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Apple updates its iMac line

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Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#281

Post by xavieralexandre »

dijit wrote: post #255
xavieralexandre wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure. But the drive that is inside is listed as being SATA. I haven’t seen a tear down but it’s not soldered or proprietary at least.

The spinning disc drive is SATA and non proprietary (https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac+Intel+27-Inch+EMC+2546+Bla...). The SSD is not and use a proprietary PCI-e connector (https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac+Intel+27-Inch+EMC+2546+Bla...). You can find adapters though (https://www.amazon.de/Sintech-M-2-PCIe-2280-SSD-Karte-MZ-JPU...).

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#282

Post by jcagalawan »

specialist wrote: post #268
jwr wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why you think that. I mostly write code for a living and apart from the notebook line catastrophe (I'm stuck on a 2014 model of a MacBook Pro and waiting for something to come out with a reasonable keyboard and perhaps more than one port that I can use), the desktop line is improving quickly. I've been really tempted by the Mac Mini, I would buy the iMac Pro if I could afford it, and now I intend to get t…

To the parent's point... I'd recommend a hackintosh Intel NUC. I got blisters stuffing RAM SIMMs into daughter cards. I've agonized over IRQ choices for peripherals. I'm so over fiddling with my daily driver. I've got Audrinos and RPi projects for scratching that itch. Uncertainty over the keyboards is precisely why I postponed replacing my laptop. I'd probably use my iMac more if I could find a keyboard & trackpad c…

I think Synergy does what you needed with Teleport. I used it at work a while back when I had Apple devices and it worked great as long as I had the MacBook set up as the host.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#283

Post by boterock »

jeffhuys wrote: post #52
fiblye wrote: post #13

Bought my iMac 7 years ago with 8GB as the default memory option and a 1TB fusion drive. And here we are, nearly a decade later. Still 8 GB in the newest models. Still 1 TB fusion drives. GPUs haven't even seemed to take a jump over last year's models.

It's the lowest option, you can upgrade to 32GB or 64GB on the 27-inch version. You can upgrade the drive to an 2TB SSD, or a 3TB fusion drive. If you only buy an iMac for the basic things like browsing, emailing and watching youtube, 8GB is more than enough, especially on macOS. I don't get the hate for having a lower-budget option.

I find interesting that you say "especially on macOS", personally I feel that macOS has the highest memory requirements of the major OSs, but I haven't used macOS in a while, so that may have changed...

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#284

Post by noonespecial »

S_A_P wrote: post #206
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 bought one of those from best buy and quickly hit the wall with the 5400 rpm drive. I bought the iMac repair kit from ifixit and put a 1tb ssd in its place. It screams now. I have literally never had a drive swap make such a HUGE performance improvement.

Can confirm. 2012 Imac with 1TB rust disk was truly feeling its age. Swapped to small SSD I had laying around just to see what would happen and just SuperDuper-ed the old OS. Could not believe the difference. You just have to see it happen to get it. Best upgrade ever.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#285

Post by kristiandupont »

specialist wrote: post #268
jwr wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why you think that. I mostly write code for a living and apart from the notebook line catastrophe (I'm stuck on a 2014 model of a MacBook Pro and waiting for something to come out with a reasonable keyboard and perhaps more than one port that I can use), the desktop line is improving quickly. I've been really tempted by the Mac Mini, I would buy the iMac Pro if I could afford it, and now I intend to get t…

To the parent's point... I'd recommend a hackintosh Intel NUC. I got blisters stuffing RAM SIMMs into daughter cards. I've agonized over IRQ choices for peripherals. I'm so over fiddling with my daily driver. I've got Audrinos and RPi projects for scratching that itch. Uncertainty over the keyboards is precisely why I postponed replacing my laptop. I'd probably use my iMac more if I could find a keyboard & trackpad c…

I use this piece of software for Windows/MacOS mouse and keyboard sharing: http://www.keyboard-and-mouse-sharing.com/

It works reasonably well.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#286

Post by scarface74 »

asdff wrote: post #258
scarface74 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Colleges aren’t buying labs full of Chromebooks...

They aren't buying iMacs, either. I work at one of the largest unis in the US and everything is dell optiplex from the libraries, to the lecture halls, to the research labs, and the hospitals. The only iMacs I've seen are requested specifically by faculty for their office, or are 10 years old in some windowless back room hooked up to a random microscope running snow leopard. That being said, I've never set foot near…

Two colleges instead of one don't make it less anecdotal...

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#287

Post by WillPostForFood »

todd8 wrote: post #201

It's just frustrating, I switched the household over to Apple devices when OSX came out, and now there really aren't any systems from Apple that look interesting to me. I've been programming since before the (Unix) dawn of time, and Apple devices have been good development machines for me since OSX was released 18 years ago. I'm comfortable on Linux, but the Apple iOS devices and computers are all over my home and in…

> I'd love to see Apple make a system that supported upgradeable memory, SSDs, High capacity hard drives, graphics, and separate larger monitors

Apple does a pretty good job supporting the needs of most people, in a slim clean form factor, with the iMac. It supports memory upgrades, and external monitors. There is a small group that needs nearly every component to be upgradeable or swappable, and they offer the Mac Pro for that use case. I don't see a scenario where the cost/benefit of adding removable graphics cards to an iMac would make sense. I would like to see the hard drive accessible like the memory is.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#288

Post by 0xffff2 »

scarface74 wrote: post #162
owenwil wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lab settings? What school is buying hardware these days? The majority in my area are either investing in Chromebooks and dropping purchases of their own devices, or making kids buy Chromebooks.

Colleges aren’t buying labs full of Chromebooks...

Are many colleges buying computers at all? My university CS and engineering schools both just required that students supply their own computer that was sufficient for the coursework.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#289

Post by Zarel »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #267
naravara wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the Mac Pro is the computer of all our dreams, I doubt it will meet the poster’s needs. Seems like they want a fairly bare-bones, minimalist and simple computer. I doubt a Mac Pro is going to come in at under $3.5k at the entry level.

The iMac Pro starts at $4,999 and was (probably) intended to be Apple's only "pro" desktop but the desire for an upgradable system was too much so Apple caved and a new Mac Pro is on the horizon. Apple is going to charge a premium for that upgradability that the iMac Pro doesn't have, I'll bet the base price for the Mac Pro is going to be at least $5,999.

> was (probably) intended to be Apple's only "pro" desktop

Apple specifically said in 2017 (before the release of the iMac Pro) that they messed up the 2013 Mac Pro, that they would make a new modular Mac Pro but it would take a long time to finish, and that the iMac Pro would be a stopgap.

It was a private press event, so the best source on this is probably Daring Fireball: https://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#290

Post by jillesvangurp »

icedchai wrote: post #215

The iMac is a great machine. I have a late 2014 iMac 5K 27" and it's still going strong with 32 gigs of RAM and 512G SSD. It had the max CPU for the time (4.0 ghz i7.) Apple Care expired end of 2017, so unless the thing dies or OS upgrades become unsupported, I don't have a reason to upgrade it.

Same here. My 3TB fusion drive died at some point but it lives on with just the 128GB ssd that came with that. Also, I connected an external 2 TB Samsung SSD to it which ended up being a nice performance upgrade as fusion drives are slow. Apple should just kill the fusion drive option; bad idea. You are better off with a proper ssd and external storage.

I maxed out the specs at the time, which in retrospect was a good choice since it has lasted me for five years. The screen is awesome and with a quad core i7 and 32GB there's not a lot it can't do comfortably even today.

Games are the exception as this is not a gaming machine. Yet, I regularly use x-plane on it as well and I get decent performance given that it is running on a laptop grade GPU that is five years old. It's actually more sensitive to CPU performance and the 4Ghz core i7 is still pretty nice. CPUs have gotten faster but not a lot in the last five years. Certainly they have not doubled in performance twice. Rip Moore's law, I guess.

I don't run x-plane at native resolution because I gain a few FPS by using a slightly lower resolution but it is actually usable at native resolution if you can live with lower graphic settings. If you are into this, I maxed out most graphics settings like maximum objects, texture resolution, etc. but have reduced reflections to the minimum (kills performance with not a lot of visual impact) and reduced anti-aliasing settings and shadows as well. Tuning x-plane is a bit of dark art but generally it can look great on even modest hardware. I also use a lot (several hundreds of GB) of high resolution Ortho4XP scenery and and other custom scenery. Typically seeing between 20/30 FPS. So, looking pretty good and it uses the 32 GB. The AMD m295x with 4GB has been pretty good.

It's a bit disappointing that five years later the state of the art Imac is essentially the same with a slightly newer CPU and GPU. Sure it will be faster but a 2x performance boost will only be true for software that maxes out all 8 cores. Still, nothing wrong with the vega and i9 combo. I'd take that provided there are no thermal issues. I had the same kind of disappointment when I replaced my 2012 MBP with a new one a bit over a year ago. My java build ended up roughly 30% faster only (maxing out all cores). I suspect my comparatively ancient iMac might be faster.

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