My tuppeny worth: iMac update will be incremental
Hi. I'm new here.
Here's my story... and some un-educated opinions on the 'new' iMacs.
Okay. After several months messing about with OSx86 on a 'Hackintosh' PC (without any real problems installing or using it I hasten to add), I decided to go legit and took the plunge and bought a mid-range MacBook ... 4 days before the last update. (Gutted? Indeed, but I couldn't be bothered to return and re-order, though I made them refund my credit card UK£50 - just enough to buy 2gb of third party RAM)
Anyway, I love my MacBook - it's cute and fast and cool, and I cant fault it for anything, except that I find the screen resolution a bit limiting for my graphics and web layout work. My PC is now a media/gaming centre only you see, plugged into a 26" LCD TV running at 1280x720, so I can't use that. I have contemplated using an external monitor with the MacBook when working from home, but hate the inelegance of that.
What I really want is a 24" iMac, but that's way beyond my price range, so I've been looking at the 20" iMac, and have found someone via eBay who may consider swapping their 6 month old one for my MacBook as they are going abroad.
Cool, you say, but what's all this navel-gazing leading to?
Well, obviously I can't go ahead with this swap now can I? Not until I've heard the skinny from next week's WWDC, and the revealing (or not, as the case may be) of lovely shiney new bits of kit to drool over.
However, I got to thinking... if they do go ahead with announcements of new consumer desktop hardware, will they release a radical new iMac design? Or will it be an incremental upgrade, the same as the recent MacBook & MacBook Pro updates?
I think it's preeeetty obvious that the latter is much much more likely, and they will probably hold off releasing a new iMac design and any major hardware update until after Leopard is released, or even have a simultaneous hard launch.
Some people might wonder why they would update their desktop just 4 months before the launch of a new desktop... well, wasn't the much improved iMac G5 with iSight released just 4 months before the radical switch to Intel hardware?
I think that there will be an update to the iMac as follows:
1) Both 20" and 24" will adopt the same nVidia GPU as seen in the new MacBook Pro - the 8600GT. They would not put a more powerful GPU than that because of heat and cost issues, but also because of marketing (i.e. consumer desktop cannot appear more powerful than the Pro kit, either desktop or mobile) though the 24" might be offered the 8600GTS variant as an option with more memory.
2) I can't see them upgrading the memory in an iMac to 2gb as standard, for same marketing reasons as above.
3) There will probably be a minor upgrade in minimum hard drive capacity and CPU speed, similar to MacBook Pro.
4) If the iMac 17" is retained, then there'll be a convergence to one model for the low-end/education market with Intel integrated graphics, 1gb RAM, 160/200gb hard disk and a Superdrive (the Combo drive will be dropped across the board this year - the fact that it exists in this day and age of a few dollars difference in manufacturing price just stinks of penny-pinching. I mean, in the case of the low-end MacBook : an otherwise highly capable notebook that costs UK£700... with a CD-writer? Ludicrous! ).
Can I just add - why oh why are people whining about the potential loss of the 17" iMac, and even go so far as to demand 15" iMacs? Why do people like and want *smaller* screens? Do they like to be restricted in their OSX desktop real estate, or just want to ruin their eyesight squinting?
A 17" widescreen is awful, in that you loose so much height from a normal 4:3 17" screen. Yet a 20" widescreen which offers so much more resolution, is the same height as a 4:3 17" and just a few inches wider.
I think it should be a minimum for any desktop PC - just the right resolution to fit more onto, yet also the right size for to feel comfortable with. Apple got it just right. And they are now cheap as you like - I picked up a brand new reasonable quality 20" widescreen for the XP computer I use in my employers office for just UK £112 the other day. I've tried several 22" monitors with the same resolution as a 20" before and they just felt wrong. Having said that, a 24" HD monitor like the one on the top-end iMac feels very very right
I digress.
As regards the radical new iMac desktop redesign that I predict will be out in October or thereabouts:
1) Aesthetically, it definitely WON'T be brushed aluminium as that styling is older than the white iMac and is too similar to Pro kit. It might resemble the iPhone and top-end iPods - glossy black, seamless screen-to-border styling, metal backed, all-in-one with superbly engineered adjustable height/tilt mechanism. Personally, I think it would look tacky though - I've seen some glossy black cased monitors and they are yuck. I just can't see how they can improve on the current design other than making it slimmer, improve heat exhaustion and noise, and, well, that's it. The reason the iMac aesthetics haven't changed in 3/4 years are because they hit the nail right on the head with a big fat lump hammer and produced an absolute instantly recognisable and completely lickable design classic (though I realise it's not to everyone's tastes. My mate who is a bigger Apple fan than me hates the white iMac and wishes it was silver - just the same as all the other PCs out there. Boring!)
2) Not touch screen - that will be for the sub-notebook and next generation laptops. Might have some element of that sort of touchable trickery though - possibly some kind of programmable keyboard/mouse/touchpad controller? Nothing too radically different that people will have to learn how to physically 'use' a computer again though.
3) Definitely no 30" iMac... the mega-dopper screen is for the Pro elite only. Though I can see how some slavish Apple fanatics would wank themselves silly for a UK£1999 limited edition 30th Anniversary 30" iMac in silver and black - but it would have to be splashproof
4) Internal hardware specs - hard to say, but I can see BluRay as an option in my minds eye, proper desktop processors, 8600GT GPU as before, possibly some kind of digital TV functionality integrated into Front Row (but difficult due to varying worldwide TV standards, plus it would annoy their third-party hardware buddies ), 2gb RAM minimum, 500gb drive minimum, motion sensitive game remote, 3D virtual reality mind mapping interface, a BFG9000 free with every copy of Doom 4, wireless quadrophonic massage receptors, woofers and tweeters, a bag on yer head...
Okay, I'm getting carried away now, and it's bedtime... so I'll not continue with this hyper-speculative nonsense any more.
This has been my first post. I'm sorry. Be gentle.
