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

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#221

Post by shocks » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

n3k5 wrote: post #134

“SSDs across the line with quadruple the storage” 1/4 TB of storage in the $1800 model, 1/2 TB in the $2300 one. Ugh. (So before the lower-end one had 64GB? [Edit: Nope, 1 TB Fusion Drive, thanks smnrchrds!] That would be FULL just from installing the one game the press release mentions.) What kind of magic fairy dust SSDs are they using that you can't have a sensible amount of storage space at those prices? Looking…

Apple’s pricing makes sense when you realise they’re just a consumer electronics company masquerading as a luxury brand.

Most people can afford to buy an iPhone of some kind. $1000 monitor stands and expensive iMacs is what makes their brand seem luxury.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#222

Post by Hackbraten » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

stu2b50 wrote: post #163

asadkn wrote: post #15

It just feels wrong to buy anything new from Apple with "Intel Inside" - when they're clearly going to dump it soon, in favor of ARM (excuse me for not using the cringey term Apple Silicon).

>ARM (excuse me for not using the cringey term Apple Silicon). That makes less sense, though. Apple isn't using Arm's cpu architecture, just the ISC. Apple is switching from Intel chips with x86 to Apple chips with ARM. You should, when comparing, use one pair or the other. From x86 to arm Or From Intel to Apple

The chip also contains a bunch of coprocessors which have little or nothing to do with ARM, e. g. the GPU. That’s one more reason to call the chips Apple chips, not ARM chips.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#223

Post by berbec » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

skohan wrote: post #201

ebg13 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What kind of magic fairy dust SSDs are they using I don't know about magic fairy dust, but Apple's SSDs are known to be phenomenally fast in benchmarks. $300/TB is compared to $200/TB aftermarket for a high end NVMe SSD. Is that markup? Yes, but it's not 300%.

But it’s intel so presumably you could beat it on an AMD with PCIE gen 4 right?

Not presumably, definately, at least in benchmarks. Max transfer rates on a current model gen4 ssd can reach upwards of 5GB/second, but top-end gen3 model is faster at other things. The Samsung 970 pro is still the fastest nvme consumer disk in almost all categories, besides max transfer rate, due to its usage of 100% mlc, instead of qlc & mlc cache.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#224

Post by brian_herman__ » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

zitterbewegung wrote: post #189

n3k5 wrote: post #134

“SSDs across the line with quadruple the storage” 1/4 TB of storage in the $1800 model, 1/2 TB in the $2300 one. Ugh. (So before the lower-end one had 64GB? [Edit: Nope, 1 TB Fusion Drive, thanks smnrchrds!] That would be FULL just from installing the one game the press release mentions.) What kind of magic fairy dust SSDs are they using that you can't have a sensible amount of storage space at those prices? Looking…

Schools need Macs at that price point or they can’t buy them .

Schools don't need Macs... it would be the other way around iMacs need schools.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#225

Post by _ph_ » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

dschuetz wrote: post #167

I saw "Intel" and I laughed out loud. Wow. The nerve Apple has trying to sell Intel-Macs after announcing the change to ARM!

There are people, who require a new machine now, so it is good that they get an up to date offering. Also, there are people, who need x86 compatibility when running virtual machines. Also, as long as Apple expects developers to support x86 Macs, they need to offer x86-based machines for those developers.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#226

Post by eyesee » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

JohnTHaller wrote: post #191

ogre_codes wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But for a $600-$700 machine with an ARM CPU? that's insanely competitive, and is in-line with the "basic" macbook branding. I'm skeptical Apple's introduction of their high performance CPUs exclusively on a low end device. A super light/ high performance 12ish inch machine seems right up their ally, but they don't want the new CPU associated with being a low-end "Intel Pentium Gold" type device. There might be a lo…

Maybe not exclusively, but it would make more sense as users of their more 'budget' machines likely won't be put off by its inability to run Windows and running existing Mac software more slowly due to emulation (unless it's been recompiled in the latter half of 2020). Edit: Thanks to the replies letting me know that Rosetta is still a thing. I somehow forgot. Updated.

Existing Mac software will run under emulation with Rosetta 2.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#227

Post by sukilot » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

thelittlenag wrote: post #111

Shipping with 8GB memory by default just seems absurd. Also, having only 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports seems a little light as well. I would hope to have had 4 ports at least.

The have to do that in order to offer a machine that has a low price with their 40+% margin.

Apple only does value-based pricing. They'd charge you a percentage of your income if they could figure out how.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#228

Post by mberning » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

n3k5 wrote: post #134

“SSDs across the line with quadruple the storage” 1/4 TB of storage in the $1800 model, 1/2 TB in the $2300 one. Ugh. (So before the lower-end one had 64GB? [Edit: Nope, 1 TB Fusion Drive, thanks smnrchrds!] That would be FULL just from installing the one game the press release mentions.) What kind of magic fairy dust SSDs are they using that you can't have a sensible amount of storage space at those prices? Looking…

Yeah, entry level should be a 512GB SSD and 16GB of RAM for any "premium" desktop in 2020. I'm sure some bean counter at Apple has calculated that arranging the options in this way makes more money for Apple per unit, but I can't tell you how many times I have looked at an iMac or Mac Mini and thought "that's a pretty good price", then add the correct amount of memory and disk capacity and noped right out of their website.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#229

Post by bayindirh » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #209

bayindirh wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can it be high endurance drives? My MacBook Pro has used 5% of its SSD endurance in 6 years or so? It has a 1TB SSD. I'm not filling it up, but I'm not trying to optimize the writes or something?

For all of the handwringing over SSD endurance figures over the years, the fact of the matter is that normal use won't ever get close to using it up. The only people who ever really needed to worry about those figures were doing heavy data processing every day.

I actually do heavy data processing but not every day.

It can be hundreds of RAW images (50MB/image) or the simulation software I'm working on which can generate GBs of output in 3 seconds if I leave the wrong flags on.

In my other workstation I can actually see the big jumps of write accumulation when I do these tasks via SMART (I log the data periodically).

So mine was a honest question rather than covert fanboyism.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#230

Post by jandrese » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

thomasedwards wrote: post #195

supernova87a wrote: post #188

I still find it fascinating how the choice of Intel chip generation is almost an afterthought (well, maybe only for a minority, but do most buyers look carefully? are they aware?) in the difference between models or computers when you click to buy something. Is this a strategy of Apple (or Intel) to be able to get people to ignore (and therefore they can optimize the cost of) the generation of chip used? It's almost…

I still don’t fully understand this world, I ‘downgraded’ from an i7 to a slower i5, and my computer got faster. I wish they’d use sensible clear names for the generations so you can clearly understand what’s better.

The first number after the i# is the generation. i5-5350 is fifth generation, i3-9350k is ninth generation.

That said, the difference between generations is pretty minimal thanks to Intel's huge process blunder last decade.

If you want to know which chip is actually faster for your workload that turns out to be a fairly difficult question to answer. A lot depends on what you're trying to accomplish and how your code is built.