Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple updates its iMac line

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 480 posts

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#91

Post by opencl »

klodolph wrote: post #20
BossingAround wrote: post #11

Huh... The title of their press release seems to me somewhat clickbait-y... Why not 'iMac got a hardware refresh; now with 2x performance'? When I read this, I thought, 'oh wow, Apple really outdid itself with their SW optimisations'. Overall, I'm kinda disappointed that the 21' and 27' macs get different CPU gens. Why? Why not just have the latest gen in both of them? Is it price, or is it more about artificial perf…

To me, it makes no sense that only the latest CPU generation should be used in new hardware. It’s not like the latest generation is a big improvement, not since the 2000s or so, and older CPUs are cheaper to manufacture (because problems in the manufacturing process have been fixed)

Intel has been using the same manufacturing process for the past 5 generations of CPUs, the problems in that process were fixed a long time ago.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#92

Post by jcadam »

Still have an old first-gen i5 powered 27" iMac. I pulled it out of the closet a year ago and replaced the dead OEM hard drive with an SSD and set it up in a corner of the living room as a GP/web machine. The optical drive is dead and a couple of the USB ports don't work, but it's still useful (nice screen, still). It's the last mac in the house, though, and I'll never buy another one.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#93

Post by Angostura »

subpixel wrote: post #68

re: RAM, I bought a 2015 iMac with a 1TB drive on Craiglist last month, thinking it might be the perfect machine to edit and store/serve family photos (mac --> Google Photos and mac --> BackBlaze). It never in a million years would have occurred to me that 1) 8GB on a 2015 machine would be utterly, pathetically underpowered for even browsing the web, or 2) that an iMac would be sold in 2015 that would not let you upg…

I'm quite surprised that you found 8Gigs a problem - what was the memory pressure indicator showing? It should be fine.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#94

Post by huffmsa »

_red wrote: post #73
pixl97 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But we cant compromise profits of our high end line"

Sometime around 2013-2014 it began to be visible that Apple stopped trying to make "the best hardware in its class" and migrated to "how does this fit in a marketing matrix". Tim Cook and Steve Balmer have curious parallels. Both genius COO-types that can squeeze enormous profits from their processes, but both strategically undermined their brands severely. I think the board at Apple is going to discover that the cos…

Cook is doing exactly what he's best at, which is what you said. Optimizing every last cent out of a process.

Great for the bottom line, but unlike in a supply chain, your cash source (customers) will eventually want something different.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#95

Post by xavieralexandre »

dijit wrote: post #71
tambourine_man wrote: post #24

Still selling brand new machines with 5400 rpm HDs. In 2019. It undermines the brand. Any Mac a customer buys should have good enough performance. 5400 spinning disk hasn’t been fast enough for a decade.

it's SATA so you can replace it with anything you like; if you're not fond of paying the extra $200 for 25% of the storage capacity. A bit like buying an OS-less PC. But I agree full-heartedly that it's counter-intuitive to the brand.

Getting max performance is not that obvious. You'll want to go through the the PCIe port and find a M2 NVME/PCIe Mac adapter.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#96

Post by lesss365 »

tambourine_man wrote: post #24

Still selling brand new machines with 5400 rpm HDs. In 2019. It undermines the brand. Any Mac a customer buys should have good enough performance. 5400 spinning disk hasn’t been fast enough for a decade.

Does it still hold that SSDs are harder to recover data from than HDDs? Or is that out the window?

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#98

Post by crazygringo »

subpixel wrote: post #68

re: RAM, I bought a 2015 iMac with a 1TB drive on Craiglist last month, thinking it might be the perfect machine to edit and store/serve family photos (mac --> Google Photos and mac --> BackBlaze). It never in a million years would have occurred to me that 1) 8GB on a 2015 machine would be utterly, pathetically underpowered for even browsing the web, or 2) that an iMac would be sold in 2015 that would not let you upg…

...how is 8GB underpowered for browsing the web?

My 2016 MacBook Pro has 8GB and it's perfectly fine.

I can't even imagine what web you're browsing.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#99

Post by feelix »

tosh wrote: post #63

I find it curious that Apple is starting to communicate major product updates decoupled from an event. Just good old press releases. Maybe they already have too many announcements to fit into the narrative of the handful of events per year.

they want to push iOS. They are begrudgingly updating their Mac line, with horrible specs such as 5400 RPM drives, and are avoiding holding an event for the announcements.

This way they get to ward off accusations that they have forgotten about the Mac, and they get the profits from the sales, while still trying to drive consumers to iPads.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#100

Post by systemtest »

Angostura wrote: post #88
justjash wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I bought my wife an iMac 4-5 years ago with the standard HD config and it feels almost useless being so slow. My even older MBA with half the RAM and an SSD is much more usable.

Worth popping an aftermarker SSD (or Fusion Drive) in there.

I did it once and removing the big glass plate assembly with magnets is nerve-wracking.
Post reply on HN