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New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac

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Re: New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac

#41

Post by bane »

mgkimsal wrote: post #4

having just bought the $1299 model last year, glad to see they're trying to offer a cheaper model. Lowest used to be $1199 a few years back - another $100 to $1299 (essentially $1400 with tax) was a big hit to take. Yes, $200 is just $200 - these new $1099 ones aren't free , but... this may make the difference between someone getting a new one vs not. 1.4ghz seems awfully slow, but... I suspect for a lot of what many…

>I suspect for a lot of what many people do - email, youtube, Facebook, a bit of iTunes music, this will be more than fine

But honestly, a system targeting that demographic and use-case (and built minimally to serve them) should be several hundred dollars less.

Re: New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac

#42

Post by hackety »

bane wrote: post #37
dsr_ wrote: post #21

This has a 1920x1080 display. I fail to understand why someone would buy this over a Mac Mini and an external display: cheaper, more powerful, ability to change displays, only two more cables (power and data for the display). Anyone care to enlighten me?

I was going to say, I can get a really nice laptop at Costco with better specs for about 30-40% less and better specs all around, and a touch screen. In fact, I can get an all in one with much better specs for less. http://www.costco.com/.product.100115209.html?cm_sp=RichRele... Other than the crap specs, it's really hard to buy into the idea that this is "entry level" when it's selling at a mid-level price. This sho…

Geeks tend to forget that there is more to a computer than raw numbers.

Design, noise, materials, software (try getting that inspiron with apps like garageband, imove, pages and numbers for less than $1099), support (walk into the apple store and someone's there to help) and general ecosystem (time machine, app store, UNIX foundation (no real viruses)).

Re: New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac

#43

Post by deelowe »

dsr_ wrote: post #21

This has a 1920x1080 display. I fail to understand why someone would buy this over a Mac Mini and an external display: cheaper, more powerful, ability to change displays, only two more cables (power and data for the display). Anyone care to enlighten me?

This quote is extremely relevant when criticizing apple products based solely on specifications: http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ip...

Simply put, because it's designed by Apple. Evidently, that alone is enough to drive a much higher demand than similarly priced competing products.

Re: New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac

#44

Post by minopret »

glibgil wrote: post #17
tmikaeld wrote: post #5

Too bad Hackintoshes are illegal, could get a lot more hardware for that kind of money.

Calling something illegal is usually reserved for things that are in the criminal code. There is no law against running Mac OS X on non-Apple computers. No one will be going to jail. Nothing will happen. You don't even have to feel bad. Apple would have to sue in civil court and would have to prove damages. They would not be able to prove damages.

"There is no law against" except in Professor Kingsfield's class on contract law. "You come in here with a skull full of MUSH; you leave thinking like a lawyer." Which I am not.

Re: New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac

#45

Post by roeme »

hackety wrote: post #20
tmikaeld wrote: post #5

Too bad Hackintoshes are illegal, could get a lot more hardware for that kind of money.

I have a hackintosh, and it's a nightmare. Even though I copied a "gold build" from "TonyMacx86" (the "hackintosh authority"), the machine freezes randomly every hour, sometimes a week. But it will freeze and I'll have to do a hard reset. Also, many of Apples services won't work with a hackintosh. iMessage and FaceTime, for example. To fix it, you'll need to call Apple and convince them to whitelist your fake generat…

That's strange.

I built one last year, and it's far from being a nightmare. I also followed the builds from the site you mentioned, as best as I could in my country (local dealers are cheaper, or on-par to amazon around here) - the few deviations I had to make just require me to replace the NIC and Graphic kexts after an update (but I can do this on the same system, it's not unusable without them). The only other problem I did not bother to fix yet is that I can't watch hardware-accelerated movies in the browser (really not required with the work I do this machine).

But still, it was for fun. I'd never use them as a substitute to the real thing, the price difference is too small IMHO – I do factor in the time I "waste" on a system.

So I don't quite get where people got the Idea that a Hackintosh is worth the hassle to be used as a substitute. C'mon, it's even in the name.

Re: New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac

#46

Post by joesmo »

danford wrote: post #13

>1.4 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost Speeds up to 2.7 GHz, Intel HD 5000 graphics, 8GB of memory and a 500GB hard drive. Eh.. I got similar specs in laptop form for about half the price on black Friday last year. I'd like to get something like this for a desktop but I'm afraid my Ubuntu might have some issues on the hardware. I'll wait until I find it slightly used for half the cost. On a side…

Considering that no one else makes a decent desktop or laptop anymore and hasn't for years, I'd say this is quite newsworthy.

Re: New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac

#47

Post by brudgers »

My guess? This suggests the old paradigm Mac Mini's lifecycle may be winding down because this targets Apple's core market in a manner consistent with the rest of Apple's product lineup and the not-all-in-one Mini doesn't no matter how much communities like this one love it.

Re: New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac

#49

Post by drbawb »

Touche wrote: post #19
freshyill wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the cost of significantly more complexity and a far from optimal user experience. A hackintosh is fine for a very minute slice of the population. Even building a PC, except for hard-core gamers, isn't really a thing anymore.

> And the cost of significantly more complexity and a far from optimal user experience. I've never done a Hackintosh (very happy with other unixes), but is this true? Certainly more complexity with setting it up, but afterwards? If you follow http://www.tonymacx86.com/home.php and get hardware they recommend and follow their guides isn't it pretty close to Apple's own computers?

My old man managed to build a Hackintosh and a "Hackbook Pro" just fine, following the tonymacx86 guides so far as I know. I helped him assemble the tower because he had never built a PC before, but he installed Mac OS himself.

The machines have minor problems on occasion; but to be frank I don't expect any computer to work with 100% reliability.

For instance a problem my dad w/ the hackintosh tower stemmed from storing `/Users` on a secondary hard drive.

Occasionally the hard drive would not mount quickly enough and Mac OS would create skeleton home directories under `/Volumes//Users` which would bork the login. Plus the volume can no longer automount since the path `/Volumes/` now exists.

---

The HP ProBook works really well but it has had strange issues w/ the wireless card.

For some reason the wireless card lost the region code stored in its firmware. As a result Mac OS no longer sees the wireless card. (System Profiler shows the hardware, but refuses to recognize it as an "Airport Express" card.)

Humorously: the utilities to reflash Atheros firmware don't run on Mac OS.

---

I have to admit that I'm a bit jealous. The "Hackbook Pro" runs much faster than my actual MacBook Pro of similar vintage (late '11).

Re: New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac

#50

Post by johnpowell »

hackety wrote: post #20
tmikaeld wrote: post #5

Too bad Hackintoshes are illegal, could get a lot more hardware for that kind of money.

I have a hackintosh, and it's a nightmare. Even though I copied a "gold build" from "TonyMacx86" (the "hackintosh authority"), the machine freezes randomly every hour, sometimes a week. But it will freeze and I'll have to do a hard reset. Also, many of Apples services won't work with a hackintosh. iMessage and FaceTime, for example. To fix it, you'll need to call Apple and convince them to whitelist your fake generat…

Mine works perfectly fine. Installing OS X was pretty painless and the only problem I have is that point updates break audio but that is a two minute fix. iMessages and Facetime work as expected.

The first time I built one I had lots of problems like you described but that was pretty much due to me not really knowing what the hell I was doing.

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