Apple Releases New Sandy Bridge Quad-Core iMacs with Thunderbolt

[bpaluzzi]

Do you want to buy 4 iMac 27''? Really nice , but why??

And also, a couple of Time Capsules? What are you planning to do with a computer?

I imagine he's kitting out a lab / office. No matter how nice the machines are, 4 of them is a bit much for a personal user ;-)

 

[diegous79]

just confirmed with Apple...hopefully they'll remove that.

Anyway, looking forward to the spec bumps for the Mini, the Air and the Pro.

And really hope that everyone's iMacs will behave and be okay this time around.

I just found that out too and I want to cry :-(

 

[andrewbecks]

Any idea when these new iMacs will begin showing up at Amazon or Best Buy? Just curious if they're usually available immediately after they are released or a few days later.

 

[Gemütlichkeit]

http://www.apple.com/macbookair/specs.html


Where's the macbook air upgrades!

 

[Eidorian]

Apple refurbed are the best you can find in most cases.

Apple never puts previously damaged hardware on the refurbed store, only open boxed then returned products, or products at End Of Life (EOL). You will find TONS of the previous models on there for 15% off or more.

Any damaged goods always get parted out and used as Genius Bar parts for repair.

There are TONS of things I don't like about Apple, but they actually do refurbished good very very well.

I strongly suggest against a refurbished model of older revisions. It is similar to purchasing a Core 2 model. The base 21.5" Sandy Bridge once it hits refurb would be tempting at ~$999.

Right, which is why I really need to wait for the Pro, just to see if it's price is reasonable, and if it really makes it a worthy and expandable option over the iMac.

I would've chosen the iMac over the Mac Pro in the last iteration of either machine. This new iMac is making the "expandable" option a little more moot.

I will learn how to solder and service an iMac if it saves me $1000+

This is the first worthwhile iMac solely based on the stillborn potential of Thunderbolt and the quad on the base models. It only took 5 years.

 

[joshwest]

It's awesome Apple is making a base iMac so powerful, a i5 Quad for 1199$ shows that apple is going to be having faster i7's in the future for the high end.

 

[tringo]

The biggest question I have is whether the dual Thunderbolt will support 2 external monitors.

Imagine a triple 27 inch setup! (Brain explodes at thought)

 

[*LTD*]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/8H7)

Impossible. This isn't supposed to happen. Apple doesn't care about Macs, just iToys.

 

[commander.data]

Not sure if anyone noticed this but while trying to price one, I noticed that the 21" model can't be maxed to 16gb as their page says....

That was the case for the previous 21.5" too. The smaller enclosure can only fit 2 DIMM slots while the larger 27" can fit 4 DIMM slots.

 

[mattcube64]

Woohoo! About ****ing time Apple offered a decent GPU again. The last time the iMac had a GPU capable of playing modern games was 2007 with the 8800GS.


I will probably retire my 24" late in the summer and replace it with a top-end 27".

I have a gaming rig; but its nice to know you can play games on all your computers and/or let someone use it during a LAN party. That 6970m should prove to be pretty nice.

 

[xUKHCx]

The biggest question I have is whether the dual Thunderbolt will support 2 external monitors.

Imagine a triple 27 inch setup! (Brain explodes at thought)

http://www.apple.com/imac/performance.html

And don’t worry about a single drive or peripheral tying up the Thunderbolt port: You can daisy-chain as many as six devices plus a display. The 27-inch iMac includes a second Thunderbolt port for even more expansion possibilities. Connect up to six more devices or a display or two.

 

[iamthedudeman]

Really good to see the update (finally)... but I am disappointed they didn't bring the 24" back

The 27" is too big, and the resolution on the 21.5 is laughable for an upgrade of this magnitude.

Still, quad core across the range is nice.

The biggest thing with the 27 is the yellow hue. Fonts. Glossy. And I like to change out my display and own the latest and greatest quite often, say every two years, or every year due to work at home.

Solution for me was I got a HP brightview 25.5. It is a MVA panel not quite as good viewing angles as the imac 27 IPS but with better black levels, deeper black levels, whiter whites, no yellow hue to speak of. Much better for graphical design work. Brightview technology has me hooked. All the benefits of a glossy and some of the benefits of a matte, less glare than the imac 27.

I have my 21.5 as a extra display and use the 25.5 as my main display in dual mode. Fantastic setup.

 

[commander.data]

The biggest question I have is whether the dual Thunderbolt will support 2 external monitors.

Imagine a triple 27 inch setup! (Brain explodes at thought)

Displayport is suppose to support daisy-chaining from one port so the external monitor support could actually be higher than just 2 if Apple supported it. I believe the HD6970M can support at least 4 total display outputs, possibly 6?

 

[NYC Russ]

And yet prices in the Australian Apple Store are still 25% higher than the USA Store. How rude, Apple.

Top end 27" iMac = US$1999, or in the Australian Store, AUD$2299 which at the current exchange rate is about US$2500. Why should we pay more, Apple? If anything, we're closer to China so should pay less on shipping!

Whilst it's slightly better than yesterdays prices, I'm still seriously not happy.
I'd buy one if we got the USA prices.

Does Australia have a VAT? The U.S. doesn't.

 

[krause734]

Free Ipod w/ iMac?

Does anyone have any idea if Apple is going to start the free iPod Touch again for students buying a computer this summer?

 

[Cygnus311]

Any gamers have a sense as to how well the top end machine (either i5 or i7) with the 2gb gpu option will handle Battlefield 3 later this year?

 

[milo]

Is it confirmed these beauties have SATA III?

Exactly what I'm wondering. The new laptops have SATA III for the boot drive but II for the optical. I would hope these have III for the boot drive and optional SSD, it would be nice if they just went ahead and used it for the optical as well.

Now how about a mac pro update, now there are two cheaper lines with thunderbolt (and likely SATA III).

 

[JangoFett124]

Did the low-end, $1199 model disappear from the store page?

 

[trip1ex]

Wow amazing!

Quad core on the low end and a decent gpu.

I'm in.

I thought they would nerf the gpu if they went quad on the low end.

 

[commander.data]

Woohoo! About ****ing time Apple offered a decent GPU again. The last time the iMac had a GPU capable of playing modern games was 2007 with the 8800GS.

The 8800GS was actually the 8800M GTS, the second-highest model GPU in nVidia's mobile lineup at the time. The HD5750M in the previous iMac was actually a HD5850M or the second-highest model GPU in ATI's mobile lineup at that time. So Apple hasn't been skimping up to now on top-end options. Admittedly, the HD6970M is notable because it's actually the top-end mobile GPU, so we have climbed up a rung in the ladder.

 

[smiddlehurst]

Great. Really screwed a lot of the world on pricing. In the UK, we have 20% VAT, but that doesn't mean that Apple should then scrape an additional £200 on top of this thinking users won't notice.

And don't just say it's more expensive. They are all manufactured in China.

Okay, let's work it through.

Base iMac is $1,199 and £999. $1,199 is currently £727 in a straight conversion. So let's see:

£727 * 1.20 = £872.40 (VAT)
£727 * 1.08 = £58.16 (Additional cost of doing business in UK)

£872.40 + £58.16 = £930.56

Difference: £68.44

Now I can never remember how this works but I *think* there's an additional 3.5% import duty which would account for a further £25.45 which brings the extra cost down to 42.99, or just about 6% of the US price. Considering Apple also have to allow for currency changes that's hardly a rip off.

 

[iamthedudeman]

That was the case for the previous 21.5" too. The smaller enclosure can only fit 2 DIMM slots while the larger 27" can fit 4 DIMM slots.

False. My current imac 21.5 has 4 dimm slots. And can handle 16GB. Same as the 27. The new sandybridge imacs can handle 32GB. Regardless of what apple says. They all can take 16GB.

http://www.apple.com/imac/specs.html

 

[rmwebs]

Throwing in an SSD drive bumps the ship time to 4-6 weeks!!!!

Not cool, Apple. Not cool.

You'd have to be a fool to order that from Apple. Their upgrade prices on SSD's are a joke! It'd probably be cheaper to wait it out a couple of months and get an external thunderbolt one - it'll be just as fast if not faster!

 

[grahamnp]

Not really sure why Apple can't bring themselves to put an i7 by default in a $2,000 machine. That's kind of ridiculous.

It annoys me too but it works out pretty well for Apple and I'd much rather pay extra for the i7 than not have the option at all. Look at the latest MBPs compared to the previous ones, Apple bumped the GPUs up significantly but charged $200 more and yet everyone is happy.

 

[kiiso]

WTF!
The top 3.1 Ghz 27" iMac has a cheaper i5-2400 CPU, than the low-end 27" and high-end 21.5", with both have i5-2500S processors!
(The i5-2400 is 184$ and the i5-2500S is 216$)


+ the 2500S can do 3.7 Ghz in turbo, and the 2400 can only 3.4 Ghz in Turbo Mode!!!???

Am I wrong?