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27-inch iMac gets a major update

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Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#271

Post by avianlyric »

smnrchrds wrote: post #236
avianlyric wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What kind of magic fairy dust SSDs are they using that you can't have a sensible amount of storage space at those prices? The kind where Apple can make a 300% or more margin, knowing that people will still pay. Don't think Apple have ever sold SSD upgrades at anything remotely resembling competitive $/TB prices. Clearly they don't need too because people still buy their machines.

They learned their lesson and made storage, RAM, etc. non-user replaceable in newer versions. You used to be able to buy a Mac from Apple and upgrade its RAM at a reasonable price on your own. Not anymore.

Franky I don’t think people upgrading their own machines ever played into this.

I suspect the vast majority of people who pay for the upgrades are businesses or consultants where the Apple upgrade price is fairly negligible compared to cost of their professional time.

If you’re someone who didn’t want to pay the Apple premium before they took user upgrades away, it seems a little unlikely you’ll be happy to stomach them after. Rather you would just do without (of course there will be some who do upgrade, but I suspect they’re in the minority).

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#272

Post by enterprise1 »

osrec wrote: post #248
smnrchrds wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They learned their lesson and made storage, RAM, etc. non-user replaceable in newer versions. You used to be able to buy a Mac from Apple and upgrade its RAM at a reasonable price on your own. Not anymore.

Why do their customers tolerate this?! I know some people love Apple (their hardware does look great), but this is extremely annoying.

Because not everyone can be a computer nerd.

Apple has put a huge amount of real effort into direct outreach and support of their customers, really.

Microsoft chased business.

Apple chased people.

Google is chasing its own tail.

For the markup over the retail price of the SSD, someone else does the installation, validation, built dumb stupid restore and backup services to boot.

Dell? Lenovo? Microsoft? Still ramming bloatware down your throat and persona non grata in malls or shopping centers, or wherever a digital nomad might be roaming.

Apple built a hardware and software ecosystem for normies. Free from the Machiavellian incantations of pretentious experts with their opinions on memory layouts, how big their data is, when people just want to edit and backup files.

People think the markup is worth it to avoid IT people. Can’t say I blame them. Have you worked with the “professional” level IT crowd? Alpha bro sausage fest and foot fungus eaters.

That’s why people pay the markup.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#273

Post by snapetom »

gambiting wrote: post #240
avianlyric wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What kind of magic fairy dust SSDs are they using that you can't have a sensible amount of storage space at those prices? The kind where Apple can make a 300% or more margin, knowing that people will still pay. Don't think Apple have ever sold SSD upgrades at anything remotely resembling competitive $/TB prices. Clearly they don't need too because people still buy their machines.

The only ones that had anything close to reasonable prices were the 2012-2013 MacBook Airs. The base one came with 128GB(which was decent at the time) and upgrading to 256 or 512 wasn't a lot more than those drives cost at retail.

Throughout its history, Apple went back and forth between reasonable memory upgrades and ridiculous memory upgrades. They seem to have settled on a general trend recently - if the user can do it, like in a Mac Pro or iMac, charge a ridiculous amount. If it's not user accessible memory, like in a portable, charge a more reasonable (but admittedly still on the expensive side) for memory upgrades.

I bought a tricked out iMac last year and the only thing I didn't upgrade was the memory. Got 32 GB from Other World Computing at the same time for a much more sane price.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#274

Post by rbanffy »

savoytruffle wrote: post #170
rbanffy wrote: post #133

Most interesting that, now, the only Mac you can buy with a (SSD-cached) hard disk is the 21" iMac. I guess the next update will get rid of any vestigial spinning metal storage.

It seems very important to Apple to get the T2 (similar to an iPhone 7 CPU) controller chip into all the Macs. But it seems unable to accomodate internal HDD or Fusion drives. And Most of the 21.5" models are bargain basement (as far as that goes for Apple) models. Fusion drives were an interesting digression, but obviously not the wave of da future.

Indeed. With M2 sticks with 8+ GB hard drives become an oddity.

I have a laptop with dual storage and the largest hard drive that fits is 2 TB, but, on the M2 side, it can go way beyond that.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#275

Post by SllX »

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…

Worth noting that the very first Intel Macs released in January 2006 were the MacBook Pro and the iMac. At the time the MacBook Pro came in 15”/17” sizes, now after multiple generations they’re 13”/16” machines. The iMacs were 17”/20” machines as opposed to the 21.5”/27” machines they are now.

The rest of the PowerPC line was brought to Intel within the calendar year, and iMacs and MacBook Pros received an additional refresh replacing the Core Duos with Core 2 Duos later in the year.

At the time I remember thinking the release cadence for which models they transitioned over made perfect sense. You could make a strong argument for them to follow a similar roadmap this time around because while Macs have changed substantially since then, each Mac’s place within the lineup has not changed very much, although a MacBook Pro and a new ultra-thin MacBook around the same to show off the advantages of Apple’s chips on both sides ends of the performance per watt spectrum wouldn’t surprise me.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#276

Post by ebg13 »

tmpz22 wrote: post #250
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%.

Apple uses a file system especially designed for fast file transfer speeds, and guess what benchmarks they're using to declare their SSDs superior? With newer M.2 drives like the 970 EVO or Sabrent Rocket Apple has no valid excuse for charging so damn much for storage...

> With newer M.2 drives like the 970 EVO or Sabrent Rocket Apple has no valid excuse for charging so damn much for storage...

Can you show any other major manufacturer that includes a competitive internal drive for significantly less? Because otherwise you're comparing very different things. Dell also upcharges $300 for a 1TB NVMe SSD.

"If I buy it separately and install it myself" isn't a valid market comparison. If you want to do that, then do it.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#277

Post by karmelapple »

> T2 ... makes transcoding HEVC video up to twice as fast as the previous generation

So the T2's processing power is used to augment the main CPU and graphics card's power.

This seems like a new development, but maybe it's been known for awhile?

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#278

Post by saagarjha »

shocks wrote: post #221
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.

Yeah, iMacs don't really help there.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#279

Post by armagon »

look_lookatme wrote: post #70

I wish I could use it as an external display. I would buy one as my personal machine and then use the display during the day with my MBP for work. Would be nice in this new world of remote work.

Some iMacs support a feature called "Target Display Mode". Looks like Apple no longer supports it, but it is worth taking a peek to see if you can use it. https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/389348/what-are-th...

There's also some screen extender software, but you absolutely want a wired connection or it'll be painful.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#280

Post by lifeisstillgood »

bayindirh wrote: post #229
jandrese wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I would be interested in hearing more about how you log / see this - a real world case always beats benchmarks
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