Apple predicted to release new iMacs, MacBooks in weeks - Page 5

Um . . . Apple is doing exactly what customers want. That kind of explains record quarters, record Mac sales (in a recession), outpacing the rest of the industry several years running, domination of the Premium segment of the market ($1000+ noteboks), Macs #1 in customer satisfaction several years running, unprecedented increases in marketshare, the list just goes on and on.

Why the hell would Apple license out OS X?

Have you been in a coma since 2006?

Not sure if Apple is giving the trolls what they want, though. Sorry about that.

I would have quoted your long winded reply, but it would seem rude given it's length. Nothing in your post will change the fact that all the reasons for your desire for Matte are strictly due to your personal dislike of glossy. Your opinion has no effect on mine. I have a light directly behind my iMac 24" glossy screen and it doesn't bother me in the slightest. Given the choice, I would buy glossy again. The simple fact is, that it was obviously more profitable for Apple to ditch the matte option at the time. Sucks to be you.

The HP info is interesting but not relevant to a Mac buyer. Mac owners are an entirely different type of user. Lenovo buyers are arguably more business oriented and more likely to use a laptop in an office environment with neon lighting overhead. Mac's on the other hand have much smaller penetration in the office except for design firms and the like which oddly enough, tend to prefer glossy screens due to the color, clarity, and sharpness offered by glossy screens.

If you don't like it, then don't buy a Mac. It's just that simple. If they happen to re-introduce matte in whatever model you feel you must have, again that's great. Just don't imply that people who prefer glossy are newbs and stupid for their choices (obviously a large number of folks if it's enough for Apple to change their offerings). I am certainly no newb to PC's. I've been working with them since I started on a TRS-80 and a trusty cassette tape for storage. I also don't think it was a stupid move on Apple's part, and apparently neither do Apple's stock prices.

You, my friend, are a PC

Maybe you haven't read up on this, but all Intel mainstream mobile GPUs (Arrandale) will have Intel graphics on the CPU package. You don't get a choice.


IIRC, camcorders, and at least all 2.5" FireWire 800 drives I've seen only have one port, effectively ending the chain. Which is why it would be useful with two ports, I don't care much whether there's actually two separate FireWire buses. Granted, it would be very nice with a separate FireWire 400 bus, since one such device will slow down the whole chain.


Well, either it will disappear on it's own accord, or if it doesn't, we could regulate it to death. That would be nice, wouldn't it?


The PS3 seems to do just fine with its 2x drive.


There are BD slot load drives. The PS3 for one, and there are other products on the market. Dell offers a slim-line external version for their Adamo.

I too would have quoted your long winded reply but but you're right, it would have been rude. While I don't feel cheated by the glossy screen only option, I have to point out that you made two of the weakest arguments for a glossy screen I could have imagined, see above. To say that your evidence was anecdotal is stating the obvious.

Apple's decision to go with glossy probably had more to do with streamlining production and the obvious benefits you pointed out (improved color, sharpness and durability).The truth is that monitors were never matte before lcd's and somehow we all got by, but after so many years of using a matte screen it's initially hard to imagine going back. There seems to be a little flip-flopping in the industry and it's "confusing" people. Fortunately we use mostly 30" displays but I'll be ticked if they finally go glossy and the crew hates them, but I doubt it.

Hi Guys,

After reading through the entire thread, the feeling I get is that there are alot of people wanting to include Blue-Ray into the imac and of course the latest CPU and GPU and hard disk and monitor and while we are at it, why not everything else that can be upgraded.

I seriously believe it will never happen. The imac will still be classified as a basic desktop suitable for 'most' needs. It would have improvements but nothing earth shattering. It will never ever cross into the territory of the PRO series. Apple has always been very clear and adamant on this. If you want pure processing power and your computing needs are stressing out the imac, then whatever you are doing must be on a demanding and professional level. Thus, the Pro would suit you and as a business investment, it is relatively cheap based on a ROI basis.

However, if you have the PC mentality and wants to have to the ability of huge processing power with powerful graphic cards but not really utilising it everyday and yet you want it at a similar PC price, Forget it, it will never happen.

The imac would see gradual improvements to pace itself against the PC market at a similar price. Apple may argue that their price is competitive but everybody knows that there really exist a premium if you want to buy Apple products. I am not arguing if the premium is worthwhile to pay "as to each its own" but we cannot deny that it exist. Apple to me personally is just trying to play a basic "ice lemonade" game. Lower the price, get more sales. However, does the increase in sales justify the loss of revenue due to lower prices?

Apple are just tweaking the numbers. Once they feel that the have achieved the best combination or if they feel that by lowering the price would not generate sufficient higher sales, than I am very sure that it would stop. The refresh of the imac is due to necessity not to improved technology. Apple would never be in the forefront of hardware technology but in the software aspect, they are great.

As far as i am concerned, as long as they don't screw up the OS like previously and they maintained the high standard of the OS, I will continue to buy the Macbooks and the imacs. However, If the OS is screwed, based on design and hardware specifications, I will never pay so much for the imac.

Possibly off topic... If they had BluRay disc rental here in Malaysia I would easily pop-in a BluRay reader into my gaming PC and be set. Gaming + HiDef personal desktop PC with Windows 7... Until then... it's back to Wolfenstein (teh latest 3D shooter) and various *cough* *cough* downloads.

For my PC my goal was not the latest and greatest but the most value for money for what I wanted to do, which was enjoy smoothly playing the latest PC games.

That meant the latest quadcore CPUs were *not important*. I went with a dualcore AMD, thus saving on generally more expensive Intel CPUs and motherboards. Then I went with a "mid-range" but good value for money ATI Radeon 4830 512MB ~ still a decent GPU 6 months down the line.

BluRay, like I said, is just a disc drive upgrade away...

However I had to compromise on noise (at least 4 fans running in my PC). Ugly cables (luckily covered from view behind my Samsung matte 21" 16:9 screen (I would have preferred 16:10 but well...)

Of course, my web development work now is purely on Mac and VMWare Fusion for testing in Windows. Gaming+movies/tv shows --> PC.

jetpack you do have a point, especially with the Intel quadcore and Core i7 "scam", people are buying extremely powerful CPUs and not even doing much with it! I can't stand Dell shoving in great CPUs but skimping horribly on the graphics. These "mid-range" Dells can't even play 3D games smoothly at higher resolutions and detail despite having quadcore (because GPU is still the key factor in gaming).

My Late 2007 iMac ran pretty hot prior to 10.5.8, but it has never caused any problem for me. Ever since 10.5.8 and later upgraded to SL, it's running cooler and cooler. CPU is usually around 40 degree here and rarely goes over 50 even when running Windows via Fusion so I wonder how do you actually use your iMac?

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You can install iStat Menu's if you are curious about fan speed and CPU temperature. My iMac,8 get's a lot of heat coming from the fan exhausts, but remains pretty cold for the most part unless I'm doing heavy encoding from Blu-Ray or something similar. I've actually noticed more heat coming from the display than the back of the casing.

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Dude, why do you bother? You'll be banned in a bit as a spammer, and your content deleted. Troll with your adds elsewhere.

can the MBP15" 3.02 HGz play wolfenstein ?? is it like cod ?

Why don't you like apple ??? I read all your post and thought you was a mac owner ?

The thing with blu ray is that its still way over priced for so few good titles that if the format dies down then people will be stuck with a shit drive in their mac. Blu ray is great for block buster movues but you tube or my dinner with Andre seem like over kill. The fact is the most expensive real estate in the world is the mac computer . So putting anything in takes a lot of doing . Apple has a small mac lime up but sells millions so any mistakes can wreak havoc . I guess you own A DELL so you have 75 models to choose from . Enjoy them . Millions of people love dell / what your name at the dell forum ???

kidding

9

ps your full of beans you will buy a mac and you will be thrilled . OK

but but his name is honest ??

MY friend apple engineer's all stood back speechless at the incredible beauty of the new gamma adjusted display with the <<green>> glass on top / Matte looks much duller and fades over time .
i own at least 5 working macs at a time for over 7 yrs and the new MBP15 3.02GHZ is as good or better than my hd tv . All my matte laptops including the recent black MB feel kinda icky for there graphics my imac 2 yr old still has good graphics.

So your thought that apple would lose quality for speeded up production is wrong . they speeded up production and made a great product

thats apple !!

.... Apple was worth 11 billion dollars.


Today Apple is worth 180 billion dollars.

You appear to not know what you are talking about or you are just trolling.

You should not be worried about that. The CPU is rated to handle more than 90 degrees C (lazy to check now, but could be 97-98). But you want it below 55? The processor has built-in protection, but it is unlikely you will ever trigger it, unless the cooling system or the processor are defective.

I had my MacBook Pro at 92 C sometimes (heavy load of course, not really often, but happens). The annoyance is that you can not put it on your lap when it is that hot, but I leave it as is on my desk. No issues so far (more than 2 years).

I'd like to see a keyboard with proper navigation keys.

Let me see, was that Fn or option ( or is that alt? ) or cmd or ctrl? Does that one move the cursor or not? And they are all different in OpenOffice, and Excel, and Excel in VMWare... That is NOT intuitive.

I get your point but disagree. No matter whether Apple should license it's OS years ago or not, doing this now would be a great mistake. This was discussed too many times so I won't go on it again. The relevant bit in this discussion is that currently Apple offers complete solutions with great overall user experience. Even MS is abandoning it's own model because it has serious drawbacks (XBox, Zune, plans and hints for own mobile phone).

"Listening to customers" does not mean listening literally. As I commented above, SJ believes that the customer does not know what he or she wants in technical terms. When the customer says "I want Quad Core processor here" he or she could actually mean "I want my images and video to be processed faster". This could be achieved by utilizing the GPU already sitting in the computer rather than adding raw power. Apple controls both the hardware and the software and can make this happen. HP, Dell or Microsoft can not.

This brings the limitation of choices. It's a tradeoff. You can not have everything for everybody, and cheap.

It's been "high prices and limited choice of models or options" for over ten years now. When exactly is this "Apple doesn't have a bright future" thing going to set in? I suppose making billions more every year + more cash on hand than MS, record quarters, record Mac sales, domination of the Premium notebook market, all the mindshare, not to mention Apple setting the bar in non-Mac areas, means they don't have a "bright future." Hell, MS' fear of Apple is palpable, having already lost control of the Premium end of the market. MS spent hundreds of millions of dollars on their Laptop Losers campaign and what happened? Apple ended up selling more Macs. The list goes on and on.

Actually, Apple seems to be the ONLY ONE in the tech industry with a bright future right now. Apple is doing virtually everything right, especially since 2006. Apple leads the industry. When Apple sneezes everyone else grabs a kleenex.

The "high prices" = Premium market. That's kinda the idea. That's the whole point.

LOL, is your trolling always so ineffective? I mean, one would think that after posting several paragraphs you'd actually produce something coherent.

The only thing worse than trolling, is trolling that makes no sense.

I already store a 2.5 Hdd back there on my imac. Only difference is I use a strip of double sided sticky tape. Costs .30 cents and keeps the hdd completely hidden.

[QUOTE=nvidia2008;1483686]For my PC my goal was not the latest and greatest but the most value for money for what I wanted to do, which was enjoy smoothly playing the latest PC games.

Hi nvidia2008,

The key point is "value for money". I have always insisted that the mac would never ever replace the PC. Both of them actually complement each other in many aspects. Without the PC, the Apple would never be able to sell so many units if they insist on only "apple parts". It is the pc market that is driving the costs down and with such a huge market, any new innovation or upgrades would achieve economies of scale within a very short period of time. As an apple user, I must thank MS for their effort. They created the thirst for computing and the ever innovation towards more powerful cpus and gpus.

It is then that the apple would benefit greatly in terms of costs and of course profits. The imac actually in my view represents the core of apple computer. Notebooks are nice. Everybody needs/want one but the desktop is where the battle is won or lost. I would dare to say that the imac pricing appears to be the upper limit and a litmus test to see how much premium a person would be willing to pay for the "apple experience'. The mini is a joke and the costs of the Pro series is even a bigger joke. Most average mac user would only consider the imac i.e. between the lower end or the highest spec model. They are greatly hindered by the cost factor of the pro even if they want better spec.

For notebooks, other factors including form, size and design play a very big part but for the desktop segment, these factors lose their shine a little. People still tend to look for specs. If the specs does not justify the price, then the consumer would still hesitate.

I believe that apple has realised this and thus the imac refresh/upgrades are appearing faster and the leap is getting bigger and bigger. The imac segment is actually very price sensitive even among hardcore apple user. For the notebook segment, apple can convince the user to pay more for design, sleek and the feeling of owning a mac and of course the "showboating" among friends to appear cool and modern. However, the desktop is sitting in your home or office, thus no one really bothers. The imac thus becomes more "Pc like" where specs and value becomes more important.

If anything is a guide, look at the latest dell desktop high end spec model and tweak the spec down say 20% and you would come close to what the new imac would probably to refreshed to.

Why would you do that?

Why not get a Blue-ray drive that writes, like the ones from AMEX DIGITAL that reads and writes!

1. http://www.amexdigital.com/Press_Rel...ti%20Drive.htm

2. http://www.amexdigital.com/Press_Rel...ulti_Drive.htm

I like HP's disclosure on their HP HDX 18t Premium series with a BD, i.e., "As Blu-ray is new format w/new technologies, certain disc, digital connection, compatibility and/or performance issues may arise, do not constitute defects in product. Flawless playback on all systems not guaranteed. For some Blu-ray titles to play, may req. DVI or HDMI digital connection, display may req. HDCP support. This Blu-ray drive does not support writing to ultra-high-speed CD-RW media (16X to 32X advertised perf.). HD-DVD movies can't be played on this PC. " http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/sh...ies&aoid=46257

How about putting a full function, top of the line graphics card in there? I'm not saying a slot, but it could just as well be on the board. Have you seen the size of something like an nVidia GeForce 295 GTX? Do you even know how much heat it has to dissipate? In my homemade PC, my GeForce 275 GTX card is so big I could barely fit it in the huge Gigabyte aluminum case I have. The thin design is a limitation. It requires that you put mobile or less powerful graphics in there. Considering there are plenty of people who dual boot and play games in the Windows environment, this would be a huge plus. Not to mention, there is a slight possibility with larger numbers of Mac users that some of the more resource heavy games just might see porting to the Mac if it had the hardware to process those games. Also, with OpenCL, this makes the machine even more powerful.

First of all, this doesn't mean Apple is doing what customers want. This just means that people are tired of the alternative, and are looking elsewhere to fill their needs. The iPod has opened people's minds up to Apple, and they're looking.

Apple was #1 in customer satisfaction when their market share dipped so low that people questioned why I was even bothering to use a Mac, still. Apple has always had a high customer satisfaction rating.

Best post of the day!

Agreed, have confidence in Apple's PHD's already! Sheez!

I do like the iMacs all-in-one design. One cable (pwr) coming out the back. With my BT mouse and keyboard (and 8 rechargeable batteries) wireless all in one printer, I almost hate to connect my iPhone because it means another cable out the back. I hate the excessive cables/pwr bricks dust/dirt attracting detritus of the PC world!

If it's not matte, I'm not buying- plain and simple. A 24" high glossy mess will never reside in my dwelling.
Also fix the arm so it has a height adjustment. Not everyone is 5' 10". And it has to get a new mouse. Peace.

I never said they would lose quality. I said here were obvious reasons and benefits to glossy that not everyone is sold on. Learn to read and learn to to conjugate; "speeded up" LOL. What I did say, is that they did it to streamline their production, ie. it's easier to make 1 version of a product. That's true for any manufacturer. I'm not pro or against glossy, but I am pro choice (LOL NPI) and if you read my response I was mostly pro glossy. I have no reason to replace the studio's displays yet and have not used them much for production work only in the office. Finally it's obvious fewer choices for the consumer is usually a bad thing and since we can only get Apple products from 1 manufacturer i don't think Apple forcing glossy displays is exactly fair to their consumers though somewhat understood on my behalf even if I think Apple should provide a choice.

matte is the way to go...

it is so functional and it look amazing still...

Why?

I don't know of any mouse that would be universally acceptable.

There is no one fits all. There are too many variables*.

It's like buying a golf glove. And, you would never buy somebody a golf glove off the shelf unless they were standing right next to you.

* And if you don't know what "variables" mean and you have Snow Leopard, select the word and right click on it.

The original Microsoft Explorer 3.0 mouse is universally heralded. No other mouse is as good. Even the re-released Explorer 3.0 doesn't do the original justice - they've cheapened it. Say what you want about big bad Microsoft, but they used to make the best peripherals around. It's no longer the case, as they've gone to sticker lettering on the keys, and horrible, over-featured keyboards and mice, everything wireless but doesn't work right, redesigning the key layouts, and very badly at that... You have to look long and hard to find quality keyboards and mice, these days. The PC market has moved more and more to toward "cheaper is better" and it shows.

There is a lot that Apple can do to their mighty mouse design from adding a proper scroll wheel, fixing those "squeezable" side buttons to the ergonomic feel and user experience. The mouse is Apple's weakest design IMHO.

Whenever I get a new Mac the first thing I replace is the mouse.

The best keyboard I've ever used was the extended keyboard that came with the 8100/80. Typing on that was amazing, it had a full set of function keys that you could place a plastic quickkeys template over from QuarkXpress. Ahh those were the days!

My wishes for iMac

Likely
200$ cheaper
No or less chin
LED Backlit Screen
Mobile Quad Core i7 (high end model)

Unlikely
Matte option
SSD option
Replaceable HD

Very unlikely
USB 3.0
ATI 5850 GPU option
No CD/DVD/BD (physical disc are dead like floppy at the time, please free up all that space in MB, MBP & iMac !)

-

Internal BD-Rom drives are actually very cheap. They can be had for about a hundred bucks retail. With Apple's buying power, they could be had for much less. There is no loss here as they are all compatible with the various DVD formats. That leaves either licensing costs, or coding costs to implement DRM, or a combination of both.

Whatever it is, I hope they resolve it soon. I hate going to another machine just to rip a blue-ray when I could be working on my Mac instead.

Performance gains?!?!?!?!?

Going from a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo in 2008 to, wait for it, a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo in 2009. Big gain there

Going from an 8800M GTX (Apple calls it an 8800GS) to a GT130 (die shrunk 9600M). No improvement again.

Exactly where is Apple improving performance? Putting in the amount of RAM and size of HD common in sub-$600 PCs back in 2008? That's not even keeping up with the Joneses.

Apple software is where things have been getting better. That and Apple customer service is why they have a better satisfaction rate. Apple notebooks fare well against direct competition, but their desktop lineup is mediocre at best and is badly outperformed by PC hardware costing half as much.

Making the iMac thinner will only appeal to people who value form over function and can afford to replace their computer every couple of years.

Ever since the personal computer was invented the most important measurements have always been reliability and performance per dollar because those tell you how many years you'll get from your purchase and thus what it'll really cost you.

I believe today's Core i7 PCs are as powerful as the iMac will be in 2012. So take the lifespan of the iMac and add 3 years. Now that would be good value for the consumer, but it would kill Apple to have machines last 6 years because sales would plummet. They have to make them good enough to get you to buy them, but crappy enough that you'll need to replace them frequently.

Viewed from that perspective it's clear that Apple doesn't want customers who can do simple math. They would rather have us shut up, go away and buy a PC. If we install OS X on our PCs then we're supporting the Mac software market so that's OK.

And I'll bet that it takes you more time to choose the ideal mouse than your Mac.

I just walked into our computer lab and there are 84 stations. There are only 4 stations that have the same mouse, and are all Apple's latest iteration. Most of the graphic stations are manned with users who have bought their own mouse/trackball/corded/wireless/1-5 button, etc. Some even take them home after class.

Not just because it fits them like a glove, but some, believe it or not, won't use another person's mouse because of the H1N1 virus.

I wouldn't want Apple to waste time designing a mouse.

Just how would you rip a Blue-ray on a Mac or any other computer with an internal BD-ROM?