz model at the Tysons Corner Apple Store and were very impressed. A 15" LCD on a polished stainless steel neck connected to a 10.6" diameter white hemispherical base is quite a design. The base is flat white rather than glossy white like the iBook and the Apple logos are polished stainless steel like the neck. The Apple Pro keyboard and mouse are white and clear rather than black and clear. The new iMac looks smaller in person and it was easy to pick up by its neck. At 21 pounds, the LCD Mac lighter than previous CRT iMacs. Its speed running Mac OS X was impressive. We like it very much and believe it will be successful at $1299 to $1799. The $1799 model is due in Apple Stores the week of January 21st.

Apple is still selling two CRT iMacs at the low end ($799 and $999) as we suggested Apple do last year. Apple was still selling nearly 100,000 CRT iMacs per month according to the last quarterly report. While down substantially from the iMac's peak, that is still a lot of revenue to risk on a new design. Development costs should have been recovered and parts should be relatively cheap through years of large purchases for the CRT iMac so it makes sense to keep selling them as long as there are significant sales and until the LCD iMac can be sold for under $1000.

The 14.1" iBook looks exactly the same size as the 1999/2000 PowerBooks (Lombard and Pismo) and at 5.9 lb. it is the same weight. The difference, of course, is their color and it's flat rather than curved. At $1799, it's cheaper that either of it's wickedly black predecessors. It gains a CDRW-DVD combo drive and longer battery life but loses an infrared port and PC card slot. According to Apple Store personnel, the 14.1" iBook is an extremely hot seller at $300 more than the 12.1" iBook and $500 less than the 550 MHz PowerBook G4 Titanium.

iPhoto completes Apple's suite of easy-to-use audio and video software, joining iMovie, iTunes and iDVD. We used it and found it comparable in ease of use to its digital lifestyle siblings. While iPhoto v1.0 needs additional work, it is a welcome addition.

There were two third party announcements that we believe are extra significant, one software and one hardware. GoLive 6 for Mac OS X will be out in early February according to Adobe. It will cost $99 for an upgrade and $399 for the full version. GoLive will allow many webmasters to finally work natively in OS X rather than in Classic mode. We, of course, are among them. GoLive is slow in Classic mode and has a number of quirks. We look forward to the release of version 6. But we also wonder where an OS X version of Dreamweaver from Macromedia is. Many webmasters also use Dreamweaver. The hardware is the ATI Radeon 8500 graphics card for $299. Its specifications are similar to NVIDIA's top-of-the-line graphics card, the GeForce3 which costs $499, but ATI claims the 8500 is faster. The 8500 signifies that there is still competition in the Mac graphics card market. Unfortunately, it does not come with an ADC connector needed for Apple's recent LCD monitors. Hopefully, ATI will make one and Apple will sell it as a BTO option.

Finally, Mac OS X has come of age. Steve Jobs announced that it will ship as the default OS on all new Macs despite some Mac applications, most notably Adobe's Photoshop, are still not Mac OS X native. This is a bold step, one that we hope will hasten the production of Mac applications native to Mac OS X.

In summary, we are pleased with Apple's progress and new products. Do they live up to Apple's hype leading up to Macworld? Each person will have to judge for themselves. We have and we think so. Seeing the new iMac in person should convince many.