When was it? 2010 was Apple's "Back to the Mac" event? It seems like October is THE month for products that matter? 2012 Mac mini? October. 2010 MacBook Air with SSD? October. Unibody MBP? October.
But how much would such a machine cost? 27 inches of retina sounds prohibitively expensive, and I would want to max out the internals (CPU, RAM) to give it as long a life as possible...
That being said, I don't care about on-board storage (500GB flash would be fine), as much of my media is stored in iTunes in the Cloud.
My guess it would cost less than if you tried to build a system on your own. Given Apple's bump on memory on iPhones, my guess is that the Macs will also see a new top end memory option.
But if you have to worry about the price, then it's not the system you want.
When was it? 2010 was Apple's "Back to the Mac" event? It seems like October is THE month for products that matter? 2012 Mac mini? October. 2010 MacBook Air with SSD? October. Unibody MBP? October.
This year's WWDC keynote seemed like a "Back to the Mac" event. No new hardware of course, since it was a developer's conference, but it sure gave the impression they haven't forgotten about the Mac, despite all the hand-wringing after every iPhone introduction that "Apple has forgotten where they came from!"
With all that enthusiasm, I can't help feeling there's some tasty new hardware in the works.
Finally time to replace my 2006 Mac Pro. Kind of a pity. it's still running very well with the Radeon 5770 GPU upgrade.
I put a GTX 550Ti in mine, and it likewise runs quite well. Honestly, it ran well with the X1900XT, but I cut heat production by like 2/3rds going with the newer card. 8-)
As someone stated above, how seriously "distracting" if you're retouching the whole day to hide certain imperfections... only to be reminded of work when it's time for entertainment.
Funny thing: when I meet up in person with a model after a rather intense and long retouching session... I have to refrain from reaching out and trying to "repair" little things that I've "corrected" for like 100 or so images. I never let models watch me retouch... and I keep on trying to remind myself I'm a designer and retoucher, not a dermatologist. I think they would die if they saw what a Nikon 810 sees at 100% resolution, and imagining that in 5k is... slightly... disconcerting?!
If you were talking about my comments, I wasn't talking about an entry level iMac. The base 27" 3.4GHz iMac starts at $1999 Apple store list. It quickly grows to $3449 when you upgrade to the 3.5GHz i7, 32GB RAM (I know I can get RAM for lower), 512GB flash storage, and GTX 780M GPU. If Apple is talking about a 5K iMac, I can't see them starting with the same base configuration and just a better screen. They'd almost need to start with my configuration and go from there. I'm not in the market for the base configuration and I bet the majority of people who visit this website (except for the Apple haters) don't buy the base model of anything Apple sells so I wanted to be more realistic on what the normal selling price would be for a product that had a 5K display. I wouldn't want to but I could see myself spending $5K for a properly configured iMac 5K (why not call it this and charge that amount??). If you need(want) a 5K display, then you need the horsepower to drive it and a reason for it. Surfing the web, reading email, or watching videos don't justify spending this amount of money. Editing videos, transcoding videos, and anything similar, takes horsepower unless you like to drink a lot of coffee while you're waiting for things to finish. This is also why I'm waiting to see whether a Mac Pro is worth the money or if I can exist with a more powerful iMac.
**@wizard69: Just because I'm thinking about an iMac doesn't mean I don't need a Mac Pro. Except for GPU-capable applications, a loaded iMac is very close to the base Mac Pro. Upgrade the CPU and GPUs and a new iMac might match or exceed the base Mac Pro (at least until the Mac Pro is upgraded).
Nice post... and I'm in the same boat. I'm still tending towards a new MP for all of that expandable power for video editing at 4k and above. I just can't imagine the same kind of power in an iMac enclosure. If Apple was so very close to bringing similar power to an iMac... it makes their choice of the derided but necessary "trash can" design of the MacPro all that more superfluous.
When was it? 2010 was Apple's "Back to the Mac" event? It seems like October is THE month for products that matter? 2012 Mac mini? October. 2010 MacBook Air with SSD? October. Unibody MBP? October.
"products that matter" being the operative sentence there - I am so bored by these neverending iPhone-related news that in the end bring little more than just a speed bump and yet another useless app.
Any chance that Apple is rushing TB3 and that's why the desktops haven't seen updates in awhile?
Or is Skylake still the best we can hope for?
I suspect Skylake, with surrounding logic, marks the date. Thus, I suspect, next autumn or so. However, this requires that Apple doesn't arbitrarily limit iMac use as a display to other macs. A good thing about waiting, apart from increased utility and longevity from display use, is that one can also hope for 16nm/14nm FinFet GPUs. The GTX980m is good, but significantly improved process and HBM would bring quite a bit to the table in that time frame.
UGHD IMac on its way, I still expect them to do the same to it as MacBook Pro was and upgrade it to Thunderbolt 2 etc. while there is this 5k model, probably starting prices of old one will be $1000/$1500 and new ones $2000/$3000 for those UHD+ displays.
I think the Mac game publishers (Feral, Aspyr) would probably prevent you from setting a game to the full 5K resolution, if it was a complex 3D game. Aspyr made a 4K version of Civ V for the Mac Pro, maybe that would be updated for the iMac, but in general I doubt they would shoot for 5K support on many games. 5K is mainly for the desktop.
"products that matter" being the operative sentence there - I am so bored by these neverending iPhone-related news that in the end bring little more than just a speed bump and yet another useless app.
Yeah, the iPhone 6 is little more than a "speed bump". Do you actually believe that? If a completely redesigned iPhone (both internally and externally) is defined as such, If so, how on earth would you define Apple's updates to the rest of their product line? If you're gonna troll, at least make an effort to not sound insane, or at least make statements that are something other than laughably massive lies. If the latest iPhone is a "speed bump" , then that also applies to 100% of Apple's updates since the company's inception.
Oh, and is Health the new "useless app"? Anyone with a shred of insight can see that it is probably the most significant "app" in the last few years, and will become even more so as time goes on.
One doesnt need to look hard to find the rest of your garbage:
Quote:
My point was that Sculley's early-to-mid years were among Apple's most prosperous compared to the rest of the company's years (before he joined), yet they led to the same kind of non-innovation and crisis period we're moving towards now.
Hey guys, the "crisis" period is just around the corner- people like you have been repeating this shit every single day since Cook took office- just around the corner. I assume this time, it will happen just after they announce their earth-shattering Christmas quarter, right? Or do we have to wait a bit longer? When does this "spiral into irrelevancy" truly begin, because you've been warning us about it for a while now, and in that time, Apple has been producing the best products in their history, never-mind the financial successes.
5120x2880 is 14,745,600 pixels, square root = 3840
3840x2160 is 8,294,400 pixels, square root = 2880
1920x1080 is 2,073,600 pixels, square root = 1440
so 5K is 78% more pixels than 4K and 7x more than 1080p. The games above show fairly consistently that 4K runs at just under half the FPS of 1080p so using the square root of the pixels is closer. I'd suggest that 5K would run about 1/3 the FPS of 1080p worst case.
You can see the various games here for the high-end mobile cards:
High-end games on Ultra settings are playable at 1080p but a game just above 30FPS would likely drop below 10FPS at 5K. However, the graphics can be lowered a bit. Tomb Raider for example runs at 60-70FPS on Ultra at 1080p so at 5K, you'd be looking at 20FPS. Scale a few settings down like anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion etc and you'd probably be able to push it back above 30FPS.
You can also run games at 4K and they'll be scaled to 5K and you probably won't tell the difference.
It's hard to tell from screenshots though, I think you'd have to see them running to appreciate the quality difference. I think I'd find it hard to tell between 1080p and 4K:
Obviously if a picture is zoomed up enough, the 4K one will look sharper but on a smallish screen at normal viewing distance, I wouldn't be able to tell. The Retina display helps but anything 1080p or higher below ~50" will look about the same to me.
Finally! My over 3 year old imac is on its last legs after falling off the desk and a half inch strip down the side of the display not working and a backlight out, hard drive chugging like its about to fail, but still trudging through with these rumors
Goodness! I'm glad my iMac is rather more obedient than yours and doesn't go falling off my desk. Mine is a 24"; I was rather hoping that they might bring out a 30", but 27" 4k sounds mighty fine nonetheless.
Finally! My over 3 year old imac is on its last legs after falling off the desk and a half inch strip down the side of the display not working and a backlight out, hard drive chugging like its about to fail, but still trudging through with these rumors
Is that a design flaw? /s
How did it fall?
Gravity.
Steve Jobs discovered it when an apple fell on his head. In a rage, he took a chunk out of it, and that's how the Apple logo was born.
Comments
name change? new form factor?
Maybe. Same time. Broadwell. Why (no)? Why (no)?
But how much would such a machine cost? 27 inches of retina sounds prohibitively expensive, and I would want to max out the internals (CPU, RAM) to give it as long a life as possible...
That being said, I don't care about on-board storage (500GB flash would be fine), as much of my media is stored in iTunes in the Cloud.
My guess it would cost less than if you tried to build a system on your own. Given Apple's bump on memory on iPhones, my guess is that the Macs will also see a new top end memory option.
But if you have to worry about the price, then it's not the system you want.
This year's WWDC keynote seemed like a "Back to the Mac" event. No new hardware of course, since it was a developer's conference, but it sure gave the impression they haven't forgotten about the Mac, despite all the hand-wringing after every iPhone introduction that "Apple has forgotten where they came from!"
With all that enthusiasm, I can't help feeling there's some tasty new hardware in the works.
I put a GTX 550Ti in mine, and it likewise runs quite well. Honestly, it ran well with the X1900XT, but I cut heat production by like 2/3rds going with the newer card. 8-)
If I may... why just MILF?
As someone stated above, how seriously "distracting" if you're retouching the whole day to hide certain imperfections... only to be reminded of work when it's time for entertainment.
Funny thing: when I meet up in person with a model after a rather intense and long retouching session... I have to refrain from reaching out and trying to "repair" little things that I've "corrected" for like 100 or so images. I never let models watch me retouch... and I keep on trying to remind myself I'm a designer and retoucher, not a dermatologist. I think they would die if they saw what a Nikon 810 sees at 100% resolution, and imagining that in 5k is... slightly... disconcerting?!
Nice post... and I'm in the same boat. I'm still tending towards a new MP for all of that expandable power for video editing at 4k and above. I just can't imagine the same kind of power in an iMac enclosure. If Apple was so very close to bringing similar power to an iMac... it makes their choice of the derided but necessary "trash can" design of the MacPro all that more superfluous.
When was it? 2010 was Apple's "Back to the Mac" event? It seems like October is THE month for products that matter? 2012 Mac mini? October. 2010 MacBook Air with SSD? October. Unibody MBP? October.
"products that matter" being the operative sentence there - I am so bored by these neverending iPhone-related news that in the end bring little more than just a speed bump and yet another useless app.
Any chance that Apple is rushing TB3 and that's why the desktops haven't seen updates in awhile?
Or is Skylake still the best we can hope for?
I suspect Skylake, with surrounding logic, marks the date. Thus, I suspect, next autumn or so. However, this requires that Apple doesn't arbitrarily limit iMac use as a display to other macs. A good thing about waiting, apart from increased utility and longevity from display use, is that one can also hope for 16nm/14nm FinFet GPUs. The GTX980m is good, but significantly improved process and HBM would bring quite a bit to the table in that time frame.
I think the Mac game publishers (Feral, Aspyr) would probably prevent you from setting a game to the full 5K resolution, if it was a complex 3D game. Aspyr made a 4K version of Civ V for the Mac Pro, maybe that would be updated for the iMac, but in general I doubt they would shoot for 5K support on many games. 5K is mainly for the desktop.
"products that matter" being the operative sentence there - I am so bored by these neverending iPhone-related news that in the end bring little more than just a speed bump and yet another useless app.
Yeah, the iPhone 6 is little more than a "speed bump". Do you actually believe that? If a completely redesigned iPhone (both internally and externally) is defined as such, If so, how on earth would you define Apple's updates to the rest of their product line? If you're gonna troll, at least make an effort to not sound insane, or at least make statements that are something other than laughably massive lies. If the latest iPhone is a "speed bump" , then that also applies to 100% of Apple's updates since the company's inception.
Oh, and is Health the new "useless app"? Anyone with a shred of insight can see that it is probably the most significant "app" in the last few years, and will become even more so as time goes on.
One doesnt need to look hard to find the rest of your garbage:
Hey guys, the "crisis" period is just around the corner- people like you have been repeating this shit every single day since Cook took office- just around the corner. I assume this time, it will happen just after they announce their earth-shattering Christmas quarter, right? Or do we have to wait a bit longer? When does this "spiral into irrelevancy" truly begin, because you've been warning us about it for a while now, and in that time, Apple has been producing the best products in their history, never-mind the financial successes.
Not to mention it will have to be much thicker than it should be, which will severely impact portability.
It depends on the game. Often framerate scales down fairly linearly with an increase in pixels drawn. There are some 4K tests here:
http://www.digitalstormonline.com/unlocked/watch-dogs-benchmarks-nvidia-1080p-and-4k-idnum279/
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7120/some-quick-gaming-numbers-at-4k-max-settings
http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/180402-five-things-to-know-about-4k-gaming-were-glitching-our-way-to-gaming-nirvana/3
5120x2880 is 14,745,600 pixels, square root = 3840
3840x2160 is 8,294,400 pixels, square root = 2880
1920x1080 is 2,073,600 pixels, square root = 1440
so 5K is 78% more pixels than 4K and 7x more than 1080p. The games above show fairly consistently that 4K runs at just under half the FPS of 1080p so using the square root of the pixels is closer. I'd suggest that 5K would run about 1/3 the FPS of 1080p worst case.
You can see the various games here for the high-end mobile cards:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-880M.107622.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-R9-M290X.108643.0.html
High-end games on Ultra settings are playable at 1080p but a game just above 30FPS would likely drop below 10FPS at 5K. However, the graphics can be lowered a bit. Tomb Raider for example runs at 60-70FPS on Ultra at 1080p so at 5K, you'd be looking at 20FPS. Scale a few settings down like anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion etc and you'd probably be able to push it back above 30FPS.
You can also run games at 4K and they'll be scaled to 5K and you probably won't tell the difference.
There's a site here with screenshots at 4K:
http://www.pcgamer.com/uk/tag/4k-screenshot-showcase/
It's hard to tell from screenshots though, I think you'd have to see them running to appreciate the quality difference. I think I'd find it hard to tell between 1080p and 4K:
http://daniel-farm.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/1080p-vs-4K.jpg
http://www.digitalstormonline.com/unlocked/images/articles/Nav/Articles/Assassinscreed-4k-1080p-4.jpg
Obviously if a picture is zoomed up enough, the 4K one will look sharper but on a smallish screen at normal viewing distance, I wouldn't be able to tell. The Retina display helps but anything 1080p or higher below ~50" will look about the same to me.
Goodness! I'm glad my iMac is rather more obedient than yours and doesn't go falling off my desk. Mine is a 24"; I was rather hoping that they might bring out a 30", but 27" 4k sounds mighty fine nonetheless.
Gravity.
Steve Jobs discovered it when an apple fell on his head. In a rage, he took a chunk out of it, and that's how the Apple logo was born.