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iMac to be retired this year? I don’t think so

Written by: Dennis Sellers

Article Overview: Ian Lamont, writing for The Industry Standard says he thinks that Apple will announce no later than Sept. 30, 2009, that the iMac is being discontinued. I think he’s waaay off base, but you have to admire his penchant for details.

iMac to be retired this year? I don’t think so

Ian Lamont, writing for The Industry Standard says he thinks that Apple will announce no later than Sept. 30, 2009, that the iMac is being discontinued. I think he’s waaay off base, but you have to admire his penchant for details.

Lamont has an interesting argument, and one that I’ve heard others espouse. It’s basically that more and more people are moving to laptops (which is true). But Lamont says that the icing on the cake is the pricing of the iMac in the current economy.

“The iMac dropped below the $2,000 price point in the early part of this decade, but current models still start at $1,200,” he says. “PCs dropped below $1,000 years ago. Higher-end desktop PCs from Lenovo, Dell and other well-known manufacturers handily beat the base iMac’s hardware specs, yet cost less than $800. He concludes that: “The iMac won’t be able to survive a recession, or the unstoppable trend toward cheaper, smaller, and more powerful computing hardware.”

Interesting points, but I personally think the iMac has at least another five years (minimum) of life left. Why? I’m not going to get into the pricing issue here; you can see my April 13 editorial for that.

And, yes, many folks are moving to laptops, but plenty of people will still stay with laptops until the power/price point of a laptop equals that of a desktop. When that happens, I think most people will go with laptops, accompanied by an external monitor and docking station for when they want more screen real estate or when they put their Mac to bed for the night.

For the foreseeable future, you’re going to get more bang for the buck with a desktop. For instance, the top-of-the-line iMac costs $2,199 and offers more power, more storage and a much bigger screen than the top-of-the-line 15-inch MacBook Pro ($2,499) 17-inch MacBook Pro ($2,799).

Also, folks like me, whose livelihood depends on a working Mac, need a back-up Mac in case one does down. I can buy aforementioned top-of-the-line iMac and an entry-level MacBook ($1,299) for around $3,700. If I went with, say, a mid-range MacBook Pro and Apple’s 24-inch Cinema Display ($899) the total would be around $3,400. So for 300 bucks more, I’d have two computers (one desktop and one laptop), more storage and more computing power than going with a straight laptop. In fact, that’s exactly the set-up I have.

I also think that Apple will make some major revisions to the iMac later this year (quad-core chips, among other things) and when the economy begins to bounce back (an iMac with more home entertainment features).

Check back on Oct. 1, 2009? I’m 99.9 percent sure the iMac will still be alive and well—and will have moved to a quad-core architecture on at least the high-end model.

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Article Tags: apple, decade, dell, desktop pcs, economy, foreseeable future, hardware specs, icing on the cake, lamont, laptop, laptops, livelihood, macbook, models, penchant, powerful computing, real estate, recession, storage, top of the line



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