Flower Powered Dalmations

Apple introduced their new iMac models tonight.  I'm underwhelmed.  The new color choices are "interesting", but nothing that I'd want to buy.  They raised the speed of the chips, and added CD-RW to the to high-end models.

Here's what I like:  Faster CPU's, CD-RW drives are finally available, new color schemes are bold, if nothing else.  The addition of the CD-RW drives does make the machine a nice little digital music station for a teenager or a college student. It's probably a little more useful than watching a DVD on a 15 inch screen.

What I don't like:  (deep breath) 

There's no option for DVD-ROM, if the top model of iMac had one of the combo DVD-ROM/CD-RW drives that are available, that would have been very cool.  Watching DVD's on a 15 inch screen isn't great, but if you're a college student, it'd be nice to be able to do both in your cramped little dorm room on your fancy new iMac.

Still stuck at 15 inch displays.  Those CRT's need to be bigger, 15 inches simply isn't reasonable anymore.  iMacs make good "grandma" machines, but many grandmas don't have very good eyesight...

64MB of RAM standard on two of the three models.  That's not even enough RAM to run the new Apple operating system that ships in 30 days.  How many people are going to buy a new iMac and be peeved when it can't run the newest OS less than a month later?  128MB is the requirement for OS X. 

Apple charges an outrageous amount to upgrade the RAM when you order.  They want $283 to go from 64MB of RAM to 256MB.  It's always cheaper to buy RAM yourself and install it, but Dell only charges $184 for the same level of increases on their machines.  You could buy a 256MB chip yourself for $91.79 with free shipping...

Ugly cases.  They're bold, but I wouldn't want one on my desk.

The price of the low-end model has been raised $100.  It's 50mhz faster, and now sports firewire and Airport capabilities, but most of the budget PC crowd aren't interested in those technologies, they want a cheap machine to surf the web and write e-mail on, not edit their home movies or set up a wireless network.

I was hoping for the introduction of new iBooks, as that's the Apple product that most interests me right now.  But, I guess I'll have to wait on those.  Apple also changed some of the options with their Cubes, adding a 450mhz model with CD-RW, and dropping the price of the basic model.  I still don't want one of them, they're a product in search of a market.  Or, as Michael Dell says in his book that I just read, it's "technology for technology's sake" rather than technology driven by what the consumer asks for.