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New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac

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Re: New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac

#91

Post by rsynnott »

Pxtl wrote: post #75
ansimionescu wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought an iMac in 2012 for £860 (student discount, original price £1000) and sold it one and a half years later for £600. I also bought a 13" Sony Vaio S for around £1200 in 2011 and had to sell it 6 months later, because it was a total piece of shit. I got £650 for it. So I'd argue that buying cheap plastic crap is in fact the non-budget option.

It's frustrating to see Sony fail like that - Sony was Apple back when Apple was doomed. I keep waiting for a Win32/Android company to position themselves as "Apple without the Apple OS". Sony has succeeded there with the Xperia line, but their laptops don't reflect that.

According to the former president of Sony, Apple kind of agreed: http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/02/05/steve-jobs-wanted-...

Re: New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac

#92

Post by chenster »

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?

Don't forget the aesthetic factor the new iMac.

Re: New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac

#93

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

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?

Assuming that you are knowledgeable about computers and not just looking for the most simple solution, its aesthetics and simplicity. Well engineered up to the very last detail, beautiful, great software, very good hardware.

There is no real competition in this space (unfortunately), so people pay a premium. If you care about how your room feels, let me tell you: it feels a lot better with an iMac instead of some ugly 3rd party monitor. I didn't care about that as much, but now for me it is absolutely worth it.

Also, its a computer for people that don't like to invest huge amounts of time finding the "right" pc - I've started to appreciate that as well.

Re: New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac

#94

Post by e40 »

cmelbye wrote: post #65
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?

Simplicity? My grandma doesn't want to buy an "external display", she would truly have no idea where to even start to do that. And then after she's got the Mac mini, the external display, and the cable to connect the display (assuming she was able to find the right one,) someone then has to set it up for her. Compare that to an iMac. Go to the Apple store, drop $1k, take it home, plug in the power cable, and she's on…

Let's be honest here, your grandma won't buy anything without help from someone. The leap from the iMac to a monitor+mini is not very far, with the help that will certainly be given.

Re: New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac

#95

Post by dchuk »

danford wrote: post #39
noir_lord wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's "interesting" because it broadly aligns with the interests of the HN users which is why it got voted to the top. I'm also not an Apple user but I still read the stories about what they are up to as I find them an interesting company to watch.

>It's "interesting" because it broadly aligns with the interests of the HN users so it's interesting because people think it's interesting?

Well, that's about how "interesting" works...

Re: New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac

#96

Post by Pxtl »

gambiting wrote: post #76
Pxtl wrote: post #69

This is really closing the already-small-gap between Apple and their competitors in the All-in-one space. I've been shopping for an All-in-one and it's thoroughly unimpressive - to get something with Apple-level quality, you really have to pay an Apple-level price... and at that point, you start wondering why shop with a brand with a worse reputation than Apple? I mean, I like Asus hardware, but I wouldn't want to pa…

In my experience of looking for an all-in-one: if you want apple-quality but from any other manufacturer, be prepared to actually spend more money than you would on an iMac. Obviously with an iMac you are not getting a touchscreen that is standard on every other AiO,but I can't say I would use such feature.

Wait, iMacs don't have a touch-screen? I honestly didn't know that.

This says both a lot about touch-screens and about how little I know about iMacs.

Re: New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac

#97

Post by stcredzero »

mgkimsal wrote: post #33
DCKing wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do all my development work (which involves a lot of heavy Scala stuff) on a 2012 MacBook Air, which is a wee bit slower than this one. The CPU really is not a problem. There's no SSD or 'Fusion Drive' in this one, which will make it bog down a lot. It's a shame that Apple won't go for a $999 model with a 64GB SSD or something. Should be enough for classrooms and anyone who wants a basic computer.

I guess it's all in perception - I do a lot of Java work on a 2012 MBP 2.3 quad core with 16g and an SSD - still feels slow to me quite often. Have not even considered a MBA because of this.

I have a similar spec 2012 MBP. Are you using Trim Enabler? Otherwise, you may have lost a lot of SSD performance. Also, do you monitor RAM usage? Browsers can eat up your RAM. OS X needs RAM for disk caching for snappy performance.

Re: New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac

#98

Post by judk »

joezydeco wrote: post #79
toomuchtodo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought my grandmother an iMac refurbished: http://www.refurb.me/us/desktop Very pleased, saved ~$200 off list. Still get a warranty.

Always buy refurbished directly from Apple. You get a full year of AppleCare warranty attached to the purchase and can buy more years of AppleCare after that. http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals When a new model launches, that's the best time to buy refurbs on the older stuff. The older Macbook Airs are going for 35-40% off list right now.

Only if you like to upgrade frequently. Otherwise your prev gen refurbished will run into non-support for the next OS or hardware innovation.

Re: New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac

#99

Post by judk »

stephencanon wrote: post #68
papercrane wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Haswell CPU in the iMac is still slower then the Ivy Bridge CPU in the Mac mini. The IPC boost from Ivy Bridge to Haswell isn't enough to make up the difference in clock rate. HD5000 is a decent upgrade though.

That depends heavily on the workload. For optimized floating-point code, Haswell is a beast (16 double precision flops per core per cycle, vs 8 for Ivybridge).

For 95% of consumers, all Apple CPUs are phenomenally overpowered.

Re: New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac

#100

Post by mwfunk »

randallsquared wrote: post #82
hollerith wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grandparent means he is sad that the 16:9 aspect ratio is becoming the norm. He prefers 16:10.

Right, and that transition happened last decade, not this one... Perhaps I was too specific with the 1080p mention.

There was certainly a transition from 5:4 to widescreen displays in the 2000s, with nearly everyone but Apple opting for 16:9. I don't recall any mass adoption of 16:10 followed by a mass migration to 16:9 in the last decade, which is what you're stating happened.

If Apple is moving from 16:10 to 16:9, then that would indeed be a very recent development. If this is the case, it would be kind of sad to me (I prefer a bit more vertical space), but understandable given the economics of the panel business.

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