The one thing I keep missing on my 5k iMac is some form of video-in. Would be great if I could connect my MB Pro to it and use the iMac as a display. Perhaps even in a window and all mouse and keyboard events to the window get passed to the connected MacBook.
27-inch iMac gets a major update
341–350 of 611 posts
Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update
#342Earlier 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.
> people still buy their machines Sure, but more would buy at lower prices. That said I don't doubt that Apple has researched this a zillion ways, and this price point is there for solid reasons.
Same can be said about other exclusive brands.
Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you mean by that?
Schools like buying Macs, and they don't particularly care about performance. The low-end iMac has always been a top seller to lower education because a kid isn't going to complain that their computer takes four minutes to boot.
Schools have historically liked buying Macs; I'm not sure how true that is anymore. Chromebooks have swept the schools, both because they're very cheap and because Google has, from what I've read, just terrific classroom management software compared to most competitors. More recently Apple has been pushing the iPad into education pretty hard -- competition from the Chromebook is arguably why the $329 iPad ($299 for education) exists. Macs are increasingly positioned as being for teachers and administrators, not students.
Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update
#344Nice. The iMac Pro is getting harder to justify. Specially with that sweet nano-texture glass coating. I wonder how they justify charging US$ 500 for the coating on the iMac and US$ 1.000 on the Pro Display XDR. 32" vs 27" don't seem enough.
Nano-texture is a blessing and a curse in my experience... https://twitter.com/Stammy/status/1290673590380244994
Yeah, I know. They even provide you with a standard approved cloth, which is hilarious.
Still, the results are amazing and anyone who dares to even get their filthy greasy fingers near my screen, let alone touch it, are in for some serious trouble anyway.
In the case of a nano-texture screen, I should probably require people to sign an insurance agreement to be in the same room as the device.
Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update
#345Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update
#346I 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.
Always found it irritating that they never brought back target display mode. It was forgivable on the first retina iMac, as there was then no widespread connectivity for 5K screens (iirc that Mac internally used overclocked DP1.2 or something), but once Thunderbolt 3 was available there was really no excuse.
Though maybe I should be thanking them; I'd almost certainly have bought one if target display mode was available, so they've saved me money!
Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update
#347It 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).
Why does it matter? There will be a period where the Intel Macs are still supported and probably more stable, and it could be ~2y before your upgrade is available if it's ARM based. If you have a retina macbook pro from 2014~ it definitely makes sense to upgrade to a macbook pro 16" today. The thing will see you through another 5-6y easy.
Apple stopped shipping updates to PPC systems after the 2 year transition was over last time. So if you buy today, you’ll need a new system in less than 3 years
Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
It will almost certainly be a low end macbook. In fact, there's a non-pro 'macbook'[0] that already exists which would be perfect, it was discontinued a year ago, but used ultra-low power CPUs. In fact when they were talking about them (prior to release) they thought they would have ARM CPU's back then. They are fanless and have a 5W thermal envelope, which fits in with the current A12X too. The major criticisms of t…
> Intel CORE-M is truly, truly painful No, it wasn’t. I used to ru Xcode, iOS Simulator, World of Warcraft, League of Legends on the fanless MacBook with 8 GB of RAM just fine enough.
Lightroom or Ableton are almost impossible to run on a CORE-M. It's painful specially after a 10/15 minute editing session when the fans kick in and not only you have to deal with a noisy laptop but also your CPU gets underclocked and switching between your full screen Lightroom or Ableton back to Chrome sometimes takes more than 30 seconds.
WoW and LoL are very lightweight compared to pro image or sound editing software, specially because they are doing a lot of the heavy stuff in your GPU.
Even the Mac Pro is also kinda bad with that software to be honest, specially if you spend more than half an hour using it, because of the thermal issues.
Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update
#349Shipping 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.
A lot of Mac users get the computer and never plug anything to it besides a phone or some USB sticks. If all you want is a computer you can read your e-mail on, 8 GB is fine. Memory, AFAIK, is upgradable post-purchase in all current models.
It isn't on all models unless you pay Apple to do so.
Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update
#350“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…
> So before the lower-end one had 64GB? No, the lower end ones came with "Fusion Drive", that was 32-128 GB of SSD merged with a 1TB HDD presented as a single disk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_Drive
The audacity they had selling spinning drives for personal computing in 2020.