Price of 1TB Fusion Drive

Greed.

Can't upgrade the memory either unless you get a 27" model. And only then do you get a 7200RPM hard drive.

The only reason there is no 7200 RPM drive in the 21.5 inch is so Apple can save money and charge you more. There are 2.5 inch 7200 RPM hard drives in plentiful supply, but the 5400 RPM's are cheaper.

And the only reason you can't upgrade the memory on those new 21.5's is because Apple wants more of your money. How DARE you circumvent their highway robbery-esque memory module upgrade prices all these years!! How DARE you pay HALF for a bump from 4 GB to 8GB by buying memory modules from a 3rd party!!! We'll fix that: solder it to the board. Charge highway robbery-esque prices for a bump from 4 to 8GB of dirt-cheap DDR3 RAM. Profit.

After digesting the maketing hype, I don't get the logic for the 1T fusion drive at a price of $250

$250 for 1T fusion drive for mac mini
$300 for 256 SD drive for mac mini

I don't think anybody would argue that a single SDD is better than SSD+HD. In the end your HD is spinning generating heat, fans etc...

Isn't it more interesting to get a single 512 GB SSD for $400 (or 256 GB for 200USD) and put the default 1TB HD into an external usb 3.0 enclosure

I'd love to know why people are storing beyond 500GB of data on their local drive.

The fusion drive gives you simplicity and nothing external on your desk. But I think you are right that the vast majority of folks could fit anything they consistently use on 256 and put the rest on an external drive that rarely gets accessed.

But personally, I'm not worried about the fan noise of these drives since I don't hear my current 2011 iMacs drive. I'd go for the seamless solution that keeps it all internal and provides me plenty of storage.

I wonder how fusion would work with bootcamp though? Could you designate some SSD space for both OSes? Then 126 is probably going to be very tight.

Has Apple said how much the Fusion drive will cost?

I haven't seen it anywhere also when will we know when we can preorder?

You can see it as an add on when configuring the iMac

*edit

They said it was about an extra $250 on the Cult of Mac Cultcast. not sure where they got that from though?

*double edit

it was priced on the Mac mini

bobright said:

I haven't seen it anywhere also when will we know when we can preorder?

Click to expand...

It hasn't been stated yet, but for the Mac mini that option is $250, so that may be the cost for iMacs.

on the Mini to go from a 1TB SATA to a 1TB Fusion is a jump of $250. I would assume it will be the same for iMac?

http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MD388LL/A?

If i had to guess, $250 for the 1TB Fusion, $350 for the 3TB.

That will be.....

A good estimate (the mac Mini price). I dont see how Apple can buy these components from sources charging a lot more beetwen. Having said the latter, maybe Apple can factor down or up depending in assembly costs specific to iMac models....

What if we want simply SSD (in smaller capacity) instead of hybrid or HDD is there a charge for that?

bobright said:

What if we want simply SSD (in smaller capacity) instead of hybrid or HDD is there a charge for that?

Click to expand...

Yes you'll have SSD options in the 27" up to 768GB

nuckinfutz said:

Yes you'll have SSD options in the 27" up to 768GB

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Right but there's a charge for that it isn't a choice in the base model for instance 1tb HDD or 500gb SSD?

bobright said:

Right but there's a charge for that it isn't a choice in the base model for instance 1tb HDD or 500gb SSD?

Click to expand...

Yeah until the Macs are ready for sale we may not know the configuration options.

I was thinking about the 3TB Fusion Drive but then it dawned on me that the 1TB should be fine and I'm gonna need external storage anyways for video and audio files.

mr.thing said:

Nothing "ace" to me. They are just using the functionality of intel chipset that was available since z68 chipset was introduced. Intel SRT. What is interesting is how did they bypassed the 64gb limmitation of that technology. Could be a custom chipset.

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This isn't SRT, though. SRT is a form of SSD caching, where the most-used data from the HDD is copied to the SSD. On Fusion Drive however, most-used data is moved to the SSD, so you get full capacity. This is more RAID stripe -like behavior, with the OS (or some chipset) figuring out what to keep on the SSD.

TrboMac said:

It hasn't been stated yet, but for the Mac mini that option is $250, so that may be the cost for iMacs.

Click to expand...

I hope it will be a bit less for the iMac, given that the Mac Mini's standard drive has 5,200 rpm versus the iMac's 7,200. But I don't have experience with Apple's pricing in those matters, it's wishful thinking really.

CoreyLahey said:

I hope it will be a bit less for the iMac, given that the Mac Mini's standard drive has 5,200 rpm versus the iMac's 7,200. But I don't have experience with Apple's pricing in those matters, it's wishful thinking really.

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199 would be nice but I doubt it

I wonder what apple is waiting for, let us know the damn price points and when we can preorder??!?

bobright said:

199 would be nice but I doubt it

I wonder what apple is waiting for, let us know the damn price points and when we can preorder??!?

Click to expand...

I hope preorder starts at the same time for 21 and 27, even if the latter will ship in December. But it seems like Apple isn't the only company that has announced products that are still unavailable, all those other new AIOs can't be bought either, and I also wanted to take a look at the Chromebook, which is nowhere to be had.

I expect $250, same as Mac Mini. There is no 7200 rpm drive option for the 21" and nowhere does it state that Fusion drive is always 7200 rpm. I expect Fusion on 21" is just 128GB flash added w software to make Fusion magic happen, same as for 27".

mr.thing said:

Nothing "ace" to me. They are just using the functionality of intel chipset that was available since z68 chipset was introduced. Intel SRT. What is interesting is how did they bypassed the 64gb limmitation of that technology. Could be a custom chipset.

Click to expand...

No they are not, they are using this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_storage_management

The cost is a bit on a higher side, that is true, but given that Apple is the only company offering such tech to the consumer you can't say that its too expensive, as there is simply nothing to compare it to (its very different from a hybrid drive with a small SSD cache). Basically you get write speeds of a fast SSD but a storage capability of a HDD. The read speeds will also be those of SSD for data where the speed matters matters.

Is it overpriced? It sure is. Is it expensive? Not really - an SSD of that size would only offer very slight real-life performance benefits but would me much more expensive.

Edit: a new wikipedia link - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_Tiered_Storage

To make the iMac as a great machine with least bottleneck, one would need:

High end 27" iMac .. $2000.
CPU upgrade to i7 ... $200.
GPU upgrade to 680MX .. Unknown, but I assume it would cost around $200.
1TB Fusion drive .. extra $300.
Total cost: $2700, roughly.

Luckily you can upgrade the RAM yourself for much cheaper alternative.

Clearly, to get a decent and workable machine, for gaming, editing, rendering, $2000 is not enough.

Like I said, it's a half baked machine and way putting the sweet candies just a little bit beyond your reach.
So the cruel fact is, if one going to get a high end 27" .. "might as well" pick those upgrades.

iSayuSay said:

To make the iMac as a great machine with least bottleneck, one would need:

High end 27" iMac .. $2000.
CPU upgrade to i7 ... $200.
GPU upgrade to 680MX .. Unknown, but I assume it would cost around $200.
1TB Fusion drive .. extra $300.
Total cost: $2700, roughly.

Luckily you can upgrade the RAM yourself for much cheaper alternative.

Clearly, to get a decent and workable machine, for gaming, editing, rendering, $2000 is not enough.

Like I said, it's a half baked machine and way putting the sweet candies just a little bit beyond your reach.
So the cruel fact is, if one going to get a high end 27" .. "might as well" pick those upgrades.

Click to expand...

Since when was the fusion drive 300$?

bobright said:

Since when was the fusion drive 300$?

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Okay, it's not $300. Upgrade 1TB 5400rpm drive to 1TB fusion drive on Mac Mini costs $250 ... my bad. Yes you can expect the same pricing scheme for iMac from other refreshed Mac, i.e Mac Mini and 13" cMBP.

But let's assume you also get external SuperDrive for iMac, it's $60 .. boom .. another purchase for something which has already been included and built-in on previous-gens iMac.

Fact is, now $2000 gets you nothing but basic iMac with a lot of things to expand and leaves you wanting this and that. GPU, CPU, RAM, FusionDrive, Superdrive, FW adapter. Half baked machine.

Can anyone confirm that the 27" will actually be able to be configured with JUST an SSD, lower than 768gb?

I kind of got the impression that the drive options would be

1TB Drive - Standard
1TB Fusion - $250
3TB Fusion - $350?
768GB SSD - $eleventybillion

with no option for a 256/512gb SSD only?


I am interested in how this Fusion drive performs, it is indeed an interesting concept. I do feel though that it should have been standard with 1TB fusion.

Think about it, next year the classic Macbook Pro's will surely dissapear leaving the iMac the only shipping Apple computer with zero SSD storage as standard. (Mac Pro not included).

I wonder if next year they will drop the classic macbook pro's and also make 1TB fusion drives standard.

EDIT: Just realised the Macmini also doesn't have any SSD storage as standard. The high end should have a 1TB Fusion drive I reckon, along with every iMac model.

LachlanH said:

Think about it, next year the classic Macbook Pro's will surely dissapear leaving the iMac the only shipping Apple computer with zero SSD storage as standard. (Mac Pro not included).

I wonder if next year they will drop the classic macbook pro's and also make 1TB fusion drives standard.

EDIT: Just realised the Macmini also doesn't have any SSD storage as standard. The high end should have a 1TB Fusion drive I reckon, along with every iMac model.

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And that is the irony - if this is true (that next year classic mb pro will be abandoned) then only desktop class computers will be sold without ssd as standard)) funny, desktop used to be higher performance than portables, but in apples "think different" world, everything is possible