Rumor: Apple to release new iMacs with Core i5, i7 CPUs in June or July - Page 4

This.

I don't want a matte screen, I just don't want a mirror. The semi-gloss look of the Air screens seems about the right balance to me, they are still quite useable in a brightly lit room. Compare and contrast to a (standard, glass panelled) Macbook Pro screen in the same room.

Anti-reflective displays!? Finally!? Yes, please!

In case Apple decision influencers are reading this board:

If Apple makes an anti-reflective screen iMac at similar price points to current models, I will almost certainly buy one!

Couldn't agree more. The air display is a glossy display, but it is nowhere near the reflectiveness of the current iMac or Macbook Pro (glossy version). The issue with these products is that they put an additional layer of glass on the front. On the iMac, when the glass in front is removed with packing tape (or suction cups...), the reflectiveness is DRAMATICALLY reduced! Issue being then you sacrifice the beauty of the product, which I'm sure is a big reason many people buy Apple products.

out! if you want it, it's an external like the MBA, maybe w/ a $20 price drop. [remember all of those usb floppy drives that were released after the original iMac came out?]

Once Apple gets rid of the ODD across the line, including the Mac Pro (if it survives), I'd like for them to update OS X to support HDCP for Blu-ray and release an external DVD/Blu-ray drive. That would piss off so many people.

Thunderbolt isn't a replacement for USB.

Still awesome, still ahead of its time.

Please. I'm using a matte MacBook Pro right now. It's awesome. And yes, I also have a MacBook Air with the semi-glossy screen. It's still reflective.

Been waiting for this refresh. 2012 is going to be the year of new Apple gear for me: my new iPad is "preparing for shipment" as I write this, and I'm planning on upgrading to a 27" iMac as well as a new iPhone when they're released in the coming months.

A single box cold be much faster, the only reason for additional boxes would be for disk arrays.

It is probably to early but that Super chip with built in Infiniband would be just the nuts for this sort of box. Think about it each box becomes a module that can be plugged into an Infiniband network. There is just so much happening technology wise that I suspect whatever Apple does deliver, this year, will be quickly eclipsed by the coming hardware.

That's not true. Using the scheme begin proposed (essentially stackable boxes) offers a great deal of flexibility, as well. Lets's say that you're CPU-limited. Simply add a box with a couple of CPUs. Or maybe a box with a couple of GPUs. Or maybe you're limited by the number of ports. Add a box with a couple of Ethernet or Thunderbolt or USB ports. Or a box with one or more hard drives. Or a box with an optical drive. And when it's time to upgrade, you can keep the storage box and simply replace the CPU box. Thunderbolt would make all of that possible.

Now, I don't really see it happening - it adds a layer of complexity in the purchasing decision that goes against the grain of what Apple has been doing for a decade. But it is an interesting concept. In particular, I could see an interesting niche market for small business or departmental servers.

Their port allocation includes usb ports including within the TB display. usb accessories including things like mice and keyboards are cheap. TB peripherals would be expensive. There's no reason not to include usb 3 support.

WTF are you talking about?

Neither a MacPro nor an iMac have ever been ahead of their time. Unless you count Apple getting marginal first dibs at new gen Intel CPU's. But then they go and mess it up with crappy GPU's that are behind the times and grossly over-priced.

My best guess at another iteration of a MacPro (if one ever materialises) is that it will be completely outshone computationally by $1200.00 PC's.

There's no Steve Jobs to weave magic silken webs now, Apple are all alone.

The GPUs for the past two models have been quite current.


Sure it will.


Implying the Mac Pro was ALWAYS on the cusp of "fricktacular awesomeness" when he was alive.

Not ahead of their time, but they offered high quality internal parts and durability much like the workstation Z800 offerings from HP. BTW Mac Pros and Z800s are priced almost identically when configured the same. I have both in my facility and they are comparable at all levels. In 15 years of Mac desktop usage (from Quadras to MacPros) I have had almost no hardware failures in the Macs. The PCs tend to lose their power supplies fairly regularly (except the HPs). I have had one Mac power supply fail in that time. $1200 homebuilt PCs don't last and don't offer the same level of performance.


Of course the big advantage to the MacPro is that is runs OS X.

I wasn't taking issue with Apple build quality. Just the idea some people have that Apple products are extra special. They are generally superbly built.

I use Macs because of OS X.

Well they are a little special. I think the price always confuses casual onlookers because they don't realize the things are built for heavy use, super reliability and long life. No, they don't hit the bleeding edge, but they do what we need them to do day in and day out.

I hope we get either one more round of updates, or a completely new rethink of the workstation model done the Apple way. Imagine what we might get if Apple applied the same thinking to the MacPro that they do to the iPad and iPhone. Not the iOS part, but the hardware part.

I don't know why no one has mentioned it but wasn't there an article released when lion came out that indicated it was the last OS X upgrade that would cost anything? There was something about apple budgeting a portion of every Lion sale in a way that they could make all subsequent OS X editions free upgrades. That means they could release hardware/software completely independent from each other. iMacs could release well ahead of Mountain Lion, and those who bought at release would just upgrade for free in ML comes out months later.

If there was, they were morons for saying it. There's no real indication nor proof of that, and I personally hope that it ISN'T the case.

Because something like that just screams "forced obsolescence".

Not planned, mind. Forced. In that if your machine ships with 10.8, you get 10.9 and 10.10 but not OS XI.

This is sort of a bad example given that OS XI wouldn't work on classical (read: modern) computers, but you understand the parallel I'm making, yeah? The iOS thing?

I'll be honest, I do not at all get what you are saying. I never said it would be a forced upgrade, just a free one. I mean at only $30 for an OS it is nearly that now. What does the cost of the update have to do with wether or not the update renders anything obsolete?

And that's not what I'm saying at all.

Forced obsolescence, not updating. Like with iOS devices, except illegitimately so (because iOS device hardware actually can't handle OS' beyond what they get).

Which ones in particular? I'm just curious.

The chips, you mean? Or which what? Model?

The models and their respective brands.

I've heard that before, and I think they always reference either gaming machines or single core, high-end non-Xeon chips for their conclusions. Could be wrong though, but I don't see how another Xeon in, say, an HP could outperform the same chip in a Mac Pro.

I'm sorry but that still isn't making any since to me in the context of my initial post. Are you saying that Apple upgrading its OS is forcing obsolescence? If Apple is going to no longer charge for newer OS upgrades, how does that change anything compared to how its always been done, outside of the financial aspect of it?

How did you get that out of what I've said? If OS updates go free, computers will be artificially limited to a subset of them. THAT'S what I'm saying. I don't see how it could be misconstrued.

It's forced obsolescence in the sense that the software would work on older machines that wouldn't be allowed it. That's in contrast to today and in semi-parallel to iOS.

My mistake in having you guess. I meant to ask "What current $1,200 PCs will completely outshine the next Mac Pro in your estimation?"

Apple products are staggered obsolescence over time.

No big surprise. They add new features and cut hardware off.

If you get 3 good years with forthcoming software updates count yerself lucky these days.

Progress I guess.

June/July for iMacs?

Er...I suppose desktop sales will plateau in the mean time as people wait. This has happened before. It's nothing new.

I don't see this iMac update as a 'blow my socks off' update. The last round saw a great top end model released with a really decent gpu option.

Anybody who is in the market for an iMac and are on a +3 year old iMac/PC switcher will be on to a good deal.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Are you implying that it's time for me to retire my 2004 Dual G5 2.5 GHz Mac that I am using right now?

You may laugh...but I've seriously considered buying a 2nd hand G5 just to run my Adobe Design collection.

Rosetta will run Illustrator but Photoshop is a no go. I guess it has been ten years...still...a G5 is cheaper (these days) that Photoshop. How ironic.

If you're G5 is still doing loyal and decent service keep it. It is a thing of timeless, engineered beauty.

But I think you'd notice a difference going to a top end iMac or the new Mac Pro when it (finally?) arrives. Stating the obvious, I guess.

I had my old Power Mac 604e 200 mhz for years after I bought in 1997. It cost a fortune with a 21 inch monitor and the adobe collection back then. It was hard to let it go when I did. It ran Photoshop 4 just fine! The only thing that went wrong with it was the battery for the date.

Nostalgically,

Lemon Bon Bon.

Oh, none.

Ah I was a bit worried for a moment. Heh.

It all depends upon your care in buying. With a careful selection of hardware you should get multiple years, with 5 years being easy. Right now one important key is to always prefer Macs with a dedicated GPU, one that supports OpenCL well. A second point buy at the sweet point between clock rate and cores. Third have more than enough RAM.

If you take care there is no reason why you shouldn't get 5 years out of the right Mac hardware. One of the reasons I've never considered the AIRs, even if they are desirable, is that the meet almost none of these parameters. AIRs are of course fine if you can accept disposable hardware, but I'm not willing to do that with a Mac.

That does seem like a long ways away. If the rumors about a mid June WWDC are true then that would be a significant delay in getting out the new iMacs.

Interesting, but why not? For one thing chipset technology has changed dramatically, both AMD and NVidia should be shipping their latest and greatest GPUs by then. These being the chips built on the low power processes. On an iMac, IB performance might be ho hum but other tech like USB 3 should come along for the ride.

The potential is there.

Well let's hope so, as optimistic as I am, I still realize that Apple has blown it more than a few times.

Maybe you missed what I was saying but the point I was after was that Apple could have a much faster machine than the current Mac Pros in a smaller box. If they went with the new Suoer chip Intel just revealed, the one with built in Infiniband, the need for big boxes evaporate.

Yes I realize that and in a perfect world we would have software to take advantage of such platforms. However the reality is that we don't and frankly for many users never will have such software.

There is little chance of success building a box that requires add ons for people to get the basic capabilities they expect.

TB has its value, but I don't tink it has much of a play as a cluster inter connect.

Well for one Apple has pretty much given up on servers.

The bigger issue is Apples customers, I doubt the will accept a box that requires the purchase of another box just to get USB ports. Now don't take that as my being against smaller boxes for Pro usage, remember I'm a constant XMac advocate. What I'm saying is that a small box must present a rational Value equation. That is it must offer a feature mixe that appeals to a broad array of users.

After that base machine is available one can the configure later for various Pro needs. Here is where TB can come into play as a disk array would be a highly desired feature. That is an extended capability though, I suspect most Apple customers would be put off buying a box that doesn't have basic features. Further weakling demand for the Mini likely highlights and reinforces these thoughts. Especially in today's world where the economy doesn't allow for disposable purchases.

In a way I think we are in agreement in the large but disagree on the details.