Apple gets rid of two BTO storage tiers on a computer they are poised to discontinue and that’s your best take? I have a bridge for sale if you’re interested, going cheap.
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Apple Discontinues 512GB and 1TB SSD Configurations of 4K 21.5-inch iMac
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I’m anticipating a much more powerful M1 iMac with a different hardware design than the 5K iMac
Only downside to this new M1 iMac may be price and in order to get a configuration which demonstrates great processing speed etc it’s going to be costly
Only downside to this new M1 iMac may be price and in order to get a configuration which demonstrates great processing speed etc it’s going to be costly
You may be pleasantly surprised on the cost, as its likely Apple will pitch silicon iMacs very competitively which will diminish the perceived Apple premium and bring in more users.
Thusfar the silicon roll out has been very competitive and driven Intel to despair and would never surprise me if Apple buy TSMC which would be a strategic move and the ironical situation where Intel would have to come to Apple for some of its chips!
If the redesigned iMac is actually on its way next month, I think we’re only getting the 23”/24” model with an M1 and some of the same limitations as the Mac mini, unfortunately. The larger model version will be Q3/Q4 2021 along with the MacBook Pro 14”/16”.
If you have one of those early fusion drives, you got the better deal. A couple of years later, they reduced the size of the SSD buffer on the fusion drive so it ended up slower and less reliable. The current fusion drives are the same weak sauce drives.
I take your point but 80% of Mac sales are laptops. And Apple's desktops do need a bit of maintenance too, fan accessibility would be nice on a Mini.
You are seriously missing the point. The fact that a 14TB HDD is about the same price as a 1TB SSD means the price per GB is far better with HDD. Therefore, this leads to the cost of a fusion drive, even if its only 2 or 3 terabytes. People would rather prefer space vs pure speed.
I'm not missing the point at all? You are only accounting for the price per GB? Ignoring performance or in the case of a non SSD internal, the performance difference in function. The fusion drive was a great innovation, but does not compare in terms of efficiency/speed/performance with the latest internal SSD's. FACT.
So many users seem to be believe that they need TB's of space on their internal drive, which pushes up the cost beyond they can pay for SSD, which is true, but the question is do they need TB of storage on that drive, or would they be better having a very fast SSD, and a secondary high capacity HD?
In any event the HD storage will likely go the way of the floppy disk, its technological change, and you do get a time when the cost of manufacturing a HD may be greater than manufacturing an SSD. Technology changes as we know.
I'd much rather have a very fast SSD that did not necessarily contain all the DATA I had accrued, but accommodated system and application plus a bit more, and then if need be have other data stored.
Even that is unlikely to be necessary in the very near future as SSD innovation like chips is running hot, with even externals now capable of sequential read/write 2000MBs and moving HD technology is unlikely to be able to compete.
So its not a question of if but when HD's are no longer viable, and for me for internals its now.
I recently bought a little Sandisk Extreme v2 for just £66 and the price you paid for a 1Tb ssd years ago compare it to the performance/price now? Its technology, it changes as any history of computer products demonstrates.
You argument was purely 14TB. But you missed the point entirely that the price per terabyte. Why get a 2TB SSD for way more money than a 2TB fusion drive?
Wrong again. The 14tb comment was not my comment it was a reply to reference of 14tb hard drive?
your comment “why get a 2tb ssd for way more money than a 2tb fusion drive” I answered that and confirmed I would not currently get a large SSD and for other data would get an external HD which would include fusion? It is academic though as I believe Apple will not produce iMacs with anything other than SSD configs and HD technology is likely to go the way of floppy disk
21.5" iMac shipping dates in the UK have changed again.
Non-retina: 2 days
Retina i3: 9 - 15 days
Retina i5: 9 - 13 days
All 27" are still 2 days.
Non-retina: 2 days
Retina i3: 9 - 15 days
Retina i5: 9 - 13 days
All 27" are still 2 days.
Not until I can get 14 TB SSD for $250, hard drives will be around for a very long time.
Not sure if that's true (efficiency-wise). My understanding is that there simply hasn't been a market for high performance ARM chips outside Apple products so far. I'd imagine other ARM SoC available should be pretty damn efficient, considering their use in phones and tablets, both in die space and energy consumption, but they lack the peak performance of Apple's chips, especially in a single thread.
Qualcomm effectively has a monopoly on the non-Apple consumer device ARM market and their chips each generation have significantly smaller die areas than Apple's, while also using older process nodes. You can see this reflected in the reference core designs made by ARM themselves, who this year attempted to design a core (called X1) focused on performance for the first time (while still being way more conservative than Apple in their core designs). Current flagship SoCs from Qualcomm (Snapdragon 888) and Samsung (Exynos 2100) only ended up using a single X1 core, with a significantly hobbled core design in both cases (lowered clocks and significantly cut down caches across all levels, which saves die space). I'd imagine that the companies simply don't have a motivation to try harder, the market is simply too cost sensitive and the development costs too expensive, for no real benefit to sales. Google even uses a midrange Qualcomm chip in its latest Pixel flagship to reduce costs, which gets completely obliterated in benchmarks vs the flagship chips (by 50-80% and those already lag behind Apple's latest chips).
I agree that Apple's ARM SoC design feats will not be easily replicated. After all, attempts by Samsung and Qualcomm to, similarly to Apple, deviate from reference ARM core designs, failed pathetically and have been abandoned after just a few years, although I'd imagine the motivation and cost/benefit simply hasn't really been there for those companies. On another hand Apple clearly had a grander plan in mind for their ARM designs and therefore kept throwing money at the problem after the rather humble beginnings. It's kind of sad, but I can't really see a path to an Apple Silicon competitor, investment wise, right now. Nobody really moves the products in such volumes, AMD and Intel still haven't hit an x86 wall, Windows on ARM is too niche and Android is too low margin and competitive. And even if, say, one of the HPC/cloud ARM designers that are starting to pop up now somehow made a magically amazing mobile ARM core as a side project, with like 1/10 of size and 5x the perf, they still wouldn't be competitive, since Qualcomm owns so much of the IP around making an actual SoC they would crush them with licensing fees (as was Apple).
What is strange is no strong rumors from supply chain. Like they would be updating current models.
You misunderstood my comment entirely. I was referring to the remaining iMac Apple offers currently after discontinuing most models.
The Mac supply chain is usually pretty tight, smaller numbers produced and no lucrative offers from case manufacturers looking to get the drop for day one supply of cases for iPhones.
Remember the Mac Pro and iMac Pro were a mystery before they launched, there was only vague rumours of a 14" and 16" panel being prototyped before the 16" MacBook Pro showed up.
Theres still a huge logical reason behind having a 14" MacBook Pro in the lineup (battery, smaller bezel, better GPU performance, possible future mini LED, possibly with or without Touch Bar).
With the advent of the Pro Display XDR could some of the prototypes for that have been an iMac (Pro) design?
Fun:
I am hoping for the iMac Nano Stereo. Two 5x5 inch screens next to eachother, Monochrome, with a german 60s design, with danish wooden stand - with absolutely no usefulness whatsoever. But a must have for scandinavians...
I am hoping for the iMac Nano Stereo. Two 5x5 inch screens next to eachother, Monochrome, with a german 60s design, with danish wooden stand - with absolutely no usefulness whatsoever. But a must have for scandinavians...
They are low power, sure, but efficiency is about the performance in relation to power. Apple CPUs are considerably faster while consuming the same amount of power.
The X1 in the chips you mention is at best comparable to the A12 performance-wise. This again illustrates my point about Apple being years ahead. It’s not just about peak performance but how much power you need to reach it. For example, Zen3 or Tiger Lake are fast, but they need 4 times as much power to outperform an M1 Firestorm core. It seems that similar is true of X1 - if it can even be clocked this high.
Well have to see what ARM’s upcoming CPUs can offer. So far, X1 is not sufficient to challenge the x86 hegemony.