While reading this Daring Fireball article I started to wonder, if Apple does come out with a 499$ headless Mac to take advantage of the halo effect supposedly produced by the iPods, wouldn’t it be kind of weird to find iPods at 249$ and up and then get a whole computer for just double the price? Doesn’t mean anything rumor wise, I just find it weird price wise.
And while I’m here, just in case I spotted the right rumor I want it to be written here, not just in Alex’s comments ;). What if the headless Mac isn’t meant to be a replacement computer but rather a media box to work with home theaters and Airport Express? Same specs but add some software for that purpose and change the marketing. Just sayin’…
[Update] Ah! Ah! I rule! (until the images are proven fabricated…. ;) )
5 Comments
And what media would you want to put there? Movies? There are no (legal) ones that you can download and zip around your broadband network, and at HD bandwidth it would suck the life out of even Wireless-G.
Maybe some kind of TiVO device, combined with some sort of iSync-able, free service delivered via .Mac or even RSS. I could see that.
Even so, the rumored specs make it really quite underpowered as a media box, especially compared to existing devices. Without specialized RISC video chipsets, a generic G4 PowerMac isn’t powerful enough to deal with multiple HDTV streams the way the high-end TiVOs do.
In any case, the Media Center PCs have largely tanked in the marketplace. I’ve played around with a few; they’re nice, but powerful ones are still huge, 3U rackmount style beasts, and expensive.
Now, maybe as a pure music jukebox, it would rock. If they could out-perform the Sonos ZonePlayer, make it a centralized gateway for iTunes content to stream to all the computers in the house, and add high-end Super Audio CD and Surround music CD support…and give it a cool, ipod-like remote control…
But I really see this as being the Corporate Breakthrough Desktop Mac. The one that beats the mass-order Dell box with solid security and reliability, plenty of admin-friendly features (NetBoot, Apple Remote Desktop, UNIX etc.) that acts as a hook to sell Apple server products to support the backend (Xserve, Xserve RAID, XSan software).
Maybe some kind of TiVO device, combined with some sort of iSync-able, free service delivered via .Mac or even RSS. I could see that.
That’s what I was thinking
In any case, the Media Center PCs have largely tanked in the marketplace
So have most hard drive mp3 players ;)
multiple HDTV
screw HD
But I really see this as being the Corporate Breakthrough Desktop Mac.
I don’t see Apple breaking in corpo land anytime soon.
Ça m’étonnerait que ce soit un faux montage. Ça semble vraiment bien réel.
J’aime mieux ça qu’un simple iMac à 500$US. Ça fait beaucoup plus de sens selon moi aussi.
I read a discussion thread at MacRumors analyzing those images. The conclusion was that the packaging is a fake:
– The font is wrong – the printing is way off-center – the title “Media Centre” is a British spelling, not American “Center” – Given the orientation of the handle, the images would be upside down if you carried it, unlike real Apple handle-boxes – the style of images on the sides of the box is also not Apple, they usually put product shots on all sides, not what looks like yellowish stock photos of people – there are no specs on the package
-The open flap of the box seems to have ragged edges, as if it were a sheet of paper glue-sticked onto another package – people noted that ports on the actual “ihome” unit itself looked like a folded, printed cardboard box; the labeling of ports seemed to be taken from a Photoshopped snap of iBook ports; when he takes it out of the outer box it seems way too light and flimsy – on a real computer with dual Firewire ports, there wouldn’t be a Firewire icon for each port, just one for both of them.
-Why does there seem to be an iBook-style power plug on both the front and back of the unit? If the front one was an IR port I think Apple would design it a bit more elegantly…
and most damningly:
That’s the same elevator in which last year’s purported “imac g5” box was found, and the image seems to have come from the same source…
Héhé.
ok. j’ai regardé ça ce matin avant le café. Ça m’apprendra! :-)