Retina iMac

Osullivan1 said:

When do you guys think we'll see an iMac with Retina Display -- and how much will it cost?

I want to upgrade my late 2009 iMac, but refuse to upgrade until there is a Retina Display on it. Do you guys think it will be sold alongside the non-retina iMac as a more expensive model, or do you think it will just outright replace the older generation. Plus, how much do you guys reckon it would cost?

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This has been discussed in several threads over the past few weeks. Don't expect a 4K display iMac to be this year and likely not next year. Also, technically the 27" iMac is near Retina already. An iMac with 2816x1584 would be a Retina iMac.

Osullivan1 said:

With Mavericks including 4K sized wallpapers suitable for a retina iMac, I guess it could be as early as late this year, but more likely sometime next year. Really hope it's sometimes soon as my current iMac is starting to slow and crash on me :/

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I would say the 4K wallpapers are for the expensive displays that people will be using with the Mac Pro.

Why Retina this year, No Content not many apps at the moment are optimised for Macbook retina display. No Desktop Wallpaper from the sites i subscribe to CGWallpapers and Gamewallpapers or from free wallpaper sites, plus the higher cost seemingly makes a retina display a lemon, therefore I can live without it until Apple is ready to announce it.

I also do not understand the issue, the 27 inch Imac I have has the best screen I have ever seen on a computer.

It is also fast, silent and I could not imagine the extra 2k it would cost for the "retina" on top of the price of the machine - 4-5K is my guess - and that is too much for a machine that cannot be upgraded easily and will be replaced in 3-4 years.

Tom

yet another guy with the magnifying glass to look for those pixels from a very short distance.. at the desktop screen..
that brainless retina-everywhere-mania truly frustrates me.

mrmarts said:

Why Retina this year, No Content not many apps at the moment are optimised for Macbook retina display. No Desktop Wallpaper from the sites i subscribe to CGWallpapers and Gamewallpapers or from free wallpaper sites, plus the higher cost seemingly makes a retina display a lemon, therefore I can live without it until Apple is ready to announce it.

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Agreed. Programs not built with retina in mind will have some components of their GUI smaller than other things. People are already complaining about specific issues with different programs. Until there is a solution to fix things across the board I would consider it a step backwards: Apple has always been "it just works".

It is a moot point for the near future though. They can not make large retina screens economically enough. They would need to raise the price points.

I suspect when we do first see retina (no pun intended) it will be a BTO option. That way the base price is unaffected and those that want to pay for it can. I have no idea what the price would be ... predicting costs of technologies a year or so in the future is a fool's game at best.

I would imagine you'd see a retina option on iMac sometime after they discontinue the non-retina MBP.

Osullivan1 said:

When do you guys think we'll see an iMac with Retina Display -- and how much will it cost?

I want to upgrade my late 2009 iMac, but refuse to upgrade until there is a Retina Display on it. Do you guys think it will be sold alongside the non-retina iMac as a more expensive model, or do you think it will just outright replace the older generation. Plus, how much do you guys reckon it would cost?

With Mavericks including 4K sized wallpapers suitable for a retina iMac, I guess it could be as early as late this year, but more likely sometime next year. Really hope it's sometimes soon as my current iMac is starting to slow and crash on me :/

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No, it almost certainly won't be this year and the problems facing the iMac going Retina are the same as ever they were:

1) Cost and availability of a suitable panel. A £3k iMac might be an option as a niche product but not if it's the starting price for the range

2) CPU and GPU power, especially for gaming use. Think about it for a moment, the best Retina-equipped Mac right now is the 15" rMBP and that has issues getting high end games (e.g. Crysis 2, BF3) to run at a Retina resolution. If the iMac was given a Retina panel at 4x the pixels you'd be looking at a resolution of 3,840 x 2,160 on the 21" model and 5,120 x 2,880 on the 27". Right now I can't think of a way you could get enough graphics grunt into an iMac chassis to get anything like acceptable performance. It's not just games of course but it's the easiest example to illustrate the problems.

That being said... I can see Apple introducing a Retina display this year but as a standalone model to supplement the current Thunderbolt display to compliment the new Mac Pro. From what we've heard that machine will have dual graphics cards as standard and Thunderbolt 2 should be able to support 4K video out. Plus Asus have already shown off a 31" 4k display, albeit with a somewhat painful $4k price point, and I can't see Apple being too happy about not having a horse in that particular race. I wouldn't expect it to be the only external they offer as it'd just be too expensive but there'd be a small market in high end pro kit for it and it'd be a good way of gaining experience with those panels for mass market in a few years.

Just make a retina but with HDPI, thats all.. and in applications top max 1440p

Osullivan1 said:

...
If not, how long do you think a mid-2009 iMac will last before it becomes either (too) slow or unsupported - I'd like to know how long I'll be able to last waiting for it!

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Too slow is subjective and it depends on the software you use and what the upgrades to the software you use do to performance. Also, if you start to work with larger images, that will affect performance.

If by unsupported, you mean no longer able to get OS upgrades, it could happen next year or it could be 2 or 3 years or more.

If you mean Apple being willing to repair your computer? Mid 2017 for California, and mid 2015 everywhere else if Apple continues to use the same vintage and obsolete definitions.

Osullivan1 said:

If not, how long do you think a mid-2009 iMac will last before it becomes either (too) slow or unsupported - I'd like to know how long I'll be able to last waiting for it!

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Not sure which iMac you have. There was no Mid 2009 iMac, there was an Early 2009 and Late 2009. http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1758

I have an Early 2009 iMac and a 2010 Mac Pro. Because I have SSD's in my Mac Pro it makes the iMac seem very slow, plus the C2D was a much slower chip than the Xeon. I can't stand how slow it is now so I'm replacing mine when the Haswel iMac's ship.

Plus I think it will only be supported until the end of Mavricks life because I was told that almost every Mac from before 2008 is unsupported by Mavricks. I wasn't even expecting the Early 2009 iMac to be supported under Mavricks so I was pleasantly surprised when I found that it was.

Osullivan1 said:

With Mavericks including 4K sized wallpapers suitable for a retina iMac, I guess it could be as early as late this year, but more likely sometime next year. Really hope it's sometimes soon as my current iMac is starting to slow and crash on me :/

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The Developer Editions of OS X Lion shipped with wallpapers sized at 3200x2000 and yet it was another year before Apple shipped a Mac that could make use of it (the 15" MacBook Pro with Retina Display at 2880x1800).

kaellar said:

yet another guy with the magnifying glass to look for those pixels from a very short distance.. at the desktop screen..
that brainless retina-everywhere-mania truly frustrates me.

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Your viewing distance and visual acuity are not the same as everyone else's, so don't dismiss their experiences just because yours are different.

mm201 said:

Your viewing distance and visual acuity are not the same as everyone else's, so don't dismiss their experiences just because yours are different.

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Are you sitting ten inches from the desktop screen, or what? What distance range do you think we have here? There's absolutely no way anybody will sit closer than 20-25 inches before their iMac for the long time, and from that distance it's next to impossible to say if it's retina or not.

2560x1440 resolution at 27" viewed from a normal viewing distance of at least 2.5' gives current iMacs and Thunderbolt Displays a retina display. The big problem is the fact that there isn't that much content for these devices. Everything tops off at 1080p and there isn't much steaming at 2k resolution.

Bottom line, we won't see 4k displays for a few more years.

kaellar said:

Are you sitting ten inches from the desktop screen, or what? What distance range do you think we have here? There's absolutely no way anybody will sit closer than 20-25 inches before their iMac for the long time, and from that distance it's next to impossible to say if it's retina or not.

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I am not sure I agree with that. I don't have brilliant eyesight but I probably do sit closer than that and I can see pixels.

That said, it's really not an issue. If the screen resolution was increased, the improvement would be so marginal I really could not be bothered. And if it cost significant extra - which it would - I would not want to pay it for such marginal improvement. Not to mention the huge processing overhead of driving all these pixels that you can barely see anyway.

The bottom line for me is that Retina on an iMac only makes sense when 27" 4k screens are so cheap and the graphics power so huge, that it makes no sense to leave it out. Until then, it is a very expensive waste of time.

That said, who knows whether Apple will get caught up in a pixels race - a bit like the digital camera industry - and feel obliged to offer it anyway, even if it does make no sense right now.

I would prefer a HDMI port and a bump of graphics, than a retina display atm.

mrmarts said:

I would prefer a HDMI port and a bump of graphics, than a retina display atm.

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The person who delivers a simple, lag-free method to get HDMI In on a Thunderbolt iMac will receive a chunk of my money very quickly.

SoAnyway said:

The big problem is the fact that there isn't that much content for these devices. Everything tops off at 1080p and there isn't much steaming at 2k resolution.

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There is lots of content for these devices. Photos for example.

Moonjumper said:

There is lots of content for these devices. Photos for example.

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I meant streaming video.

SoAnyway said:

I meant streaming video.

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If you are only using your computer for streaming video, then a retina display will not be of benefit. But many computers are used for much more, so your reasoning of lack of content meaning higher resolution screens are not needed does not apply to a large part of the user base.

I will take as much resolution as I can get, especially for software such as Illustrator and Photoshop.

I'm in exactly the same position as the OP. And as him, I'm not interested in upgrading before a significant increase in resolution is available. (I work with photos, and am nearsighted.)

I don't see it happening until we have reasonably priced panels in Apple volumes. Furthermore, increased graphics performance allowed by 20nm GPU process would be preferable. So - mid 2014 for the GPU at the earliest, and possibly 2015 for the panels. My iMac hums along nicely, so waiting is not a problem.

DELTAsnake said:

Plus I think it will only be supported until the end of Mavricks life because I was told that almost every Mac from before 2008 is unsupported by Mavricks. I wasn't even expecting the Early 2009 iMac to be supported under Mavricks so I was pleasantly surprised when I found that it was.

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Almost, but not all. If your machine can run ML, it'll run Mavericks. I would expect a 2009 iMac to run the follow on to Mavericks as well (but that's just my own gut-feeling).

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13...ion-likely-compatible-with-os-x-109-mavericks