Hay-sus… Is Apple crazy? Or is Apple Genius?
Apple gulps the entire holiday supply of ATI Radeon 4000 series GPUs (geeks.com)
From the article….
The new Apple machines will feature ATI Radeon HD 4850 as a more affordable BTO [Build-To-Order] option, complementing current ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB as a $399 option. We are not aware when the Apple BTO system refresh will happen, but expect an announcement in the next couple of weeks.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
Just add this to the list of why I will not purchase an Apple product. Almost $400 for a midrange card… from last summer…
To say it is ridiculous… would be a ridiculous understatement. I can get, right now, a 4850 with 512mb for ~$100 at newegg.com. I can get the 1GB version of the card (arguably most useful) for ~$120. Furthermore, the usefulness of the card is dubious at best on an iMac. Presumably it is for Adobe product acceleration (CS4 uses the video card for improving performance of some features) but that doesn’t require a lot of horsepower. You can easily get away with a $50 card (Apple would probably charge you $300 for it) and get equal performance. It can’t be for games, because… well… there’s only a handful of games available on the Mac.
So what is it for?
I’ll tell you what it’s for. It’s to put more money in Steve’s pocket. And on that note… I can only applaud Steve. The man is a genius.