Alex Salkever of BusinessWeek says it’s time for the iMac to become the Cube. Actually, he never mentions the word "Cube," but Mr. Salkever says that Apple needs to separate the iMac and its monitor — making it into a small, headless Mac — in order to rejuvenate lagging iMac sales. This is, of course, similar to what the Cube was, but Mr. Salkever’s point is that a headless iMac would be inexpensive, something the Cube was not. Mr. Salkever also says that a standalone LCD display with the iMac’s display arm would also be appealing to consumers. From Mr. Salkever’s latest Byte of the Apple column:
This leads me to what I think is the major weakness in the iMac line: It’s an all-in-one machine, which the market has moved away from. The iMacs come in a cute package with a small footprint of only 10.6 inches, about the size of a Frisbee. But for many Mac lovers it might as well be a rock sitting on their desk. They would rather have a notebook that they can close and slip onto a shelf or under their desk.
IT’S TIME. At least, this is what Apple’s sales trend are saying. The two notebook computer lines have performed the strongest over the past four quarters — in keeping with Jobs’s pledge to make 2003 the year of the laptop.
So what to do about the iMac? Cut off its head. This suggestion has been floating around the Apple community for a while, and it’s time for Apple to listen.
A competitive, freestanding, entry-level computer that’s sleek and powerful has a role. The all-in-one eMac with a CRT monitor has done fine by targeting schools, but it’s just too bulky for consumers, I think. The PowerMac G5 line is a big jump up in cost from the iMac when you add the requisite monitor. The PowerMac G4 is competitive price-wise with the iMac and offers better expansion options, but it has a clunky, massive footprint that barely fits under a normal desk.
iPOD OF MONITORS? So a headless iMac — a pretty little machine that sits beneath your desk and provides enough power to do nice things but not enough to run a advertising agency — might fit into the plans of people who, say, own an Apple laptop and want a second machine.
There’s a lot more in the full article, and we recommend it as a good read.
The Mac Observer Spin:
Yeah, it’s pretty much the Cube, but Apple never understood that the Cube needed to be inexpensive. Not enough people weren’t willing to pay a premium for the gorgeous design, small footprint, and amazingly quiet performance (not counting issues with some video cards), and Apple killed it.
So, that taken as a given, could a small, headless iMac do well on the market? We think so, especially if Apple didn’t cripple it by only including the company’s convenient, but idiotic, Apple Desktop Connector (ADC) monitor connector. Bring those PC users in, let them see a US$699 (or so) headless iMac, and let them hook it up to the display they have at home (without any converters), and we might see more Switchers.
That’s our take at least, or rather we agree with Alex Salkever, but we don’t expect Apple to do this. The company has to do something, however, because falling iMac sales are a real and pressing issue.