Apple to drop sub-$500 Mac bomb at Expo


Recommended Posts

I will be buying one for sure... I can just simply plug it in to my existing monitor keyboard scanner etc and FINALY be using mac..

then if I want to do something on my pc ( fast but SO GD Lound !@#$#@ fans ) I can just swap the plugs

easy and affordable.. i CANT wait

:)

i liked the thing on macslash about the guy wanting apple to put a kvm in it... the stupidity...

anyway, people will still pis and moan about overpriced apple and blah blah blah because when you hate something, it doesn't matter how good it really is, it's still bad.

Ok so they are marketing a 500 dollar computer to someone that drops 300 bucks on a dedicated music player.  It just seems wrong.  I mean can't you just see someone hooking up that old 14" crt to one of these. Suddenly Apples aren't so "pretty".

And if you add an LCD you have an expensive slow computer. :)

585188481[/snapback]

the 1.25 Ghz G4 is no slouch of a processor, it keeps up very well with the P4 and Athlon lines. Don't knock something till you have tried one.

Bah, I hate all the ****ing trolls that come into Apple threads, ragging on things they never have tried and yet hate it just to hate it.

"If it doesnt run windows why buy it?". What kind of retarded statement is that. And to say that 1.25Ghz is slow is equally retarded. PPC's do more work per clock cycle, just like AMD's do more than intel. Just because it doesnt run at 50GHz like most pentiums doesnt mean its a piece of junk. Rabble rabble rabble. :pinch:

meh. wouldn't want one even if they paid me.

besides, you really think OSX will run on that hardware? :laugh:

585195046[/snapback]

OS X runs just find on the hardware in my sig (not including the Dell, of course), and this would be at least twice as fast as my Blue&White.

if i could run windows xp on it, i might consider buying it, but till then... WHAT IS THE POINT!?!?!

585195216[/snapback]

You could via VirtualPC (well, you'd really need to upgrade the RAM some first).

Won't get me. Apple took way too long to follow such a strategy. They could have done this over 2 years ago in concurrence with the iPod deployment.

I've just upgraded my PC to the next Gen. I think Apple's lost a lot of potential customers since many have invested in either the P4, Athlon or A64.

Won't get me. Apple took way too long to follow such a strategy. They could have done this over 2 years ago in concurrence with the iPod deployment.

I've just upgraded my PC to the next Gen. I think Apple's lost a lot of potential customers since many have invested in either the P4, Athlon or A64.

585195248[/snapback]

You have to understand that Apple hit a gold mine with the iPod. What theyre trying to do is snag people who use PC's and iPods together (obviously). Theyve already got them hooked by a nice mp3 player, now if they buy a Mac, then it'll go quite nice. Err..

it doesn't matter how good it really is, it's still bad.

It works both ways. And when I was saying slow I meant mainly because of the measly amount of RAM out of the box. It's similar to how Dell once included 128 MB in their budget systems. It completely bottlenecks the system. I do realize that most likely 128 is worse on XP than 256 on OSX but its the same idea. I'm still not too impressed with the Apple's CPUs or really any of the platform. Mainly because of the limitations that make Apple what they are. Choice... You have none.

I'm not hating on Apple.... even though I don't like them. :)

The OS seems way better than it used to be though. I wouldn't mind giving it a try to see if its what its cracked up to be. I like the idea of introducing the UNIX platform they did with X.

There's just something annoying about Apple hype and their marketing that drives me away from the company. At one point they were selling computers because they were "pretty". Often still do. Then they were taking advantage of the ignorant with their G3, G4 commercials. Another thing I think is funny is how Apple components are supposed to be some kind of designer line for computing where you often get awesome quality for an inflated price but yet have had so many quality control problems in the past.

Anyway thats my rant for the day. If this thing is as small as that rendering, it might do well for someone that wants a portable system mainly to browse the net and type up papers and stuff. Knowing Apple though they will have some kind of overheating catch on fire catastrophe. :)

OS X runs just find on the hardware in my sig (not including the Dell, of course), and this would be at least twice as fast as my Blue&White.

585195234[/snapback]

i really fail to believe that.

i have ran Panther on different models of G4s, ranging from 450mhz/400something RAM all the way through 1GHzsomething/768mb RAM, and have experienced the stuttering issues with the GUI, slow downs all over the system doing simple tasks like switching applications (running Photoshop, Freehand, Safari and iTunes at the same time, with no out of the ordinary work on each), Finder restarts and even complete freeze/lockups.

actually, this GUI stuttering issues i even witnessed on a dual 1.4GHz (i think it was 1.4.. or was it 1.2..... i don't know something dual past 1GHz) with a gig of ram in a PowerMac G4, one of the latest G4 models out there.. i really can't imagine how people enjoy working in such a slow responding environment. everything needs to be animated and oh so pretty, while you're just trying to command-tab and keyboard-shortcut your way out of the animation mess you're witnessing. but then you realize you might as well option-command-esc out of the whole situation and start all over. thank God that UNIX has stable application shutdown. Force-Quitting in OS9 was a joke.

ahem...

anyway, i really doubt you can run OSX on 256mb RAM, at least not worthy enough of promotion.

however, i could understand it if you were just using the system for iChat, iTunes and Safari, not running together, of course.

all these posts about "I won't be buying this" "this is crap" are pointless. This Mac is not for you. If you are on these boards reading these posts, obviously you know something a little more than "the interent is that e button in the startbar", and are OBVIOUSLY not the target demographic. Who cares if you don't want this computer, it is not for you. I will tell you who its for - your grandparents, your parents, aunts and uncles who are CLUELESS about what is spyware, viruses, and how to remove them.

All they care is to get on the "internets" send their crappy jokes to each other, maybe do some digital photography, and maybe listen to some mp3s they downloaded. Guess what, for $500 this is a PERFECT solution. Who cares about "re-learining" the OS, the things they do it doesn't matter and will not take time at all...

all these posts about  "I won't be buying this" "this is crap" are pointless. This Mac is not for you. If you are on these boards reading these posts, obviously you know something a little more than "the interent is that e button in the startbar", and are OBVIOUSLY not the target demographic. Who cares if you don't want this computer, it is not for you. I will tell you who its for - your grandparents, your parents, aunts and uncles who are CLUELESS about what is spyware, viruses, and how to remove them.

All they care is to get on the "internets" send their crappy jokes to each other, maybe do some digital photography, and maybe listen to some mp3s they downloaded. Guess what, for $500 this is a PERFECT solution. Who cares about "re-learining" the OS, the things they do it doesn't matter and will not take time at all...

585195524[/snapback]

Maybe. It would be a neat thing to see. Especially if they can maybe sell this and an ipod at a discount or something. As long as they can keep the quality up and if this thing will run well with its specs. I'm sure it would. It's not like apple to release something that would stutter around the OS. Should be OK as long as your not doing content creation.

I laugh at all the ignorant PC users who complain that it will bel slow, crappy, etc. I just got an iBook 1.2 ghz with 256 megs of RAM. That was a perfectly fine amount to run OSX, and I could run Firefox, mail, Adium, and iTunes at once, and still have a perfectly responsive system; moreso than my Athlon XP 2600+ with a gig of RAM running XP Pro. Add another 256 stick to it like I did, and this iBook runs smoother and more efficient than ANY PC I've seen.

i have ran Panther on different models of G4s, ranging from 450mhz/400something RAM all the way through 1GHzsomething/768mb RAM, and have experienced the stuttering issues with the GUI, slow downs all over the system doing simple tasks like switching applications (running Photoshop, Freehand, Safari and iTunes at the same time, with no out of the ordinary work on each), Finder restarts and even complete freeze/lockups.

actually, this GUI stuttering issues i even witnessed on a dual 1.4GHz (i think it was 1.4.. or was it 1.2..... i don't know something dual past 1GHz) with a gig of ram in a PowerMac G4, one of the latest G4 models out there.. i really can't imagine how people enjoy working in such a slow responding environment. everything needs to be animated and oh so pretty, while you're just trying to command-tab and keyboard-shortcut your way out of the animation mess you're witnessing. but then you realize you might as well option-command-esc out of the whole situation and start all over.

585195514[/snapback]

Honestly, that doesn't sound right at all. What stuttering? What slow downs? I just CMD-Tab'ed and F9'ed around my system with no delay. I've got BBEdit, Mail, Camino, Adium, Terminal, NetNewsWire, and Stickies open and it responded right away. Dragging a window? Responsive. Minimizing? Responsive. Where is this slowdown you're talking about?

I'm not saying I've never had a crash on a Mac, but it doesn't sound like we're working with the same system...

interesting- but for 500 bux i can get a faster pc /w a monitor

585195607[/snapback]

sure you can, it'll come with a "PC Chips" MOBO build in one of those unknown asian countries a 200w power supply, a 20x CD-ROM drive, a 20gb HD, a combo of sound card/winmoden, one PCI slot, one AGP, two USB ports, no Firewire and nice set of drivers that are incompatible with Windows XP... ahhh, the 15" monitor will be powerful enough to keep warm your room at night... :p

you have no idea how much this will help my mom, who constantly is getting spyware, and alot of virus. This computer is perfect for her. You have to rember, not everyone is very tech savy, and that doesn't make them dumb. I mean, I go and get my car fixed, now sure, to the mechanic it just needed a small tweak, or some small thing he could have easily done. That doesn't mean i'm stupid, it means i just have no experiance with cars. Just like my mom has no experiance with computers.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • Millions of users to benefit from Windows 11's new performance boost on Adobe Photoshop by Sayan Sen Despite the advent of AI-generated imagery, Adobe's Photoshop remains one of the most popular tools on this planet. Adobe does not have a publicly reported total user count but it's probably not wrong to assume there are millions. As of 2025, Adobe Creative Cloud has had approximately 41 million paid subscribers, many of whom likely use Photoshop. In addition, more than 166,000 companies worldwide are apparently also using the app. These figures are according to a very recent report by SQ Magazine. Out of them, it is fair to assume that many are probably running Windows. As such, there is good news for these users as Microsoft has announced Photoshop is getting a big 20% performance boost on x86-64 (AMD64) systems and a 13% bump-up on Arm devices. This is definitely great news for them as many have complained about the slow performance and general sluggishness of Photoshop on Windows 11 ever since the advent of the latter back in 2021. If you are wondering how Microsoft managed to do this, the answer lies in a combination of compiler-level optimizations and a technology called Sample Profile Guided Optimization (SPGO). According to Microsoft, Adobe worked closely with the company’s Visual C++ team and adopted the latest MSVC toolchain enhancements together with SPGO to squeeze more performance out of Photoshop’s CPU-bound workloads. Unlike traditional Profile Guided Optimization (PGO), which requires developers to create special instrumented builds and run lengthy training workloads, SPGO gathers performance data directly from optimized release binaries. This means Adobe could collect real-world usage information which gives a major advantage to this technique, as companies could leverage data collected from actual customer workloads rather than only relying on synthetic benchmark runs. In theory, this should allow optimizations to better reflect how users interact with software in the real world. Thanks to this, there are improvements to code layout, function inlining, hot-and-cold code separation, and other low-level tweaks that help processors execute instructions more efficiently. Essentially the compiler is better able to identify “hot” code paths, those which are most frequently executed, and optimize them accordingly.
    • "The 2TB Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSD hits lowest price in over three months¨ I'd prefer to see the lowest price in over a year
    • Glad these prices are starting to come down, but that is still crazy. I bought the 2TB 9100 Pro (slightly more expensive version with PCIe 5.0) last year for $240.
    • The 2TB Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSD hits lowest price in over three months by Sayan Sen Yesterday, we covered a really good deal wherein you can get a 4TB TeamGroup T-FORCE G50 NVMe PCIe Gen4 SSD for a low price of just $400 with a special discount coupon. That's just $100 per TB, making it a very good offer during these hard times. The deal is still live, so you can check it out in its dedicated article here if you do not want to miss out. Meanwhile, if you don't have that kind of budget but still wish to buy an SSD for a good price, the 2TB variant of the TeamGroup SSD at $280 its lowest price in over three months. Meanwhile, those seeking 2TB but faster performance can check out Samsung's 990 PRO, which has hit the lowest price also in the last quarter or so, as it's on sale for $370 (purchase links under the specs table down below). Thus, you want a faster drive, get the 990 Pro, or you want more capacity, grab the TeamGroup 4TB linked in the first para. The 990 PRO is a PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD and still one of the fastest drives available today for under $500. Speaking of fast, sequential reads and writes are rated at 7450 MB/s and 6900 MB/s, respectively. The random throughputs for reads and writes are 1400K IOPS and 1550K IOPS, respectively. The 990 PRO is based on Samsung's 7th Gen V-NAND flash, and it too is TLC. It packs 2 gigs of LPDDR4 DRAM cache, which helps the random performance. The endurance rating for this is 1200 TBW (terabytes written), which should be sufficient for most users. The Samsung 990 PRO is compatible with the PlayStation 5, but if you are going to use the 990 PRO on a PC, check out the Samsung Magician app that lets you track your drive's health, update its firmware, customize various settings, and more. The tech specs are given below: Specification TeamGroup T-FORCE G50 2TB Samsung 990 PRO 2TB Interface PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.4 PCIe Gen 4.0 x4, NVMe 2.0 Form Factor M.2 2280 M.2 2280 Controller InnoGrit Controller Samsung In-house Controller NAND Flash 3D TLC 3D TLC DRAM Cache None (HMB supported) 2GB LPDDR4 Sequential Read (Max) 5,000 MB/s 7,450 MB/s Sequential Write (Max) 4,500 MB/s 6,900 MB/s Random Read (4K) Up to 600,000 IOPS Up to 1,400,000 IOPS Random Write (4K) Up to 700,000 IOPS Up to 1,550,000 IOPS TBW (Endurance) 1,300 TBW 1,200 TBW MTBF 3,000,000 hours 1,500,000 hours Operating Temperature 0°C to 70°C 0°C to 70°C Storage Temperature -40°C to 85°C -40°C to 85°C Shock Resistance 1,500G / 0.5ms 1,500G / 0.5ms Heatsink Patented Graphene Heat Spreader No Get them at the links below: Samsung 990 PRO SSD 2TB (MZ-V9P2T0B/AM): $369.99 (Sold and Shipped by Amazon US) TEAMGROUP T-Force G50 2TB SSD (TM8FFE002T0C129): $279.99 (Sold by TeamGroup, Shipped by Amazon US) Good to know This Amazon deal is U.S. specific, and not available in other regions unless specified. We only use first-party seller links (at the time of article publishing); ensure that you purchase from a first-party seller link only. Check out Today's Deals on Amazon | or our recent tech deals. Become a Prime member (for Students or SNAP) via Neowin Get Prime Access - Prime for half price (for qualifying Medicaid, EBT, SNAP) Subscribe to Prime Video, Audible Plus, Music Unlimited or Kindle Unlimited via Neowin As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
    • If you can't spell a simple word that 2nd graders learn, your entire argument is suspect.
  • Recent Achievements

    • First Post
      Jocimo earned a badge
      First Post
    • Week One Done
      suprememobiles48 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      Windows Guy earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • One Month Later
      Prasann earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Prasann earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      519
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      174
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      90
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      81
    5. 5
      ATLien_0
      70
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!