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Did you just say something in a foriegn tongue? Would you please say all that again so we can understand it CLEARLY? Thanks :)
The main point is that the OWC RAM costs more than say Crucial/Kingston RAM for a reason, and if you have good technical knowledge it isn't hard to figure out if RAM will be compatible with your Mac (as a general rule if it works in most similar x86 PCs it will work with similar Macs too).
 
The main point is that the OWC RAM costs more than say Crucial/Kingston RAM for a reason, and if you have good technical knowledge it isn't hard to figure out if RAM will be compatible with your Mac (as a general rule if it works in most similar x86 PCs it will work with similar Macs too).

One word solves all: Crucial. ;)
 
64GB RAM is useless to most people. If you needed that much RAM I don't think you'd even be using a Mac for whatever it is you're doing.

Of course, it's an option so now people with more money than sense will buy it. I have 16GB in my PC and even that's a bit overkill for gaming. Most people don't need any more than 8GB these days.

I honestly think Apple should put in a proper SSD and better GPU instead of all this RAM.

It's a money making scheme. If Apple stick in a SSD, no one would really need to upgrade it except for higher capacity. Otherwise, it's just as fast, whether it's a 128GB SSD or a 1TB SSD. The "upgrade so it goes faster." reason is eliminated.

They stick in a crappy 5400RPM HD in so it forces the casual users to have a reason to pay a higher price, otherwise, most casual users won't have a need to fill all that space anyway. If they do, the first thing that comes to mind is an external drive for storage.

But I agree with you. It's 2015, the iPhone is still 16GB and the iMac still has a 5400RPM HD. That's Apple. Base on the last several iPhone releases, by 2020, the iPhone will still start at 16GB, and some Macs will still use spinning hard drives.

This is a sign that has reached it's peak or plateau. Once it has matured its technology, it just drags it out. Milking the cow for as long a they can. It's not completely Apple's fault, they're just using other companies technology. They can't dictate when and how fast Intel should make and release their hardware, or how much storage each SSD chips need to have.
 
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Microsoft has pulled ahead of Apple in many areas and stability and lack of malware is about all that's left.
Have you used a nMacPro? Stability is bafflingly awful on both 10.10 and 10.11. I had hoped that El Capitan would fix the random-complete-system-hangs (complete with repeating, stuttering audio), but no such luck. Apple used to make a decent desktop OS: 10.6 was a thing of beauty. 10.7 stunk on ice, 10.8 showed some improvement but it's been downhill since then. Win10 on a Dell Precision Workstation has proven to not only be far more stable than the aptly-nicknamed "trash can" Mac Pro, but it also destroys it performance-wise as well.

And yes, I've taken the Mac "Pro" into both an Apple Store and a local independent reseller. Both times it was returned with a clean bill of health. I've clean-reinstalled five or six times now. It's just plain junk.
 
The original iMac was $1200 US and that was 17 years ago. Adjusted for inflation it would be $1,754.47. So this isn't a bad deal.
... depending on the development of disposable income over that period of time.

It's a money making scheme. If Apple stick in a SSD, no one would really need to upgrade it except for higher capacity. Otherwise, it's just as fast, whether it's a 128GB SSD or a 1TB SSD. The "upgrade so it goes faster." reason is eliminated.
Higher capacity SSD's usually are faster as well (often due to more available chips that can be addressed in parallel and/or better controllers). And if they wouldn't, Apple could still take care of this by e.g. force-bundling higher-capacity SSD's with bigger CPU's (official explanation: more PCIe lanes required for more speed or something like that). The very minimum would be to make Fusion drive standard and e.g. offer higher SSD capacities within Fusion in higher tiers.

So they'd still be able to apply an upsell scheme without being criticized for putting vastly outdated tech into machine claimed to be premium for a premium price.

I honestly can't understand why Apple is risking it's reputation only to save a few dollars on a machine. Computers sell in significantly lower quantities than iDevices, so the scale effects are negligible compared to the long-term damage being done here. Perhaps Tim Cook does weigh things (too much) by their precise evaluability, so difficult-to-measure reputation loses against hard numbers in the BOM.
 
It's a money making scheme. If Apple stick in a SSD, no one would really need to upgrade it except for higher capacity. Otherwise, it's just as fast, whether it's a 128GB SSD or a 1TB SSD. The "upgrade so it goes faster." reason is eliminated.

They stick in a crappy 5400RPM HD in so it forces the casual users to have a reason to pay a higher price, otherwise, most casual users won't have a need to fill all that space anyway. If they do, the first thing that comes to mind is an external drive for storage.

But I agree with you. It's 2015, the iPhone is still 16GB and the iMac still has a 5400RPM HD. That's Apple. Base on the last several iPhone releases, by 2020, the iPhone will still start at 16GB, and some Macs will still use spinning hard drives.

This is a sign that has reached it's peak or plateau. Once it has matured its technology, it just drags it out. Milking the cow for as long a they can. It's not completely Apple's fault, they're just using other companies technology. They can't dictate when and how fast Intel should make and release their hardware, or how much storage each SSD chips need to have.


Your post made me think of TV tech. Few years ago ... Idk maybe 6 +/- LCD was the rage and then LED came out and at the same time there was a small OLED on display at Best Buy in the Magnolia section. Instantly you could how the jump from LCD to OLED could be made but the industry was smart. They charged a premium for LED and gradually over a few years phased TV's from LCD to LED and still haven't milked the cash cow of OLED yet.

And in between all this I read several articles taunting the tech beyond that and how it could be readily available yet it's not out or yet to be released because of profit margins and bottom lines.
 
Have you used a nMacPro? Stability is bafflingly awful on both 10.10 and 10.11. I had hoped that El Capitan would fix the random-complete-system-hangs (complete with repeating, stuttering audio), but no such luck. Apple used to make a decent desktop OS: 10.6 was a thing of beauty. 10.7 stunk on ice, 10.8 showed some improvement but it's been downhill since then. Win10 on a Dell Precision Workstation has proven to not only be far more stable than the aptly-nicknamed "trash can" Mac Pro, but it also destroys it performance-wise as well.

And yes, I've taken the Mac "Pro" into both an Apple Store and a local independent reseller. Both times it was returned with a clean bill of health. I've clean-reinstalled five or six times now. It's just plain junk.


No, I haven't used a Mac Pro. It's out of my price range and needs (maybe if they offered a consumer version with a good gaming card instead of Pro video cards for closer to $2k I'd consider it). OS X has been utterly rock solid in terms of no kernel panics on my 2012 Quad i7 Mac Mini Server, though. I have yet to get a single kernel panic on the machine since early Mountain Lion versions and I'm running El Capitan right now (version 10.11.0, which traditionally should be the most buggy version). I ran Mountain Lion and Mavericks on it as well and while Mavericks had some issues early on, it never kernel panicked that I can recall. By its final version, it was 100% stable here (i.e. my server is normally running 24/7/365 save any updates where I might have to reboot).

I skipped Yosemite due to the slow reports and ugly interface, but I felt METAL might be worth the ugliness to try El Capitan (I still have Mavericks on my CCC backup drive so I could put it back if I wanted at this point). El Capitan broke VMWare Fusion 5.x here (had to upgrade) and iZotope V2.x doesn't work (mostly had it on this machine for editing convenience; it still runs on my MBP that I do the real music work on and I've left it running Mavericks for that reason. I don't feel like ponying up several hundred dollars for something that gets relatively little use (I edited more LP conversions on it than album type stuff since I record album stuff new). I did up grade CCC to 4.x before installing El Capitan as well ($20 upgrade I believe). Otherwise, everything else has run fine. Icons are uglier and I hate the flat traffic light buttons, but otherwise, it's OK looking. I DO like the new "Dark" mode for the dock/menus. That kind of makes up for the ugly icons to some extent. I wish iOS had a dark mode.... (old versions of iOS were much darker to begin with).

Personal History:

PPC PowerMac Digital Audio upgraded to a 1.8GHz G4 7448, Sata, ATI Radeon etc. used as a server until 2012. It had Jaguar on it when I bought it used in 2005. I upgraded to Tiger and upgraded the hardware. Tiger was excellent and fast, but I did get occasional kernel panics. Leopard seemed less stable at first, but did finally settle out to be very stable at the final version. iTunes itself caused some kernel panics, but for once Apple actually answered my bug report and fixed the PPC bug causing the panics and the system was 100% stable from then on until I replaced it in 2012 with a Mac Mini Quad i7 Server.

Meanwhile, in 2008, I bought a Macbook Pro (with the primary idea of making a music album with Logic Pro in mind). It came with Leopard. Unlike many others, I found Snow Leopard to be slower and until the 0.4 incarnation, unstable. It eventually was pretty good and stable as well. I kept that on the Macbook Pro until Mountain Lion after finding Mountain Lion to be acceptable on the Mac Mini. I avoided Lion entirely after reading endless bad reports on it and finding out Rosetta was ditched (still used it for a few things on the Macbook Pro). Mountain Lion and Mavericks ran OK on the MBP, but performance was a bit slower. This did impact Logic a little and that was the worst part (i.e. available CPU was noticeably less in that some tracks from my album wouldn't always make it all the way through in live previews that usually did preview fine in Snow Leopard).

Mountain Lion in its final incarnation was the best in terms of maintaining absolute compatibility (SBM went wonky for XBMC use on another machine in a server capacity when Apple ditched the legacy version for M$'s SBM2), but Mavericks did improve multi-monitor support substantially so I kept the upgrade anyway. I skipped Yosemite as I mentioned above, but decided to try El Capitan out. I'm still running it and not a single kernel panic here yet and it's been on 24/7.

So while I don't know what the problems are with the Mac Pro (I'm guessing it gets tested less than other models for some reason; past versions of OS X seemed to always have problems on whatever Mac Pro was out there that didn't seem to happen on the MBP, iMac and Mac Mini lines for some reason.) I think Apple needs to pay more attention to the Mac Pro and keep it updated and stop nickel and diming all the models as they seem to be doing lately. I'm very disappointed in Apple under Tim Cook. Whatever beefs I had with Steve Jobs losing interest in Macs, it's only gotten 10x worse under Mr. Cook who treats Apple purely as a cash cow these days. Steve first and foremost wanted to see Apple on the cutting edge of things. My 2008 MBP was awesome when I got it. I couldn't have asked for better features at the time (it was the one that ran Vista better than any other notebook except the desktop class ones). It did have the NVidia GPU that had a lot of failures, but mine is still fine 7 years later. The 2012 Mac Mini is a great little machine except that it came with only an Intel Integrated GPU. The 2014 model dumped all over that with no quad-i7 option and a royal PITA to change a hard drive, etc. Again, Apple seems to be steadily going down hill.
 
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Have you used a nMacPro? Stability is bafflingly awful on both 10.10 and 10.11. I had hoped that El Capitan would fix the random-complete-system-hangs (complete with repeating, stuttering audio), but no such luck. Apple used to make a decent desktop OS: 10.6 was a thing of beauty. 10.7 stunk on ice, 10.8 showed some improvement but it's been downhill since then. Win10 on a Dell Precision Workstation has proven to not only be far more stable than the aptly-nicknamed "trash can" Mac Pro, but it also destroys it performance-wise as well.

And yes, I've taken the Mac "Pro" into both an Apple Store and a local independent reseller. Both times it was returned with a clean bill of health. I've clean-reinstalled five or six times now. It's just plain junk.


And this is the issue with Apple's OS as of late. Depending on your hardware your experience can greatly change which is always been Window's achilles heel but that made more sense since Windows ran on every conceivable hardware configuration known to mankind so obviously there is going to be issues with some people. Apple’s advantage was they controlled everything and had limited hardware. Once they can’t control how their own OS runs on their own hardware it’s taking away from their biggest advantage.
 
Your post made me think of TV tech. Few years ago ... Idk maybe 6 +/- LCD was the rage and then LED came out and at the same time there was a small OLED on display at Best Buy in the Magnolia section. Instantly you could how the jump from LCD to OLED could be made but the industry was smart. They charged a premium for LED and gradually over a few years phased TV's from LCD to LED and still haven't milked the cash cow of OLED yet.

And in between all this I read several articles taunting the tech beyond that and how it could be readily available yet it's not out or yet to be released because of profit margins and bottom lines.


OLED has been a major challenge in manufacturing which is why it hasn't been milked yet and actually now has less TV manufactures putting money into r&d for the tech than it did a few years ago.
 
I've heard of people using those. I would be curious to see if there are any reliability concerns of using that over USB3 or if it would be better to use a Thunderbolt enclosure. Also it would be interesting to see speed differences between internal SSD/external HDD combo and internal HDD/external SSD combo.
I've only tried TB variant, could not say much about USB3. Main advantage of SSD is low latency which is still there for external SSD, so I think in most cases performance of intSSD/extHDD will be similar to intHDD/extSSD unless you really need throughput of NVMe SSD - but in that case it will be better not to use Fusion drive at all.
 
It's a money making scheme. If Apple stick in a SSD, no one would really need to upgrade it except for higher capacity. Otherwise, it's just as fast, whether it's a 128GB SSD or a 1TB SSD. The "upgrade so it goes faster." reason is eliminated.

They stick in a crappy 5400RPM HD in so it forces the casual users to have a reason to pay a higher price, otherwise, most casual users won't have a need to fill all that space anyway. If they do, the first thing that comes to mind is an external drive for storage.

But I agree with you. It's 2015, the iPhone is still 16GB and the iMac still has a 5400RPM HD. That's Apple. Base on the last several iPhone releases, by 2020, the iPhone will still start at 16GB, and some Macs will still use spinning hard drives.

This is a sign that has reached it's peak or plateau. Once it has matured its technology, it just drags it out. Milking the cow for as long a they can. It's not completely Apple's fault, they're just using other companies technology. They can't dictate when and how fast Intel should make and release their hardware, or how much storage each SSD chips need to have.

Awfully cynical aren't you. I would argue that they stick in a 5400RPM drive to lower costs, and MANY consumers will never need or appreciate anything more, so why include it? Many people buy an iMac as a "fashion" item, because they heard Apple are amazing and are stylish, and that all their friends have one. That's more likely it.
 
Annnndddd there goes the last reason to buy a nMacpro...

You must not really have a need for an nMP, since it's in no way comparable. Try to do real high-intensity pro work all day every day on an iMac and see how that works for you.

The iMac is great but it is not a replacement for a workstation.
 
The iMac isn't a server though. It's not used in the same way or intended for the same audience. There are so many ways they're totally different beasts. I don't see many iMac users having a lot of need for 64GB of RAM. If you have a real need for it, the architecture of the Mac Pro will be far better suited.

Uh, how about celebrating the option, for those who do need it? Gobs of pros use iMacs for very intensive work. Top end iMac specs rival low end nMP's. Add the fact that Apple only offers a very outdated stand-alone display, and I can see how many pros are going to iMac.
 
Apple's specs on the new iMac indicate support only to 32 Gb....
http://www.apple.com/imac/specs/








Apple's line of newly updated 5K Retina 27-inch iMacs with Skylake will support up to 64GB of RAM, an upgrade from the previous-generation 27-inch Retina iMacs that would only support a maximum of 32GB of RAM. According to OWC, The current 27-inch Retina iMac includes four memory slots that support up to 16GB of memory per slot for a total of 64GB.

newimac64gbram.jpg

Image via OWC

Build-to-order options for the 27-inch Retina iMacs only allow it to be purchased from Apple with a maximum of 32GB RAM, but OWC will offer 16GB modules in 48GB and 64GB configurations for the new iMac. OWC plans to start selling its new 48 and 64GB kits tomorrow, and pricing is as follows:

- Single 16GB module - $329.99

- 32GB Kit using 16GB x 2 Modules - $599.00

- 48GB Kit with 16GB x 2 + 8GB x 2 - $729.00

- 64GB Kit with 16GB x 4 - $1195.00

The new 27-inch iMacs were announced this morning and are available from Apple retail stores and Apple's online store. Pricing for the machines starts at $1,799 for a 3.2GHz quad-core processor, 8GB RAM, 1TB hard drive, and an AMD Radeon R9 M380 graphics card.

Update: OWC has torn down the new 21.5-inch 4K Retina iMac and has learned that the memory is soldered in, which means it can't be upgraded. Customers purchasing a 21.5-inch Retina iMac should get the maximum amount of memory they can afford at the time of purchase as there will be no third-party upgrade options. The maximum amount of RAM for the 21.5-inch iMac models is 16GB.

Article Link: New 27-Inch iMac Supports Up to 64GB of RAM, OWC Offering Upgrade Kits
 
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You forget how much it would cost to add a comparable 5K display to the Mac Pro. The display is what makes the 5K iMac a good deal over the Mac Pro.
Not exactly. The display is the excuse Apple is using for getting rid of powerful mid-range options. Why dropping all discrete GPU options from the 4K iMac? Why offering low-end GPUs in the 5K iMac? Why the trend in avoiding user-serviceable memory and drive bays? Answer: Because you get the awesome awesomeness of an incredible display which is the only part of the computer that will matter from now on.

I'm beginning to believe there're no Mac engineers at Apple anymore. It's all being done with an iPad mind.
 
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