Apple releases new iMac desktops with Intel Sandy Bridge CPUs, Thunderbolt ports - Page 6

So we're to take it you're an optometrist? Funny I've used glossy screens for years. I'm nearly 35, I don't get eye strain from sitting at a computer at work all day and then for a large part of my time at home after work. I'm one of the only people in my family to have 20/20 vision. Hell, when they tested my eyes 2 months ago they told me each eye was 20/20 and I had better than 20/20 when they tested them together. Sorry if I don't take your word that I'm ruining my eyes. I don't wear sunglasses to use my computer, I just manage the contrast and brightness properly.

Looks like I goofed

My browser didn't load the BTO page because Apple didn't have it up when they first refreshed this morning. It was just showing the wireless keyboard, trackpad, and mouse.

As for the matte screen, I'd like to see Apple offer it as an option. But these comments about "rearranging furniture" and "closing drapes" are just plain idiotic It's a little more complicated for those of us who have vision problems and taking my iMac for a ride around the house isn't going to help.

Ok good to know. I'll mention it to Steve the next time I see him.

Why is it ridiculous? If Apple has decided that based on everything they have heard from their users that the percentage of people who would buy an iMac for purposes that some would consider Pro rather than consumer is as small as the petitions show the matte market for an iMac to be, why wouldn't it be Pro vs Consumer? The iMac is designed as a Consumer device. The specs for it are certainly good enough that it could be used in a Pro work environment, but that is not it's goal. Apple has their own plan for each division and an expectation in mind. That doesn't include matte screens for the iMac.

Appreciate it.

What's the problem? Apple's products come with miniDisplayPort connectors; requiring an adapter to connect to a DisplayPort monitor is nothing new here.

I think this is an extremely naive viewpoint.

You won't eliminate all glare, well maybe unless you live in a cave.

I have 20/10 vision and good eye movement and coordination. I am fortunate that the world is often presented quite clearly for me to see. I am grateful for it. What I don't need is for people telling me to accept a screen that I know isn't acceptable. I can barely tolerate the iPad in my bedroom with the lights out and curtains and shades down. I can't even take the thing outside.

Well..... good news.......I hope this means that the MacBook Airs will be the next upgrade to get the TB ports (prob not the SB processors)??????

Can some mod take all the bullshit matte screen posts and dump them into a matte screen thread where they can wither and die, and the rest of us can get on discussing the actual announcement today.

Sorry about your vision problems, but you can't seriously expect an off the shelf inexpensive consumer device to be built to specifications for your medical condition. There is specially designed equipment for that. I have a couple friends who have vision problems and they utilize specific assistive computer technologies, not iMacs.

Where did I say, in my post, that I expected "an off the shelf inexpensive consumer device to be built to specifications for (my) medical condition"?

It's very relevant to the discussion.

The machine has flaws that prevent people from buying it. The purpose of discussion is to point them out.

A thread stating "Hey awesome machine I'ma go buy one right now!!!" would be boring indeed.

Other than that, it's a minor announcement for Apple. They place a higher priority on the white iPhone, as evidenced by their home page.

Its a pretty major upgrade actually - new processor, great benchmarks, graphics card etc. It is way better than the old one. I remember upgrades in the past when I have thought to buy the refurbished version of the old version, not this time.

the Matte screen, wasn't there before, isn't there now. Its like worrying about floppy disk drives. Most of us dont care. What I would like to see is links to benchmarks, or somebody with information on what we can expect in real world tests, not this nebbish nonsense.

I guess I shouldn't have jumped to the conclusion that you would like to see Apple offer matte screen to help with your vision problems, as 'expecting' it. What do I know since a simple suggestion of not using your monitor facing the window or improve light conditions by closing the drapes is clearly idiotic and not helpful.

The 1TB and 2TB Seagate SAS drives over at newegg cost triple what the SATA versions cost. The IBM versions are all ridiculous like a 2TB for a grand. Also, what is the volume level like on the SAS drives? The drives they put in the iMac are basically silent

I hope you never have to experience vision problems. If you ever do, "suggestions" such as "closing the drapes" or "not using your monitor facing the the window" will sound just as idiotic to you as they do to me

Ya the larger drives came out pretty recently and us such there's a premium on them. I don't need 2TB of drive space as I don't have that much pr0n. For me 300GB is ideal, and as such it'd be nice if it was a SAS drive instead of SATA.

None of which really matters as I won't be buying one as they don't have a matte screen

It seems like you're everywhere.

I have a better idea. How about: Can some mod take all the bullshit anti-matte screen posts and dump them into a jerk thread where they can whither and die?

Guess what? This IS about today's announcement. Some of us held out hopes (albeit very small) that we might actually be able to buy a desktop machine from Apple at some point, but looks like that's not the case again for 2011. And it's apparently an important issue to a lot of people, regardless of your opinion. Unarguable, because enough people raised a stink that Apple caved and made it an option for the MacBook Pros, even though I'm sure they'd much rather keep it simple without extra hardware options.


This is just not true, and it's really tiresome to hear people spout off nonsense like this. Anti-glare filters are bullshit. Problematic at best, to install, and they offer noticeable degradation in quality. Monitor hoods? Are you joking? Are we back in the 80s? An iMac is a consumer device that resides in the living room, bedroom, home office, etc. It's probably going to be in a relatively small space compared with a desk at work, and a big ol' hood is ridiculous.

And NO, it's not reasonable to ask people to rearrange their furniture, turn off the lights and close the drapes every time you want to spend some time at the computer.


Best quote of the entire thread.


Maybe because it acts a fricking mirror?!

Not aimed at you in particular, but this is the saddest part of the whole debate. The fact that that many people don't seem to notice the reflections. What the hell is up with that? The reflections are there. Absolutely, unequivocally, there are serious reflections on glass screens. So what kind of tricks are people doing to fool their brains into ignoring them? I'm serious, I would love to know!


Are you saying people prefer reflections when they watch video? Dimming the lights can help a lot when watching videos on a big-screen, but it's several feet away from you, so the % of the room that's in your reflected area is greatly reduced.

This is why it's not as objectionable using a glossy screen on an iPhone/iPodTouch. It's much smaller, so a lot easier to diddle your position/angle as there's less reflected area behind you.


Kind of silly; Mac Pros are out of the question for most people. Mac Mini is an option, but Apple continues to make them very under-powered, therefore unattractive performance-wise compared with iMac.


I think you meant to type "abomination".


Tweaking the contrast and brightness makes the reflections go away? Bwahahahaha!

You can help tone down the worst of it, but that's it.


Even if you are in a cave (or realistically, in a very dark room), that doesn't remove the reflections of your face from the light of the screen. Reflective screens suck.

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There may only be 1300 sigs on that petition, but there are way more than a few small percent of frustrated customers. The surveys put out a couple years ago showed that pretty solidly. A few more comments just to reiterate that there are a lot of people who care about this issue.

I think this is a huge update IMO.

Quad core across the line up now. Going by the MBP benches when it got quad core SB cpus, the entry level 21" iMac should meet or exceed the performance of the high end 27" iMac from the last generation. That's pretty damn nice IMO.

Not only that but TB ports and the 27" iMac has *2*. Engadget already has a demo of a 27 iMac driving *2* additional 30" monitors.

What else do you expect them to do? Does any other pc vendor offer an AIO that even comes close to these new iMacs? I'm sorry that they don't offer matte screens, I'd probably get one if they did. But that doesn't take away form the other positive aspects of the machine.

It is not about today's announcement. There was no matte before today, there is none today. Maybe you could pollute a thread somewhere about how Apple did not being back the floppy, or a tape machine. Or revert to a PPC.

A rather excellent update from Apple, and a thread to discuss it, is being hijacked by a group of matte screen fetishists. Most of the posts, including mine, are about how important the missing matte screens are, how unimportant the missing matte screens are, or how we wish people would stop talking about matte screens.

The posting on threads doesnt have to follow the main headlines, you could set up a Why is there no matte Screen thread.

Please do.

Yes, it's a machine with decent specs. From a purely neutral perspective as someone who regularly researches specs in the ongoing Mac vs. PC debate, the amount of memory allocated to the graphics card is still a generation or two behind gaming PC setups (except in a very top end 27" config). We still need to see graphics benchmarks to determine if the M in the video cards means it is somehow a detriment to the overall graphics performance.

i5 is bonus, 4GB default is bonus, Thunderbolt is great, etc.

I don't see a reason to insult and consistently battle with people who think differently about the screen.

My point was that just because people aren't mind readers doesn't make them idiots. We offered normal suggestions for normal people. You have vision problems which we clearly did not know about, why call us idiots? If you had said I have vision problems are there any suggestions about minimizing glare, and if some said see an optometrist then that would be idiotic. But that is not what happened.

Of course it's just a 'mild' refresh to you.

As stated above boot with your OS DVD, Run the Disk Utility.

You'll want to select the Erase Button and look for the Security Options button. Under that option you'll have 3 options for erasing every last bit on the drive.

* You'll then need to reinstall the OS.

10/15K SAS drives are not designed for consumer devices. They're enterprise drives. They run much louder and hotter than SATA drives and use much more power. SATA is integrated into all the consumer chipsets made by Intel. SAS controllers require a multilane pci-e connection that honestly doesn't exist on Intel's consumer Sandy Bridge chipsets.

We've done extensive testing at my company and the native Intel ICH SATA controller outperforms all of the low cost SAS controllers. You need to get into SAS controllers with cache before they make sense.

Today's 7200RPM SATA drives are rather fast wish a mixed IO load.

You weren't the one making ridiculous statements that I was responding to tho. I never told you what screen to buy. I called some BS about glossy screens ruining everyone's eyes and have pointed out several times that clearly Apple feels that glossy is what should be in their Consumer focused products.

The current MBAs have 10W processors and 12W IGPUs. There are 17W SB procs available. No reason they won't get SB procs in the next revamp

Yes an iMac is a consumer device that will be in those places, but most of the people whining about matte screens are wanting to use the iMac in more of a Pro or at least Prosumer way, so in that case, while yes being pretty old school, if they're really serious about minimizing glare there is the option of a hood. No you don't need to turn off all the lights and close the drapes to use your computer. My apartment has big windows at the end of the living room and my wife and I use the dining room it's attached to as a computer room. My monitor is perpendicular to the windows and I have no problems from the lighting.

I don't have any reflections on my screen b/c most of the time this room is kept reasonably dim and like I said, I have my contrast and brightness controlled so the picture suits my preferences. My eyes aren't being damaged like has been claimed in this thread and my computer works just fine.

You may think some of the suggestions are bullshit but guess what, they were fucking suggestions. The reality of the matter is that Apple isn't making iMacs with matte screens and a measly 1300 people isn't going to change their minds. Maybe I just used my head when I decided where I wanted to have my computer setup. Nah, can't be that simple.

I'd also appreciate some thoughts on this, as a fellow Logic user upgrading from workhorse Powermac, be nice to hear some opinions on the difference between i5 and 7 rather than the relative merits of matte/gloss, Portal/asphalt 6. Get a 360 and a Chimei and shoosh up. Anyone using these things for real work?

OK people, anyone else lovin' the fact that FireWire 800 is still on these machines? Nice

Questions need answering...

1: Will there be a voucher included with new iMacs for an upgrade to Lion?
2: Will there be adaptors available to run USB3 through ThunderBolt ports if and when USB3 becomes available?
3: How much better is i7 over i5 (is it a worthwhile upgrade for photo enthusiasts or just overkill)? Or, to put it another way, who would need the top spec iMac?

OK you smarty young 'uns ...

Considering switch to iMac from PC and looking at 27" 3.4 i7; would like to upgrade RAM aftermarket. I'm a novice at this but thought there was a problem mixing different capacity SIMMs (e.g. 2gb and 4gb). I gather from above post that's not true with the suggested 4+4+2+2 configuration?

i am thinking about getting my imac and below is the specs, any advice?

3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
4GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
1TB Serial ATA Drive
AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2GB GDDR5
Magic Trackpad
Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad (Int'l English) & Users Guide (English)

any advice pls say, appreciate it!

C-

Yes you did. In my post I stated; "It's a little more complicated for those of us who have vision problems".

When people tell me to move the computer around and close the drapes or blinds, you might just as well tell a blind person to "get some eye drops".

My problem isn't serious; a mild form of Tunnel Vision, but glare is a problem for those of us affected. No, I don't expect Apple to accommodate me or anyone else who has difficulties or needs special assistance. Walk a mile in my shoes (albeit with a cane ) and you'll begin to understand why comments like moving the computer around and closing the blinds/drapes annoy the Hell out of me.

Dude you are preaching to the choir. My VERY best friend was blinded in an accident at age 30. I know just about everything there is to know about blindness except what it feels like to be blind. But that doesn't change the chronology of the posts. The one about not orienting the monitor toward the window happened about three hours before you mentioned you had vision problems.

I know you are but what am I?
Oh wait...

I think the complaining about lack of Blu-Ray will come when they update the mini and don't add that.
I know because I will be one of the whiners.

You DO have reflections on your screen, and the main point that I wish people would stop contradicting. From your comments here, I gather that don't care about them, and that's fair enough, but they are most certainly there. Smooth glass is reflective, and nothing anyone here on the forum can say changes that fact. If you sit in front of your computer and look for the reflections you will see them unless your environment is picture-perfect and your head never moves. Please do this and report back. :-) Actually, I invite everyone to do this. You will see reflections, you're just not particularly bothered by them.

So the relevant and interesting question is this: how is it that you can train your brain to ignore those reflections? I can't. Apparently lots of people can't. I'm not even sure it's desirable to train yourself to not see something!


I never made that claim, it was someone else.


Even turning your display 90 degrees to the window, unless everything in the area reflected in your display is dark, including your surrounding walls, your hair, your face, your shirt, etc., then you can see reflections.

What's sad are the insults thrown out, like those of us that are actually bothered by these reflections are stupid or something. I'll put my IQ up against pretty much anyone here on the forum (and yes, I know this is a bright group in general), the point being only that we are NOT stupid, we just can't ignore the fucking reflections on these screens like so many people apparently can, and it's really frustrating to be insulted. For those of us who can't selectively ignore the reflections, these machines are literally unusable for more than a few minutes at a time, in all but the most perfect environments.

This is intended for all the naysayers, not you in particular. You just happened to be the one to reply now.

Why don't you get some suction cups and remove the glass screen?

I really hope you don't drive a car.