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

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#181

Post by martini333 » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:01 PM UTC

fermienrico wrote: post #53

martini333 wrote: post #12

What on Earth are these bezels in 2020????

I think I might the only one who likes and wants bezels on everything that has a display. Extra large bezels. Perhaps the only exception would be phones as they increase the size of the device. Bezels are important to frame the screen content from functional perspective. Think of it like a frame for the art work. Black bezels occulude the distracting edges and background noise from the screen and you have always have…

I don't mind nicely designed bezels, if they have to be there. It's 2020; they don't.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#182

Post by Dunedan » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

Shivetya wrote: post #159

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?

Man, this will put a lot of us in a quandary. Buy this knowing the Apple Silicon is coming down the pipe or wait it out. I am disappointed no obvious changes to cooling have been made. Current i9 models can really spin up the fan as a number of owners have stated it one of the loudest Apple computers ever. Nano Glass is around $500 up charge which does not seem bad but I seem to recall it has special cleaning require…

> SSD upgrade from 512 to 1TB is reasonable as well, around $200

Reasonable for Apple maybe, but for $200 you already get a pretty decent 1TB retail SSD.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#183

Post by ebg13 » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:02 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…

> 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%.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#184

Post by avianlyric » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:03 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…

> 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.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#185

Post by savoytruffle » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

apocalyptic0n3 wrote: post #65

jdhawk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but you can buy 32GB of RAM for $150 and install it yourself. what? Since when did they offer a DIY upgrade path?

Haven't the iMac and Mac Mini always offered (relatively) easy memory upgrades? I've upgraded probably 10-15 of them at work. They just use the samller laptop modules instead of a desktop module, and (usually?) only support 2 modules. Mac Pro offers it too, though that's a different style of computer entirely.

The current 2020/2018 (they are the same) Mac mini does use DIMMs, but it is not easy to entirely disassemble the computer to replace the RAM. Some (2014?) Mac minis didn't have replaceable memory at all. The 27" "regular" iMac is still using a design from late 2012 that has a simple door behind the stand hinge to very easily access the RAM. Even the iMac Pro has to be totally disassembled to change RAM!

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#186

Post by freehunter » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #151

freehunter wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My fear isn’t around Apple and OS-level support. My fear is around smaller or indie developers who are already being asked to support macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android and now have to support another target. It’s not uncommon to see these devs not supporting Android or Windows because they can’t keep up. So how long before those devs drop support for Intel Macs (or don’t support ARM Macs for several years)? For…

It's trivially easy to build software for both ISAs from within Xcode, unless, of course, you are playing with Intel or ARM intrinsics or other pathologically non-portable thing, in which case it's anything but trivial. It's not much harder than supporting Linux on x86 and ARM.

And yet with the Raspberry Pi being so popular and being on the market for so long, there are still a lot of packages that don’t support ARM.

It’s trivially easy to compile your iOS app for 64-bit as well, but like I mentioned... that transition left a lot of dead apps in its wake.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#187

Post by sparky_ » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

jdhawk wrote: post #51

bluedino wrote: post #36

Just when you think they've forgotten the iMac. Can't wait for Barefeats to post the benchmarks, and compare the top level 27" to the Pro. The 27" is interesting now because you can get 10Gbe. One gripe is the 27" iMac comes standard with only 8GB, while the 15" MacBook Pro has came with 16GB standard since 2014... I'm guessing most people are going to the aftermarket to throw 32-64GB in there anyway. Apple offers th…

> but you can buy 32GB of RAM for $150 and install it yourself. what? Since when did they offer a DIY upgrade path?

iMacs have always had upgradeable RAM, just about the only user-serviceable part in them. There's a little door you can open on the back by the power connector. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201191

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#188

Post by supernova87a » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

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 as if they realized people fixate on the GHz figure, and overlook the chip generation, which (I guess?) must contribute much more to effective clock speed than a small difference in Hz rate? I even fall into this trap sometimes.

It is a bit complicated for the casual buyer to have the clock speed which was the previous metric of "goodness" of your machine now have to be weighed with the generation of processor. When the name of the processor itself doesn't provide clear differentiation between generations.

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#189

Post by zitterbewegung » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:04 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…

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

Re: 27-inch iMac gets a major update

#190

Post by jjoonathan » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

madengr wrote: post #129

protomyth wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting how much emphasis they put on the camera, speakers, and mic People realized how crappy the camera (an well mic) was on Macs compared to other computers now that we are all video conferencing. Its sad that every PC user with a Logitech looked much better.

The original Apple FireWire webcam was very good, with a large, motorized lens. Despite boasting higher resolution, I doubt many modern webcams are as good, especially integrated ones.

You can still judge the macbook cameras by looking at the images they deliver. They're bad, really bad. I suspect that apple's laptop guru / team moved to iPhone and never got backfilled, leaving the macbooks with budget flat cameras from 2007 or something.