27-inch iMac gets a major update • Hacker News Board

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#51

Post by jdhawk » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #36

Just when you think they've forgotten the iMac. Can't wait for Barefeats to post the benchmarks, and compare the top level 27" to the Pro. The 27" is interesting now because you can get 10Gbe. One gripe is the 27" iMac comes standard with only 8GB, while the 15" MacBook Pro has came with 16GB standard since 2014... I'm guessing most people are going to the aftermarket to throw 32-64GB in there anyway. Apple offers th…

> but you can buy 32GB of RAM for $150 and install it yourself.

what? Since when did they offer a DIY upgrade path?

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#52

Post by _ph_ » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 3:55 PM UTC

ogre_codes wrote: post #20

burlesona wrote: post #3

Solid spec bump. Interesting how much emphasis they put on the camera, speakers, and mic; makes total sense in the age of Zoom. I’d also speculate this means iMac won’t be the first computer getting Apple Silicon. I wonder if it will be the last? What’s the consensus guess now? Perhaps a new MacBook Air with good performance but the real “breakthrough” is > 12 hours battery life?

I'm guessing they will go right to the meat of things and upgrade one of their MacBook Pro models. That is right up the "Performance per watt" avenue which Apple claims their new silicon is best for. They are going to want to squash any rumors that these don't perform well right off the bat so I don't think they are going to be conservative here. For similar reasons, I don't think the iMac was ever slated to be the f…

Yes, they need at least one Apple Silicon machine, which demonstrates that it is competitive for absolute CPU power and of course as a machine for all the developers. They do need not only a testing machine, but should be doing the development itself on an Apple Silicon machine. That is, why I would consider the rumor about a 13 or 14 inch MB Pro with Apple Silicon for highly plausible. The 16 inch would then follow later, with an even beefier CPU.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#53

Post by fermienrico » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 3:55 PM UTC

martini333 wrote: post #12

What on Earth are these bezels in 2020????

I think I might the only one who likes and wants bezels on everything that has a display. Extra large bezels. Perhaps the only exception would be phones as they increase the size of the device.

Bezels are important to frame the screen content from functional perspective. Think of it like a frame for the art work. Black bezels occulude the distracting edges and background noise from the screen and you have always have a constant black border. They can be made to look nice as well like some of those Bang & Olufsen TVs[1] and Sony Trinitron Professional monitors [2].

Contrararily, there is no reason to the opposite besides "aesthetics". Can you think of any?

Alas - the momentum behind bezels is so massive, it is impossible to reverse this trend. Same with "borderless" trends in UI/UX.

[1] http://www.extravaganzi.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Bang-...

[2] https://www.proav.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/...

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#54

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 3:55 PM UTC

mvanbaak wrote: post #38

haunter wrote: post #26

Likely this is the machine to buy if you want one of the last Intel Macs that can natively run x86 code

erm, no. During the introduction of Apple SOC they stated that they will produce and support Intel based macs for some time together with the apple SOC versions.

[deleted]

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#55

Post by TwoNineA » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 3:56 PM UTC

ddavis wrote: post #35

PascLeRasc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Massive upgrade for people working at companies whose IT refuses to buy anything but the cheapest model.

Still only 8GB RAM though, a bit of a bummer.

I thought iMacs have an easy way to upgrade the RAM no?

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#56

Post by easton » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 3:57 PM UTC

api wrote: post #14

goalieca wrote: post #6

I'm sitting here on a 2012 imac with a fusion drive. This drive never seemed to give much performance but it absolutely tanked once it converted to APFS. The computer became unusable to the point that I had to buy an external SSD and use that as my main disk. Now i'm very disappointed that it doesn't support Big Sur despite being only 8 years old. I will wait for the apple silicon because i don't anticipate that inte…

APFS is as far as I know designed for flash and performs really badly on spinning disk. They still provide HFS+ and ExFAT as the options if you format an external spinning disk.

Will macOS install on a non APFS volume though?

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#57

Post by volkk » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 3:57 PM UTC

speedgoose wrote: post #40

The iMac would be so much more interesting with a touchscreen and a pencil, like the overpriced Microsoft Surface Studio.

if that were to happen, then its price point would be unimaginable

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#58

Post by _ph_ » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

speedgoose wrote: post #40

The iMac would be so much more interesting with a touchscreen and a pencil, like the overpriced Microsoft Surface Studio.

I wonder what the ARM based iMacs will bring. There is a lot of talk about a fundamental redesign and Big Sur really looks like being designed for touch. If an iMac should support touch and pencil, it would need a foot similar to the one of the Surface Studio too.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#59

Post by goalieca » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

donatj wrote: post #13

goalieca wrote: post #6

I'm sitting here on a 2012 imac with a fusion drive. This drive never seemed to give much performance but it absolutely tanked once it converted to APFS. The computer became unusable to the point that I had to buy an external SSD and use that as my main disk. Now i'm very disappointed that it doesn't support Big Sur despite being only 8 years old. I will wait for the apple silicon because i don't anticipate that inte…

How much RAM do you have? I recently upgraded my 2012 iMac from 8gb to 32gb and the performance is like night and day, I suspect because it has more memory to use for disk cache. It's a fully usable machine again.

Upgraded to 24GB. It helps restarting applications because it caches.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#60

Post by saos » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 4:00 PM UTC

ogre_codes wrote: post #11

Finally they ditch spinning media on the base models. Also notable, the rumored iPad-like style changes are conspicuously absent, these look pretty much identical to the older iMacs. Otherwise this looks like a decent bump all around. Notably, the iMac Pro also got some love (though not too much it seems?)

I reckon the redesign will come when they push new lines with ARM