Apple lowers prices for eMac line

Apple has lowered prices for its popular eMac desktop computer for home and schools, making the eMac the most affordable SuperDrive-equipped Mac ever, starting at just $1,099.

Featuring a stunning 17-inch flat CRT in a compact all-in-one design, eMac includes Mac OS X version 10.3 “Panther” pre-installed with over 150 breakthrough new features, including Fast UserSwitching making the eMac easy to share among users in the home and schools. eMac also offers Apple’s iLifeâ„¢, the industry’s only integrated suite of award-winning applications for digital music,photography, moviemaking and DVD creation.

“Complete and ready to use right out of the box, eMac is the most affordable SuperDrive-equipped Mac ever offered,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of Hardware Product Marketing. “A brilliant combination of performance and value, eMac makes it easy and affordable for everyone to make DVDs from their movies, music and photos—it’s the ultimate computer for home and schools.”

Housed in a remarkably compact all-in-one design that is even less deep than the original iMac, eMac offers a crisp 17-inch flat CRT display supporting screen resolutions of up to 1280-by-960 pixels in 24-bit color. Offering a fast 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processor, eMac comes with either a Combo (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) drive for watching DVD movies and burning CDs or Apple’s revolutionary SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW), which adds the ability to burn DVDs that play in most consumer DVD players. eMac comes with high-performance ATI Radeon 7500 graphics with 32MB of dedicated DDR SDRAM and hard drives up to 80GB.

Offering the latest in wireless communications, eMac includes a built-in antenna and card slot to support AirPort® Extreme 802.11g wireless networking. eMac also includes built-in 10/100BASE-T Ethernet and 56K V.92 modem allowing customers to connect to the Internet any way they like. With five USB ports, and two FireWire ports conveniently located on the side of the system, eMac desktops offer easy plug-and-play connections to popular peripherals such as digital video camcorders, iPod, digital still cameras, printers and scanners.

Every eMac comes with Panther pre-installed. Panther delivers more than 150 breakthrough new features including a completely new Finderâ„¢ that provides one-click access to a user’s favorite files and folders; Exposé, a revolutionary new way to instantly see all open windows at once; and iChat AV, a complete desktop video conferencing solution for business, education and consumers. Panther also features Fast User Switching to elegantly switch between active users without having to quit applications or log out; FileVault, which uses the latest security standards and 128 bit encryption technology to ensure that data in the home directory is kept secure and private at all times; and enhanced Windows compatibility that ensures files, printers and network services can easily be shared with Windows users.

Perfect for today’s digital lifestyle, every new eMac also includes iLife, Apple’s integrated suite of award-winning digital lifestyle applications that features the latest versions of iPhotoâ„¢, iMovie and iDVD and iTunes. iLife is the only integrated suite to include all of the four applications required for today’s “digital lifestyle”—digital music, photography, moviemaking and DVD creation—and is the first product to offer the benefits of seamlessly integrating them. In addition to Panther, eMac also includes AppleWorks®, Quicken 2004 Deluxe, WorldBook Encyclopedia 2003 Edition and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4.

Pricing & Availability
The eMac line is available immediately through the Apple Store (http://www.apple.com/), at Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers in two standard configurations.

The 17-inch flat CRT eMac, for a suggested retail price of $799 (US) includes:

• 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processor;
• 128MB of system memory;
• a 32x Combo DVD-ROM/CD-RW optical drive;
• ATI Radeon 7500 with 32MB video memory; and
• a 40GB ATA hard drive.

The 17-inch flat CRT eMac, for a suggested retail price of $1,099 (US) includes:

• 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processor;
• 256MB of system memory
• a 4x SuperDrive DVD-R/CD-RW optical drive;
• ATI Radeon 7500 with 32MB video memory; and
• an 80GB ATA hard drive.

Build-to-order options and accessories include additional memory, a 160GB hard drive, AirPort Extreme Card and AirPort Base Station, and the AppleCare Protection Plan.