Price of 1TB Fusion Drive

[beerglass007]

Just looked on the mac mini BTO site and the option for a 1TB Fusion Drive is £200

I hope this isnt the same price for an iMac

If so you get a crappy 5400 RPM or pay £200 for something a little more useful

[Cockney Rebel]

Nice investigative work, buddy

I'd like to think that the iMac version was 7200, though ...

[beerglass007]

Only the 27" gets the 7200 HDD

The 21" gets 5400RPM as standard

[MoreAwesomeDanU]

the fact is, hundreds of millions who are going to buy the 21" won't have a clue or care about what 5400RPM even means.

[beerglass007]

Originally Posted by MoreAwesomeDanU

the fact is, hundreds of millions who are going to buy the 21" won't have a clue or care about what 5400RPM even means.

I do

[fruitpunch.ben]

Originally Posted by MoreAwesomeDanU

the fact is, hundreds of millions who are going to buy the 21" won't have a clue or care about what 5400RPM even means.

While I agree with your main point, you can't talk about hundreds of millions of people when speaking of iMac sales. Apple sells <5 million macs per quarter, and less than half are desktops, so we're talking <10 million sold until they next update the iMac line

[Dnix]

Originally Posted by MoreAwesomeDanU

the fact is, hundreds of millions who are going to buy the 21" won't have a clue or care about what 5400RPM even means.

That's at least 2/3 of the US population buying the 21" model, alone. Depending what is meant by "hundreds".

[boy-better-know]

£200 extra for a 128GB SSD with intelligent software that can tell which apps you use the most and assign them to the SSD along with a 1TB 7200rpm HDD?

Sounds ace to me.

[AnalyzeThis]

Originally Posted by boy-better-know

£200 extra for a 128GB SSD with intelligent software that can tell which apps you use the most and assign them to the SSD along with a 1TB 7200rpm HDD?

Sounds ace to me.

Wow! Intelligent drive! A miracle of engineering!
Hm, You can have your fusion drive by installing OSX on SSD and mounting HDD volume/partition under root "/Users" directory as mount point.
A miracle of engineering! Intelligent drive! Wow!

For real Apple??? Really eclipsing Apple history of innovation with this one... Be very, very proud/full of yourselves!

[Cory Bauer]

Fusion Drive should have been standard, without question. 128GB SSD costs $99 retail these days, and Apple raised the price of the iMacs by $99 while reducing their own costs (optical drive and shipping rates given the far lighter design). Plus, making Fusion Drives a BTO option means we'll have to go thru Apple to get it, requiring that we pay full retail price on the Mac plus tax.

Anyone think OWC will be able to offer the SSD portion of the Fusion Drive for after-market upgrading?

[kfscoll]

Originally Posted by AnalyzeThis

Wow! Intelligent drive! A miracle of engineering!
Hm, You can have your fusion drive by installing OSX on SSD and mounting HDD volume/partition under root "/Users" directory as mount point.
A miracle of engineering! Intelligent drive! Wow!

For real Apple??? Really eclipsing Apple history of innovation with this one... Be very, very proud/full of yourselves!

That's not even close to the same thing as what the Fusion drive is doing. The Fusion drive will dynamically move data to and from the SSD portion of the drive depending on use. In other words, applications could potentially be moved by the OS to the HDD if they're infrequently used, and data could be moved to the SSD if it's accessed frequently. In the scenario you describe (which is how my iMac is currently set up), user data always remains on the HDD, and apps always stay on the SSD, regardless of use case.

In other words, the Fusion drive dynamically optimizes disk storage based on individual use cases, whereas the configuration you describe doesn't.

[Cockney Rebel]

Originally Posted by Cory Bauer

Fusion Drive should have been standard, without question.

... agreed.

[TallManNY]

Fusion drive is worth the extra money. You may not like paying it, but adding ssd functionality for $300 and getting additional storage space is worth it for a computer you should expect to use for four years, at least.

So put it in the budget right now.

[MoreAwesomeDanU]

Originally Posted by TallManNY

Fusion drive is worth the extra money. You may not like paying it, but adding ssd functionality for $300 and getting additional storage space is worth it for a computer you should expect to use for four years, at least.

So put it in the budget right now.

A extra 128g SSD for $250? I can pick one up today for 80$ off amazon

[drambuie]

I think the speed difference between the new 21" and 27" iMac HDDs is because the 21" uses a 2.5" laptop drive, and the 27" uses a 3.5" desktop drive, hence its 7200 RPM speed, and up to 3TB availability.

[WordMasterRice]

Originally Posted by kfscoll

That's not even close to the same thing as what the Fusion drive is doing. The Fusion drive will dynamically move data to and from the SSD portion of the drive depending on use. In other words, applications could potentially be moved by the OS to the HDD if they're infrequently used, and data could be moved to the SSD if it's accessed frequently. In the scenario you describe (which is how my iMac is currently set up), user data always remains on the HDD, and apps always stay on the SSD, regardless of use case.

In other words, the Fusion drive dynamically optimizes disk storage based on individual use cases, whereas the configuration you describe doesn't.

You talk about it like hybrid hard drives haven't been around for years doing exactly that. Nothing about this hybrid drive is novel.

[bmunge]

Originally Posted by kfscoll

That's not even close to the same thing as what the Fusion drive is doing. The Fusion drive will dynamically move data to and from the SSD portion of the drive depending on use. In other words, applications could potentially be moved by the OS to the HDD if they're infrequently used, and data could be moved to the SSD if it's accessed frequently. In the scenario you describe (which is how my iMac is currently set up), user data always remains on the HDD, and apps always stay on the SSD, regardless of use case.

In other words, the Fusion drive dynamically optimizes disk storage based on individual use cases, whereas the configuration you describe doesn't.

The drive does none of that. Mountain Lion is managing that through software that will exist on your machine regardless of whether or not you have a fusion drive. Apple is just doing what they always do and that is milk every last buck out of hardware extras.

[TallManNY]

Originally Posted by MoreAwesomeDanU

A extra 128g SSD for $250? I can pick one up today for 80$ off amazon

Yes, so that is a lower price. The question is what do you do when you order your new iMac. Do you just shrug your shoulders and live without an SSD drive until your next computer? Do you buy the base model and then install that Amazon drive yourself or pay someone to do it? Or do you drop the extra $250? I know if I were buying right now I'd drop the 250. But guys with more tech skills might go the self install route. If a blue print from I fixit even suggests that is possible.

[nuckinfutz]

Originally Posted by WordMasterRice

You talk about it like hybrid hard drives haven't been around for years doing exactly that. Nothing about this hybrid drive is novel.

Seagates drive only offers a 4 or 8GB of SLC NAND and only recently started caching writes

Intel's SRT is capped at 64GB

We don't know enough about Apple's approach to know what is or isn't novel about it.

I like the idea of having 128GB of NAND and potentially more.

[jaw04005]

Originally Posted by WordMasterRice

You talk about it like hybrid hard drives haven't been around for years doing exactly that. Nothing about this hybrid drive is novel.

The price.

I'm more disappointed about the lack of 256GB SSD option though on the 27. It's an additional $1300 for the 768GB upgrade on the low-end MacBook Pro. They haven't released pricing yet on the iMac. However, a SSD-only setup is going to be expensive.

It's absolutely ridiculous to not offer the much cheaper 256GB as an option.

[cgdrennan]

I just want the 21.5" base with some kind of SSD capabilities! the fusion should come standard! I guess im one of the few that doesn't want to pay 1300 to have a slow laptop HDD. The real question is will it be user upgradable?? when do you think iFixit will get a chance to break it apart?

[george-brooks]

Originally Posted by MoreAwesomeDanU

the fact is, hundreds of millions who are going to buy the 21" won't have a clue or care about what 5400RPM even means.

while your estimate is off by some millions, I am pretty sure Apple is well aware of this and does it to increase their profit margins at the expense of the naïve consumer.

[lucasfunkt]

Originally Posted by boy-better-know

£200 extra for a 128GB SSD with intelligent software that can tell which apps you use the most and assign them to the SSD along with a 1TB 7200rpm HDD?

Sounds ace to me.

£200? Where did you get that figure from?

Sounds like a lot just for 128GB.

So when they say 1TB fusion drive on their website they actually mean 1.128TB don't they?

[mr.thing]

Originally Posted by boy-better-know

£200 extra for a 128GB SSD with intelligent software that can tell which apps you use the most and assign them to the SSD along with a 1TB 7200rpm HDD?

Sounds ace to me.

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.

[theSeb]

Originally Posted by boy-better-know

£200 extra for a 128GB SSD with intelligent software that can tell which apps you use the most and assign them to the SSD along with a 1TB 7200rpm HDD?

Sounds ace to me.

Does it? £150 gets you a nice and fast 256 GB ssd so I don't think this is a good deal, but paying more for options is the norm, not just for apple.