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There are two demographics that want expandable Macs. Enthusiasts, and professionals. Professionals are willing to pony up for a Mac Pro. Which leaves enthusiasts as the only target of a cheaper, expandable tower. And we know how Apple loves bending over for the enthusiast (like, say, people on this forum?). ;) Couple this with the fact that a tower would hurt iMac and Mac Pro sales without making up for lost profit (plenty of people are willing to pay for the iMac when it's the baseline desktop Mac... far less people would pay for it if they could just get a cheaper Mac tower).

Edit: Not that I disagree with you, because I would love one, I just don’t think it’s going to happen.

I'm an enthusiast AND a professional (well, at least I get paid a decent amount to work on a Mac). I'm not prepared to pay what it costs in Oz for a Mac Pro. I hear what you're saying about eating into iMac sales, but so what? Surely it would win enuf PC converts to compensate. Having said that, just a teensy bit better graphics option on the iMac would have me lining up. Then again, will probably line up anyway...
 
I don't know why some users are trying to differentiate the Bloomfield and Lynnfield core and cache. They're the same but the platforms they service are different.

Exactly. But now that Apple is offering Core i7 finally, those "old" chips don't count because they're old and Apple isn't using them. Only the "new" one counts.

At least thats how Apple fans see it.

That doesn't change the fact that a year ago $1,000 got you Core i7 with a better GPU than the $1,999 iMac gives you now.

Core 2 Quad is ancient now but Intel hasn't found a need to price it against Nehalem according to performance. Core 2 is still priced against Core 2. Then again it has been that was since Bloomfield launched. Take a look at the Q9650 today.

Heh yeah. It's really unfortunate that AMD can't get a real competitor out. They're good on price but when it comes to raw performance....

I was only pointing it out to another user for clarification. We went over the lack of built-in Blu-ray playback in Windows 7 a month or two ago. (Yes, you and me)

Yeah I know. Was just saying.

I'm interested in what you consider as good design? Got any pictures or links?

I'm part of the camp that believes a computers functionality is far more important. Computers aren't meant to be fashion accessories, they're meant to be tools. Like the rest of the world, I'd rather have a top of the line monitor sitting on my desk and the far more functional tower tucked away somewhere else.

Windows computers continue to remain vulnerable to viruses, worms, trojans as well as the typical user stupidity that affects every other operating system on the planet.

The only way one can really get any malware in Windows these days is by actively installing it themselves.

The corporation I work for spends over $10M a year on computer defenses, but I suppose we do that because we are completely populated with idiots?

Probably.

I spend over $1000 a year on network and PC security, specifically to deal with Windows vulnerabilities at the small business that I own with my wife.

Well, you're spending $1,000 too much.

You just need to face reality here. PCs are in fact more vulnerable than Macs due to the extremely weak underpinnings of Windows. OS X is built on a BSD base and is inherently more secure.

Any person who can actively install malware on XP can screw up OS X. Not to mention the fact they wouldn't be able to deal with OS X's quirks. Imagine a new Mac convert dealing with Finder's frequent crashing and control-alt-delete doesn't work and they don't know the stupidly different key combination for OS X.

Even the geniuses at the Pentagon know this is a fact which is why they are diversifying the armed forces and defense department networks with OS X as they have been demonstrated to be more robust in resisting cybernetic attack.

Actually, they run multiple OSes, not just Windows and OS X. And it has been quoted that they run all OSes specifically for diversification, not because OS X is "better". That way if Windows gets taken down, they still have OS X and Linux. Or if OS X gets attacked, Windows and the others will still be up. Their words, not mine.

The #1 thing to love about Apple right now is OS X. Having worked with Windows for almost two decades (since the Windows for Workgroup days) and having worked with OS X now for about a year, there is simply no comparison. OS X beats the **** out of Windows (even Windows 7) and makes it scream for mercy.

I've been on OS X for nearly 3 years now, I've been using Windows since the 3.0 days. I have the complete opposite opinion. OS X is unstable, unintuitive, and lacks far too many features compared to Windows. Windows 7 is years ahead of Mac OS X, and its obvious that Snow Leopard is nothing more than an attempt to say "LOOK! WE HAVE A NEW OS TOO!" when Windows 7 is finally released.

This is obvious. If you want the highest performing computer for the cheapest price build your own box.

I don't even have to build my own system to beat Apple at price. If I go to Dell or HP or any other number of manufacturers I can still build a system that outperforms the $1,999 Core i5 iMac for several hundred dollars less.

You're unfairly comparing towers with an all-in-ones.

Oh please, this "size" argument that Apple fans try to use has never worked and it never will. Maybe if Apple gave consumers actual CHOICES then it could work. But right now if I want a desktop I have 3 choices from Apple. A Mac mini, which is extremely low-end and extremely overpriced for the power. Theres the iMac, which is a laptop on a stand. Then theres the Mac Pro, which is also extremely overpriced and offers extremely limited expandability.

So comparing a tower PC to an iMac is a perfectly fair comparison since Apple does not even give you the choice of having such a system.

Are you out of your mind? Last year's laptops were nothing compared to this. Unless you consider an 8 pound luggable a "laptop". Even then, where were all those mobile Core i7 processors last year?

8 pounds? No, more like 6.5.

But anyway, Apple is using last years mobile GPU. Which is what I was talking about.

Plus Core i7s were available in desktops a year ago.

So, again, my point stands. Apple is using last years technology and charging this year's premium price tag.

Last year had mobile Core 2 Duos comparable to what you can get in an iMac today.

And I'm not really sure how you can call them ugly. If the design was any more minimalist there wouldn't be a screen. Honestly, I'd love to see the great looking PCs you are comparing this to.

Again, a PC is not a fashion accessory. A computer is a tool.

If Apple was selling Bluray drives in their computers, OS X would have the software for it.

Why can't Apple offer bitstream decoding now for other types of video? Playing a standard DVD or SD H.264 video in Snow Leopard still takes more CPU time than playing a blu-ray disc in Windows 7.

Ugh, please. If you want some laptop with quad-core, sli, dual harddrives, three display connectors, etc., then just go and get a ThinkPad W700 or whatever Alienware is pushing these days. You have people bitching about how hot their Macs get, and then you have people bitching that they aren't nearly as fast as a workstation

You don't need to buy an Alienware to get more a more powerful system than a Mac.

$1299 at HP gets you an 18.4" screen, Core i7, 4GB DDR, 320GB 7200 RPM, 1GB GeForce GT 230, blu-ray, HDMI, all that good stuff.

As far as heat is concerned, I had one of the hottest Macs of all, the white plastic MacBook with an Intel GPU. It had a 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo in it and the Intel GMA 950. It got HOTTER than my HP with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo and dedicated graphics.

Apple's systems just get hot because of the design and piss poor cooling systems.

Have you ever tried to take apart the previous generation aluminum MacBook Pros (and PowerBooks?). Or even upgrade the harddrive? It's a nightmare. The Unibody is far easier to service.

Still more difficult to service the current MacBook and Pro line compared to a PC.

Bull****. Want an example? Last year I did a clean install on a ThinkPad tablet (don't even get me started on the 30 extra processes Lenovo adds to the default boot in XP), and Lenovo literally did *not* have the sound drivers for the laptop on their website. I had to go hunting around on the web for someone who had the drivers. That's inexcusable.

First, that's Lenovo's fault. Second, why didn't you check to see who manufactured your soundcard before reformatting? Third, why didn't you just open Windows update? Windows Update will install all of the drivers for your system.

Eventually it will happen. Even now on my horrible internet connection, I can stream moderate quality HD video from Netflix.

I guess we have different requirements for "quality". When it comes to movies, blu-ray is as low as I'll go now. For TV, theres no way I'd go back to cable or downloading from iTunes when DirecTV and FiOS look so much better.

I recently installed Windows on my Macbook and it (the OS) actually advised me to get virus protection software.

Thats funny because so does Apple:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/security/ "However, since no system can be 100 percent immune from every threat, antivirus software may offer additional protection."

Still waiting for that Hackintosh All-In-One with the same, or better specs as the 27" quad-core i7 iMac, LED ISP 2560 x 1440 for half the cost. I have no problem with the Quad-Core i7 860 (Lynnfield with Hyperthreading and Turbo Boost, introduced last month) or an LED backlit LCD (ISP with a 2560 x 1440 resolution, not currently available for under $1400)

I already took care of your concerns.

Core i7 was available a year ago in PCs. The Radeon 4850 is more than a year old now. A more powerful GeForce GTX is available for about $170.

So the processor and more powerful GPU can be had for about $460. The rest of the components aren't going to cost $540.

The best part about NOT having a tacky all-in-one thats more fashion accessory than computer is that you can overclock that CPU.

And, again, Apple uses EDGE-lit LED LCD panels which offer NO visual quality improvement. EDGE lit does NOT improve quality, it just uses less power and is instant on.

I really don't know why you'd want an Internet Service Provider in your screen either, but yeah..

IPS screens are overrated as well. Standard screens from LG, Samsung, and others, often have higher color gamut, faster response times, similar viewing angles, as well as much higher contrast ratios. Plus theres always the issue of Apple displays not having standard connectivity.

For the price of one Apple display you can get two higher quality displays for a PC, and thanks to Windows proper multi-display support, you can actually use both at the same time.

The best part about the new iMac? For $2,200, the cost of the Core i7 iMac, you don't even get a GPU that can run games at a playable frame-rate, at all, at native resolution. At least a PC for that same price would give you multiple GPUs that would be capable of pushing any game at 60fps at that native resolution.
 
Still waiting for that Hackintosh All-In-One with the same, or better specs as the 27" quad-core i7 iMac, LED ISP 2560 x 1440 for half the cost. I have no problem with the Quad-Core i7 860 (Lynnfield with Hyperthreading and Turbo Boost, introduced last month) or an LED backlit LCD (ISP with a 2560 x 1440 resolution, not currently available for under $1400)

I'd prefer that it doesn't look like total crap.

funny_pictures_ghetto_computer.jpg


BTW, what is all this ranting about 16:9 aspect ratio? Now that it is a mute point, you seem somewhat disappointed.

Moot point. There's no such thing as a "mute" point.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mootness?wasRedirected=true
 
Exactly. But now that Apple is offering Core i7 finally, those "old" chips don't count because they're old and Apple isn't using them. Only the "new" one counts.

At least thats how Apple fans see it.

That doesn't change the fact that a year ago $1,000 got you Core i7 with a better GPU than the $1,999 iMac gives you now.
I do remember the Studio XPS 435 MT starting off at ~$849 for a Core i7 920 tower.

Gateway had a complete Core i7 920 system with the tower, display and 4850 for $1,299. I recommended it to people that couldn't build one.

Lynnfield is just a mainstream platform for Nehalem. The platform costs are lower but the core and cache are the same in terms of performance. Lynnfield is cooler too at 95W instead of 130W.
 
Nooo... I signed up on this forum because I planned to tell everybody about my dream of a 22" iMac.

Now Apple surprisingly came close to it but with a terrible resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixel, instead of 1920x1200 which I wanted. The 20" model is too small for my eyes, the 24" too big for my desk.

Can they please stop the current manufacturing and change the resolution :( I was eager on buying an iMac if they would release a 22" model, they now came so close but messed it up :(
 
Mosx,

Only someone with abslutely no understanding of OS architecture would try to refer to SL as a "me too" OS. Maybe you'd like to go on a tear about how recent benchmarks show snow leopard outperforming win7 in common computing tasks on the same hardware?

It's also difficult to fathom why you are hanging around an iMac release thread when u obviously have so much disdain for them.

Do you drive a chevy and hang around Honda forums all day and night telling them how lame they are?

Regarding your continued lunatic comments about windows security and stability, maybe you could find one single company, school, or gov agency with 100 or more windows machines that isn't running comprehensive windows security. Right...right, they are all just idiots and not as smart as you.
 
Any picures yet of the insides? Would it be possible to put in a blueray drive yourself? Is the HD easily upgradeable? Is the computer easily opened?
 
I have not gone through all the posts so apologies if this has been said before (and I would think it has!)

After many years great service and still going strong, I was planning to upgrade my iMac G4 to a nice 27 inch iMac but I shall be keeping my money in my pocket, as a protest really at the price difference between UK and the US. I know it always happens but £260 on the base 27 is a joke.

Even £130 difference on the new white MacBook.

No bigger Apple fan than me but this time they have gone too far. :(
 
Sorry to repeat my question :eek: but does anybody have accurate dimensions of the 27” ? It’s a huge beast and I have already cut out a template to see if will fit in my workspace, but soon realised its only the screen measurement without the stand, can anyone hazard a guess as to how much to add for the foot??

mac.jpg


BB
 
Mirror mirror, on my desk ....

Watching the 7 min video introducing the new iMacs, you are aware of how much effort had to be put into photographing the displays in the restricted ways needed to downplay the screen reflections.

Can't shoot it head on, in the way people will use the display, because then people will see the camera doing the filming; always have to be off at a 45 degree or greater angle.

Even then, the narrator intones (as a selling point) the uniform brightness of the screen -- even as a bright line of room reflection sweeps across the screen, washing out half of it ... but they even aligned everything so the room reflection would match the screen wallpaper lines and be less obvious.

The narrator intones how the edge-to-edge screen puts the emphasis on "your content and nothing else" ... as more room reflections wash across the screen, obscuring the its content.

Targeted for people who don't use computers as computers but instead expensive media players, its unusable screen makes this another upgrade to skip for people who use computers as computers -- and Apple knows it since they had to work around it so hard to film their advertisement.
 
Looks like a solid update to me. I am impressed that they are now making it from one piece of alu so they don't need that plastic on the back. Can't wait to see the 27" in the metal, it must be huge.
 
Still no matte option. I can only imagine what all that reflection will look like on 27". It will be like watching tube TV's all over again. Seriously, I had to downgrade my 13.3 MBP because of its glossy LCD to a 2007 15" MBP matte. Glossy may be fine for some people, but Apple is losing me and others I know as customers with their latest line of products.
 
Still no matte option. I can only imagine what all that reflection will look like on 27". It will be like watching tube TV's all over again.

Mini + 30 inch display (matte of course). Relatively underpowered, but it may be the best option right now. You can always reuse the display too.
 
The 21.5-inch model,

I am VERY tempted by the new .The 21.5-inch model, With the Intel Core 2 Duo processor standard SD card and wireless mouse, my Apple Store for Employee Purchase Plan price would be $1,119. That machine would be faster than the quad-core Mac Pro I currently use. Particularly since it would have the faster graphics.
 
Im going to go with the 27 inch model. I have an iMac from 2006, and I have been waiting to upgrade, and I am glad I did. That looks like an amazing machine!
 
About Blu-Ray:
With its HiDef audio AND video, you want to play these on a decent A/V setup, like: a 55" Samsung LED display, Onkyo or Denon amp, and some serious PSB or Paradigm speakers. BluRay is about big sound and even bigger visual, watching them on a desktop display defeats its true purpose. Also, BluRay has 1080p vertical resolution, and playing it on the 27" which has 1440p vertical resolution will require some upscaling, which would produce lower contrast & washout details etc. It's nice to have as an option on the 21.5" model which has the perfect BluRay resolution of 1920X1080. And why would you play Bluray on a laptop which requires high CPU usage and drains your battery flat before Frodo throws the ring into the fire?

About the supposed "compelling feature" for multimedia enthusiast:
Multimedia enthusiast would include those who shoots with serious dSLRs, like a Canon 5D or Nikon D700. These gears usually carry Compact Flash cards, a higher throughput memory cards than SD. Where is that CF card slot when you need one (Sony AW laptop series has a CF card slot, the only one built for Sony dSLR users)? The higher resolution 27" LED display and Quad Core are all nice for image & video processing but that glossy screen is just "way" too glossy even for a fan of glossy display like myself. The outcry for matte option, or a switch to less reflective glass is justified.

About 27" model
The video input via adaptors and the ability to mount the unit are all very nice additions. I don't know where Apple is going with this one, an integrated iMac/AppleTV combo in the future that will allow direct streaming of iTunes videos?
 
I cant believe they didn't include an option for Blu-ray reader/burner in the new Imacs...?? I mean, come on now Apple, at least give us the OPTION for this since this a very important feature for many of us! :mad:

Oh well, guess I have to wait for the next "refresh" in april and hopefully get a new iMac (27 inches LED) with built in BD-RW then...
 
Now the lack of Mac depreciation comes into its own.

Aluminium 20" 2.4Ghz with Radeon 2600 - £500 on ebay.

27" new iMac with Radeon 4850 - £1500

Friend at university means 8% discount.

Cost to me: £880 :D
 
I recently installed Windows on my Macbook and it actually advised me to get virus protection software.:rolleyes::D;)

The rest of your post offers nothing new from you. Price and Blu-Ray blah blah blah. Thanks we all know now.

Thats funny because so does Apple:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/security/ "However, since no system can be 100 percent immune from every threat, antivirus software may offer additional protection."

I think there is a great deal of difference between a small disclaimer on Apples webpage and what I actually said about the OS (that being Windows) constantly telling me to get antivirus software and then to update it etc etc.
Of course when you said there has been no problem with viruses being an issue since Windows 95 (see below) - I'm afraid the operating system itself is disagreeing with you. Or are you still just spread FUD? :rolleyes:

Please don't say anything about drivers or viruses, because those sorts of things haven't been an issue since Windows 95 and those arguments haven't been valid since then.
 
"movies, movies, movies, blu-ray, movies, 16:9, movies, 27, movies, movies, dvd, movies, movies, cool, movies, thank you apple for new awesome-tv, movies, movies..."
my God! Guys, you buy iMac's to watch movies? o_O
 
Only someone with abslutely no understanding of OS architecture would try to refer to SL as a "me too" OS. Maybe you'd like to go on a tear about how recent benchmarks show snow leopard outperforming win7 in common computing tasks on the same hardware?

I take it you're referring to that recent cnet test that even some Apple fans panned as inaccurate?

I've been using Windows on a Mac for almost 3 years now. Apple's shipping drivers are absolutely terrible and do have a major affect on how well Windows does or doesn't run. For example, right now I have the unibody MacBook. It took until the release of Boot Camp 3, roughly 10 months after I bought it, for Apple to finally release a working Windows driver for the touchpad. The best part is that Apple is still shipping 177 series nvidia drivers. Thats a driver from 2008.

Saying Apple's Windows driver support is terrible is being polite. Their bad drivers absolutely affect the performance of Windows on a Mac.

Let's see cnet re-run those tests with updated drivers on a finished version of Windows 7.

What architecture improvements are in Snow Leopard? Grand Central Dispatch? Everything that benefits from SMP is already SMP and already has years worth of code refinements behind it. Why would a developer switch?

OpenCL? CUDA has been around for years now, and lots of apps in Windows take advantage of it. How many apps take advantage of OpenCL?

Why does Snow Leopard take more RAM than Leopard did and more than Vista and Windows 7? Why does it use more HDD space?

Why is it I can run a fully 64-bit version of Windows but I can't get 64-bit kernel in Snow Leopard on my unibody MacBook?

Regarding your continued lunatic comments about windows security and stability, maybe you could find one single company, school, or gov agency with 100 or more windows machines that isn't running comprehensive windows security. Right...right, they are all just idiots and not as smart as you

I'd also like you to find a large scale use of OS X that doesn't have some similar security running.

With its HiDef audio AND video, you want to play these on a decent A/V setup, like: a 55" Samsung LED display, Onkyo or Denon amp, and some serious PSB or Paradigm speakers. BluRay is about big sound and even bigger visual, watching them on a desktop display defeats its true purpose.

Not even close to being true. Blu-ray is meant to be watched wherever people want to watch it. I have a better than any Apple display sitting on my desk right now. I've hooked my dedicated blu-ray player up to it as well as an external blu-ray reader connected to my PCs and the picture is downright stunning.

As for audio, as long as you have a good DAC, headphone amp, and a set of Audio Technica, Grado, or Sennheiser headphones (NO BOSE or Sony), you'll be able to hear every fine detail in the audio, just not in surround sound.

Not only that, but some of us like to hook our computers up to our home theater systems. This is where Macs fail, as they don't have HDMI or blu-ray capabilities. I hook my Windows PC up to my home theater system via a single HDMI cable all the time to enjoy videos and games. But I can't do it the same way with my Mac because I need a mess of cables and adapters and I have to run Windows to get support for what I want or need to do.

Also, BluRay has 1080p vertical resolution, and playing it on the 27" which has 1440p vertical resolution will require some upscaling, which would produce lower contrast & washout details etc.

Proper upscaling will not negatively affect the video quality.

And why would you play Bluray on a laptop which requires high CPU usage and drains your battery flat before Frodo throws the ring into the fire?

Well, neither one of those is true either. But blu-ray on a laptop is either for the person who travels a lot or has their system hooked up to a nice external display. Plus blu-ray doesn't require a lot of CPU time. Thanks to bitstream decoding in Windows, my original unibody MacBook pushes blu-ray video at around 15% average CPU use. In OS X, thanks to the lack of bitstream decoding of video, H.264 standard definition video and DVD video take about 20-25% CPU time. Blu-ray video in Windows takes less CPU time than standard definition video in OS X.

I think there is a great deal of difference between a small disclaimer on Apples webpage and what I actually said about the OS (that being Windows) constantly telling me to get antivirus software and then to update it etc etc.
Of course when you said there has been no problem with viruses being an issue of that since Windows 95 (see below) - I'm afraid the operating system itself is disagreeing with you. Or are you still just spread FUD?

Funny you say things like that when OS X actually detects a small number of malicious apps itself (built-in minor virus detection) and constantly warns the user about downloadable apps possibly containing malware. Every time I install an app that I've downloaded, OS X warns me it may contain malware.

So OS X is every bit as bad as Windows when it comes to warning the user about malware.

Maybe if Apple put as much time into making the OS stable as they do coming up with warning screens, OS X would be as good as Windows and not years behind? ;)

Well, as far as the new iMacs go, it's nice to see Apple offering a $2,200 system with the same specs as PCs had a year ago. Since they're so far behind the curve, maybe we'll finally get HDMI and blu-ray on Macs at the end of 2011? Seems it takes Apple about two years to finally start offering features that were standard in PCs... two years ago. That means we should see dedicated graphics in 13.3" Macs sometime in 2011! hah!
 
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