One thing that really needs to happen is the death of the integrated graphics with shared memory. That is a piece of shit technology that refuses to go away.
On a note, glossy screens suffer from glare, but looking at a matte finish screen after getting used to glossy is horrible. The picture quality in terms of contrast, brightness, etc. is just bad on the matte. Matte might be fine for road warriors. YMMV.
One thing that really needs to happen is the death of the integrated graphics with shared memory. That is a piece of shit technology that refuses to go away.
With OpenCL, you'd have to think that Apple is testing their combined CPU+graphics hardware with future overall performance in mind.
So any new iMac hardware should be, I hope, particularly ready for SnowLeopard & future Quicktime/iMovie needs.
Perhaps you only look at synthetic benchmarks. but if you ever read REAL tests from Anandtech and others, you will see that real world performance rarely has anything to do with those.
OK here goes:-= Almost 2 1/2 years ago there was like this new invention from Apple called (let me remember)- oh yes, the iPhone!
And wouldn't you know this caused a lot of- switchers!!. Also in this period there was something released from Microsoft (what was it called?) - oh yes- VISTA!!!!
Both of these caused - what? ANs: A ton of SWITCHERS!!! Got it?
This cause more Mac - BUYERS!!! got it!! Glossy screened iMacs were the only new iMacs available in that period.
You don't need a degree in brain surgery to figure this out.
JEESH!
I don't think the iPhone argument works here. as soon as the new iMacs came out, sales went up by a good percentage. That was too coincidental.
I believe Intel has officially introduced i7 platform for notebooks recently, so there is no reason why iMacs wouldn't have any.
Well, no real reason at least \
You mean any reason other than the fact that the mobile i7 tops out at 2.0GHz and costs $1000 while the desktop goes up to 3.33GHz and is priced firmly in 3 digit territory.
Nobody wants a better processor at a lower price do they?
Wow, new iMacs will have new features. How did they come up with that all on their own?
If there is a Blu Ray drive, it will be dog slow. The current slot loader is only 2x for Blu Ray recording speed. The drives are also $999, so expect a nice big price increase on that iMac. You don't need an update to OS X for Blu Ray. Roxio has has Blu Ray recording support for years. The external drive offers 12x Blu Ray recording speed at half the price. So for all of you begging Apple to offer a Blu Ray drive in an iMac, get ready for performance disappointment. Just buy the external drive and stop whining about it already. Next, you will complain about the high price for blank Blu Ray media.
Apologies - I have yet to read everyones replies to this article.
Therefore, if someone could please sum up the following, I'd be most grateful:
When is the exact date these new machines are going to be released, and what are their exact features?
Thanks in advance!!!
Give me a break. Apple doesn't release information about new models, nor do they announce product release dates for Macs. Of course new iMacs would be coming out, it is the near to the holiday season. Yes, they will probably be slightly faster than the models released last March, and they would probably have similar price points.
I was having a similar argument with my brother the other day. I was complaining about Apple's decision to pull the ExpressCard slot from their 15" MacBook Pro. He says that no one uses those slots. I said that music, video and design pros use the things and I'll be damned if there isn't a good number of them that would want to throw an eSATA card in there (especially the video guys).
You are so full of it. Less than 1% of customers used the ExpressCard slot. I have never used the PC card slot in my PowerBook G4. it is a worthless slot for 99% of the consumers. Music and Video pros use FireWire for their devices, not an ExpressCard slot. I bet you want the floppy disk back too.
Goddbye- you fugly racconed iMac. Begone with the black border once and for all. I've been waiting 3 years for this. Bring on a new mouse and cord to match. Hopefully the cheap black plasticy Dell back is history too. A blu-ray of course. It pays to wait. This has been a great year for me with Apple:
1.) iPhone 3Gs- video and speed
2.) 13" MacBook Pro- firewire.
3,) New iMac- blu-ray, new design. matte perhaps or at least less gloss?
Enough of your matte rant. You don't own any of the those products, but you sure like to bitch about them, and it is getting fucking old! You have never owned an iPhone, and you refuse to use a Mac with a glossy screen, so you are constantly talking out of your ass!
The glossy LCD screen finally brings back the clarity of the Trinitron monitors, which was an Apple staple of high quality (are you even old enough to remember the AppleColor RGB High Resolution Monitor? That was made of glass too). The matte LCD was always fuzzy, because that is the downside of a matte screen. The original Apple Cinema LCD Displays were higher quality than the ones used in the iMacs, but they were still fuzzy. Put the glossy LCD next to a matte LCD and you can clearly see the difference in clarity. Colors are much more vivid without the washed-out look on matte. The Matte screen sucks ass compared to the glossy. That is why the PC world transitioned much sooner than Apple did.
So you are just kidding yourself if you think matte is a better display. The Aluminum iMacs are way better looking and more solid than the white plastic iMac G5/Early Intels.
But I am sure you will complain about the new models, like you always do.
As pretty looking as they might be- and they're damn pretty- I simply can't deal with the reflections of the glass-covered screen. Matte (or anti-glare, whatever Apple calls it these days), despite not having quite as vibrant color or looking, has a huge advantage for me: it's not a mirror!
Matte's biggest pro is that it lets you see the display clearly in nearly all situations and conditions, as opposed to the people and things surrounding you. That's of more use to me than having somewhat deeper blacks and a prettier case.
I really, really, really hope the dual core thing will be only for the base 20" model at most... if Apple doesn't come with a decent quad-core processor inside (Core i5 or the mobile Core i7) than this is just plain sad. Every bigger and smaller company is introducing a quad-core notebooks and Apple having the brand new multi-processor optimised Snow Leopard OS and then a sad old slow dual core processor in a revamped iMac body... please don't... please please dont! Apple can do so much better...
Well then we'll have to assume that PC buyers also find the available desktop offerings "pretty weak", because laptop sales have overtaken desktop sales in that market as well, a trend that appears to be accelerating.
I must admit, I haven't check the exact figures for the most recent Quarterly results, but, about a year ago, then the Global Market was 50:50 Laptop : Desktop, Apple was about 60:40 Laptop : Desktop
- I would argue that this meant that if Apples Desktops were as appealing as their Laptops, then they would be able to sell 50% more desktops.
So I think this bears out my personal feeling that the Apple Desktop range is not as strong, or appealling as its Laptop range.
But there are lots of good reasons why Apple would concentrate on Laptops, and non-user-configurable Desktops - e.g. there are propably a lot fewer support calls for products where the user is not expected to open up the machine and add an unsupported GPU of some sort....
The new mobile i7, Clarksfield, would work great in the iMac. But there are only three of them, they're expensive processors, and no integrated graphics work with them. That would really limit Apple's flexibility to offer different models, especially a cheap model.
A cheap model will presumably still use the old 9400M + Core 2 Duo setup.
All the Clarkfield models (if this processor is used) will use a discrete graphics chip (NVIDIA or ATI, ATI has some nice GPUs but do they have Apple OpenCL drivers yet?) attached to the CPU via PCIe, and an Intel chipset (P55) for I/O. Memory controller is on the CPU as well.
This is perfectly acceptable for a late-2009 iMac.
And personally, I'm not buying a 24" Core 2 Duo iMac with Nehalem based CPUs on the market.
One thing that really needs to happen is the death of the integrated graphics with shared memory. That is a piece of shit technology that refuses to go away.
AMD's integrated chipsets support their own local memory bus. But they're only available for AMD's processors.
They do this not for performance, but for power savings - the framebuffer is stored on the sideport memory and thus the CPU can go to sleep entirely whilst the graphics keeps on displaying. With Intel-style shared memory framebuffers and on-CPU northbridges (as with Nehalem, Clarksfield, etc), the CPU (or a portion thereof) is kept awake by the framebuffer accesses.
Comments
On a note, glossy screens suffer from glare, but looking at a matte finish screen after getting used to glossy is horrible. The picture quality in terms of contrast, brightness, etc. is just bad on the matte. Matte might be fine for road warriors. YMMV.
One thing that really needs to happen is the death of the integrated graphics with shared memory. That is a piece of shit technology that refuses to go away.
With OpenCL, you'd have to think that Apple is testing their combined CPU+graphics hardware with future overall performance in mind.
So any new iMac hardware should be, I hope, particularly ready for SnowLeopard & future Quicktime/iMovie needs.
Therefore, if someone could please sum up the following, I'd be most grateful:
When is the exact date these new machines are going to be released, and what are their exact features?
Thanks in advance!!!
--They will suck balls.
Or so I gather.
Apologies - I have yet to read everyones replies to this article.
<snip>
When is the exact date these new machines are going to be released, and what are their exact features?
I get that you didn't read the replies, but did you even read the article?
Umm, and you'd be wrong on that - CPU Performance Benchmark Chart:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
Perhaps you only look at synthetic benchmarks. but if you ever read REAL tests from Anandtech and others, you will see that real world performance rarely has anything to do with those.
That's something I'd expect to hear from Dell.
When there are a tiring amount of complaints, Apple should listen.
It's tiring HERE, the public doesn't give a lick.
Again, pot, meet kettle
Ok you two guys, cut it out.
OMG- not you too!!!
OK here goes:-= Almost 2 1/2 years ago there was like this new invention from Apple called (let me remember)- oh yes, the iPhone!
And wouldn't you know this caused a lot of- switchers!!. Also in this period there was something released from Microsoft (what was it called?) - oh yes- VISTA!!!!
Both of these caused - what? ANs: A ton of SWITCHERS!!! Got it?
This cause more Mac - BUYERS!!! got it!! Glossy screened iMacs were the only new iMacs available in that period.
You don't need a degree in brain surgery to figure this out.
JEESH!
I don't think the iPhone argument works here. as soon as the new iMacs came out, sales went up by a good percentage. That was too coincidental.
I believe Intel has officially introduced i7 platform for notebooks recently, so there is no reason why iMacs wouldn't have any.
Well, no real reason at least
You mean any reason other than the fact that the mobile i7 tops out at 2.0GHz and costs $1000 while the desktop goes up to 3.33GHz and is priced firmly in 3 digit territory.
Nobody wants a better processor at a lower price do they?
If there is a Blu Ray drive, it will be dog slow. The current slot loader is only 2x for Blu Ray recording speed. The drives are also $999, so expect a nice big price increase on that iMac. You don't need an update to OS X for Blu Ray. Roxio has has Blu Ray recording support for years. The external drive offers 12x Blu Ray recording speed at half the price. So for all of you begging Apple to offer a Blu Ray drive in an iMac, get ready for performance disappointment. Just buy the external drive and stop whining about it already. Next, you will complain about the high price for blank Blu Ray media.
Apologies - I have yet to read everyones replies to this article.
Therefore, if someone could please sum up the following, I'd be most grateful:
When is the exact date these new machines are going to be released, and what are their exact features?
Thanks in advance!!!
Give me a break. Apple doesn't release information about new models, nor do they announce product release dates for Macs. Of course new iMacs would be coming out, it is the near to the holiday season. Yes, they will probably be slightly faster than the models released last March, and they would probably have similar price points.
I was having a similar argument with my brother the other day. I was complaining about Apple's decision to pull the ExpressCard slot from their 15" MacBook Pro. He says that no one uses those slots. I said that music, video and design pros use the things and I'll be damned if there isn't a good number of them that would want to throw an eSATA card in there (especially the video guys).
You are so full of it. Less than 1% of customers used the ExpressCard slot. I have never used the PC card slot in my PowerBook G4. it is a worthless slot for 99% of the consumers. Music and Video pros use FireWire for their devices, not an ExpressCard slot. I bet you want the floppy disk back too.
Goddbye- you fugly racconed iMac. Begone with the black border once and for all. I've been waiting 3 years for this. Bring on a new mouse and cord to match. Hopefully the cheap black plasticy Dell back is history too. A blu-ray of course. It pays to wait. This has been a great year for me with Apple:
1.) iPhone 3Gs- video and speed
2.) 13" MacBook Pro- firewire.
3,) New iMac- blu-ray, new design. matte perhaps or at least less gloss?
Enough of your matte rant. You don't own any of the those products, but you sure like to bitch about them, and it is getting fucking old! You have never owned an iPhone, and you refuse to use a Mac with a glossy screen, so you are constantly talking out of your ass!
The glossy LCD screen finally brings back the clarity of the Trinitron monitors, which was an Apple staple of high quality (are you even old enough to remember the AppleColor RGB High Resolution Monitor? That was made of glass too). The matte LCD was always fuzzy, because that is the downside of a matte screen. The original Apple Cinema LCD Displays were higher quality than the ones used in the iMacs, but they were still fuzzy. Put the glossy LCD next to a matte LCD and you can clearly see the difference in clarity. Colors are much more vivid without the washed-out look on matte. The Matte screen sucks ass compared to the glossy. That is why the PC world transitioned much sooner than Apple did.
So you are just kidding yourself if you think matte is a better display. The Aluminum iMacs are way better looking and more solid than the white plastic iMac G5/Early Intels.
But I am sure you will complain about the new models, like you always do.
Matte's biggest pro is that it lets you see the display clearly in nearly all situations and conditions, as opposed to the people and things surrounding you. That's of more use to me than having somewhat deeper blacks and a prettier case.
I really, really, really hope the dual core thing will be only for the base 20" model at most... if Apple doesn't come with a decent quad-core processor inside (Core i5 or the mobile Core i7) than this is just plain sad. Every bigger and smaller company is introducing a quad-core notebooks and Apple having the brand new multi-processor optimised Snow Leopard OS and then a sad old slow dual core processor in a revamped iMac body... please don't... please please dont!
Agreed 100% on point!
You're kidding right?
They put computers and TVs on everything these days, they're even on fridges.
Why put a computer in a kitchen:
- music jukebox
- a replacement for TV or movies
- for searching up recipes or storing recipes
- for displaying daily weather and news
- to control lighting/HVAC/window blinds
... and the list goes on...
A purely U.S. thing. No one in Europe does this in the kitchen. No one at least I know personally, I have read or heard about.
So, no, he is not kidding. For the rest of us it is something really unusual.
Well then we'll have to assume that PC buyers also find the available desktop offerings "pretty weak", because laptop sales have overtaken desktop sales in that market as well, a trend that appears to be accelerating.
I must admit, I haven't check the exact figures for the most recent Quarterly results, but, about a year ago, then the Global Market was 50:50 Laptop : Desktop, Apple was about 60:40 Laptop : Desktop
- I would argue that this meant that if Apples Desktops were as appealing as their Laptops, then they would be able to sell 50% more desktops.
So I think this bears out my personal feeling that the Apple Desktop range is not as strong, or appealling as its Laptop range.
But there are lots of good reasons why Apple would concentrate on Laptops, and non-user-configurable Desktops - e.g. there are propably a lot fewer support calls for products where the user is not expected to open up the machine and add an unsupported GPU of some sort....
The new mobile i7, Clarksfield, would work great in the iMac. But there are only three of them, they're expensive processors, and no integrated graphics work with them. That would really limit Apple's flexibility to offer different models, especially a cheap model.
A cheap model will presumably still use the old 9400M + Core 2 Duo setup.
All the Clarkfield models (if this processor is used) will use a discrete graphics chip (NVIDIA or ATI, ATI has some nice GPUs but do they have Apple OpenCL drivers yet?) attached to the CPU via PCIe, and an Intel chipset (P55) for I/O. Memory controller is on the CPU as well.
This is perfectly acceptable for a late-2009 iMac.
And personally, I'm not buying a 24" Core 2 Duo iMac with Nehalem based CPUs on the market.
One thing that really needs to happen is the death of the integrated graphics with shared memory. That is a piece of shit technology that refuses to go away.
AMD's integrated chipsets support their own local memory bus. But they're only available for AMD's processors.
They do this not for performance, but for power savings - the framebuffer is stored on the sideport memory and thus the CPU can go to sleep entirely whilst the graphics keeps on displaying. With Intel-style shared memory framebuffers and on-CPU northbridges (as with Nehalem, Clarksfield, etc), the CPU (or a portion thereof) is kept awake by the framebuffer accesses.