Sunday, September 26, 2004

Apple needs an Xmac, or iMac G5 Mini

I have seen this proposal time and again, here is the latest at The Mac Night Owl First off, I love the new iMac and intend to get one as soon as all my old PC components are sold on eBay. Apple pricing the iMac extremely competively. There is no premium price in the iMac compared to PC box builders all-in-one machines, look at the Gateway Profile That said, a friend is in the market for a new computer, and I mentioned the new iMac. He said is looking to spend about $700. He loved the look and styling of the iMac, but price is a sticking point. I believe Apple is leaving a lot of money on the table by not having a stand-alone consumer/busines computer without LCD. A lot of people already have LCDs or monitors that work perfectly fine (ugly as they might be). I would call this machine the Xmac, which fits perfectly in the naming scheme with Xserve, Xserver RAID, Xsan, and Xgrid. With the engineering brilliance demonstrated in the iMac G5, Apple could build an extremely small machine and price it in the $500-$700 range. This would look even more iPod like than the new iMac and sell like hotcakes. I too believe Apple has a lot of positive momentum, the stock price is sure banking on it. Another name just came to mind, perhaps even better branding and marketing synergies: iMac G5 Mini