OK, just added mine. Ship date is 27th June, aww man!!! The delay has remained at a constant 4-6 weeks after nearly two weeks of being on sale, and it shows in the order shipping estimates on that spreadsheet. But I'm hoping they all ship at roughly the same time, and hopefully sooner than 4-6 weeks.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
2011 Thunderbolt iMac w/ SSD Shipment Tracker
- Thread starter mrfoof82
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
One thing I've noticed is with few exceptions, ship dates are post-WWDC. Interesting.
I'll be at WWDC this year (haven't been since 2009), so it'll be interesting to see what gets announced that might be relevant. The conversations regarding SSD caching (and talking to Siracusa recently) make me consider if that *would* be an implemented option for iMacs and Mac Pros.
For MBAs and MBPs, not having SSD caching makes sense. Space is at a premium, and typically they don't have massive disks anyways by being limited to 2.5" form factor disks.
For iMacs and Mac Pros... it's a useful stopgap until large SSDs both exist and the $/GB comes down to a mass-marketable level. Especially for simplicity's sake. Most people don't want to deal with partitioning their data (heck, even I don't), they just want things to be faster.
I'll hopefully re-up my order after WWDC. In the meantime, I'm making a lot of noise at work at having to shell out for a non-POS laptop for work.
I'll be at WWDC this year (haven't been since 2009), so it'll be interesting to see what gets announced that might be relevant. The conversations regarding SSD caching (and talking to Siracusa recently) make me consider if that *would* be an implemented option for iMacs and Mac Pros.
For MBAs and MBPs, not having SSD caching makes sense. Space is at a premium, and typically they don't have massive disks anyways by being limited to 2.5" form factor disks.
For iMacs and Mac Pros... it's a useful stopgap until large SSDs both exist and the $/GB comes down to a mass-marketable level. Especially for simplicity's sake. Most people don't want to deal with partitioning their data (heck, even I don't), they just want things to be faster.
I'll hopefully re-up my order after WWDC. In the meantime, I'm making a lot of noise at work at having to shell out for a non-POS laptop for work.
That's a great observation. Still, I've heard that SSD caching is kind of a stopgap measure itself, until SSD becomes cheaper. If you already have a 256 GB SSD (like the ones most of these people are waiting for), what's the point of SSD caching? Meaning, isn't the point of SSD caching is that you can do it with smaller (40/60 gb) SSDs, not the "large" 256gb models? Inquiring minds would like to know.
well, ssd caching wouldn't be as good as using the ssd, but it could be very useful for many users. you could set up a small part of the ssd for a cache and use the rest for OS X and maybe even Bootcamp with Windows 7. I could imagine this might be good for people who have more than 250 gb of games or people working with files which are too large to really fit on the ssd.
That's the whole point really. It gives a significant performance boost over the traditional 7200 rpm drive.
Of course SSD caching is a stopgap measure. The only way to get a 2TB SSD otherwise is to RAID0 four 512GB drives together, which is about $5,000-$6,000 and shoots the MTBF clear in the foot (and having nothing but enterprise customers, SSD lifetimes are much shorter than we'd like to see, and that includes even FusionIO).
However, for most users and most use cases, it's "good enough". I have a Momentus XT in this Mini, and in my Thunderbolt MBP15 -- boots, app launches? As fast as an SSD equipped laptop. It won't shine when running database queries and doing DW work since the test databases aren't in the 4GB cache, but that can be resolved with a larger cache (256GB instead of 4GB). The difference in boot times between running off a Momentus XT and an actual SSD is < 1 second. It approaches zero. Yes, the SSD is still technically faster, but barely. Same with level loading times on the Mini. And this is on a tiny 4GB cache!
Again, it'd probably be an option. For most users, caching is "good enough" -- way faster for everything they do. Only for the minority would users want to ensure that certain data is always on the SSD, and for them, caching can be turned off and people can manually partition their data (partitioning being something the average user doesn't want to bother with), creating symbolic links, etc.
Still, ship dates are basically post-WWDC (6th through 10th), which is interesting.
Last edited:
SSD caching is unlikely to be a short term technology. An all-SSD system is only realistic where the storage capacity requirement is so small that the all-SSD system is affordable. Like the iPad I'm typing this on. Or if the performance requirement is not able to be met if any accesses come from HDD.
For while SSD storage is getting cheaper, so is HDD storage, and the combination of HDD and SSD will generally be cheaper than a pure SSD system.
Caching systems generally work well because the active working set of data is often less than 1% of the total. Note that Intel state that they found that they needed no larger than 64GB, and in z68, set that as an upper limit.
A subtle edit was done to my data changing the state from MA to PA. I guess we'll all just have to keep checking our data until the children get bored.
Yeah I just checked and my order date was changed from May 3 to May 9. How stupid....
Rather boringly, they have also turned me orange and put a line through - which I can't seem to undo.
Stupid trolls are stupid.
I've restored the sheet to a revision from about 2 hours ago. I've also temporarily required sign-ins to be able to edit the sheet. Sign in from a Google account to edit.
Hopefully I can limit this restriction later on when the trolls get bored.
I've restored the sheet to a revision from about 2 hours ago. I've also temporarily required sign-ins to be able to edit the sheet. Sign in from a Google account to edit.
Hopefully I can limit this restriction later on when the trolls get bored.
Nothing was preventing you from editing it. There are validation rules to ensure Order Dates aren't before 5/2/2011, but that's it. That sheet is completely unprotected, which is why trolls can do the damage they do (anyone can change anything).
However, I have completely locked the Statistics sheet, since no one should ever need to touch that anyways. So that's troll proof.
UPDATE: Anonymous users are very clearly still trying to open the sheet and edit anything and everything. Odds are good that sign-ins will continue to be required. The reason being are signed-in edits are logged, and I can then revoke privileges to the accounts of trolls. Sorry for the inconvenience, but blame the trolls.
-----
On non-troll protection related fronts, I went to the Boylston Street Apple Store in Boston's Back Bay. Employees were A) completely unaware that SSDs were delayed as long as they were B) had no reason to give why they would be delayed and C) confirmed that SSD-equipped iMacs will not be a standard retail channel configuration for as long as they're aware.
The only quote I can provide is, "You would think that if they weren't ready to ship yet that they wouldn't be selling them. That's really weird."
Last edited:
A 240 GB hard drive could be partitioned to be 200GB boot drive and 40 GB cache. Or various numbers in the split.
If you use aperture, iTunes or whatever, and the files are stored on the hard drive, they will be loaded into the SSD cache partition. I see this especially useful for working on large files ie photoshop, that the user does not want to store on the boot drive.
This is mentioned in the Anandtech article
If you use aperture, iTunes or whatever, and the files are stored on the hard drive, they will be loaded into the SSD cache partition. I see this especially useful for working on large files ie photoshop, that the user does not want to store on the boot drive.
This is mentioned in the Anandtech article
A very similar thing happened back when the late '09 iMacs were first offered for sale (these were the first of the current design -- i.e. 21" and 27" models, unibody cases, smaller chins). I remember ordering my 27" iMac on the first day it was available (10/20/09 to be exact) and it didn't ship until 11/11/09. I can't remember whether the new 27" display held up the shipment or the new Core i7 quad processor.
I'm going to assume display, not CPU. The i7 was an 860. Some previous iMacs had used an "Extreme Edition" CPU, which was not the case with the i7-860 which was a normal, non-limited edition SKU.
Does the caching work at a file or block level? I am thinking whether it works for running a VM. Currently I have a 50Gb VM running off an SSD which flies but it might not if the VM disk files had to be on the cached Fisk in their entirety.
Actually, you have locked down the document for everyone. If you do not share the document with specific users, but "everyone", everyone that views the document and is treated as "anonymous", no matter whether he is logged in or not. (See here)
Either you open the document for everyone again (propably resulting in massive trolling again), or we send you our google account names so you can share the document with us explicitly (so we can add/edit our info and other users can still view the document but not edit it).
Cheers
Last edited:
As an alternative, could we just get people to post their stats in the forum and get whoever runs that spreadsheet to update it. Just make sure stats are posted in same order as spreadsheet e.g.
Name | Display | CPU | Memory (GB) | SSD (GB) | HDD (TB) | GPU | Mouse | Keyboard | Order Date | Est. Ship Date | Actual Ship Date | Shipped Via | Dest. Country | Dest. State/Prov/Region | Dest. City | Est. Delivery Date | Actual Delivery Date | Notes
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sironfoot | 27.0 | 3.4GHz i7 | 4 | 256 | 0 | 6970M 2GB | Magic Trackpad | Wireless (English) | 2011-05-15 | 2011-06-27 | | | United Kingdom | Scotland | Glasgow | 2011-07-01 | | DIYing 16GB RAM
Name | Display | CPU | Memory (GB) | SSD (GB) | HDD (TB) | GPU | Mouse | Keyboard | Order Date | Est. Ship Date | Actual Ship Date | Shipped Via | Dest. Country | Dest. State/Prov/Region | Dest. City | Est. Delivery Date | Actual Delivery Date | Notes
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sironfoot | 27.0 | 3.4GHz i7 | 4 | 256 | 0 | 6970M 2GB | Magic Trackpad | Wireless (English) | 2011-05-15 | 2011-06-27 | | | United Kingdom | Scotland | Glasgow | 2011-07-01 | | DIYing 16GB RAM
It's block level caching. It has no knowledge of the file system. And probably doesn't want to!
I've opened it up for public access again.
If the sheet is damage by trolls, you guys need to fix it by restoring (either the entire sheet, or individual rows by hand) from older revisions, as I canceled my order and am not re-ordering until these start arriving in peoples' hands, or until I hear of any news while at WWDC.
I'm not wasting my time on trolls for the sake of everyone. Everyone can do their part.
If the sheet is damage by trolls, you guys need to fix it by restoring (either the entire sheet, or individual rows by hand) from older revisions, as I canceled my order and am not re-ordering until these start arriving in peoples' hands, or until I hear of any news while at WWDC.
I'm not wasting my time on trolls for the sake of everyone. Everyone can do their part.
Good news!
Although, since today is the 14th day since the new iMacs went on sale, 5-7 business days puts the updated shipping window at the very end of the original 2-3 weeks (seven business days would push into a 4th week, actually).
So that isn't a good sign for those of us hoping the 27" BTOs will ship sooner than the original 4-6 week window....