I acknowledge that it might make sense for Apple to build a headless xMac with desktop components between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro. However, some of the specifics that have been suggested strike me as implausible. It's important to remember that Apple is a consumer electronics company, not a DIY supplier. Some of the suggestions are simply antithetical to Apple's corporate culture.
I was particularly amused by the idea than an xMac should have six drive bays. I was also amused by the idea that the current Mac Mini has only one drive bay when in fact it has two and can be ordered with either two hard drives or one hard drive and one optical drive.
The reason why Macs are so great is that Steve has the power to remove unnecessary features. In virtually every other major tech manufacturing company, design by committee makes it easy to add features i.e. bloat and nearly impossible to remove them. In my opinion, the only plausible xMac would -- except for additional memory slots -- have the same expandability as the Mac Mini or possibly three drive bays instead of two. I think the main differences from a Mac Mini would be an internal power supply, desktop rather than laptop components, 3.5" drive bays, a second Ethernet port, four DIMM slots rather than two SO-DIMM slots, and a fan.
I have yet to become proficient with the multi-quote thing. Never-the-less, here are my replies to SSquirrel.
First: Isn't it a shame if Steve doesn't like it, it does not happen?
Second: Having speakers in a computer is just a thought. Maybe it will get hooked up to a TV, maybe not. I might ask why the iMac can output to an additional monitor?
Third: My eyesight is a very unique situation, caused mostly by premature birth. I have an iMac 20 inch. Resolution is too small. My vision is constantly blurred. Small, fuzzy text is awful. I have to bump up the mouse pointer, and it is loaded with jaggies. Zoom (Universal Access) only magnifies an already blurry situation.
Four: As monitors grow in size, the resolution goes higher. For me, moving away from the Native Resolution is also too blurry. So, the only answer (in theory) is an HDTV. You have only two resolution choices.
Your monitor of 22 inches uses the same resolution as mine. While better, it is not good enough. Give me a 22 inch screen (or larger) running 1366 by 768 aka 720 HDTV. Thanks to solipsism, I am able to experiment with the current status of Resolution Independence. It works, but has a long way to go. I use it at either 125% or 150%.
Third: My eyesight is a very unique situation, caused mostly by premature birth. I have an iMac 20 inch. Resolution is too small. My vision is constantly blurred. Small, fuzzy text is awful. I have to bump up the mouse pointer, and it is loaded with jaggies. Zoom (Universal Access) only magnifies an already blurry situation.
Four: As monitors grow in size, the resolution goes higher. For me, moving away from the Native Resolution is also too blurry. So, the only answer (in theory) is an HDTV. You have only two resolution choices.
Your monitor of 22 inches uses the same resolution as mine. While better, it is not good enough. Give me a 22 inch screen (or larger) running 1366 by 768 aka 720 HDTV. Thanks to solipsism, I am able to experiment with the current status of Resolution Independence. It works, but has a long way to go. I use it at either 125% or 150%.
Resolution Independence is definitely the right answer to your problem. It's a shame that Resolution Independence was dropped from 10.5. I like it set to 0.8, but the 100dpi screen on my 13" unibody MacBook makes it look poor. I'm tempted to get a high-res 15" MacBook Pro so that I can use Resolution Independence at 0.75 or 0.8 have it look sharp. What I really, really want is a 132 or higher dpi MacBook Air with 4GB of RAM.
Resolution Independence is definitely the right answer to your problem. It's a shame that Resolution Independence was dropped from 10.5. I like it set to 0.8, but the 100dpi screen on my 13" unibody MacBook makes it look poor. I'm tempted to get a high-res 15" MacBook Pro so that I can use Resolution Independence at 0.75 or 0.8 have it look sharp. What I really, really want is a 132 or higher dpi MacBook Air with 4GB of RAM.
You stand a better chance at getting what you want than I do. Lawd Have Mercy! I can't imagine making text smaller. RI does fail when making it larger. In some cases, the screen does not adjust, and parts are missing.
What is really a shame is LCD screens are not designed to work outside of their native resolution. I will never understand why CRTs could, and LCDs can't. It is senseless for Apple (and others) to advertise supported resolutions, when they don't work all that well.
I don't understand DPI as much as overall resolution. My goal is to have everything on the screen bigger, at least 25%. I can do so with Safari, and other browsers, but it gets blurry.
I acknowledge that it might make sense for Apple to build a headless xMac with desktop components between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro. However, some of the specifics that have been suggested strike me as implausible. It's important to remember that Apple is a consumer electronics company, not a DIY supplier. Some of the suggestions are simply antithetical to Apple's corporate culture.
I was particularly amused by the idea than an xMac should have six drive bays. I was also amused by the idea that the current Mac Mini has only one drive bay when in fact it has two and can be ordered with either two hard drives or one hard drive and one optical drive.
The reason why Macs are so great is that Steve has the power to remove unnecessary features. In virtually every other major tech manufacturing company, design by committee makes it easy to add features i.e. bloat and nearly impossible to remove them. In my opinion, the only plausible xMac would -- except for additional memory slots -- have the same expandability as the Mac Mini or possibly three drive bays instead of two. I think the main differences from a Mac Mini would be an internal power supply, desktop rather than laptop components, 3.5" drive bays, a second Ethernet port, four DIMM slots rather than two SO-DIMM slots, and a fan.
On the other hand, I find some of the problems with Apple, are because of SJ - if he doesn't want it, then no one gets it.
I don't consider the Mini expandable at all; seriously, it takes a thin putty knife to open it, and you better hope you don't break any of the tabs in the process. And it uses mobile parts, which means it's limited in what it can support, because of thermal issues (its 110 W PSU is the same as the TDP of just the GPU in my PC)
And unfortunately you can't order the Mini with one or two HD's; you either get the Mini, or the Mini Server, with OSX Server (and while a server OS is nice, it's overkill for a NAS IMO).
My vision of the xMac, is the return of the G3/G4 Power Mac cases; if not, don't bother. I have a Mini, it isn't a real desktop, as there's zero internal expandability, and on the opposite end, is my PC desktop, although large (on the size of the Mac Pro - it could be smaller, but I love this case), it uses standard desktop parts (ATX motherboard, Core i5-750, ATI Radeon 5770, USB 3.0, 4 GB DDR3, blah, blah, blah, oh, and Blu-ray and HDMI, so that I could hook it up to my HDTV as a 2nd monitor). It's a killer setup, the only bottleneck I have anymore, are the HD's, but I can't afford SSD's ATM.
Apple could do away with PCI and PCIe slots, there isn't a market for those in Mac land from what I've seen, and Apple is a year behind in graphics anyhow; what's currently offered on the Mac Pro is pathetic, and the Nvidia 320/330 are 'meh'. Hopefully, Apple does update the iMacs with Radeon 5xxx-series graphics (which will also provide OpenGL 4.0 support).
My ideal xMac:
Core i5/i7 (or AMD Thuban 6-core)
min. 4 GB DDR3
ATI Radeon 5650 or 5750
1 TB HD, with room for at least 1 more HD internally
Slot-loading disc drive (they're unreliable, but that's what Apple likes)
no PCI/PCIe slots
small internal PSU (min. 450 W for a quality one, like an Antec)
lots of USB ports (lightpeak is probably a year or so away)
FW?
audio in/out
SD reader
Bluetooth (wifi optional, but I just never saw the point of wifi in a desktop)
gigabit ethernet
a small G3/G4 Power Mac type case (those are so easy to open and work around with
$1200
It's really hard to do much less than that (just the mobo, CPU, RAM, GPU, PSU, and Blu-ray drive in my PC cost over $800), and much more, it's not an attractive option against the 27" iMac.
I have yet to become proficient with the multi-quote thing. Never-the-less, here are my replies to SSquirrel.
First: Isn't it a shame if Steve doesn't like it, it does not happen?
Second: Having speakers in a computer is just a thought. Maybe it will get hooked up to a TV, maybe not. I might ask why the iMac can output to an additional monitor?
Third: My eyesight is a very unique situation, caused mostly by premature birth. I have an iMac 20 inch. Resolution is too small. My vision is constantly blurred. Small, fuzzy text is awful. I have to bump up the mouse pointer, and it is loaded with jaggies. Zoom (Universal Access) only magnifies an already blurry situation.
Four: As monitors grow in size, the resolution goes higher. For me, moving away from the Native Resolution is also too blurry. So, the only answer (in theory) is an HDTV. You have only two resolution choices.
Your monitor of 22 inches uses the same resolution as mine. While better, it is not good enough. Give me a 22 inch screen (or larger) running 1366 by 768 aka 720 HDTV. Thanks to solipsism, I am able to experiment with the current status of Resolution Independence. It works, but has a long way to go. I use it at either 125% or 150%.
In order:
1) That's one of the chief perks of being CEO. You get to make all kinds of decisions like that
2) The iMac can output to an additional monitor so you are able to do a multi-monitor setup. Final Cut Pro and Logic are a couple of programs that are more than happy to use all the screen space you can provide them.
Display Port is fully compatible with HDMI if you are using the right cable. DP on one end, HDMI on the other. That could solve your problems right there.
I agree with the thrust of the post. The Mac Pro can do what it likes. With it's 'pretend' Workstation title. (ie with PC machines that have better bang for the buck going at less than half the price of Apple's entry level 'Workstation.') Add in the rumoured 27 inch monitor and you're looking for a lot of money. Buy a quad core iMac instead.
As for the mythical desktop and elusive X-Mac. I take your point for Apple to offer more choice to keep up their market momentum. We're not talking about a million desktop models. Just a humble one for us veteran X-Mac fans who remember when Apple's Mac Pro was affordable to human beings (ie the 'rest of us') back in the G3 days...
However, Hmurchison said it best...
Amen.
Lemon Bon Bon.
I can't speak to right this moment, since most of the workstation pricing I've seen recently is in large batches of corp orders, but when I bought my MP it was the cheapest I could get a machine of comparable specs, either by direct purchase, or by building my own. The fact that it was absolutely silent, particularly compared to most others in its class, was an added bonus :-)
(I ended up getting it even cheaper, using a dev purchase price, but as I recall it was still cheaper than equiv. machines even at full MSRP)
Now as to how many people really need a workstation class machine....
(btw, workstation doesnt just refer to raw compute power, it also generally implies higher quality components (particularly CPU, usually server-bin CPUs), ECC ram, etc)
EDIT: Looks like you're right right now, Dell's T7500 series blows the MP away bang/buck, both at msrp!
You stand a better chance at getting what you want than I do. Lawd Have Mercy! I can't imagine making text smaller. RI does fail when making it larger. In some cases, the screen does not adjust, and parts are missing.
What is really a shame is LCD screens are not designed to work outside of their native resolution. I will never understand why CRTs could, and LCDs can't. It is senseless for Apple (and others) to advertise supported resolutions, when they don't work all that well.
I don't understand DPI as much as overall resolution. My goal is to have everything on the screen bigger, at least 25%. I can do so with Safari, and other browsers, but it gets blurry.
That's just the current implementation. Resolution independence is the right answer -- large text on a high DPI screen is a thing of beauty and makes it easier to read, even for the old and poor of vision. RI won't make things more blurry, it will make it more crisp. If its blurry, then you're just getting scaling, not RI.
CRTs and LCDs are fundamentally different technologies -- CRTs could play games with their cathode rays that LCDs simply can't do because they don't have a beam to manipulate. You're right, they shouldn't bother advertising other supported resolutions... but hey, that's marketing for you.
That's just the current implementation. Resolution independence is the right answer -- large text on a high DPI screen is a thing of beauty and makes it easier to read, even for the old and poor of vision. RI won't make things more blurry, it will make it more crisp. If its blurry, then you're just getting scaling, not RI.
CRTs and LCDs are fundamentally different technologies -- CRTs could play games with their cathode rays that LCDs simply can't do because they don't have a beam to manipulate. You're right, they shouldn't bother advertising other supported resolutions... but hey, that's marketing for you.
My "test" for RI comes from this thread, post number 30:
As I mention in the thread, I used it at 1.25. I have a 20 inch iMac. Because I have to sit so close, it is hard to imagine a monitor much bigger. Do you have a photo of RI on a high DPI screen?
Even for a person with "regular" vision, just how big should a monitor be? I have seen the 27 inch iMac. For me, it is too big and too wide. How much bigger will the iMac screen go, and why should it?
As I mention in the thread, I used it at 1.25. I have a 20 inch iMac. Because I have to sit so close, it is hard to imagine a monitor much bigger. Do you have a photo of RI on a high DPI screen?
I'm not talking about Apple's implementation per se, I mean just the basic graphics principles for how it works. I have a fair bit of experience working with graphics at a wide variety of DPI displays. I know a few people who run their desktops at crazy high resolutions, but I find if things go beyond the "standard" sizes it causes me eyestrain (even though I'm blessed with excellent vision). I have seen the benefits of high resolution displays used to draw things at the "standard" sizes, and it is really remarkable in terms of clarity and reduction of eyestrain. Apple's implementation is making progress but still has a ways to go... which is a bit disappointing because it has been promised for years. Fortunately, it doesn't require new hardware... it is a software feature.
Quote:
Even for a person with "regular" vision, just how big should a monitor be? I have seen the 27 inch iMac. For me, it is too big and too wide. How much bigger will the iMac screen go, and why should it?
I've used 30" displays, or multiple >24" displays with good results... but at the quasi-standard resolution (72 DPI?) that has been in place for ages.
I am mostly confused. Easy to do. I've never seen a rating for DPI in a monitor's specs. I assume that is different from dot pitch. I am not blessed with excellent vision. Age will only make things worse. Many years ago, I saw a basic Acer monitor, for testing purposes. It was a 19 inch 1280 by 1024 monitor. I took it down to 800 by 600, and within reason, it worked. Nobody seems to have 4:3 monitors on display anymore. Do you know what specs I need to look for? Finding the right monitor would prevent me from having to return to the Windows operating system.
The case for a headless desktop Mac between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro increases as the volumes of desktop Macs sold grows. However, most of the Mac growth is in laptops.
I also have trouble figuring out just what someone would want that one couldn't get from a Mac Mini. Faster? Then it might make more sense to offer a higher-end Mac Mini.
1 - Dedicated graphics card(s) that can be changed.
Comments
I was particularly amused by the idea than an xMac should have six drive bays. I was also amused by the idea that the current Mac Mini has only one drive bay when in fact it has two and can be ordered with either two hard drives or one hard drive and one optical drive.
The reason why Macs are so great is that Steve has the power to remove unnecessary features. In virtually every other major tech manufacturing company, design by committee makes it easy to add features i.e. bloat and nearly impossible to remove them. In my opinion, the only plausible xMac would -- except for additional memory slots -- have the same expandability as the Mac Mini or possibly three drive bays instead of two. I think the main differences from a Mac Mini would be an internal power supply, desktop rather than laptop components, 3.5" drive bays, a second Ethernet port, four DIMM slots rather than two SO-DIMM slots, and a fan.
First: Isn't it a shame if Steve doesn't like it, it does not happen?
Second: Having speakers in a computer is just a thought. Maybe it will get hooked up to a TV, maybe not. I might ask why the iMac can output to an additional monitor?
Third: My eyesight is a very unique situation, caused mostly by premature birth. I have an iMac 20 inch. Resolution is too small. My vision is constantly blurred. Small, fuzzy text is awful. I have to bump up the mouse pointer, and it is loaded with jaggies. Zoom (Universal Access) only magnifies an already blurry situation.
Four: As monitors grow in size, the resolution goes higher. For me, moving away from the Native Resolution is also too blurry. So, the only answer (in theory) is an HDTV. You have only two resolution choices.
Your monitor of 22 inches uses the same resolution as mine. While better, it is not good enough. Give me a 22 inch screen (or larger) running 1366 by 768 aka 720 HDTV. Thanks to solipsism, I am able to experiment with the current status of Resolution Independence. It works, but has a long way to go. I use it at either 125% or 150%.
Third: My eyesight is a very unique situation, caused mostly by premature birth. I have an iMac 20 inch. Resolution is too small. My vision is constantly blurred. Small, fuzzy text is awful. I have to bump up the mouse pointer, and it is loaded with jaggies. Zoom (Universal Access) only magnifies an already blurry situation.
Four: As monitors grow in size, the resolution goes higher. For me, moving away from the Native Resolution is also too blurry. So, the only answer (in theory) is an HDTV. You have only two resolution choices.
Your monitor of 22 inches uses the same resolution as mine. While better, it is not good enough. Give me a 22 inch screen (or larger) running 1366 by 768 aka 720 HDTV. Thanks to solipsism, I am able to experiment with the current status of Resolution Independence. It works, but has a long way to go. I use it at either 125% or 150%.
Resolution Independence is definitely the right answer to your problem. It's a shame that Resolution Independence was dropped from 10.5. I like it set to 0.8, but the 100dpi screen on my 13" unibody MacBook makes it look poor. I'm tempted to get a high-res 15" MacBook Pro so that I can use Resolution Independence at 0.75 or 0.8 have it look sharp. What I really, really want is a 132 or higher dpi MacBook Air with 4GB of RAM.
Resolution Independence is definitely the right answer to your problem. It's a shame that Resolution Independence was dropped from 10.5. I like it set to 0.8, but the 100dpi screen on my 13" unibody MacBook makes it look poor. I'm tempted to get a high-res 15" MacBook Pro so that I can use Resolution Independence at 0.75 or 0.8 have it look sharp. What I really, really want is a 132 or higher dpi MacBook Air with 4GB of RAM.
You stand a better chance at getting what you want than I do. Lawd Have Mercy! I can't imagine making text smaller. RI does fail when making it larger. In some cases, the screen does not adjust, and parts are missing.
What is really a shame is LCD screens are not designed to work outside of their native resolution. I will never understand why CRTs could, and LCDs can't. It is senseless for Apple (and others) to advertise supported resolutions, when they don't work all that well.
I don't understand DPI as much as overall resolution. My goal is to have everything on the screen bigger, at least 25%. I can do so with Safari, and other browsers, but it gets blurry.
I acknowledge that it might make sense for Apple to build a headless xMac with desktop components between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro. However, some of the specifics that have been suggested strike me as implausible. It's important to remember that Apple is a consumer electronics company, not a DIY supplier. Some of the suggestions are simply antithetical to Apple's corporate culture.
I was particularly amused by the idea than an xMac should have six drive bays. I was also amused by the idea that the current Mac Mini has only one drive bay when in fact it has two and can be ordered with either two hard drives or one hard drive and one optical drive.
The reason why Macs are so great is that Steve has the power to remove unnecessary features. In virtually every other major tech manufacturing company, design by committee makes it easy to add features i.e. bloat and nearly impossible to remove them. In my opinion, the only plausible xMac would -- except for additional memory slots -- have the same expandability as the Mac Mini or possibly three drive bays instead of two. I think the main differences from a Mac Mini would be an internal power supply, desktop rather than laptop components, 3.5" drive bays, a second Ethernet port, four DIMM slots rather than two SO-DIMM slots, and a fan.
On the other hand, I find some of the problems with Apple, are because of SJ - if he doesn't want it, then no one gets it.
I don't consider the Mini expandable at all; seriously, it takes a thin putty knife to open it, and you better hope you don't break any of the tabs in the process. And it uses mobile parts, which means it's limited in what it can support, because of thermal issues (its 110 W PSU is the same as the TDP of just the GPU in my PC)
And unfortunately you can't order the Mini with one or two HD's; you either get the Mini, or the Mini Server, with OSX Server (and while a server OS is nice, it's overkill for a NAS IMO).
My vision of the xMac, is the return of the G3/G4 Power Mac cases; if not, don't bother. I have a Mini, it isn't a real desktop, as there's zero internal expandability, and on the opposite end, is my PC desktop, although large (on the size of the Mac Pro - it could be smaller, but I love this case), it uses standard desktop parts (ATX motherboard, Core i5-750, ATI Radeon 5770, USB 3.0, 4 GB DDR3, blah, blah, blah, oh, and Blu-ray and HDMI, so that I could hook it up to my HDTV as a 2nd monitor). It's a killer setup, the only bottleneck I have anymore, are the HD's, but I can't afford SSD's ATM.
Apple could do away with PCI and PCIe slots, there isn't a market for those in Mac land from what I've seen, and Apple is a year behind in graphics anyhow; what's currently offered on the Mac Pro is pathetic, and the Nvidia 320/330 are 'meh'. Hopefully, Apple does update the iMacs with Radeon 5xxx-series graphics (which will also provide OpenGL 4.0 support).
My ideal xMac:
Core i5/i7 (or AMD Thuban 6-core)
min. 4 GB DDR3
ATI Radeon 5650 or 5750
1 TB HD, with room for at least 1 more HD internally
Slot-loading disc drive (they're unreliable, but that's what Apple likes)
no PCI/PCIe slots
small internal PSU (min. 450 W for a quality one, like an Antec)
lots of USB ports (lightpeak is probably a year or so away)
FW?
audio in/out
SD reader
Bluetooth (wifi optional, but I just never saw the point of wifi in a desktop)
gigabit ethernet
a small G3/G4 Power Mac type case (those are so easy to open and work around with
$1200
It's really hard to do much less than that (just the mobo, CPU, RAM, GPU, PSU, and Blu-ray drive in my PC cost over $800), and much more, it's not an attractive option against the 27" iMac.
I have yet to become proficient with the multi-quote thing. Never-the-less, here are my replies to SSquirrel.
First: Isn't it a shame if Steve doesn't like it, it does not happen?
Second: Having speakers in a computer is just a thought. Maybe it will get hooked up to a TV, maybe not. I might ask why the iMac can output to an additional monitor?
Third: My eyesight is a very unique situation, caused mostly by premature birth. I have an iMac 20 inch. Resolution is too small. My vision is constantly blurred. Small, fuzzy text is awful. I have to bump up the mouse pointer, and it is loaded with jaggies. Zoom (Universal Access) only magnifies an already blurry situation.
Four: As monitors grow in size, the resolution goes higher. For me, moving away from the Native Resolution is also too blurry. So, the only answer (in theory) is an HDTV. You have only two resolution choices.
Your monitor of 22 inches uses the same resolution as mine. While better, it is not good enough. Give me a 22 inch screen (or larger) running 1366 by 768 aka 720 HDTV. Thanks to solipsism, I am able to experiment with the current status of Resolution Independence. It works, but has a long way to go. I use it at either 125% or 150%.
In order:
1) That's one of the chief perks of being CEO. You get to make all kinds of decisions like that
2) The iMac can output to an additional monitor so you are able to do a multi-monitor setup. Final Cut Pro and Logic are a couple of programs that are more than happy to use all the screen space you can provide them.
3)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16889102334 22" LCD HDTV 720p.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16889102335 26" LCD HDTV 720p
Display Port is fully compatible with HDMI if you are using the right cable. DP on one end, HDMI on the other. That could solve your problems right there.
I agree with the thrust of the post. The Mac Pro can do what it likes. With it's 'pretend' Workstation title. (ie with PC machines that have better bang for the buck going at less than half the price of Apple's entry level 'Workstation.') Add in the rumoured 27 inch monitor and you're looking for a lot of money. Buy a quad core iMac instead.
As for the mythical desktop and elusive X-Mac. I take your point for Apple to offer more choice to keep up their market momentum. We're not talking about a million desktop models. Just a humble one for us veteran X-Mac fans who remember when Apple's Mac Pro was affordable to human beings (ie the 'rest of us') back in the G3 days...
However, Hmurchison said it best...
Amen.
Lemon Bon Bon.
I can't speak to right this moment, since most of the workstation pricing I've seen recently is in large batches of corp orders, but when I bought my MP it was the cheapest I could get a machine of comparable specs, either by direct purchase, or by building my own. The fact that it was absolutely silent, particularly compared to most others in its class, was an added bonus :-)
(I ended up getting it even cheaper, using a dev purchase price, but as I recall it was still cheaper than equiv. machines even at full MSRP)
Now as to how many people really need a workstation class machine....
(btw, workstation doesnt just refer to raw compute power, it also generally implies higher quality components (particularly CPU, usually server-bin CPUs), ECC ram, etc)
EDIT: Looks like you're right right now, Dell's T7500 series blows the MP away bang/buck, both at msrp!
They did handle Floating Point well but that is of limited value on a Mac.
LOL... okay, that's just funny.
You stand a better chance at getting what you want than I do. Lawd Have Mercy! I can't imagine making text smaller. RI does fail when making it larger. In some cases, the screen does not adjust, and parts are missing.
What is really a shame is LCD screens are not designed to work outside of their native resolution. I will never understand why CRTs could, and LCDs can't. It is senseless for Apple (and others) to advertise supported resolutions, when they don't work all that well.
I don't understand DPI as much as overall resolution. My goal is to have everything on the screen bigger, at least 25%. I can do so with Safari, and other browsers, but it gets blurry.
That's just the current implementation. Resolution independence is the right answer -- large text on a high DPI screen is a thing of beauty and makes it easier to read, even for the old and poor of vision. RI won't make things more blurry, it will make it more crisp. If its blurry, then you're just getting scaling, not RI.
CRTs and LCDs are fundamentally different technologies -- CRTs could play games with their cathode rays that LCDs simply can't do because they don't have a beam to manipulate. You're right, they shouldn't bother advertising other supported resolutions... but hey, that's marketing for you.
Besides that, maybe a hdmi to give reasons for costumers to buy. anti-glare for 13in. possibly a better webcam. more ports. changes will be minor.
I'm more sure of what is NOT going to happen:
blu ray- by next year hd movies online should be even more popular...netflix im lookin at you...
core i5- no way in hell, why would anyone by a 15 inch if this was the case for 13inchers.
graphics upgrade- nope this just happened.
3g/4g- i highly doubt Apple is going to want to make the ipad even less pointless.
That's just the current implementation. Resolution independence is the right answer -- large text on a high DPI screen is a thing of beauty and makes it easier to read, even for the old and poor of vision. RI won't make things more blurry, it will make it more crisp. If its blurry, then you're just getting scaling, not RI.
CRTs and LCDs are fundamentally different technologies -- CRTs could play games with their cathode rays that LCDs simply can't do because they don't have a beam to manipulate. You're right, they shouldn't bother advertising other supported resolutions... but hey, that's marketing for you.
My "test" for RI comes from this thread, post number 30:
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=109113
As I mention in the thread, I used it at 1.25. I have a 20 inch iMac. Because I have to sit so close, it is hard to imagine a monitor much bigger. Do you have a photo of RI on a high DPI screen?
Even for a person with "regular" vision, just how big should a monitor be? I have seen the 27 inch iMac. For me, it is too big and too wide. How much bigger will the iMac screen go, and why should it?
As I mention in the thread, I used it at 1.25. I have a 20 inch iMac. Because I have to sit so close, it is hard to imagine a monitor much bigger. Do you have a photo of RI on a high DPI screen?
I'm not talking about Apple's implementation per se, I mean just the basic graphics principles for how it works. I have a fair bit of experience working with graphics at a wide variety of DPI displays. I know a few people who run their desktops at crazy high resolutions, but I find if things go beyond the "standard" sizes it causes me eyestrain (even though I'm blessed with excellent vision). I have seen the benefits of high resolution displays used to draw things at the "standard" sizes, and it is really remarkable in terms of clarity and reduction of eyestrain. Apple's implementation is making progress but still has a ways to go... which is a bit disappointing because it has been promised for years. Fortunately, it doesn't require new hardware... it is a software feature.
Even for a person with "regular" vision, just how big should a monitor be? I have seen the 27 inch iMac. For me, it is too big and too wide. How much bigger will the iMac screen go, and why should it?
I've used 30" displays, or multiple >24" displays with good results... but at the quasi-standard resolution (72 DPI?) that has been in place for ages.
The case for a headless desktop Mac between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro increases as the volumes of desktop Macs sold grows. However, most of the Mac growth is in laptops.
I also have trouble figuring out just what someone would want that one couldn't get from a Mac Mini. Faster? Then it might make more sense to offer a higher-end Mac Mini.
1 - Dedicated graphics card(s) that can be changed.
2 - Dedicated audio card.
3 - Space for 3.5" drive(s) for more storage.
4 - > 4GB RAM.