Apple unveils new iMacs with 21.5 and 27-inch displays - Page 6

Gotta love Amazon Prime eh?

So do I.

So beautiful LED IPS display and so UGLY GLASS SCREEN. Duh...
I'm waiting to upgrade 10 workplaces for my designers until Apple releases MATTE iMacs!!!! No way before!

Since Blu-Ray is arleady dead, I don't care about blu-ray drive in iMac. Dump it, Apple.

Who cares about Blu-ray support?!?! It'll be obsolete in a few years anyway. Apple isn't playing that game. They are pushing digital distribution and will soon offer true 1080p videos.

For the time-being, I'm happy with what they offer on iTunes. Especially on my 32-inch TV. Now if I had a 60+ inch TV, it would be a different story. If 60+ TVs were the norm and the majority of users owned TVs over 60", then I would be sending Apple feedback about supporting 1080p.

There really is hardly any perceptible difference between 720p and 1080p on lower than 60" TVs. For the most part, Apple is keeping their technology in current reality. Not reality 3-5 years from now. They're a smart company but they're not targeting the ultra audio/video-phile (which I assume you may be).

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DDR3 is still expensive. buy the minimum and wait a year or so until it's cheaper and buy more RAM. same with HD. buy the smallest and buy an external off newegg. it will be cheaper.

Hyperthreading has nothing to do with the OS. It is an entirely internal to the processor function.

When the processor is below its TCP, and the workload requires it, the cores will automatically up their speeds by a bin or more, depending on the load and the individual processor model, up to 5 bins.

Don't worry about OS X recognizing it.

Again, percentage increases don't tell you much unless you account for what they're increasing from. The fact is that digital already pulls in way more money than BluRay.


That seems like a very convoluted and somewhat conspiratorial way to account for what's being reported. An easier way to explain it is that the tech press is aware of the misleading nature of talking about rates of increase that doesn't acknowledge absolute numbers.


Of course it's doing "fine", the question is what's going to happen in the near future.


Look at what you wrote-- you start by citing Blu-Ray's increasing percentage of optical disc market share as evidence of the format's success, then follow up by dismissing the slump in the DVD market as inevitable. So...... Blu-Ray gets a bigger percentage of a decreasing market.

Lucky kids!

Yes very well worth it! Especially for Video Encoding, but please feel free to check around on the net for the latest benchmarks. Just be careful with the numbers though. For example some early i5 numbers appeared to be really bad but that was later chased down to BIOS problems. Given the right software and the opportunity to Turbo Boost both the i5 & I7 processors can be real speed demons. I7 however can run some video codecs very fast if they are parallel optimized codecs and the software is wrtten properly. A lot of IRS but i7 works very well.

This update is impressive in some aspects but it unfortunately didn't address the issue I have with the lack of internal storage. In a way I kinda wish the had provided dual Ethernet ports so that one could provide a dedicated Drobo connection.

At the rate things are going it could be several months, maybe even a year before I even consider an iMac. Hopefully they will get some minor tweaks and 35nm processors by then.


Dave

Just out of curiosity, for the people wondering why no HDMI on the new iMacs:

HDMI on the average desktop PC is HDMI out. Why would you put HDMI out on an all-in-one?

I'm really happy to see desktop processors coming to the 27" iMac. Finally the enormous gap between iMac and Mac Pro is closing. I'm also happy to see LED backlighting arrive.

Pricing is rather disappointing given that the Core i5 plus 4850 likely costs Apple less than the mobile Core 2 Duo plus 4670. It looks like a blatant $300 cash grab to me.

Display manufacturers have moved to 16:9 so Apple really had no choice there, but it's disappointing to keep losing vertical screen real estate.

I'll reserve judgement on the glossiness of the new display until I've tried it out at the Apple Store, but if it's like the last two versions I won't be able to use it.

Core i7 I like, i5 I like, Quad I like, 27 inches I like... and these things are beautiful!

But... the 4850 is, like, not great - especially on a screen that size - it's a bit of a system choker to be completely honest.

I am very impressed Apple upped the hardware so significantly though. Interesting.

That article, small that it is, doesn't say anything.

What they mean by B-R not taking up the slack is not that B-R sales aren't rising quickly, but that they are still so small when compared to the much older format that they didn't slow the drop by much.

This is like what we've read over the years about iTunes not stopping the drop in music sales. By this interpretation, iTunes sales weren't going anywhere, even though we know the were. Now, they're 25% of ALL music sales.

The same thing is true for B-R. Sales are moving up as many reports over the year have shown. But the base numbers are still too small to affect total movie disk sales.

It's also like Apple's computer sales vs the entire industry. The industry want up 2.5% this quarter, while Apple went up 17%.

So we can say that the PC industries sales were lackluster, and Apple's sales didn't change that.

Again, by this interpretation, Apple didn't see a growth in sales, when we all know that they had good growth.

Be careful of what's being read. Sometimes an article assumes the reader has other information, and when they don't, misinterpretation is common.

This is a little older, but it's typical of articles about B-R this year:

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/blu-ray-...news-4250.html

tech Q: once you get 1080p into the new 27" 2560 iMac how will it look at full screen? Interpolated? What?

Nice! Perfect except maybe the need for external speakers. No Blu-Ray? Just add PS3

They needed all that space for cooling the desktop class processor.

Storage in the iMac will always disappoint people who need more than the basic amount. I have 5 external hard drive cases on my desk beside my mini.

Considering all the outcry when Apple switched over to TN LCD panels on the last generation 20" iMacs, I'm surprised that nobody's mentioning the return of IPS panels to the entire iMac lineup. That's a huge improvement over the visibly degraded image quality that those 20" TN panels displayed.

For all the misinformation getting passed around about Blu-ray, personally I don't see the big fuss. Aside from YouTube vids and occasional movie previews, I don't sit at my computer to watch TV and other programs. And that's consistent with a Ball State study from earlier this year, which found that SURPRISE SURPRISE ... the vast majority of TV programs are viewed on TVs. Online video only constituted a fraction of the total viewing time (less than 1%).

http://www.researchexcellence.com/vcmstudy.php

When I want to watch HD programming, I'd much rather lounge on my sofa and watch a big screen HDTV. I already have a Blu-ray player, and I already have an iMac. I use the iMac as a wireless media server for my home theater setup, not as a primary source for video viewing.

That's the beauty of statistics. Without the proper context the numbers can be "tortured" to "say" anything.

Blu-ray sales are doing well but when compared to stout competition like On Demand, IPTV, iTunes, Vudu, Netflix and more it's an upstream swim for dominance.

Frankly I don't know why we're centering a thread about new iMacs around Blu-ray. This thread is a microcosm the media pie. There are a few "vocal" propononets of Blu-ray that take over every thread with complaints. The reality is that lack of Blu-ray hasn't hurt Mac sales one iota.

Apple delivered here with the iMacs. They proved many of us wrong with regard to Mobile vs Desktop chips and cooling. They have made another step forward by reducing hazardous materials by going all LED on the display and they've increased resolution on the high end iMac and removed the need for a low end Mac Pro (somewhat)

Yet we're talking about the lack of a format that hasn't shown much ability to take the market by storm despite it's main competitor closing up shop almost a year ago.

These iMacs are winners to me.

B-R DRM has nothing to do with anything else. The DRM in certain iTunes products also have nothing to do with anything else.

I wish people would stop spouting this junk about DRM.

Yes, we don't like it, but it doesn't do anything to your computer.

i might be a computer illiterate...but does the graphic card kick in for the smoothness and quality of the movies/outside source games? Also, with the new 27' dual core imac, do you guys think ill be able to run some new games on it with decent performance? like diablo III...whenever it might come out. Or should i aim for the i5 imac just to be safe, cuz it has a better graphic card too

One of the few things we agree on.

Hey, I have a Tardis!

But all that goes in there are pencils and pens.

And the furthest it's even traveled was to the floor and back.

I couldn't agree more and thanks for the imagery. You had me laughing all through lunch.

Trying to compare different Mac options (in the UK):

1) Mac Mini

Base: £649, Magic Mouse £55, Wired KB £28, iWork £54 -> £786 (+ monitor (£200) TN)
2.53GHz, 320GB, 4GB, 9400M

2) iMac

Base 21.5": £949 (includes Mouse, Keyboard), iWork £54 -> £1003 (includes monitor IPS)
3.06GHz, 500GB, 4GB, 9400M

3) MacBook

Base: £799 (includes trackpad, keyboard), iWork £54 -> £853
2.26GHz, 250GB, 2GB (£70 upgrade to 4GB), 9400M
Has 1280x800 13.3" monitor, no match for 21.5" 1920x1080 display.
But has 7 hour battery life.
If you need monitor - add £200 + £20 (DP->DVI). £1143 in total.

4) 13.3" MBP oddly has smaller HD than base MacBook. About £200 more than MacBook overall.

So yeah, it's really hard to build a Mac system for under £1000. The Mac Mini is great if you can share/reuse existing components, but the £649 price is appalling (didn't consider the £499 option, that's £150 less (£850) for 2.26GHz, 2GB, 160GB. The Mac Mini used to be vastly cheaper over here, it's a boutique computer at these prices. :-(

But the Mac Mini 21.5" looks like a reasonable deal, once you can accept the £1000 price tag. The monitor is decent. The CPU is faster so you can delay replacement another year beyond the other options. None of the options are suitable for games (not an issue for me).

Might be worth waiting for iWork '10 and maybe a mid-cycle update for Core i3/i5 throughout product line and/or BluRay option. Only if you don't absolutely need a new computer though.

That doesn't mean much. People who are getting streaming aren't getting the same IQ.

B-R is growing pretty quickly.

Not having Blu-ray in the iMac is not that big of a deal, but not having it as an option for the Mini is an omission. Many people do have blu-ray... I won't buy a movie that isn't Blu-ray because the quality of the picture AND the sound are so far superior to anything that can be streamed/downloaded or DVD, it isn't even funny.

The iMac is a desktop machine and 27" isn't really big enough to notice the diff between DVD and blu-ray, but 42" and above is noticeable... HDTV sales are doing very well and Blu-ray will sell very well beside DVD. Having BR in the mini would be the final step to becoming a full-functioning home theater computer.

Still the best Blu-ray player is the PS3 because it can play games, blu-ray movies, videos, pictures, and music... it is essentially the center of my home theater.

I watch many of my video podcasts on it, blu-ray movies, music, DVD, and gaming. I paid 600 for mine and I have got my money's worth out of it.

And only 300 bucks, now as well... it's a better value that any home theater PC with blu-ray.

He's an AI masochist. Increased beatings only spur his post count.

I've used the Logitech MX series wireless KB and Mouse for years now. As much as I love Apple, I haven't liked their external KB's since the modular version died years ago.

LOL...no matte option...because matte sucks, get over it! The aluminum iMac is far better looking than the old white models.

And BluRay is still too expensive for computer use when external hard drives are better for backups anyway. No one wants to watch a BluRay movie on their computer. People don't even watch DVD's on their computer.

Now that mouse looks awesome...finally no more scroll ball to get dirty.

Ok, let's be realistic.

The memory upgrade is costing most of that extra bucks.

You don't have to buy memory at Apple. You can get it much cheaper at OWC, and others. A 2 TB internal drive is also bigger than most people need, and it's better to buy an external for backups anyway, again much cheaper.

Use Click for Flash, as I do, and you won't see them.

It doesn't stand a chance to go mainstream in the living room when you can get 1080p from Dish or Direct TV.

In this economy, blue jeans before blu-ray, but it still has a future as an archival media.

I remember it well.

But it doesn't apply here. B-R sales are galloping along. The fact that the B-R HD-DVD war ended as the recession begun has made it harder for people to see it, but B-R sales are almost double from a year ago, with no evidence that it's slowing down. I've even seen a player advertised for $50, and titles are dropping to DVD pricing.

You're wrong. It's meaningful. As meaningful at iTunes sales the first few years.

I suppose you also said that those big gains weren't important because the baseline was small?

iTunes 720p is still much better than Comcast's 1080i (which is the true bottom of the barrel), and I'm paying them monthly for their crap.

I'd love 1080p from iTunes, but the vast majority of people wouldn't have the bandwidth to make that practical.

They have mini-DVI and mini-DisplayPort on the Mini, but no HDMI. It seems clear that Apple isnt focusing the Mac mini on the living room. That is what the AppleTV was designed for.

I really think blu-ray would have been a great additon, although i7sies will do me

For one instant, near the beginning, they flash an Imac with duel DVD sized slots on the right side. Its during a pan from that side. Don't know how to grab just a frame.

Yes, if you buy enough to give them the $79 up front to become a Prime member.

Then the free, same day service in certain areas, for SOME of their stuff SEEMS to be a good deal.

But it isn't.

Just like the unsuccessful iTunes music store, right?

And the truth is that you don't know where downloading movies is going either, it could be just as ephemeral as what you think B-R will be.

There is an SD card slot and DVD drive slot on the right side.