The cost of the machine isn't an issue, I don't want to have an annual computer expense. Some people buy a new car every year, me I try to get ten or more years out of my vehicles. It is very liberating to have 7 or 8 years free of car payments.

In any event I'm keeping an open mind with respect to the coming hardware. Even the Mini has the potential for improvement. However I still believe it would be far better for the majority of Apples customers to have a midrange desktop machine to choose from.

The release of Ivy Bridge based hardware has been sparse. None of the manufactures below have fully transitioned their lineups to IB.

As to Apple it could be a wait for WWDC or the might be waiting for a new stepping. The Errata sheet for IB is fairly long for the first release, including some OpenCL related issues. This is all speculation though, Apple could just as well be waiting for HiDPI screens and debugged OS support for those screens.

Further let's face it IB isn't really huge on the MBP as the CPU gains are modest clock per clock and the MBPs will still require descrete GPUs. Apple may see real value in better screens or other new features. IB will be a huge improvement for the AIRs whenever AIR suitable chips ship.
The Pro is the big mystery. I can imagine fairly well what the laptops might look like. The Pro however can be replaced by many different types of configurations. Some of these Pro replacements could be fairly radical.

Interestingly the last time the Pro came out it was announced a couple of weeks before WWDC if I recall correctly. If the Pro gets a minor bump to Sandy Bridge E I could see this happening again. However if we are about to see something radical arrive it will likely happen at WWDC. A radical machine will need developer support , making it a proper WWDC event.

Speculation is that Intel skimped on cooling technologies. Apple is big enought to demand quality cooling solutions.

Note the high heat at the chip seems to be due to less effective heat transfer. The actual power going into the chip is often lower. Also realize that we are hitting very high clock rates for mainstream chip technology, lower those clock rates to SB levels and we would likely see cooler chips.

Beyond all of that you seem to be excited about nothing. We have no idea how Apple will implement the coming hardware. They could put an AMD chip in the Mini for example, a Xeon in the iMac and an IB in the MBPs. Beyond that Apple sets it's own clock rate levels for various machines, it very unlikely that Apple would over clock or even use an extreme edition for example.

It otherwords grab a beer and chill for a bit. You likely have less than five weeks before we start to get a handle on what is actuall due to launch.

 

 

If the annual cost is the same then it's not free.  In fact it's a detriment.  First you have higher opportunity cost (money tied up in the computer or car) and then the value delta due to technology and inflation.

 

$1000, $1000, $1000 over three years is better than $3000, $0, $0.  The second and third $1000 is worth less than the first $1000 and you have the option of not spending them should some higher priority opportunity/expense occurs.  Not to mention that typically you'll end up with a better computer to use during year 3.

 

Apple has a midrange desktop machine to choose from.  It's called the iMac.  That you don't like it doesn't mean it doesn't exist or that it actually isn't better for the "majority of Apple's customers" than an xMac.

More with ssd drives in what way? In terms of pushing them? If they wished to make one standard, they could always make a high capacity 2.5" HDD as a cheap upgrade/sidegrade for those that want the storage on their cto options with in store being base ssd options. They'd probably have a minimum target capacity at which they'd consider doing something like this. Keep in mind on Dell, they're launched, not shipping.

I wouldn't start speculating yet. I haven't reviewed the appropriate AMD graphics for the update. That could always be a nice update. If you read about problems with the newest ones, you can always grab a deal on one of the clearance models from one of the third party retailers. B+H is much cheaper than Apple at times. I've seen their clearance stuff a couple hundred below Apple's refurbs. 

I have specific objections to the imac. The display stays at a single height. It cannot be adjusted. Every other display I've owned has simply used a weighted base with a well balanced spring loaded mechanism. It's balanced to neutral force, so you can slide the panel up and down to where it's comfortable. The lack of HD access is annoying. The figures I've  read on this repair are always $300-400, although I haven't been able to find any official figures. Anyway it's going to cost more than it would for me to buy a quality drive myself and pop it in. It also requires me being without a machine while it's serviced by Apple on what is a very simple/common repair. The glossy displays are annoying as hell. I don't care if they're 100% matte. If it was a bit closer and I could find a quality display shade that would fit, that would be enough for me personally. Even something like a different glass treatment could accomplish this. Apple could also do a better job on attempting to compensate for longevity issues in those displays. A lot of modern displays have many smart corrections built into their design to help with this. It comes down to costs and willingness to invest there. Going forward I could definitely see storage demands going up for a desktop machine, especially at the consumer level, as with increasing wifi speeds it could make an excellent home server device. Some of these things are a bigger deal than others. They could definitely improve the glass treatments. They could add some kind of access panel. Those are probably the cheaper improvements. I can think of ways they could improve the displays beyond that, but they're probably expensive. The problem is some of these things could add to their manufacturing costs, and I don't know what their margins look like in Apple terms at the moment. There's a lot of speculation over high dpi type displays. I think if you see these on the imac within the next year or two, they'll drop back to a smaller panel.

It looks like they overclocked some of those tests. Some of those sites do stuff like this, and some of the Sandy Bridge chips were fine well over 4Ghz. I'd like to see Apple do a better job with consistent cooling on their laptops. The number of times I've read of someone on macrumors bringing down their temperatures by fixing sloppy thermal paste annoys me. Given that high temperatures and fan speeds are extremely unpleasant, regardless of what is considered within spec, I'd like to see them offer the best cooling possible.

 

 

It would be nice if they had eSATA as well but you probably don't have the eSATA expresscard anyway.  The 2 Bay guardian maximus with eSATA and FW800 is $139.  Not much of a loss even if you relegate it to backup duty later on.

 

Most consumer grade NAS are pretty slow.  Okay for streaming or backup.

 

 

 

And so you got a laptop instead?  Where you don't actually use it as a laptop but a desktop replacement?  Mkay.  Your definition of "a lot of value" and mine differs.  Things I place a lot of value on I actually go out and...you know...buy.

 

In 2008 a 24" IPS monitor was expensive so unless you don't have an external monitor you shelled out quite a bit for it or lived with a really dinky setup.  That monitor isn't worth much today in 2012 when you can get a brand new Dell 24" Ultrasync for $350.  

 

So you can still have an independent monitor for the iMac.  In fact if you wanted a dual 24" setup you couldn't with the MBP.  I bumped up to a 30" ACD mostly for that reason.  That was an expensive way to get the screen real estate I wanted.

 

 

 

The iMac isn't an option because of no particularly good reason.  The mini is priced to not be very cost effective.  Just lower cost than other options.  The mini is a pain in the ass to change the HDD as well.  Not quite as bad as the iMac but still very annoying.

 

And if you bought a 20" iMac back in the day, saved yourself $500-$1000 over the MBP and bought Apple stock with that money you wouldn't need to have a 4 year replacement cycle and your computer wouldn't suck so hard now. 

 

It's a tool.  Nothing to get all objectionable about.  Especially for features you aren't getting anyway since you bought a laptop instead of a tower.  

 

If you had bought a Mac Pro in 2008 I could understand your point.  The fact is you just proved all those "objectionable" design decisions about the iMac made no difference at all in your actual life because you didn't buy a Dell or a Mac Pro instead.  Zero, none, nein, nada, koi nahi, mei you yi dian, niks, non, ei lainkaan, nenhuns, ingen, zippo, not one little whit.

 

/shrug  

 

It's your life but your position is simply silly.

Even if they just made a 2.5" drive accessible/user serviceable (as Marvin suggested), that would be a huge improvement. I do think it need better ergonomics for heavy use in terms of more hours per day. If I bought one, I'd have to factor an arm capable of supporting it into the equation. Not many do an adequate job of this given the 27" panel. Anyway there are things they could do to improve the functionality, but once again I'd suggest it comes down to manufacturing cost, design priorities, design time, and that the imac is probably not a huge focus for them anymore. The odd thing there is that with the idevices, it's often suggested that they sell roughly as many as they can produce, so logically the potentially underperforming lines could use some love.

More like what they do with the Air. Those blade SSD drives are very compact:



There's no reason they can't offer the upgrades for $1/GB. Right now, they charge $300 to go from 128GB to 256GB i.e they charge $300 for 128GB instead of $128.

256GB is a good enough base size for all consumers and they can offer affordable blade upgrades or additional platter storage. The Mini Server for example could have a 128GB SSD boot drive with 2x 500GB HDD that can be put in RAID1. You get the high IOPs and redundant storage. The SSD part can sit beside the RAM and be easily accessible.

I want to see their entire lineup designed around SSD blade boot drives. Why should the 27" iMac have a slower stock drive than the Air?

At first, the cost will seem prohibitive but SSD prices are dropping like crazy. It was only a short while ago I posted about SSD hitting $1/GB with the 256GB Crucial M4 sitting at just above $256. Now it's sitting at $240:

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-Inch-Solid-State-CT256M4SSD2/dp/B004W2JL2A/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1336078193&sr=8-2

The 512GB one isn't doing so well as they probably aren't shifting nearly as many but that 256GB is right in mainstream pricing and the Samsung 830 isn't far behind at $290:

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-830-Series-MZ-7PC256B-Internal-2-5-Inch/dp/B0077CR66A/ref=sr_1_7?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1336078457&sr=1-7

With Apple doing it, they can guarantee no stuttering or slowdown issues.

 

VESA mount adapter $40 - http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD179ZM/A

 

Ergotron MX desk mount - $170  http://store.apple.com/us/product/TV273LL/A?fnode=MTY1NDA5OQ

 

Would it be nice if the internal drive was more accessible?  Yes.  Will they?  Probably not.  

 

If the 256GB SSD was $300 then it probably wouldn't matter to me.  Thunderbolt to an external RAID is better expansion than a Cube sized Mini with an extra bay or two.

 

As far as whether the iMac is performing well...it appears to be outperforming the PC desktop market in terms of growth AND maintaining high margins and ASP.  From that perspective they don't appear underperforming and sell well enough.

The desire to have a boot / app drive is very reasonable. In the desktops I favor a more forward looking interface. It isn't clear that the blade interface supports PCI Express for example. Currently I believe they're using SATA on the interface which f course will quickly be to slow for Solid State Storage.

It would be even better if they supported an industry wide standard with respect to printed circuit storage devices. It is one thing to have proprietary hardware in a ultra thin laptop, it is another thing to fill a desktop with a bunch of single source hardware.
I'm expecting either price adjustments or capacity increases. They are likely make good money on those drives too. So considering Apples volume they should be able to do much better. Don't forget that drives get more complex when capacity doubles. The real driver for flash drive price reductions is chip density increases.

As side note I've heard it said that one reason Apple has been slow to increase densities is that the time it takes them to validate a generation of flash has increased vastly. I'm not sure why but would guess reliability is an issue.

The thunderbolt RAID is just a single option, and it's still inferior to many mac pro options at comparable price points (as they can simply use pci cards, and I don't mean that piece of junk Apple RAID card). I mean on the high end, the mac pro has way better options. For a sort of low to mid range solution, it's an expensive add-on. Further you don't seem to get that the point of swappable drives is to be able to remedy the situation quickly if your drive crashes or starts to show warning signs. Rather than drive to the Apple store with your computer, leave it there, and pay potentially several hundred outside of Applecare (and I'm always reminded that Macs lead long service lives), you just swap it out with a retail drive and keep going. The arm option you point out adds $210 to the price. I could deal with that personally, but these should be baseline features. Also if you look at the reviews, they mention that the arm affords you very little height adjustment. 

If you read about the Sandforce debacle and some of the 6G controllers last year, it's reasonable to think that could have been a factor. I'd personally favor stability/reliability over speed.

It did seem like more than a couple of manufactures tried to give SSDs a bad name last year. That is one reason why still have a HHD in My MBP. The lack of quality control is stunning in some of the bigger cases to come to light. Then again we got a series of Dell laptoPs at work a few years ago where every HHD died within a few months. So yeah I do believe it is our best interest to wait for Apple to do it right, even if that is very frustrating.

Frankly this is another reason why I shake my head when I see all the posts complaining about the lack of a new Mac Pro. It is far better to sit back in the hope that whatever Apple does will be done right. As much as I complain about serviceability of the iMac and other Mac issues you do have to admit that Apple hardware is very reliable. The AIRs, for example, have generated very few public comments about SSD failures.

Maybe it's just me though I am not a fan of Sandforce. Many SSD companies who use it seem to have problems except maybe for Intel. (OCZ, OWC, etc.)

Sometimes they do things really well. Other times the areas they hold back are puzzling to me. A number of their older Cinema display generations had power inverter issues. Within the last few years, I've seen many splotchy 24" imac displays where they'd get those purple edges. I've had macbooks with display flicker. Then they do an exceptionally nice job on other things. You're right about the Airs. I don't think I've ever read about an SSD failure there. I am guessing they went for stable parts rather than the newest/fastest available, and I can respect that.

Maybe that has something to do with Anobit. I'm certain Apple has had an SSD failure at one time or another on the AIRs, but the rate must be so low as to generate zero interest.

As to some of those issues, often your best efforts are undermined by long term issues with parts from third party suppliers. Some of those issues become public like with the NVidia GPUs others are never shared with the public.

 

On the "high end" you aren't using the internal raid but hitting a fiber channel SAN.  Not as good on IOps but better on Mbps.  Folks with a lot of storage needs and good MBps requirements do this.

 

Even on the direct storage option for high performance you're not using the internal drives to hit high Gbps throughput.  You aren't connecting that to the internal drives on a Mac Pro but an external enclosure because the Mac Pro isn't a server configured to have a lot of internal drives.  For the real high end you need a lot of drives and top end cards.

 

At the top end are things like the CalDigit HDPro 24 via their direct connect card.

 

http://www.caldigit.com/hdpro24/

 

That's "high end".  Everything you're describing IS middle to low end.  And for that a 6 bay Thunderbolt RAID array is an above average solution at a 800 Mbps rate.  And if you're running a SAN you can use the Thunderbolt to 4Gbit/s FiberChannel Adapter.

 

As far as hot swappable drives go, in a production environment with iMacs you buy a spare iMac.  There are lots of failure options even within Mac Pros where you don't just have backup components but backup machines. What are you going to do with a blown power supply?  You got a spare Mac Pro power supply in your closet?  

 

In a pinch you can use Mac Mini's as your backup...especially now with the SANLink.  

 

Even in a 1 man shop you want to have that mini as a backup regardless of what your primary machine is.  It's $1500 worth of insurance AND you get a 2nd 24" monitor to use day to day as part of that deal.

 

Not to mention that you CAN boot from an external drive if need be in the case of a blown internal drive.

 

And if you don't want to perform surgery on your iMac for a SSD you can use TB...not quite as fast but not too dodgy even using the 1st gen seagate adapter:

 

http://www.storagereview.com/thunderbolt_storage_with_any_hard_drive_or_ssd

 

Ugly lookin' though. You'll want to cannibalize a seagate flex drive for sure.

 

As far as the arm for an extra $210 goes that's your own requirement.  Something that many folks don't seem to care about.  Especially the graphics dudes I see sporting their NEC or Ezios in their pitch black work areas.

 

My primary point is that before Thunderbolt the grouching for an xMac had more validity.  Today, you're hard pressed to find scenarios where the iMac can't function as well as a Cube sized xMac or even mini-tower.

Edited by nht - 5/6/12 at 8:03am

That's a little naive.  First, to point out the obvious, Lightroom and Aperture are fairly direct competitors.  As, to a lesser extent are iPhoto and Photoshop Elements.  And Preview was positioned as an alternative to Adobe Reader.  There were also at least rumors that Apple was working on a Photoshop competitor (long since shelved apparently, however real the rumors ever were).  

 

Also, I don't believe Apple (read Steve) was any too happy when new releases of Photoshop and the CS Suite began to come out first on Windows machines - sometimes much before.  And Adobe was reluctant to re-code PS/CS when Apple was trying to move all their ISP's to a single coding model. Granted they had a huge amount of coding invested in their massive products, and they seemed to be acting like Apple was still the struggling company that had become a smaller proportion of their business, but even so.....

 

Also, Flash being the bete noire of my browsing experience to this day on my Win mini-tower, I was totally supportive when Apple (very aggressively) did declare what amounted to a war on Flash, if not on Adobe per se.  The rhetoric was quite heated as I recall.  Beyond that, in pushing HTML 5 "open standards" as the alternative to Flash I further recall that Apple was (is?) also working to have influence in how HTML 5 implementations end up being deployed in ways favorable to, gasp, Apple.  

 

So "war" is a matter of semantics, but a fair amount of bad blood and sometimes direct competition between the two in recent years are facts on the ground.

 

I suspect this is the main problem regarding Apple's adoption of SSDs.  The SandForce drivers aren't reliable enough for Apple's OEM specs, even though they are for many users.  That leaves Apple only a few options like Samsung and Intel.  Intel has their own SandForce driver that's gone through their own validation process, so it's price won't be as competitive as Samsung's SSDs, where Samsung makes and validates their own controller.  There's not enough competition among reliable SSD drive makers for Apple to get a good price on them.

 

Thus for Apple to go to an all SSD lineup, either prices would rise or margins would drop.  

 

Perhaps the best solution at this time is to make the drives accessable on the entire lineup.  Jobs would turn in his grave, but it could be done.

 

It's fine for a graphics production company to keep an spare iMac around, but what about the average user?  Why should a home user have to lug their 27" iMac to the mall to slip in a new HD?  It's petty for Apple to do this, and make no mistake, it is a design decision, not an oversight.  Apple doesn't want users to be able to swap out HDDs unless they pay for a Mac Pro.  That was understandable (but still annoying) back when Apple was treading water, but now it's just an insult to their customers.  A nice little "fu[k you!" engineered into every iMac sold.  

 

Why should anyone have to pay for a TB cable and enclosure when all they want to do is upgrade their HDDs?  It hogs more desk space and introduces a rat's nest of cables.  Upgrading a HDD should be a five minute job on any computer.  

I will agree with you JYD however I will also say that the main problem right now is that the Apple SSD is a SATA II (unless they have upgraded to SATA III recently and quietly) so paying $500 for old technology is absurd. I agree that a hard drive upgrade should be easy and that yes it is a design decision though I suppose Apple figures "You have have ease of access to the hard drive or you can have a cool looking computer though not both." Add to the fact that on the top of the line iMac, it is an extra $100 to double the graphics memory. If you choose to upgrade the processor, that's another $200. For a total of $2,799 + tax and shipping.

 

The average user isn't swapping out their HDD even with a tower...we aren't average.

The average user also isn't purchasing a maxed 27" imac or anything in the $2k+ range. The average user doesn't apply to much of the hardware being discussed in this thread.

I wouldn't be surprised to find the percentage of Mac Pro users swapping or installing new drives is rather significant. Maybe in the range of 75%. The reason many people buy these machines is to process very large swaths of data.

 

He didn't say maxed...just home user.  I would guess even with the 27" model that home users outnumber pro users.

 

It would be nice if the HDD wasn't buried behind the screen but for most home users it probably doesn't matter.

 

 

Sure...but you can still access large swaths of data via TB.  Just slower.

Good point, I'd almost forgotten about the SATA II.  Strange how Apple leads the industery on some things like TB, but on SATA controllers they're years behind.  I guess their reasoning is that it doesn't matter for the spindle drives that are standard on most of the lineup.  

"for most users...it doesn't matter"  "just slower"

 

The point is that we want Apple to make the best products in the industry.  If their computers are slower and full of design flaws that don't matter to "most users" that makes them average computers, which unacceptable when OS X forces us to use Apple computers.  If Apple is going to limit choices, then the remaining choices must be exceptional choices, not all show and no go desktop ornaments.

You need to quote things correctly. You said average. Now you are saying home user. Some users play the newest games at high settings on an imac. Are they considered average? Typically when I see "average" on here, it refers to those who don't need much beyond email and facebook. Regarding hard drive swap outs, most people don't think they need it until they get a repair quote from Apple on what they may assume is an easy fix. In many cases, it probably was on previous computers that they owned. I'm saying it doesn't drive purchasing priorities all the time. It just makes people mad when it comes to repair bills.

 

Quote:

You're editorializing it here when you say "lead". They essentially beta tested it by adding their connector. Unfortunately this doesn't mean its long term health will be there. if sales are based around the "average" computer user, will that user pay $50 for a cable and peripherals at their current price points? Pricing isn't likely to just fall off a cliff anytime soon. For much of 2011, it was nearly impossible to even get a proper SDK. I wonder how much time it ate up doing R&D for thunderbolt peripherals.

The problem is not so much people clamoring for a new Mac Pro as wondering if there will even be a new one. If Apple would let people know at least that, there would be less anxiety.

 

Really?  You're dinging me on this?  He used both terms "average" and "home".  The point is whether they are average, home or even pro, I bet most folks have not messed around with upgrading drives.  Given that the Mac Pro exists then the iMac, being the way it is, is not that big a deal to me.

 

 

 

No, those people are frustrated.

 

 

 

 

Those folks are very happy.  With their iPads.

 

 

Applecare + Time Machine.  If you are uncomfortable with the risk of repair costs then Applecare is the route.  A bit pricey but most Apple customers aren't all THAT price conscious.

This is roughly the response I expected, buy the extended warranty. Applecare is still just another extended warranty. The upside is that they are thorough. I stand by my point. The "average" user isn't spending that much on a computer. Most of the hardware being discussed already ruled out average.

 

You have yet to show most people either upgrade or fix their own computers or even upgrade/replace hard drives.  Average users are buying iMacs even though they are far more expensive than a Dell or HP tower.  So inaccessible drives appear to have little impact on the average/home/etc user.

 

Pros can either a) afford the Mac Pro b) afford Applecare or c) are supported by IT staff.  Whether to get a high end iMac vs a Mac Pro vs a PC workstation vs MBP is simply another business decision.  

 

Pros with a single point of failure (Mac Pro, iMac, monitor, RAID, whatever) probably haven't learned the hard way that a backup tool chain, even if it's just their old MBP or a Mini, is worth the investment.