Alas, poor Apple-- their tragic flaw is clearly their complete and utter inability to sell a computer at a "low" price point. Unless you've been living in a cave (in particular, a cave without net access), you've heard about Artemis, Apple's upcoming G3-based computer that was long rumored to cost $999 including a 15" monitor. Well, Reality has more details on the new Mac, including a nice photo of the 60 lb. beast. It looks to be a screamer, with a 233 or 266 MHz G3, a minumum 32 MB of RAM, 2 GB hard disk, 24x CD-ROM drive, internal Zip, on-board Ethernet, 3 PCI slots, and build-to-order capabilities. It will reportedly be introduced at the National School Boards Association conference in a little over a week, and it will start shipping by early May at the latest, first into the educational channel only.

Sounds great-- though there's a hitch. There won't be an Artemis selling for $999. The "low-end" 233 MHz model will reportedly cost $1499. Which means that Apple's missing the boat again, by shipping yet another home computer that is priced significantly higher than what home buyers are expecting to pay.

Don't get us wrong-- that's a great price for a fantastic machine. You get a lot for that $1499. But the simple fact of the matter is, one of the fastest growing segments of the market is simply not going to be willing to pay that much for a computer, no matter how fast it is or how many cool features it has; they're going to walk into CompUSA and say, "I need a computer and I have a thousand bucks to spend. What can you show me?" And the majority of the people who will buy an Artemis would likely have paid a little more for a non-all-in-one system with the same capabilities. Still, it looks like a terrific machine for schools (if they can be convinced to spend $1499 on a Mac system instead of, say, $899 for a Wintel), and it may also give Apple some ammo against the likes of Gateway 2000 and Dell, both of whom have complete 333 MHz Pentium II systems available for around $2400. But we really wish Apple would hurry up and jump into the sub-$1000 fray already.

Remember, these are all still rumors, and there's a chance that Apple will sell these extremely capable systems for closer to $1000, but we are not holding our breath. Hey Apple, why not take the Artemis, stick in a 200 MHz 740, rip out the Zip drive, pull out the Ethernet, and try to sell it for $999? It's worth a shot.