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

421–430 of 480 posts

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#421

Post by derefr »

lostlogin wrote: post #341
sbarre wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like anyone becoming too successful in this space would find the ol' Eye of Sauron pointed at them pretty quickly.. Whether through technical or legal means, I doubt Apple would sit around and let this openly thrive or grow into a viable option for the average consumer.

You feel it when you try and use iCloud on a hackintosh. As you progressively lose access to your services, you begin to question the choose you have made. And that’s just a glancing blow. Never again.

I've been using iCloud on my hackintosh successfully for years now. You just need to get the SMBIOS stuff right (i.e. use a device serial number that comes from a valid production run, but which doesn't belong to any actual machine.) It's set-and-forget once it's correct. iMessage works for me. Handoff and Airdrop would too (I stuck a wi-fi card in my workstation and verified that it works, but I don't need wi-fi and it was hogging the PCIe slot.)

I think, these days, Clover does all the calculations and checks needed by itself. It used to be harder, but not any more.

Now, here's a real complaint: there's no Hackintosh driver to get the OS to treat an IBM-compatible PC speaker (you know, the one driven by an Intel PCH's onboard 8253 logic) as a sound device, so that I can configure the OS to play "System Sounds" through it, and thus have an extremely-tinny Apple "bwah" on start-up. What kind of loser OS is this? ;)

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#422

Post by jimbokun »

davnicwil wrote: post #118
_red wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hasn't Apple always been more of a 'pretty good hardware, nicely integrated and packaged, for a premium price' proposition? I personally can't remember a time when this wasn't so. Not sure outside their exhibition pieces which nobody really buys (10k fully specced mac pros etc) they've ever been going to market with a 'best hardware in class' story, have they?

"pretty good hardware"

This is the part they gave up on, while keeping the other two.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#423

Post by lurcio »

microtonal wrote: post #362
imdsm wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought an iMac Pro (base model) last year. I see it as investing up front in an already upgraded machine, that I can now use for the next 10 years.

But Apple does not support macOS for most Macs that long. E.g. last year's Mojave does not support iMacs from before 2012. You may be lucky and they might support the iMac Pro a bit longer, but it is unlikely that you'll get an up-to-date secure OS for ten years. If they transition to ARM at some point, the lifetimes of Intel Macs may even be shorter.

I'm happily using Mojave on two MBP's - 2009 (4Gb) and 2010 (8Gb) with SSD's. Freedom to upgrade internals and the smarts and generosity of dosdude1 (google that) turned them into the best tech purchases Ive made (after previous years of throwing money at premium end PC's that didn't last)

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#424

Post by bubblethink »

drewg123 wrote: post #53
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.

What seems worse to me is that the default drive for the 21.5" is a 1TB 5400 spinning rust drive, not even a fusion drive. This is just shameful. People who don't know any better will get the cheapest drive, and have horrible performance. This is exactly what happened to an older friend of my wife. And since it is an iMac, it is next to impossible to replace the drive later (on some models, you need to unseal the LCD…

>People who don't know any better will get the cheapest drive, and have horrible performance.

That's an unintended side-effect that is overshadowed by volume sales. All bulk orders for domains non related to performance (think libraries, hotels, basic desktops in enterprise), happen with a budget constraint without particular regard for price/performance ratio. So the lowest end model for all computers may have poor price/performance ratio but lower absolute price. That's also why thinkpads have poor screens, spinning rust drives, 4 GB memory, etc in the cheapest config. So that the procurement dept. can say in the spreadsheet that we replaced our inventory of n computers from 2012 to macs from 2019.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#425

Post by LASR »

8draco8 wrote: post #409
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just a weird decision on Apple's part - don't they want the best perceived performance? I mean they could just put some soldered storage in there for the OS at the very least.

Not even soldered, they could came up with some fancy marketing name for slowest SSD drive in their line up (lets call it eSSD) and just drop-in 2.5" SATA SSD for $20 (retail cost of 120GB SSD on Amazon) instead of spinning rust. No need of redesigning chassis, no need of changing any factory procedures, machines, robots etc. Just give a box of SSDs instead of HDDs to the person that is responsible for putting them i…

Yeah but to people who don't know any better, 1TB > 120GB.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#426

Post by lioeters »

IOT_Apprentice wrote: post #366
johnvanommen wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It feels like these products are just an afterthought for the company.

They are using them as cash cows to just exploit. It is a closed ecosystem, so they can afford to overcharge and under offer.

I believe underdeliver is the word you want in this case.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#427

Post by desireco42 »

gowld wrote: post #351
desireco42 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. The only thing to replace 7yr old iMac is iMac Pro. I splurged, got myself one and expect to get another 7 yrs from it.

That's strange. If you can keep an iMac Pro for 7 years, then you don't need the power of the iMac Pro, or your needs are extremely high now yet won't grow over time. Why not get a 27" iMac for half price, and another one in 4 years with whatever new thing is invented then?

Honestly I think you are overthinking this. At the time of purchase iMac had dinky video card and I wanted extra powerful processor and memory. This thing was perfect just pricy.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#428

Post by jandrese »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #299
zachruss92 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I agree. I'm pretty sure you could just plug in a Radeon VII as an eGPU, however. I've also heard that NVIDIA cards can work as eGPUs as well.

true. OTOH, an eGPU would be connected by Thunderbolt 3, which offers basically the same max communication speed as 4 PCIe lanes. and so i wonder: at what point does that communication speed limit the performance of such a set up? why do people normally plug high end graphics cards into a x16 slot? how good a GPU should be used in an eGPU housing before it's a waste of money? etc

Depends on what you're doing. For playing games you're going to be getting a fair bit of texture pop and stutter. For machine learning you might be totally fine.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#429

Post by scarface74 »

kbutler wrote: post #384
scarface74 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the same iMac. If all iMacs should be for consumers and Pros should they also sell them all with the highest performing graphics card and 64GB of RAM?

So, yes, Apple describes some iMacs that are not iMac-Pros as "for Pros". > should they also sell them all with the highest performing graphics card and 64GB of RAM? Nope, those are each about $400 retail (well, the delta from 32GB->64GB is only about $200 retail), and won't benefit everyone. But at this point, every iMac they sell with the HDD or fusion drive will meet your description of "the margins were both ridi…

The difference is that you could not get a Mac as fast as the then current PC at any price until the switch to Intel.

Even during the brief period where the PowerPC was faster than the current Intel processors, Macs were hobbled by an OS that was still partially emulated and bus speeds that were slower than PC motherboards. Not to mention the anemic graphics hardware.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#430

Post by scarface74 »

resters wrote: post #399
scarface74 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now that you see it isn’t the case after that you couldn’t just say “my bad” and spend the < $200 for an SSD drive?

I think the SSD would have been $500 more, which I would have happily paid if I had realized how poorly the fusion drive would perform.

So you would have been willing to spend $500 morethen but not spend much less and buy an external drive now?
Post reply on HN