People tend not to come up with realistic scenarios about why the iMac is so bad. It's always about not being able to plug in some obscure peripheral, which there's probably a Thunderbolt solution for, or it gets too hot and shuts down, which it doesn't, or it's too big despite being smaller than a Mac Pro and not significantly larger than any other display, or it needs a desktop CPU, which it has, or it needs 64GB of RAM, which it doesn't, or it needs to be able to house a 250W $1000 Titan GPU to play World of Warcraft (because presumably 90FPS on Ultra at native resolution with the 680MX isn't fast enough).

The motivation is simply to get the fastest spec hardware for the best price and it's only marginally better than what Apple currently offers at the same price points. It's really just boils down to 'I don't want to buy an iMac' and that's fine but Apple isn't going to change strategy after this many years when they have taken the bulk of the premium computer market. Their business is where they want it to be. If that's not where you want their business to be, buy something else and if enough people do it, they'll change their business model.

None of the above is unrealistic. What you and many other don't want to admit too is that the different issues described above keeps Apple desktop hardware out of the running for many business uses. Having to spend $2000++ dollars to get a machine with PCI slots is assinine and no Thunderbolt solutions do not exist. Not at all! More than anything the desire is versatility and configurability. The bulk of the sales are laptops, desktop sales are collapsing. Part of that is the reality of the market but a greater issue is the lack of a viable desktop line up.
History has shown us that Apple doesn't change its business model. They simply drop product lines that don't meet certainly sales expectations. The last thing I want to see is the desktop line up disappear due to a lack of effort on Apples part.

You will never receive such a device from Apple. Why the last 16 years haven't made this ABUNDANTLY CLEAR to you is beyond me. The iMac is their mid-range DESKTOP machine.

 

Yes, the Mac Pro might get smaller. Yes, it might get cheaper. But it will still be for the high end, even if it does work for the mid.

 

THIS. WILL. NEVER. HAPPEN. Why the last seven years haven't made that ABUNDANTLY CLEAR to you is beyond me. And I certainly wouldn't expect anything on the high-end of GPUs beyond a Quadro if they're still making those. Nor a CPU that isn't a Xeon (but that's probably more up for grabs than anything else).

 

Is that "No, Thunderbolt solutions do not exist" or "No Thunderbolt solutions exist?" with an accidental double negative?

 

Because "they don't exist now; therefore they never will" is ludicrous.

 

That explains why the Mac Mini and iMac sell more every quarter, huh.

 

Could you put some effort into understanding what Apple is doing and why they're doing it? 

 

Yours or ↑ his? 

So you'll have stats to back that up:

http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/02/28/mac_business_sales_surge_51_as_apple_continues_to_invade_the_enterprise

They do only have 5% worldwide marketshare but a $1500 desktop won't change that, just cheaper laptops.

And yet the Windows desktop PC market seems to be collapsing despite having viable desktops:

http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/10/gartner-and-idc-pc-shipments-tumbled-over-8-percent-in-q3/

Overall desktop sales keep going up (except for the blip recently). When they start going down faster than everyone else, that would suggest people are buying alternatives.

If Apple made the Mac Pro both a bit smaller & CHEAPER, then I would have no problems buying a Mac Pro for my gaming/media/general computing needs…

 

As for the Blu-Ray, who really knows? I think maybe the whole 'no Blu-Ray' thing might have been driven by Mr. Jobs? I can imagine where he could not get licensing that he liked and he just blew up and said "No Blu-Ray EVAH…!!!" I think someday we might see an external USB Super(Duper)Drive (meaning it also does Blu-Ray) from Apple, and the same in the Mac Pro. Your saying THIS. WILL. NEVER. HAPPEN. is not realistic, as you DO. NOT. REALLY. KNOW. FOR. SURE. what Apple might do… They said they were not working on a cell phone, then comes the iPhone… They said the 7"/smaller tablet market was not worth their getting into, then along comes the iPad mini… Blu-Ray can not be counted out until the media itself is as defunct as floppies…

 

On to the GPU assertions… What I would like to see in my dream Mac is the highend for GAMING. COMPUTERS., not for workstations; so I really do not see it as an unattainable goal. Yes, I am sure it runs 3D apps pretty nice, but it is the Quadros that are dedicated GPUS for workstations… And the (lone) Quadro that is listed on the Apple Store is a bit long in the tooth (much like the Mac Pro it is designed to go into).

 

Another good point to bring up in regards to a mid-line headless box from Apple IS gaming & GPUs. There just might be more offerings from the GPU manufacturers for OS X if there were more machines for them to go into besides the (currently) expensive Mac Pro workstation.

 

This is what I would REALLY like to see from Apple, and it would probably satisfy a huge cross-section of the desktop buying users…

 

 

 

And for the sake of credit where credit is due, the originator of these images…

 

http://ipack3d.com/page8/index.php?categories=Modular%20MacPro%20design%20Concept

 

EDITED TO ADD - I do not really like the idea of the taller & taller chassis though, but the modularity of it all is what I am seeing as making a flexible desktop solution the goes from consumer to prosumer to professional needs…

Edited by MacRonin - 3/25/13 at 10:49am

 

Everyone but you, it seems.

 

 

We know for a fact that Blu-ray will never happen. It's just that simple.

 

This. Will. Never. Happen. First Blu-ray and now gaming? Do you have any idea what Apple is?

 

How totally ugly, confusing, and pointless. And what, you have to buy a new side panel every time you expand and throw away the old one?

Yes, obviously everyone BUT me got a memo from Apple Corporate (personally signed by Steve Jobs and/or Tim Cook) stating, unequivocally, that Apple would NEVER EVER EVER come out with a Blu-ray drive…

 

 

You take my gaming comments out of context; I was trying to discern between gaming/consumer usage & pro workstation usage; which would have different GPU needs/requirements. Why do you really feel Apple would never ship a product with a decent high end consumer GPU, of which TITAN is? They already have decent mobile GPUs in their laptop & AIO lines, when the Mac Pro is refreshed/renewed I am sure there will be both a high end consumer GPU & a high end workstation GPU available; meaning, TITAN or the tier below it & something newer from the Quadro lineup…

 

As for the modular concept, are you REALLY serious? Do you not get that the individual components would have THEIR OWN COVERS…?!? And I did not imply that this HAD to be the method Apple uses for a modular headless Mac (consumer or Pro) unit, just an EXAMPLE of how the parts might be delineated.

 

With the amount of retaliatory comments you make regarding Apple, Blu-Ray, gaming GPUs & consumer-oriented headless Macs; I think you are now just trying to be confrontational… It is almost like you are trying to force your will/viewpoint/opinion upon the AppleInsider forums user base, and any who do not toe the line must be textually smacked into place.

I guess you missed the part where there are only three models of computer from Apple that come with an optical drive of any sort anymore and how that number is shrinking, not growing. 

 

In the EU, there are only two. 

 

Yes, I'm serious in that it's an ugly concept, an ugly design, and wholly unlike the experience Apple is trying to put forth. Whoever made this wasn't thinking of anything except the individual components.

Even if there was some sort of "NEVER EVER EVER" comment that doesn't mean they could change their stance at some point if circumstances change. That said, what makes you think Blu-ray is a better fit for Apple's products now than it was years ago? I don't think Blu-ray has taken over DVD yet and video streaming far surpasses both combined. On top of that Apple has removed the ODD from nearly their entire lineup so why expect it to exist in a newly designed Mac Pro that is suppose to be future-forward?

I still think there is room, in a product as physically imposing as the Mac Pro; especially one that is (supposedly) aimed at the professional graphics/audio/video/3d/compositing markets; for optical drive(s). This would also hold true for a consumer-oriented headless Mac. I know Apple would prefer if everyone obtained their digital video files from the iTunes Store, but some of us like to get the DVD or Blu-Ray, if only for all the extras they usually contain. It would be sad to see optical drives totally disappear from the Mac Pro.

 

As for the modular concept, I have already stated that it was not my preference of how such a concept be implemented, just an an example of the way one could 'slice up' the various components to allow individual customization. the point I was getting at on asking if you  were serious was directed towards your rant about 'having to get a new side cover every time you made a change to the configuration'.

 

All of this back & forth about xMacs & Blu-Ray drives could easily be solved by Apple doing two simple things.

 

One - Software support for Blu-Ray in OS X. I can put my own drive into the second optical bay on a Mac Pro.

 

Two  - Bring the price DOWN on the low end single CPU Mac Pro, US$1500 would be nice. This would make getting a low end single CPU Mac Pro and setting it up as a gaming/media/general computing system WAY more reasonable! You know, like when they were still calls PowerMacs…

These are enthusiasts discussing what they want not anything Apple has ever shown they are interesting in doing to support a small group of people which has been continually shrinking over the past decade.

And Apple has never prevented you from using a 3rd-party solution for Blu-ray. You can still plug in ODDs into machines that don't have them yet I don't that is in any way a hint that Apple will bring back the ODD to those machines. You can still plug in a floppy drive into Mac OS X with drivers, right?

Sure, a lower price would be nice — free would be even nicer — and while I do think the price is likely to come down your figures and concepts seem squarely based on what you desire as an individual, not what Apple desires to make for their customers.

 

Is wanting Blu-Ray software support (meaning, just as we have DVD Player in OS X, I would like to see an Apple-authored Blu-Ray Player in OS X) such a horrible idea? Yes, a third-party solution FINALLY came out, but an Apple-authored solution, that was updated (as needed) when the OS goes thru version changes would be nice.

 

Also, video streaming is NOT a solution when it comes to any of the extras that are on DVD & Blu-Ray releases. These, typically, are not included with a digital rental and/or purchase. Heck, these days, these are not even included on DVD rentals; so if you want any extras, NetFlix & RedBox are not going to get them to you. I, for one, like the extras & the commentary tracks provided on the purchasable media.

 

This.

 

Tal is right.  

 

I lamented the passing of the G3 blue and wait performance and affordable towers.  The days of getting a 'G5 tower' for £995 (and it was badly specced for sure) or the value 'G3' for £1300 inc vat are over.  They aren't coming back.

 

The iMac IS Apple's 'mid-tower'.  You can lament and scream at the moon.  

 

For £2k circa, you get a brilliant monitor, quad i7 and the best graphics card the iMac has ever had the 680MX ranking in the top ten or there abouts.  With a Fusion drive, it's a kick ass machine.

 

It's ice cold to the touch.  The monitor looks gorgeous and the design stunning.  And even the archaic external DVD drive doesn't look out of place.  8 gigs of ram standard is nothing to sniff at.

 

I miss the 'Pro' because that thing on sale at 2k plus to get started with a crap gpu and out of date spec, no thunderbolt etc is a slap in the face to Pro users.  But increasingly many are turning to the iMac.  Let's face it...the iMac took away the Pro's sales crown over 15 years ago.

 

A crap entry Mac Pro?  Or the top end iMac?  No competition.

 

And the sales reflect that...and Apple's desktop priorities, (such that they are...), reflect that.  We 'wait' for the Pro.

 

It needs to go on a design diet, shed a few pounds and a dramatic price cut to kickstart its sales...needs refocusing somewhat...or even an 'updated' model will see it's sales pass into oblivion...less and less people are paying 2k just to get started with no monitor and a crap bundled gpu.

 

A timeless classic or a relic?

 

I await the 2013 redesign with interest.

 

But I have a kick ass iMac in the meantime.

 

For me?  It's the ultimate Mac.

 

It's THE Mac.

 

...and it has more in common with the 1984 than the 'Power Tower' ever did.

 

(...and that's speaking as someone who had a Power Tower PPC and loved it...in 1997.)

 

Lemon Bon Bon.

The first Mac I ever acquired out of my own pocket was a Power Tower Pro 225; ah, Power Computing, you had deals when you were shutting down!

 

I await WWDC and hope we see shiny new Mac Pros, I hope they are fire-breathing monsters again, and I hope Apple might see its way clear to drop the price of single CPU models by 500 bucks…

 

But only time will tell; my future might hold a new Mac Pro, it might be a Hackintosh or it just might be a top-end specced-out iMac…

 

Until then, I will be howling at the moon, hoping for a xMac with Blu-Ray…!

Well there won't be BluRay which has basically failed in the market. I have to agree though that XMac is a requirement, no matter how strained the arguments for the iMac are, it is still a crap machine for anything other than mainstream use.

Now we may not agree with the what's, that is the exact configuration of the XMac but I have to believe one universal need is easy, low cost configurability and serviceability. People can argue all they want about there not being a market for such Apple machines, but there isn't a market because the machines don't exist.

Absolutely not, but expecting that Apple will finally update their DVD Player app to support Blu-ray titles in 2013 with Mac OS X 10.9 after ignoring it for a better part of a decade seems pretty unlikely to me. Seems like you'd have better odds investing your savings into tonight's lottery numbers.

 

Utter b*ll*cks.

 

Lemon Bon Bon.

You know it's possible that the Balmer look alike has an updated facial rig compared to the fairy. Steve Ballmer as a fairy would have been pretty funny. It makes me sad that they didn't go that route. Overall it sounds like an evolution of their strategy. They use lower end discrete gpus to amortize chip development costs. In the future the volume product will probably involve SoCs. I suspect they will try to implement as much of that R&D work as possible in their more expensive products if it is actually possible.

 

This basically misses the context of my explanation. In 2009 they used a W3520. 2010 was a W3530. 2012 placed the W3565 in the entry level machine. Each time when they updated, they chose an option that retailed for $294 at the time of product updates. My point was to disprove the nonsense that the use of something labeled Xeon is what causes a $2500 point of entry. There are parts that cost quite a bit, but via the daughterboard setup to allow for less expensive parts to be used in the single model, it alleviates such issues. Putting in an i7 version wouldn't mean they would have to charge less. They could keep the same entry price point if they wish to do so. In some ways it would drive costs up as it would limit the number of parts that can be shared (ram, backplane, etc) even though there isn't a lot of difference between i7 and Xeon when you're comparing LGA2011 based parts. I think people often miss my point about product strategies and cling to monikers and preconceived notions that Xeon = expensive. That being said Apple shares as many parts as possible between the single and dual configurations. It's possible that they need both to maintain adequate volume to justify the existence of the line.

 

Also before anyone mentions it, budget does matter if you're looking at base configurations.

There's a test like that here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QxrQnJCXKo&feature=player_detailpage#t=1075s

They map a female actor onto a male character. Skip back a few minutes in the vid to see them deal with the uncanny valley problem. The tech opens up a lot of possibilities as they can map actors onto game characters that don't match 100%.

Activision used the same source data as NVidia for a demo:

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/28/gdc-2013-activision-demo-their-next-gen-face-tech/

I think they are showing off the rendering rather than the animation itself. Unreal showed off a tech demo running on a 680 too:

http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/13722/article/xbox-720-ps4-graphics-tech-revealed-in-unreal-engine-4/

This tech will eventually come together to make some really nice interactive content.

 

It's not new but Apple is selling them.

 

http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC560LL/A/refurbished-mac-pro-28ghz-quad-core-intel-xeon

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reports over the past year:

 

http://blog.cdrom2go.com/2012/08/blu-ray-discs-still-growing/

 

http://www.myce.com/news/blu-ray-sales-increase-toward-holiday-season-65143/

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/30/us-deg-idUSBRE83S0B120120430

 

Future forward for pro's who's business requirements differ from that of consumers.  

 

That said a 3rd party BR burner isn't that hard to buy and install but there are folks who just like to buy it from the factory.  

 

/shrug  

 

I don't care either way.  I use standalone Blu-Ray players and enjoy the better image quality than from iTunes.  Every time I buy an iTunes movie I end up regretting it because I could eventually get the same movie for cheaper on Blu-Ray with either digital copy or DVD or both.

 

The folks attempting to insist on what Apple will or wont do in this thread don't seem to have a very good track record *cough*ipad mini*cough*.

 

Buy a freaking $20 drive and be done with it. If they were actually "future-forward", they'd laugh at the idea of an ODD.

 

That would be an amazing comeback if I didn't write just that in the next line.  No, not even then.

 

I can see the appeal of having fewer cables and external drives after connecting an external raid to my mini.  I'll probably just take the speed hit and move to a NAS when I move to an 802.11ac network.  However you typically want your burner near your computer and not tucked away somewhere.  

 

Buy a freaking clue and be done with being a jerk when someone else has an opposing view.

 

It's not directed at you, and you know it.

 

When you quote me in a response who is it directed at?  Folk not in this thread who won't be reading this?

 

LOL.

 

If you're a wedding videographer or something similar then blu-ray is useful as an internal drive on a mac pro.  IMHO the low and and mid-grade pro's benefit more from the expansion capability than the high end pros that have access to large disk arrays and CPU/GPU farms.

 

Same for folks using mac pros for science computing but I haven't seen many folks buy mac pros for that in a while.  Mini's might be an option today but for some things ECC RAM isn't a nice to have but a requirement.

 

Perhaps you shouldn't have written in third-person plural if you intended that particular section to refer to yourself personally, then. 

All things considered, the 8-track was decent in audio quality, far superior to the cassette before Dolby noise reduction. Your guitar pick comment is stupid and offensive, coming from a Global Moderator. I know this is an old post, shows you how frequently I look at the AppleInsider forum. It is more cost effective to pay for a Speedy Oil Change, don't you think? People do fix their brakes if they know how. Same goes for leaky faucets. You Jeff, must be a Rockefeller. Just for giggles, how much is labor at an Apple Store? Also, what if you happen to live 4 ~ 5 hours from an Apple Store? Oh, I do know how to use a drum stick! Ba Dam Bam!

It's a riff on the obsolescence, not the quality.


Huh.


I fix my own brakes, I change my own oil, I fix my own computers, I've added an SSD to my 2011 iMac. I also recognize that not a lot of people want to do that kind of work.


Here's the guide on how to do it yourself:
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac+Intel+21.5-Inch+EMC+2544+Teardown/11936/1

I'm not scared off by the process.

Not a lot of computers really get upgraded anyway, people with demanding tasks would probably be aware of that, and buy a model with whatever extras they need.

If the optical drive is so obsolete, why it is still common on most other computers? I do not drive, so no need to fix car stuff. Eyesight prevents it, something you may never consider when it comes to taking apart a Mac. I would not work on a computer myself, but family members would help me. I added RAM to my 2007 iMac, and that is as good as it gets. VoiceOver would be the #1 reason for me to have a Mac, but I'm not ready to call myself blind.

 

You're joking, right?

Apple is the first to abandon everything.