Some 21- and 27-inch iMacs begin trickling into Apple's reseller channels
Several of Apple's retail partners are for the first time Sunday reflecting some availability of the company's iMac models first introduced over three months ago, including a handful of customized 21" models in addition to the $1799 27" model.
Sunday's arrivals mark only the second or third time that Apple's indirect sales channels have received any material stock of the new super-slim desktops since their introduction back on October 23rd, with earlier shipments going largely towards filling backlog from customer pre-orders.
But even with the gradual supply improvements seen this week, Apple chief executive Tim Cook conceded Wednesday during a quarterly conference call with analysts that he does not expect the company will be able to produce enough of the new all-in-one machines to meet customer demand during the first quarter, meaning overall constraints will push into April or beyond.
In its most recently ended quarter, Apple reported a 17% drop in Mac sales to 4.1 million units -- roughly a million less than analysts were anticipating. Cook and company largely attributed the miss to the "severely constrained" iMac line, explaining that Apple could not ship an estimated 700,000 of the new desktops during the quarter that it needed for both its direct and indirect sales channels.
Although Apple has remained relatively mum on the root cause of the iMac production problems, analyst Ming-chi Kuo of KGI Securities revealed in August, months before the new iMacs were unveiled, that production issues were likely because the screen lamination process in building the new desktops was proving difficult, particularly with the larger 27-inch model.
27-inch Models
For instance, our Mac Price Guide shows that as of 1pm Sunday afternoon, both Amazon and MacConnection have limited availability of the 2.9GHz 27.0" iMac (8GB, 1TB hard drive), which they're offering for $1,799 and $1,779, respectively. At the same time, Amazon says the 3.2GHz 27" iMac will also be in stock this Friday, Best Buy claims to have some already, and B&H Photo has the 3.4GHz 27" (8GB, 1TB hard drive) model for $2,199.21-inch Models
And while none of the resellers have stock of either of Apple's two standard 21" iMac retail configurations, MacMall has the 2.9GHz 21" iMac with 1TB Fusion drive for $1,744 with 8GB of memory, as well as the same model with 16GB of memory for $1,944.00 (also at B&H for $1,949).Sunday's arrivals mark only the second or third time that Apple's indirect sales channels have received any material stock of the new super-slim desktops since their introduction back on October 23rd, with earlier shipments going largely towards filling backlog from customer pre-orders.
But even with the gradual supply improvements seen this week, Apple chief executive Tim Cook conceded Wednesday during a quarterly conference call with analysts that he does not expect the company will be able to produce enough of the new all-in-one machines to meet customer demand during the first quarter, meaning overall constraints will push into April or beyond.
In its most recently ended quarter, Apple reported a 17% drop in Mac sales to 4.1 million units -- roughly a million less than analysts were anticipating. Cook and company largely attributed the miss to the "severely constrained" iMac line, explaining that Apple could not ship an estimated 700,000 of the new desktops during the quarter that it needed for both its direct and indirect sales channels.
Although Apple has remained relatively mum on the root cause of the iMac production problems, analyst Ming-chi Kuo of KGI Securities revealed in August, months before the new iMacs were unveiled, that production issues were likely because the screen lamination process in building the new desktops was proving difficult, particularly with the larger 27-inch model.
Comments
Available... not available... available.... not available...
OK. Got it.
3.2GHz 27.0" iMac (8GB, 1TB)
I'm assuming one of these is supposed to be listed as a "Fusion Drive" unit?
I can tell this is going to be really confusing for awhile, until stock is fully filled everywhere.
I live near an Apple Store and I really love the 27" iMac but I have concerns about the screen. Everyone I have seem appears to have odd backlight bleed that makes the screen look like it has very light yellow blobs thoughout the screen. Not sure if it has something to do with the new bonding process or some kind of problem with the process.
Not sure if anyone else has seen the same issue.
(27" 3.2 i5, 8GB RAM, 3TB Fusion)
@extremeskater: no problems of any kind with the display on my new 27" (i5, 8GB Ram, 3TB Fusion.)
Too bad they don't use the 1.1 and 3.1TB sizes, which is more accurate, to eliminate any confusion about which is the FD model or not.
I'm in the market for the 27" but I think I'll wait a little while until the new technology and manufacturing process is a bit more refined.
I plan to run OS X/Windows 7 on the machine. Anyone have advice on how that works on the fusion drive? Is there still Boot Camp vs. Parallels options. Which is better?
1) Boot Camp still works with Fusion Drive setups.
2) Boot Camp v. VM* pros and cons haven't changed.
3) With Boot Camp the partition will be made on the HDD so that you get your full SSD and whatever remaining HDD space as a single logical volume for Fusion Drive.
* I use VMWare Fusion and prefer it over Parallels. I find Parallels more feature rich (for things I don't care about) and more buggy (which I do care about. In Mac OS X as well have multiple VMs running at once. I have a full Windows domain all virtually connected to each other with a free and clever app called UBER Network Fuser. This is amazing because the network interface usually just connects back to Mac OS X but UBER creates virtual NICs that will tie any of the VMs you want to each other so you can create a nice Windows Server domain (along with Apache servers or Wikis on Linux or whatnot) for compartmentalized testing.
Of course. On the weekend when the stock isn't trading, it's available.
During the week when the bears are trying to drive the stock down, it's not available.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
I'm in the market for the 27" but I think I'll wait a little while until the new technology and manufacturing process is a bit more refined.
I plan to run OS X/Windows 7 on the machine. Anyone have advice on how that works on the fusion drive? Is there still Boot Camp vs. Parallels options. Which is better?
As per Apple support forum at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5446 "Note: Boot Camp Assistant is not supported at this time on 3TB hard drive configurations."
For me, this is a problem because the 3TB fusion drive is the only setup I would buy. I'll be waiting until I know they've fixed this.
If you really need 3 TB, then that is, of course, an important consideration.
However, in the past, a lot of people have bought the top configuration just to 'future proof' their system - even though they didn't need the higher capacity at that time. Thunderbolt is fast enough that this is no longer a huge necessity. You can buy what you need now and if you need more in the future, an external Thunderbolt drive will be about as fast as the internal drive - so there's no real disadvantage to waiting to get the extra capacity other than the slightly higher price - but given that Apple charges $150 for the extra 2 GB of space, even that might not be an issue.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
I'm in the market for the 27" but I think I'll wait a little while until the new technology and manufacturing process is a bit more refined.
I plan to run OS X/Windows 7 on the machine. Anyone have advice on how that works on the fusion drive? Is there still Boot Camp vs. Parallels options. Which is better?
I believe Boot Camp does not (yet) work on the 3TB Fusion Drive (just the 1TB Fusion Drive). Don't know if Apple will fix this in the future.
I bought the 3.1TB Fusion Drive because 1) I am used to SSDs so going back to just a HDD even on a much faster system than my 2010 13" MBP would be excruciating as those icons bounce in the Dock more than once, and 2) I am using all by 40GB of my 1.08TB SSD+HDD setup. I've even offloaded about 200GB to an external HDD just to free up space.
3.1TB might not be enough in the long run but I think it'll be adequate for the first year. Hopefully by then Apple has a proper Home Media Solution that will hold all iTunes Libraries, sync with iDevices sans iTunes thus moving the iMac out of the center of the digital hub, store backups, and be a single point for updates for a home so that you only need to download an update once even if you have multiple devices with the same model number.
As for Thunderbolt, if your backup drive is a HDD I think USB 3.0 would work just as well and be cheaper. I don't think you gain any additional performance due to the HDD performance bottleneck.
Not sure about the current generation, but unlike most people, I found the previous generation of displays to be of low quality considering what i was used to. Of particular note were the white leaks in the corners and the fact that the display's view angle wasn't even symmetrical to the horizontal plane. Another issue that I have with all Apple displays are their low color temperatures which make whites and grays look yellowish / brownish.
First, I doubt that's true - while USB 3.0's theoretical performance exceeds hard disks, the real life performance is much lower than the theoretical level.
But even if it's true, it simply supports my statement. External connections (certainly Thunderbolt and, if you are correct, USB 3.0, as well) are now fast enough that there's no real penalty to using an external hard disk. So there's less incentive to buy more hard drive space than you really need.
There simply isn't anything you can do about it. As they note the maximum throughput of a 7200RPM HDD is about 1.1Gbps or 140.8MBps. Perhaps with a 10kRPM drive you could start seeing the Thunderbolt drive creep a little ahead but I doubt it. The bottom line is 5Gbps is well within a HDD's threshold.
That said, if you have the option to get an external drive casing that has both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt and, of course, a 6Gbps SATA III connection for a decent price you might as well go for it as it will future-proof your drive casing.
For some unsubstantiated reason I love that word, always have.
Why hasn't TS chimed in yet saying he wants this? It's his beloved iTHNS or some similar name and I agree to the iTunes Media hub.
I for one am glad I don't even look at all these bottlenecks anymore as I simply pop in a larger HDD in my MP when the current one is full. Just this weekend I took out an old 750GB and put in a 2TB, joining the 1TB & 3TB after converting many video's and now have them in iTunes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vaelian
Not sure about the current generation, but unlike most people, I found the previous generation of displays to be of low quality considering what i was used to. Of particular note were the white leaks in the corners and the fact that the display's view angle wasn't even symmetrical to the horizontal plane. Another issue that I have with all Apple displays are their low color temperatures which make whites and grays look yellowish / brownish.
Do tell what displays do you find acceptable and for what applications and for what price point? I have some Samsung high end displays which are far inferior to Apples's offerings in my opinion.
More importantly is what display/OS/application do you currently use professionally that requires such color perfection?