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Apple updates its iMac line

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Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#62
post #13

Bought my iMac 7 years ago with 8GB as the default memory option and a 1TB fusion drive. And here we are, nearly a decade later. Still 8 GB in the newest models. Still 1 TB fusion drives. GPUs haven't even seemed to take a jump over last year's models.

It's the lowest option, you can upgrade to 32GB or 64GB on the 27-inch version. You can upgrade the drive to an 2TB SSD, or a 3TB fusion drive. If you only buy an iMac for the basic things like browsing, emailing and watching youtube, 8GB is more than enough, especially on macOS. I don't get the hate for having a lower-budget option.

i don't think the ram is as much of an issue as the drive speed these days. it's not "lower budget", it's just a "low budget" option, but it damages the brand experience to have such a poor performing option available (speaking of drive speed specifically).

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#63
I find it curious that Apple is starting to communicate major product updates decoupled from an event. Just good old press releases.

Maybe they already have too many announcements to fit into the narrative of the handful of events per year.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#64

Huh... The title of their press release seems to me somewhat clickbait-y... Why not 'iMac got a hardware refresh; now with 2x performance'? When I read this, I thought, 'oh wow, Apple really outdid itself with their SW optimisations'. Overall, I'm kinda disappointed that the 21' and 27' macs get different CPU gens. Why? Why not just have the latest gen in both of them? Is it price, or is it more about artificial perf…

have you never seen an apple press release? Every product is 2x as fast as the old one, based on a cherry picked benchmark

It is surprising they stop at 2x every single time. You would think Apple gets better at getting better because they are so elite...

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#65
post #13

Bought my iMac 7 years ago with 8GB as the default memory option and a 1TB fusion drive. And here we are, nearly a decade later. Still 8 GB in the newest models. Still 1 TB fusion drives. GPUs haven't even seemed to take a jump over last year's models.

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…

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.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#66
post #35
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No touch bar is a win IMHO. I'm not against it per se, but a soft `esc` was a mistake.

vim lifer here, I'm dreading the day my 2015 rMBP dies.

Vim user as well. My 2014 rMBP died in 2017 and I've had the 13" MBP w/ touch bar ever since. I'm utterly disappointed with the machine. I don't like anything about the touch bar, it's literally completely useless to me, however, the escape key doesn't drive me insane. I work about half of my day using my laptop keyboard and the other half docked w/ a mechanical keyboard.

I've tried mapping esc to the backtick (`) key and tried 60% keyboards - I can't get used to it.

Depending on what you do you could look into the MacBook Air?

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#67

Huh... The title of their press release seems to me somewhat clickbait-y... Why not 'iMac got a hardware refresh; now with 2x performance'? When I read this, I thought, 'oh wow, Apple really outdid itself with their SW optimisations'. Overall, I'm kinda disappointed that the 21' and 27' macs get different CPU gens. Why? Why not just have the latest gen in both of them? Is it price, or is it more about artificial perf…

have you never seen an apple press release? Every product is 2x as fast as the old one, based on a cherry picked benchmark

I distinctly remember benchmarking by third parties for the iPhone 8. There wasn't even anything close out at the time.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#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 upgrade the RAM.

I quickly re-sold it to another person who I bet also hadn't imagined these things.

Re: Apple updates its iMac line

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the 5k model, an additional 8GB in DDR4 RAM for a total of 16GB model costs +$200 [1]. This is beyond unreasonable compared to market [2]. [1] https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac?product=MRR12LL/A&st... [2] https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/

Sure, but with a user-accessible RAM bay built into the back of the machine, I can't work up the energy to be too mad about that one.

I most definitely give you that point.
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