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Apple updates its iMac line

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Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#431

Post by NicoJuicy »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #306
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very likely that the high DRAM prices from 2017 to now have been due to market collusion, similar to what happened in 2010. Like your example shows, they’ve basically set the entire industry back years for a modest profit. It’s heinous.

Yes. However we forget that 8GB was an ungodly amount of memory in the late 90's; it required industrial gear like an SGI Origin to get that much. That a browser would fill it is another abomination.

Late 90's is almost 20 years ago. OP mentions 10 years ago

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#432

Post by subpixel »

S_A_P wrote: post #206
subpixel wrote: post #68

re: RAM, I bought a 2015 iMac with a 1TB drive on Craiglist last month, thinking it might be the perfect machine to edit and store/serve family photos (mac --> Google Photos and mac --> BackBlaze). It never in a million years would have occurred to me that 1) 8GB on a 2015 machine would be utterly, pathetically underpowered for even browsing the web, or 2) that an iMac would be sold in 2015 that would not let you upg…

I bought one of those from best buy and quickly hit the wall with the 5400 rpm drive. I bought the iMac repair kit from ifixit and put a 1tb ssd in its place. It screams now. I have literally never had a drive swap make such a HUGE performance improvement.

huh - back to Craigslist for me!

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#433

Post by PascLeRasc »

8draco8 wrote: post #409
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just a weird decision on Apple's part - don't they want the best perceived performance? I mean they could just put some soldered storage in there for the OS at the very least.

Not even soldered, they could came up with some fancy marketing name for slowest SSD drive in their line up (lets call it eSSD) and just drop-in 2.5" SATA SSD for $20 (retail cost of 120GB SSD on Amazon) instead of spinning rust. No need of redesigning chassis, no need of changing any factory procedures, machines, robots etc. Just give a box of SSDs instead of HDDs to the person that is responsible for putting them i…

The comment below you is dead and downvoted to hell, but it's correct even though I agree with you. I can't convince the IT person at my job that SSDs are faster than HDDs. He had never heard of them until we were looking at new PCs and he refused to approve any orders with SSDs since he thinks they're a scam. I even brought in my laptop with a PCIe SSD and he said he didn't notice a difference in boot time, and if there was one it was probably just a coincidence. He genuinely thinks that a terabyte of slow rust is better than a smaller amount of insanely fast storage. And that's even before he started ranting about how SSDs will all fail in a year anyway. I wish Apple would do what you said but there really are some lost souls out there.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#434

Post by lioeters »

vbezhenar wrote: post #7
robotsquidward wrote: post #2

Disappointed we have another year of the same iMac design, especially with serious Mac Pro rumors swirling. Guess I'll wait for the laptops this year to see HOW Apple gets my money lol.

What rumors? That it'll be released or there are more details?

I'm out of the loop on rumors, but I think it's about the "modular Mac Pro". I first heard about it in this article: https://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#435

Post by ux-app »

jimbokun wrote: post #418
geezerjay wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole point of using Mac hardware is to get Mac software along with it and be able to concentrate on actual work instead of endless fiddling with the system to get it to work. To some, the point of using a Mac is to be able to develop and test software for Mac hardware using Apple's frameworks, and having to spend 3x the price tag just to get the hardware is something that makes little to no sense. I mean, wher…

"and having to spend 3x the price tag just to get the hardware is something that makes little to no sense." But still probably cheaper than the value of your time spent building a Hackintosh and keeping it functional.

>cheaper than the value of your time spent building a Hackintosh and keeping it functional

I don't bother with hackintosh any more as I don't have any use for MacOS, but my experience was pretty seamless. I used hardware that was sitting around unused and after installing a couple of custom kexts everything just worked (^). I never had anything break even when upgrading from one major version to the next.

^ networking, sound, XCode etc. Not sure about apple services like iCloud or some of the iphone features since I never used them. Good enough for a cheap build machine when I was tinkering with some iOS dev.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#436

Post by jwr »

noir_lord wrote: post #406
jwr wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why you think that. I mostly write code for a living and apart from the notebook line catastrophe (I'm stuck on a 2014 model of a MacBook Pro and waiting for something to come out with a reasonable keyboard and perhaps more than one port that I can use), the desktop line is improving quickly. I've been really tempted by the Mac Mini, I would buy the iMac Pro if I could afford it, and now I intend to get t…

I'm curious why you need 5K@27 for 3 columns. I have 2x27" 4K LG's and they comfortably fit. The effective DPI may be higher on 5K at 27" than 4K at 27" but at a reasonable distance I fail to see any difference (approx 220ppi vs 170ppi at 3 feet).

I currently use a 24" at 4K and to fit 3 columns I need to use a smaller font size, which makes the code hard to read.

I used to have a 27" at 4K, and indeed you can fit 3 columns then, but the blurry/jagged fonts annoyed me. 4K really isn't enough for 27".

My conclusion was that I need exactly 5K at 27" (and not larger, because then you have to turn your head to see everything) for coding.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#437

Post by PascLeRasc »

caprese wrote: post #324
drewg123 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What seems worse to me is that the default drive for the 21.5" is a 1TB 5400 spinning rust drive, not even a fusion drive. This is just shameful. People who don't know any better will get the cheapest drive, and have horrible performance. This is exactly what happened to an older friend of my wife. And since it is an iMac, it is next to impossible to replace the drive later (on some models, you need to unseal the LCD…

My world has been totally SSD for the past decade. (Yes at a premium during times when I had an abundance of money and times when I had little. Priorities.) I am A LOT rougher with computers. I don't think twice about picking up my NAS in mid operation. A fusion drive wouldn't work for me.

I like your style. I also try to be rough with my computers, but on purpose because I want to live in a world where that's typical and designed for. I specifically pull USB drives out without ejecting, because we shouldn't have to do that.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#438

Post by mbell »

derefr wrote: post #335
mbell wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone could figure out a legal way to offer recommended-hardware Hackintosh builds as a service†, that'd be pretty ideal for what you're talking about, in the sense of "you could buy one for your mom", and it would "just work" (and hopefully continue to "just work" through updates, if they do it right.) Is this not what tonymacx86.com provides via the buying guide / golden builds forum?

You still have to buy the parts and put them together yourself; and then you have it follow the scene to figure out what to do for each macOS update (e.g. whether you should wait before installing it, whether you need to tweak some setting in Clover, etc.) I’m willing to do that for one workstation that will live on my desk; I’m not willing to do it for a computer that’s going to be used by a relative who lives thous…

Ah, by 'build' I thought you meant the parts list.

Pre-built systems has been tried before, but Apple shut it down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psystar_Corporation

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#439

Post by wilsonnb3 »

jimbokun wrote: post #416
js2 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in your boat. My history with Apple goes back even longer, to the Apple II and Mac SE. I've lost track of how much Apple gear I've purchased in the last three+ decades. The only non-upgradeable part that cheeses me is the storage. And the battery should be user swappable. Aside from reliability issues like the keyboard/display which Apple obviously has to fix, those are the only two parts which I almost always ne…

"there's no way Steve Jobs would have put up with this shit." The first thing Jobs did upon returning to Apple is reduce the product line to exactly four products. Consumer and pro laptop, consumer and pro desktop.

That’s true, but you shouldn’t assume he would do the same now.

Apple in 2019 with a market cap of ~1,000,000,000,000 is vastly different than Apple in 1997 a few months from bankruptcy.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#440

Post by scarface74 »

kbutler wrote: post #357
scarface74 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you couldn’t just by an SSD external drive and boot off of that?

Isn't the point of an iMac the fact that it's a clean, uncluttered device? If you are willing to accept separate components, you can buy much cheaper hardware.

Seeing that hardly any reputable company sells 5K displays anymore besides LG, the monitor itself is worth $1300. The cheapest 5K iMac is $1800. You’re not going to find computers “much cheaper” than $500 that match the iMacs specs.
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