I think the only way a touchscreen monitor can work comfortably is like the pic that Renzatic posted. It would like a book laying on a table with the top slightly elevated, like using an ipad with the smart cover.
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Early iMac Reviews Praise Design and Display Enhancements
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I think the only way a touchscreen monitor can work comfortably is like the pic that Renzatic posted. It would like a book laying on a table with the top slightly elevated, like using an ipad with the smart cover.
Ah yes the warrany thing. So EU VAT and EU warrany laws explain pretty much the entire difference in price?
Most will choose to ignore that.
Hey, ain't no one gonna complain about a little junk in the trunk.
:runs of singing Sir Mixalot:
Everything in Europe is priced with VAT. But I am really curious what those European Union taxes are. What shape or form do they have? On what are they levied? And at what rate?
Actually, youd be surprised how few of us CG-artists are actually using Wacom Cintiq devices as shown in your photograph. Many like the idea of using a Cintiq/Touch screen, its true, but they rarely live up to artists' expectations. Problems most commonly experienced are:
Cursor lag (onscreen feedback is unable to keep up with quick gestural strokes).
Cursor misalignment (the onscreen cursor is not precisely aligned beneath the tip of the stylus, especially in the corners of the tablet).
Heat radiated by the display makes long drawing sessions uncomfortable.
Poor display quality. Narrow colour gamut, inability to be properly colour calibrated, etc.
No driver support under Linux.
Uncomfortable surface grip. Painting on a display front made of glass (or some other highly smooth surface), with a plastic tipped stylus is slippery and not particularly pleasant.
Uncomfortable to use in combination with a keyboard that offers hotkeys, marking menus, pie-menus, hotboxes, etc. Using one with a 3D application, while certainly possible, is often experienced as awkward and limiting. The Cintiqs have a few controls on the side that the user can program to function as hotkeys. And that works kind of. I cant see Apple designing a Touchscreen/Stylus Mac with controls like that on the side.
Now these problems may eventually be eradicated by better hardware and designs but there are other problems that are harder, maybe impossible to solve, like:
Ergonomics. Its hardly the best posture to maintain for 9-10 hours a day.
Dirt/grease on the screen. Youd be surprised how often Ive mistaken a grease smear on my display for a very light grey brush stroke on a white canvas in Photoshop.
A touch screen would have to have a coating with low porosity to make sure it cleans properly. Matte coatings are problematic here. So this poses a problem with reflections of ceiling mounted lighting on that glossy surface, which after all needs to be orientated more or less horizontally to avoid further fatigue. Working on dark/black canvasses in such a situation would be horrendous. Forget about drawing anything subtle in shadows and expect it to come out correctly.
Hands are in the way of the artwork. And this is a big one. Lots of artists dont want to go back to having their own hands obscure the piece as they are working. Having a regular Wacom tablet in front of a normal display is actually favored by most, myself included. One hand on the tablet, holding the stylus, the other on the keyboard controlling hotkeys.
There are exceptions of course. Search and you will find artists that love their Cintiqs and would never go back to more, shall we say, conservative input devices.
But they are in the vast minority, despite Cintiqs having already been out there for quite a few years.Im not saying things wont ever change, just telling you what the current lay of the land is as I far as I can see.
I'd still prefer to have a slightly bigger machine with desktop-level graphics instead of a mobile GPU.
The GPU has the same amount of cores as the full blown card, just lower clocks, helps with the heat issue.
New iMac looks cool. I really wish you could order them the way you want though. The guts of the 27" (all spec'd out as high as possible) in the 21" iMac with another 21" display would work for me. I'll probably just go with the 27" spec'd out since you can't do it on the 21" and it can't add more RAM either. I can't see having two 27" monitors. It would be overwhelming! Still wonder what they will do as a tower replacement though in 2013.
I'd still prefer to have a slightly bigger machine with desktop-level graphics instead of a mobile GPU.
The top GPU in this iMac is the same level of performance as the best desktop GPU money could buy (in terms of gaming and from Nvidia) last year, the GTX 580. Honestly, not that much of a disparity.
We had the "Luxo Lamp" Imac, and now we have the "Pregnant Imac" with the big bulge. What was Cook thinking of when he approved this design?
"We" of course is figurative - I still have my dependable, expandable Dell Core i7 mini-tower working for me.
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Are you claiming that it's a good thing that the Pregnant Imac is only a year behind the curve?
Of course there won't be any numbers. I miss the days that Apple and other tech sites would run speed comparisons with the new and improved, and the machine that most users would most likely be coming from (i.e. the model that's 2-3 generations back. Not the previous model.
Although, an improvement of 15-20% from the previous model should give us a good feeling about how much faster it is over the 2010 or earlier models. As the owner of the previous model, this new one makes me a tad jealous, BUT I am grateful for my FW800 port and optical drive; both of which I use every single day including weekends.
I'd still prefer to have a slightly bigger machine with desktop-level graphics instead of a mobile GPU.
The 680M is actually comparable to the Radeon 7870. http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html
It will play most games on maximum settings.
I agree (and have posted almost a year ago in praise of Lenovo) that the future of desktops is machines that are flat to the table—and used that way all the time. Macs will be more iPad-like in the end. (Or iPads will go pro? One way or the other.) I also expect them to be very widescreen (3:1 even?) because reaching to the sides is easier than reaching ahead.
I disagree that touch makes sense on a device that is used at ALL frequently with mouse and keyboard: an all-in-one as we know it, and as PC box makers know it. The past and the future don’t mix well in that way. Keyboard and mouse should be niche add-ons (like a stylus), and that’s not where PC makers are.
So I question the ability of PC makers to challenge the iMac today using touch. I don’t question that everyone, in some years down the road, will be using touch. They will.
The ram is only user upgradable in the 27" model. I feel like every review of these new iMacs needs to make that explicitly clear.
It may not be an industry standard form factor, but the picture below of the 2012 21' logic board shows that the ram is removable. (The picture is low res, but it actually may be just 2 standard ddr3 sodimm slots!) Even the cpu is upgradeable!
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Does anyone have any idea how/if it will be serviceable, with the display laminated to the glass? I don't see how the current suction cup method will work, and can't think of any other way (not that I need to know how right now, I just want to).
This made me giggle. My little dog has sometimes stepped on my iPhone and called people...
I agree, the Cintiq is a fantastic device, the functions of which I wish Apple would embrace (for pro uses mostly - although it's amazing how "drawing on a computer" is one of the most expensive things you can do
). Though the reason the Cintiq works is because traditionally it's resistive, has an active stylus, the touch version has tons and tons of palm rejection (I know Apple have the software experience to solve this) and critically it has a sharpish edge that slides of off the desk so you can rest your entire forearms on the table. The point for most windows all-in-ones that flip down is that they still hover a bit (or a lot) off the table and they don't fold flat (or nearly flat) to it. They're screens that try to solve the problem by flipping down, but the Cintiq lives in that orientation. It's also worth noting that the 24 inch Cintiq touch is over $3,500 worth of technology.If PC manufacturers can solve that, then brilliant but then we still have the problem of the accidental palm / arm touches that screw up the user experience. I'm yet to be convinced.
It can, thank god. Apple charges $200 to go from 8 GB to 16 GB, when one can get 32 GB from Crucial for $160 with free shipping. Apple charges $600 for 32 GB. I love Apple, I love the new iMac, but that's ridiculous.
I think this is a great question. We need to see a teardown tut. Perhaps MAGBARN above knows, i.e. where did that pic he posted of the 21" come from? I just bought suction cups for my old iMac - ha!
Quick video of 21" tear down. There is no way I would want to attempt to replace the ram myself after watching this, but it is possible after breaking the glue ...
http://blog.macsales.com/15932-what-does-it-take-to-upgrade-a-2012-imac-21-5
The VAT isn't Apple's fault...
But I think even when taking that into account there is still some foreign market markup going on...
Even with a touchscreen, why do you beleive anyone would be using it in a way such as this? DO you really believe that people who have a third method of input will suddenly stop using the other two, and go all out on the touchscreen?
Touchscreen displays have their use, but replacing keyboard and mouse is not it. Adjunct.