Chip complex delaying Apple's new iMac line, says analyst - Page 4

Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.

Guess that's the iMac then. I hope there's a high end iMac with i7.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.

Guess that's the iMac then. I hope there's a high end iMac with i7.

Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.

Agreed.




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I hope we don't get these quad cores in the upper tiers of the iMac. That would be outrageous. Dell and Co. had i7s in their line ups ages ago.

And it adds fuel to the fire that we should have a desktop cpu option for the Mac Tower with a price cut to reflect this. It would render the debate moot.

Cube 2? Or 'Desktop' Mac Pro. Whatever Apple.

Also, there are some great gpus at good prices. Hopefully Apple will include the best in their Towers and iMac.

Why limit the design of the iMac to underperforming over priced components and fleece iMac buyers? I'd put a proper mid-tower alongside it. They'd still make money on Cinema displays.

Apple should be there by now. Quad core. Decent gpus. They've been available ages now. These machines haven't had an update in over a year, just under a year or years in the case of the Mac Mini.

Their desktop line up is flawed. It's go holes in it. And the fact that Mac Pro sales are taking a hammering says that iMac cannibilization is underway.

Apple could go a long way to keep buyers buying in this economic climate. A desktop mid-tower. A Cube shaped mini-tower. And allow us to pick better gpus and i7s in our desktop machines.

The design is good, Apple. But it's not excellent is it? Otherwise, we'd be able to pick our own components or a broader choice of components. The current desktop is embarrassing, out of date, a bean counter's wet dream and politically etched with Steve Jobs stubborness.

Jeeze. The industry moved to quad core ages ago Apple. And even PC world has decent 1 gig GPUs in their 'mid-towers' at around a £1000 or less. And we're still waiting. I thought post PPC we'd be getting the best of performance at all levels. Design is getting in the way of consumer wants. They need to pull their finger out of their iPhone...

The desktop line has flies over the carcass.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Originally Posted by RBR

Apple's reputation is for delivering new hardware late, choosing a lower end, if not bottom end, part, and gouging the customer.

Originally Posted by solipsism

In order for it to be a reputation it really should be truthful. Apple has always used Intels highest-grade chip in class. They have even gotten Xeons before anyone else, as in the case of a previous Mac Pro, have even gotten Intel to send to production a previous shelved item, as in the case of the first MBA processor, and have gotten Intel to release "hybrid chips" early, as in the case of the current iMac. What you are trying to compare is an aging revision due for an overhaul, like the current iMac, to the other major OEMs who showcase new models and revisions each month but sell most oldhat machines at little to no profit. For all intents and purposes Apple still works like a boutique computer shop. If you want a Nac with the latest HW you'll have to wait until the revisions are made.

Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.

Their desktop line up is flawed. It's got holes in it. And the fact that Mac Pro sales are taking a hammering says that iMac cannibilization is underway.

Originally Posted by solipsism

What industry moved entirely to 4-core mobile CPUs? You like to compare Apple's mini-desktop and AIOs and then cry foul, but you never want to acknowledge that these are a differnt class of machine than towers.

Apple currently only wants to make a tower that is a higher-end workstation. What choice do you have but to accept that?

never

Or that existing PowerMac users are so disgusted with Apple's current lineup, that they're choosing not to upgrade. Having done the reluctant PowerMac to iMac conversion, I don't blame them.

Originally Posted by RBR

The product development cycle is absurdly slow which only contributes to the problem. By the time the product gets out, it is already dated.

Originally Posted by Amorph

Desktop sales are plummeting. Apple just released a monitor that basically turns your MacBook into a 24" iMac with a couple of plugs.

Originally Posted by Amorph

Desktop sales are plummeting.

Originally Posted by Outsider

Lowend MacBook + 24" Apple Cinema Display = $2200 = :-(
I hope they don't go down that road.

Originally Posted by Amorph

Desktop sales are plummeting. Apple just released a monitor that basically turns your MacBook into a 24" iMac with a couple of plugs.

Originally Posted by TenoBell

Exactly which Apple product has been launched with dated components?

Originally Posted by BenRoethig

http://www.apple.com/macmini/
Unless you count this as a member of the NOS category. Then again, who's that nostalgic about what computers were like three years ago.

You also might want to check to graphics chipsets against wants currently in use. They're a generation or two behind.

Originally Posted by BenRoethig

The MBPs are easier to expand and upgrade than the iMacs.

Originally Posted by Amorph

Desktop sales are plummeting. Apple just released a monitor that basically turns your MacBook into a 24" iMac with a couple of plugs.

I'm not sure what that means for the iMac, frankly. I'm sure they'll keep making it, because signs point to its being by far their best selling desktop, but I'm not sure where it will go. Ironically, like other desktops it might settle into a school/enterprise role.

It's impossible to make any firm projections without looking at the sales numbers, which Apple of course refuses to provide, so but it would not surprise me if the delay in updates reflects a sense that the whole desktop product line needs a do-over, now that the laptop is king.

I'm not going to try to predict where this is going, except that a move by the mini to the Atom platform would be an interesting repositioning. (They could go old school and stuff the whole machine in a keyboard.) I don't know to what extent Grand Central works across machines or with Apple's distributed computing frameworks, but that could be an interesting partnership. Its usefulness would depend, for one, on the speed and reliability of the network connecting the pieces, especially if they're wireless.

The odd duck is the Mac Pro. There are people will need maximum computational power more or less indefinitely. The question is whether there are enough of them to justify making the machine at a less than stratospheric price (and if you think the Mac Pro's price is stratospheric, you've never priced a UNIX workstation). It's possible to make machines that scale up to near-maximum power while still catering to people who only need a lot of power, which is one way the Windows PC killed the UNIX workstation. I guess the real question is actually whether a large enough number of people will need the internal expansion, since the computational power can be more efficiently stuffed into a rackmount unit.

Just thinking out loud, though.

Originally Posted by TenoBell

When the mini had its last update, the processor and chipset were current. Its obvious Jobs wants to kill the mini. Someone with some power in Apple is keeping it alive.

Originally Posted by Frank777

Apple's "plummeting desktop sales" is a crisis entirely of their own making.

Originally Posted by RBR

I think what the market is suggesting (in rather loud language) is that the iMac needs to be more than just a laptop's guts with a large screen. The new lower power consumption Intel chips are the perfect next step for the iMac, along with improved graphics to take advantage of CUDA. I think Apple should do this with the next release of the iMac, whether it makes any large difference in performance with Leopard because people will upgrade to Snow Leopard to take advantage of improve multi-core utilization, better graphics in general and the ability to off-load some things to the GPU with CUDA.

Originally Posted by TenoBell

Before our current global economic meltdown, the current iMac was selling very well. With a higher average revenue than the general desktop market.

Apple is not directly supporting CUDA. Apple is developing an open graphics framework called OpenCL. CUDA will work with OpenCL.

Originally Posted by Amorph

(They could go old school and stuff the whole machine in a keyboard.)

Originally Posted by RBR

Yes, the point, however, is that the hardware should be compatible with the ultimate CUDA implementation. It is a game changer when it comes to video.

Originally Posted by RBR

I think what the market is suggesting (in rather loud language) is that the iMac needs to be more than just a laptop's guts with a large screen. The new lower power consumption Intel chips are the perfect next step for the iMac, along with improved graphics to take advantage of CUDA. I think Apple should do this with the next release of the iMac, whether it makes any large difference in performance with Leopard because people will upgrade to Snow Leopard to take advantage of improve multi-core utilization, better graphics in general and the ability to off-load some things to the GPU with CUDA.

Originally Posted by Amorph

.....: Why would you need to sit at a whole desk full of multiple parts with loud fans and wires all over the place when you can have a laptop


I'm not saying that the iMac won't get a desktop CPU, I just don't see it as an obvious choice. It depends on how well iMacs are selling and why they're selling and where Apple feels the iMac should be positioned as its market shrinks.

Originally Posted by backtomac

You've answered your question. There isn't a compelling reason to have a desk top machine if a lap top gives comparable performance.

Originally Posted by backtomac

If desk tops are only offer mild performance advantages over lap tops then they don't make a lot of sense. Hell, 20" and 24" monitors are cheap.

Originally Posted by Amorph

That wasn't my question.

My question was: Is there a compelling reason to have a desktop machine of any description if a laptop is powerful enough to do what you need, given the advantages that laptops offer? The observation behind the question is that laptops are now powerful enough to do what people want their computers to do at an affordable price.

Therefore, it doesn't matter whether a desktop is two or three or four times faster unless the manufacturer can give the customer a concrete and appealing justification for all that speed: a concrete use, something desirable that the laptop can't do. I'm not seeing that. Certainly there aren't enough games to justify Mac desktop purchases. So, given that most people seem to consider laptop performance good enough to use as a primary machine, how would you sell them a desktop? What would your pitch be?



Performance was only a relevant metric while laptops were too slow and too starved for storage capacity to be primary machines. Even if the iMac offers pro-level performance, what would that do other than cannibalize sales of the Mac Pro?

Originally Posted by Amorph

That wasn't my question.

My question was: Is there a compelling reason to have a desktop machine of any description if a laptop is powerful enough to do what you need, given the advantages that laptops offer? The observation behind the question is that laptops are now powerful enough to do what people want their computers to do at an affordable price.

Therefore, it doesn't matter whether a desktop is two or three or four times faster unless the manufacturer can give the customer a concrete and appealing justification for all that speed: a concrete use, something desirable that the laptop can't do. I'm not seeing that. Certainly there aren't enough games to justify Mac desktop purchases. So, given that most people seem to consider laptop performance good enough to use as a primary machine, how would you sell them a desktop? What would your pitch be?



Performance was only a relevant metric while laptops were too slow and too starved for storage capacity to be primary machines. Even if the iMac offers pro-level performance, what would that do other than cannibalize sales of the Mac Pro?

Originally Posted by Amorph

That wasn't my question.

My question was: Is there a compelling reason to have a desktop machine of any description if a laptop is powerful enough to do what you need, given the advantages that laptops offer? The observation behind the question is that laptops are now powerful enough to do what people want their computers to do at an affordable price.

Therefore, it doesn't matter whether a desktop is two or three or four times faster unless the manufacturer can give the customer a concrete and appealing justification for all that speed: a concrete use, something desirable that the laptop can't do. I'm not seeing that. Certainly there aren't enough games to justify Mac desktop purchases. So, given that most people seem to consider laptop performance good enough to use as a primary machine, how would you sell them a desktop? What would your pitch be?



Performance was only a relevant metric while laptops were too slow and too starved for storage capacity to be primary machines. Even if the iMac offers pro-level performance, what would that do other than cannibalize sales of the Mac Pro?

Originally Posted by backtomac

Users need a reason besides a larger screen to get an iMac. Monitors are cheap.

Originally Posted by Amorph

And that reason is...?
.

Originally Posted by backtomac

I would argue that the reason is virtualization.

VM Ware with two cores enabled is a revelation. It feels 'native'.

For a platform that wooing switchers the ability to run Windows smoothly under virtualization is a selling point IMO.

Originally Posted by RBR

I am not sure if OS X (perhaps server?) has the ability to assign cores to a particular application or virtualization yet, but the capability to do so is very interesting indeed. I have seen a discussion of a limited capability to do this with windows and businesses (or at least their IT people) appear to be very interested in the capability.

It will be interesting to watch this develop.

Originally Posted by backtomac

The app VM Ware can determine how many cores to use.

When enabled to use two cores it runs very crisply. I do this on my MBP fro limited periods of time. Its not recommended to do this fro long periods of time because it can cause problems for the host os.

4 cores would leave two for the host and two fro a guest os.