Yields of 27-Inch iMac Displays Expected to Improve Next Month

Fusion drive works by storing everything on the SSD first. Once the SSD fills up (almost) it starts to move files to the platter drive that are used less often. This makes the Fusion drive faster than Intel's Smart Response Technology.

Intel SRT works by first storing files on the HD, then moving common files to the SSD (cached) drive.

DrumApple said:

How so? It's not like they are each handmade individually? Care to back up your dumb remark?

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Watch the keynote, for starters. And then make me a late-2012 iMac please.

D.T. said:

Hopefully with the supply of 27" displays improving, we'll soon see a 27" Thunderbolt monitor with this new display tech (and physical design), coupled with USB 3.0 ports.

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new iMac owners... Is there a noticeable improvement in this new "closer to the glass" screen vs the old iMacs and thunderbolts?

bedifferent said:

It's all good, we're all here to learn and to help others. I just take issue when some people, not meaning you, rudely slam others when we all make mistakes (I certainly have). We all started somewhere, I try to keep that in mind while commenting in order to help, not hurt, others.

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Wow, your name "bedifferent" certainly captures your refreshing approach to forum participation! Thank you for teaching me something today, and for doing it so graciously after I contradicted you without any evidence.

Ed A. said:

It's my experience that for video editing, a Fusion Drive will most definitely cause the problems I mentioned. I know the conventional 3TB HDD doesn't have those problems because I tested a Carbon Copy Cloner backup I made on a conventional 3TB Lacie Thunderbolt HDD, and it worked perfectly.

See also:

http://www.zdnet.com/mac-fusion-drive-pro-users-beware-7000006661/

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If you read the comments to the zdnet story, you can see that there is some disagreement that the author knows what he's talking about. Having read the Fusion drive analysis at arstechnica, I tend to agree that he is somewhat mistaken.

One of the often-seen misconceptions about the Fusion drive is that it works on a file level, moving whole files back and forth between the drives. Arstechnica found this not to be true. Fusion drive works at the block level: blocks are blocks. It has no idea how large your files are, only that you are reading/writing a lot of blocks and it needs to deal with them. Blocks that are used more often should stay on the SSD and the rest migrate to the big slow drive. This may mean that some files are split across drives, in many different chunks even.

You didn't do something silly like disassociate the two drives and put a filesystem on each, did you? If you did, I could definitely see the SSD filling up and the files not migrating to the hard drive. That's what would naturally happen. A Fusion drive has one filesystem spanning both drives and in order for the OS to think that the Fusion drive was full, CoreStorage would have to be reporting that almost all of the blocks on the sum of both drives is full.

I don't mean to discount your report of having trouble with your Fusion drive, but it seems like a very basic problem that would have turned up during testing. Has anyone else here actually had similar problems with their Fusion drive and large files?

Shipments have picked up in the last week or so noticeably.

mbh said:

You didn't do something silly like disassociate the two drives and put a filesystem on each, did you? If you did, I could definitely see the SSD filling up and the files not migrating to the hard drive. That's what would naturally happen. A Fusion drive has one filesystem spanning both drives and in order for the OS to think that the Fusion drive was full, CoreStorage would have to be reporting that almost all of the blocks on the sum of both drives is full.

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No, but I was considering disassociating the two drives as an option. I'd primarily use the large HDD then, but I realized it would be an unstable hack, so I ordered another iMac with a 3TB HDD instead.

EPP Discount

I spoke with an Apple rep. It sounds like EPP discounts won't kick in until imacs are no longer backordered. Which hopefully is within the next month, because I really want to get one with the discount.

It's probably going to be a $50-$100 discount on the base and a bit more on each upgrade. I ran a rMBP configured how I'd normally upgrade and it was a little under $300 cheaper. But rMBP say "In Stock" vs "Shipping in 3-4 weeks" for the 27" iMac. So now I gotta decide is $300 worth the wait, considering I don't know how long it will take lead times to decrease to "In stock".

iChrist said:

new iMac owners... Is there a noticeable improvement in this new "closer to the glass" screen vs the old iMacs and thunderbolts?

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Yes the new iMac has both improved clarity and a significant decrease in glare. Very significant improvement over the mid 2010 iMac. I am very impressed with the overall quality. The 1 TB fusion drive/3.4 GHZ processor makes the new iMac quite fast.

patience and maturity

DrumApple said:

This is 2013, you'd think they would have figured out these amateur manufacturing supply/demand issues by now...

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I've never understood the back-seat driver mentality from those who think that cutting edge design and technology is popped out like a burger at the Wendy's drive-up window. Seriously, be patient and respectful of Apple's intentions. Personally, I've never been disappointed with waiting a bit for the best. There WAS a time, I assure you, when getting it 'right now' wasn't even an option.

musser said:

I've never understood the back-seat driver mentality from those who think that cutting edge design and technology is popped out like a burger at the Wendy's drive-up window. Seriously, be patient and respectful of Apple's intentions. Personally, I've never been disappointed with waiting a bit for the best. There WAS a time, I assure you, when getting it 'right now' wasn't even an option.

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Damn you are whipped. And easily fooled by marketing on what is cutting edge.

DrumApple said:

Damn you are whipped. And easily fooled by marketing on what is cutting edge.

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God bless you.

Ed A. said:

No, but I was considering disassociating the two drives as an option. I'd primarily use the large HDD then, but I realized it would be an unstable hack, so I ordered another iMac with a 3TB HDD instead.

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Do you remember if the "disk full" error message was from the Application or the OS? One way I could see this happening is if an application was using some non-standard (and not Fusion compatible) method of determining free disk space, only seeing the SSD, and getting all confused.

iChrist said:

new iMac owners... Is there a noticeable improvement in this new "closer to the glass" screen vs the old iMacs and thunderbolts?

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I looked at a 27" iMac pretty closely at an Apple Store (nephew was getting a Mini Smart Cover ) and it looks pretty stunning. I don't know about the color/calibration, but there was without question less glare, and it was almost like the output was printed on the surface. I could almost read it standing next to it

Ed A. said:

No, but I was considering disassociating the two drives as an option. I'd primarily use the large HDD then, but I realized it would be an unstable hack, so I ordered another iMac with a 3TB HDD instead.

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Guess it's too late now, but seems like that would have been a better option. You'd still have a computer. I don't see splitting the drives as an unstable hack. You'd have to completely erase everything on your Mac to do it. You'd end up with two distinct drives. Why not just install everything on the main spinning disk? You'd only have about 128GB less space than your Fusion Drive.

It's pretty easy to create a Fusion Drive. I did it on a 2008 15" MacBook Pro - it's got a 128GB SSD in the optical bay and a 1TB regular hard drive. Used commonly available instructions to create the volume then install ML. It works fine, although I haven't really pushed it like you have.

Anyway, I'm not trying to make you regret your decision or anything, just wanted to discuss the logistics of it as an exercise of technical discussion and possibly help someone in the future if it becomes an issue, and to be able to understand the Fusion Drive.

Isengardtom said:

and trying out the new trackpad and USB superdrive

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Brilliant, they can now sell us yet another accessory!

coolspot18 said:

Brilliant, they can now sell us yet another accessory!

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I kind of don't get the people that don't want to move forward with technology. It feels like if you had your way, you would still want a floppy drive and complain that the macbook pro retina as thin as it is doesnt' contain one.

CDs and DVDs died, for most of us anyway a long time ago. Why carry a read-only slow CD/DVD when you can have a USB thumb drive that can be reused. Why have DVD movies when you can stream 90% of them from netflix at even better quality.

Guess i'll never understand. But for me, I enjoy my light, sleek, insanely fast retina without a floppy drive, 3.5" drive, CDROM or a CRT built into it.

DrumApple said:

Damn you are whipped. And easily fooled by marketing on what is cutting edge.

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Damn you know nothing about manufacturing. And easily noticeable by your comments.

Don't ask me how... My wife walked into Apple in Irvine CA, Two days before Xmas and walked out with my new 27"

3.4 i7
8GB
1TB Fusion
GTX 680MX 2GB

about pooped myself when I saw it under the tree

<3

Spacedust said:

I would never buy glossy screen. Only matte. That's why I'm still on ACD 23"

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That's too bad. The 27" is BEAUTIFUL!!!!

coolspot18 said:

Brilliant, they can now sell us yet another accessory!

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Isn't that why you bought an all-in-one, so that you can have lots of cables and external accessories?

InfoTime said:

Guess it's too late now, but seems like that would have been a better option. You'd still have a computer. I don't see splitting the drives as an unstable hack. You'd have to completely erase everything on your Mac to do it. You'd end up with two distinct drives. Why not just install everything on the main spinning disk? You'd only have about 128GB less space than your Fusion Drive.

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I still have another recent Mac also, so I can wait a while for another iMac if I need to.
I was intending to install everything on the main spinning disk, but I read that once a Fusion Drive is split, you can't use Disk Utility to configure either drive. Plus I didn't like the idea that I would of had to go into Terminal and use "hack" commands to accomplish it.

The Dell U2711 hit $649 last week and Monoprice just announced their own 27" IPS display for $390. The standard version of this panel is not really that hard to come by or expensive anymore. All for the sake of thinness I guess.

Having no iMacs available to puchase in Sep, Oct, and Nov. Then, they go for the "WOW thats thin" factor at the HUGE expense of availability in Dec, Jan, and probably February, it just ignorant beyond description. Then, when you buy it, you find out its not really as thin as the deceptive pictures leads you to believe.

Other then wanting to look cool, there is little advantage to a 2012 iMac. Well, i Guess there is USB 3.0 ( about 18mo late).

These ladt 6 months have been laughable for the iMac team!

AidenShaw said:

Isn't that why you bought an all-in-one, so that you can have lots of cables and external accessories?

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In some cases it makes for more clutter, even if routing a bunch of cables can be annoying.

Eidorian said:

The Dell U2711 hit $649 last week and Monoprice just announced their own 27" IPS display for $390. The standard version of this panel is not really that hard to come by or expensive anymore. All for the sake of thinness I guess.

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Much of it comes down to implementation. Some companies make better use of these panels than others, but I suspect new panel designs will be available soon. Usually we'll a new major generation every 2-3 years from the display oems. I find the loss of VESA mounting capability to be kind of irritating. Adjustable height is one of the nice things you typically gain with desktop displays. Now it's not even an add-on option.