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Fusion Drive Now Available as Option for Low End 21.5" iMac
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I haven't. And I won't. I was just explaining to them that they are paying 250$ for a 128GB SSD. Information Talks.
You're not paying for an SSD drive. You are paying for an SSD drive that is used as part of a Fusion drive. You are paying for something that only Apple is selling and nobody else. You can't buy a Fusion drive from Dell, not for $250, not for any amount. You can't buy a Fusion drive from HP, not for $250, not for any amount. You can't buy a Fusion drive from any computer manufacturer that is not Apple, not for $250, not for any amount.
And if you could, they would charge you $250 as well.
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Most likely you are confusing the hard drive with the fan.
Oh, I see. If we compare things that cannot be compared, then they are different.
Here's the clever thing about the Fusion drive: It doesn't store your applications. It only stores exactly those portions of your applications that you are using a lot.
Bottom line is Apple is trying to give people large storage capacities while still having the benefits of an SSD. This is like purgatory. I'm waiting. I'm not buying something like this when it's clear that SSD's will be standard in the near future.
I made myself a Fusion drive in my 2011 13-inch MacBook Pro. I removed the optical drive and used a Western Digital 1TB 5400rpm and a Crucial M4 128GB SSD. It works wonderfully.
At the end of the day, a fusion drive is just two ordinary drives tied together by software already present in the software. Apple's profit margin from fusion drive models is much higher than normal ones because 128 GB SSDs do not cost that much.
He kinda did with the original iPhone, even though it was just price and not features, but that's what most people are complaining about anyway since the other option costs more (and yes, they did attempt to remedy that, but I don't think this is anywhere close to that).
Do people who got the Fusion iMac have something that meets their needs, and did they need it when they bought the product? If so, nothing has changed. If people wanted Fusion but didn't want the higher end, now here's their chance. If you didn't need it and got it anyway...why? And if it really bothers you that much, sell the high-end model, and buy a new low end model. The most you could possibly save if the used high-end sells for the price of new is $200, but in reality you'd probably just break even--and that's ignoring the value you'd lose in other features. So just enjoy it.
I think this is unusual of Apple, but for a different reason. Historically, they've grouped better features with higher-end machines with no option for "mixing and matching" on lower-end models at all. (For example, the low-end late 2008 aluminum unibody Macbook didn't have a backlight keyboard, but the higher model did--in addition to a faster processor and whatnot; higher-end models have also historically come with better graphics or other features standard instead of optional, e.g., AirPort, more RAM, SuperDrive instead of ComboDrive, etc.) They're at least offering an option now.
I want a MBP with a Fusion drive and not the Retina one...
Can I just swap the HD from a MBP with the Fusion drive in the Mac Mini?
Can I just swap the HD from a MBP with the Fusion drive in the Mac Mini?
Oh, please. Apple even said from the very beginning that there were supply constraints. It's the same reason the 27" iMac was available weeks later than at the same time as the 21.5"
Apple isn't the only company to offer more options on devices as they mature in their product cycle. It's the nature of ANY tech company.
I didn't make any technical statement as to what the hybrid drive is, what I'm telling you is that internally Apple's tech support business process treated both components as one "item", which was not in their inventory system as something tech support can provide. It's stupid, but they were not allowed to just open up the machine and put in a new HDD to replace the existing dead one.
The entire genius staff at the store, plus the store manager, plus an internal support line the lead genius called, plus a supervisor on AppleCare's phone support line that I was escalated to as part of a 2 hour call, plus his nearby colleagues, could not come up with a solution that allowed them to just fix the damn HDD by replacing it. Trust me, I suggested this many, many times. Maybe some techs are just ignoring the process and doing the obvious technical solution, but my store followed the rules, however insane they were (and they admitted that they made no sense), and I didn't feel like hauling a 21 pound machine from store to store until I found a genius willing to solve the problem.
It was hardly them expediting me getting back up and running to order a new custom-built machine from China with express shipping, and throw a couple hundred $ worth of apology at me, it was them admitting defeat by their internal inventory/support system.
Kafka-esque, really, that they shipped a machine that they wouldn't allow themselves to fix, but that was the experience I had.
Early adopters weren't screwed. It's not like Apple suddenly offered the fusion drive standard. It's a BTO option. No one is getting anything more for the same prices as early adopters.
Ah but you fail to take into account that Fusion Drive is more software "magic" than hardware. I can set up a Fusion Drive on my own since it's included in OS X to do so. With any hardware I want. Sure, it won't be supported but it's still a "Fusion Drive" in every sense.
So what you're paying for is a 128GB SSD and support for it.
The retina MBP doesn't even have a fusion drive by default or as an option...
The fusion drive is 2 separate drives. One traditional hard drive and one SSD. Software in the OS links them together and to the end user, it appears as one single drive.
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Yes, this is correct. Paying for support and installation is not so "abnormal" as people might think. Don't forget in the Linux world, where everything is free/open source, people still pay money to companies like Red Hat and SUSE for support of their Linux distros.
So you consider the iMac that's been in the market for 1 month "old"? Tell that to the 21.5" early adopters who could have saved $200 if they just waited a month.
/serious.
Why should Apple be ashamed. They can charge $1million for it, that's on the customer still if they want to pay for it.
Perhaps not. But it's not much work to set it up yourself. On top of that, those who have done that haven't experienced much of any troubles at all yet.
So for me, that 250$ price is riddiculous. I'd rather get an external USB3 SSD of my choosing and either create my own Fusion Drive or just manually handle my applications and stuff.
It's hard to go back to HDD's once you've tasted SSD's, not so much for manipulating large files, but for everyday computing, where I notice a distinct speed advantage on my maxed-out MBA over my desktop iMac. Everything just seems to be a bit -dare I say it- snappier. I just hope that the all-flash option will come down in price a bit, cause I'm hoping to get all Flash in my next iMac, with an external HDD for mass storage.
I also find it disappointing that you can't get more than 512MB video memory on all but the top 27" model, where you have a choice of 1GB or the GTX 680MX with 2GB. The 1GB would have been nice as an option for the other 3 models.
Basically yes because the HDD is not getting accessed as much if at all.Except that I DO have a 2012 21.5" iMac with a 5400rpm drive. It is very quiet, but it is still louder than a SSD alone would be since a SSD makes ZERO noise. You think that putting the 5400rpm drive in a Fusion configuration magically makes it silent??
Not sure...but you can go with a lower-cost alternative to a Fusion Drive upgrade (I did for my 27" mid-2011 iMac). MacFixit has a free guide on their site on how to do it. But they also sell a hideously overpriced kit that you are led to believe is necessary to make it work (as in only available from them). Not so! I used their free guide and the following parts from Amazon to do the same for less than a $100:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002YGUXKU/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&smid=AL7LHK6Q9LVTS
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004W2JKWG/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0056OB8GK/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?ie=UTF8&smid=A1UCLUF7KW7AYG
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003XS9DY0/ref=ox_sc_act_title_4?ie=UTF8&smid=A2ZSTDEXO9VTZF
Now you can get suction cups from Walmart (or wherever), but I got these because they are heavy duty looking. I had my new drive installed in about 45 minutes. Then I downloaded ML again and wiped the existing (spinning) hard drive, and used a 64 GB SSD which I reformatted. I restored everything from my Time Machine backup, and now startup time hovers around 30 seconds. Overall it is very speedy now.
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Nothing because it's software not hardware. Hence you can create your own from 10.7 onwards. If it was hardware they would probably charge roughly the same.As it isn't they can't charge for something that they wouldn't be responsible for.
You can. Google it. You'll have to take out the optical drive however, and you must have Mountain Lion.