mdriftmeyer

avon b7 said:

22july2013 said:

fastasleep said:

titantiger said:

fastasleep said:

titantiger said:

mike1 said:

titantiger said:

Put another way, the base Mac Mini is $699.  Pair it with a nice $300 LG 4k display (24") and an Apple keyboard and Mouse and you're only at about $1150.  Same M1 chip, same 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD.  But more ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and even the ability to swap out the screen as a bonus if you wanted to later.  Add a webcam for $100 and you're still $50 under this crippled iMac's price point.

You clearly aren't the customer for this, so please spend your money elsewhere.

But I am the customer for it.  I've owned three iMacs since 2002.  I'm not asking for something unreasonable, or even something that is in line with what Apple has offered in the past.  The entry level consumer iMac at $1299 has never involved these kinds of petty compromises.  It makes no sense in light of the specs for the Mac Mini for instance.

There's no need to get pissy about valid criticism.  These are artificial feature removals that are a step backward from what the entry level, non-education iMac has offered in the past.

Did you consider the fact that it’s an entirely new industrial design and larger screen and doesn’t use a 4200rpm hard drive or any number of other features that would make it more difficult to reach the same price point of the previous low end model with all the features of the higher specced models? It’s not uncommon for newer improved models to come out at higher prices to recoup development and component expenses and later drop as those things improve. It’s not a new thing. 

I did consider it.  The 2020 iMac 21.5 had 8GB of RAM, 256 SSD (not a spinning hard drive) and only a slightly smaller screen for $1099.  The new design is nice but not $200 nicer when you remove that many ports and can't even be bothered to include an ethernet jack on a desktop computer.  

Most people have zero use for an Ethernet jack.

When I set up my iMac in 2017 it was quicker to initially set it up with wireless to my router, and I've never bothered to use my Ethernet jack even though it's probably faster. Wireless is perfectly good even if I want to watch a movie on Apple TV+. I can't be bothered to connect my Ethernet cable to the jack behind my desk.

Wifi is only as good as the version you have and the antenna configuration residing in the devices.

Then you have to factor in walls/floors and other signal barriers and cross your fingers that interference isn't a problem. Then you have bandwidth issues to contend with.

Due to accumulation more than anything else, I have three networks running at home and over fifty devices hopping on and off the network.

It's a bit of a mess, truth be told but it works mostly reliably, and largely due to the fact that ethernet cables and an 8 port gigabit switch get my incoming fibre service into the routers and from there, into the air via WiFi.

My mesh system also makes use of PLC for the backhaul.

I also have old equipment that has ethernet but no WiFi.

Some people will get by with a purely wireless setup but there are solid reasons to actually use ethernet over WiFi when both are available. Especially when Wi-Fi starts playing up and things become more akin to voodoo.

If your ethernet ports are in good shape and your cables are good, ethernet can be rock solid.

And writing this I'm remembering networking over firewire back in the day. Wow! I'm much older than I thought. 

mknelson said:

Well, that's going to be an inventory 💩 show.

But the initial specs do look impressive!

22july2013 said:

1. How many existing programs (TV or movies) have already been recorded in 120 FPS so far? Couldn't be too many, since I could find only 3 doing a 3 minute web search.
2. Have Apple's programs for Apple TV+ been (secretly?) recorded in 120 FPS?
3. For countries with 100 Hz power limitations, would Apple TV be limited to 100 FPS there? (To match the TVs?)
4. I've heard of some computer games that can do 120 FPS, but that requires special video cards. If this rumour is true, that the chip in the Apple TV can render at 120 Hz, does that imply that Apple's next M chips will have the ability to render at 120 FPS?
5. I remember when Ted Turner wanted to colourize his back catalog of movies. He did some. It wasn't too will received. Will people want old non-120Hz shows to be 120-ized using similar technology? I would think that animated films could "remaster" their programs more easily than live action shows. Especially when the movie is generated from computer software. It wouldn't be too hard to get Pixar films re-rendered to 120 FPS.

sflocal said:

Anything coming out of the Western (or Eastern) district of Texas should be immediately suspected as fraudulent.  It's a patent-troll's paradise and the judge that got caught "shopping" his services to patent-trolls should be removed.