Next-Generation iMac to Offer Two 'Compelling' New Features?

[charlituna]

Why? So instead of carpal tunnel in your wrist you can have it in your entire arm?

agreed. outside of limited uses like kiosks at bookstores etc I can't see a need for touch screens

what I could see them do is, as perhaps a +$20 option, have that short keyboard with a touchpad added where the number pad used to be. as a replacement for a mouse. you get the multi-touch like with a laptop, eliminate a cable etc. perhaps they could even make an optional 'pen' to use for drawing programs, etc.

 

[hal1984]

USB 3.0 or matte-screenfor a/v professionals.
Keyboard with multitouch trackpad to allow gestures in the iMac.

 

[zw-gator]

If you want blu-ray, go buy an external bluray player and hook it up to your TV.

This wining over bluray is ridicules.

 

[Target362]

HD-DVD ain't coming back. The menu implementation was so awful it was stupid. I have an LG player that plays both, and HD-DVD is a pain to access any special features. No MENUS! Dumb.

The only reason HD-DVD is so cheap now is the chains are one step from dumping them in the trash.

Exactly. All the stores no longer sell HD-DVD movies.

Plus, in my opinion blu-ray is more a unique name then HD-DVD.

 

[hal1984]

there was an update in late Feb/early March. I remember because I was getting ready to buy an imac and by luck they surprise released them right before I placed my order

The white MacBook was updated in late January and again updated in late May. I think that the iMac will be one more time refreshed before going Nehalem in late 09/early 10. The "late return to school timeframe" is a very good time to release updated models.

 

[PaperMacWriter]

Whats on my wish list......

1) All new displays. HD 16:9 OLED H-IPS panels in all models Or at least LED backlit S-PVA.....
2) FireWire 1600(on consumer computers)/3200(those dubbed "Pro"), USB3, SD Card Slot, Blu-Ray(as a BTO option)
3) Clarksdale
4) Better Graphics
5) Cheaper(subtract $100-$200
6) Built-in-battery & surge protector(for blackouts)
7) New, thinner design with less chin, less desk space wasted, more adjustable
8) Anti-Glare glass(museum glass, or whatever you want to call it) as a standard, and a oleophobic coating for cleaning ease(I am in no way affiliated with tru-vue, it was an example I found on google)
9) SSDs standard

Well, thats about it...... hey, if they made this, they would have the best consumer computer ever. I'd buy one...

SG

 

[chedda]

20" portable

Considering the imac uses laptop components perhaps the 20" can be made portable with a flipout keyboard and trackpad. Otherwise forget touch on a desktop purleese. This only works for the iphone and tablet solutions. Quad core would be a nice touch.

 

[mixel]

Apparently it's a gamer BS personal problem with Sony.

I'm not a gamer, so I could give a rat's ass.

When it comes to Apple's gamer base vs. Apple's FCS and LS pro content creator base, guess who's going to win?

I'm a big gamer, and I have no problem with Sony at all. Just the average Mac user has potential use for BD too, they're durable and great out of the box backup solution for a lot of types of file. If people would get over their petty tribalism over a goddamn optical media format they'd realise that. Seriously, how does everything get to be "us vs them" .. BD.. OH NO! Think of the children!

Fortunately the anti-Sony camp is minute compared to the "people who like watching movies at high quality" camp. How is BD failing anyway? When big titles come out they sell very well. http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/12/11/the-dark-knight-moves-600-000-blu-ray-discs-on-day-one/ - People are being silly thinking that it's supposed to outright replace DVD, its an incremental improvement - BD players play DVDs too, most BD capable households only buy BDs of the stuff they really care about the quality of and buy DVDs the rest of the time. It doesn't *have* to replace it entirely to be a viable and profitable format. DVDs may always sell better, but it wouldn't make the format dead in the water.

TLOTR trilogy is going to sell like crazy, I'd imagine.

 

[Target362]

If you want blu-ray, go buy an external bluray player and hook it up to your TV.

This wining over bluray is ridicules.

What if people want to watch movies on the go?

Remember, its what the consumer wants, not a select few.

 

[Target362]

If you want blu-ray, go buy an external bluray player and hook it up to your TV.

This wining over bluray is ridicules.

Whats on my wish list......

1) All new displays. HD 16:9 OLED H-IPS panels in all models Or at least LED backlit S-PVA.....
2) FireWire 1600(on consumer computers)/3200(those dubbed "Pro"), USB3, SD Card Slot, Blu-Ray(as a BTO option)
3) Clarksdale
4) Better Graphics
5) Cheaper(subtract $100-$200
6) Built-in-battery & surge protector(for blackouts)
7) New, thinner design with less chin, less desk space wasted, more adjustable
8) Anti-Glare glass(museum glass, or whatever you want to call it) as a standard, and a oleophobic coating for cleaning ease(I am in no way affiliated with tru-vue, it was an example I found on google)
9) SSDs standard

Well, thats about it...... hey, if they made this, they would have the best consumer computer ever. I'd buy one...

SG

1. Could see that happen. (the OLED, or even just a LED)
2. Not sure about the firewire and USB quite yet, but a SD slot would be nice, given apple has photography as one of its main useage in macs. Blu-ray as a BTO option? sure, it will stop all the wining in here.
3. what?
4. Define that. What card, make and model?
5. That may happen, just like the macbooks
6. no
7. I see a whole new shell.
8. may be
9. as a BTO perhaps for now

 

[charlituna]

Look, Blu Ray is cool looking but so doggone hyped.

as a video format perhaps. most of the general public can't tell the diff between 720 and 1080.

however as a data format there are places that deal in 20-25 GB of data at a time and for whatever reason don't want to do it by download. my roommate that works for the US government is probably one such. he still sends data by disk. usually 6-7 at a time. the idea of sending on disk would appeal to him.

and rather like the whole 'but the iphone doesn't have X that every other smart phone that has been out for 5 years has' remember that blu-ray is a toddler. it's not old enough to really call it a fail. another couple of years we can start up that talk

How about an iMac with dock to go with your fancy new tablet?

http://gizmodo.com/339918/apple-docking-patent-works-perfectly-with-ultra+slim-macbook

Pretty much blows everything else away, don't it?

maybe for you. but I think it's rather a ridiculous idea

One of them is most likely an SD card slot like the MBPs now have.

I could see them doing a slot that would be preset with SD but on a custom order could be swapped for esata and such. I think it would be a brilliant move. at least on the higher end machines

I'm not too surprised at a possible redesign. A slimmer design

why are folks jumping on slimmer design. maybe the redesign is to move towards solid state (as a custom item perhaps), bigger hard drives and a new design that would be able to use desktop not laptop CPUs without the dang things over heating and blowing up in the machine. that latter switch is one that has been cried for way longer than a matte screen option.

It is no where near a professional device! Please do not pass on this horrible info. It is an outdated, over priced toy.

For professionals,

define professional. one agreed upon definite definition. you can't. because there isn't one. a 'professional device' and what works 'for professionals' is as varied as there are professions. all that matters is that someone can do what needs to be done in a matter that is practical for the person doing it.

I work in film editing and animation. mostly shorts, probably nothing over 30 minutes. so doing my work on a 3.06 ghz imac works.

however, my buddies over at Pixar are doing full on feature length 3D digital animation films. with a massive linux based render farm. not even a Mac Pro was enough for them.

several well known and award winning bands use macbooks and garageband to write drafts of their songs. they admit this in interviews even.

and so on. and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Remember, its what THE CONSUMER wants. You (along with others who hate blu-ray) are not the only ones using macs.

hear, hear. this is a major problem with this forum. there are a handful of uber users, total techno geek types, that think that what they demand is what is what the world demands. forgetting that they are perhaps .5% of the market.

Apple has the best marketing in the world!! This post truly shows why they deserve to have the largest profit margin in the business.

if Apple wanted to rule the computer rule, they would. they know what they would have to do. but there are very valid legal reasons for keeping things small (review the details of the whole Psystar sitch for several of said reasons)

 

[deconstruct60]

Blu Ray is just not catching on like Sony hoped it would. They won the format war and decided to charge far too much for most people. Another proprietary debacle for the company that has tried and failed at it many times before.

CDROM yeah... big failure. (yeah there is some goofy stuff they have come up with to bind memory sticks to their equipment, but name an effort that was intended to be a widespread industry standard. ). Sony also tried to push the envelope sometimes too. Folks who push the envelope will have failures. It is easy to sit back and just clone other folks stuff.


Charge too much. A one of the best selling blu-ray players over on Amazon.com at the moment is sub $200. The data burners are mostly already down below $200 (all of them on newegg). I realize folks want blu-ray to be as cheap as the mature DVD equipment was that it is displacing, but get real. At one point DVD players and burners went for $300+ too.

In the mean time, the Chinese have adopted and are running with HD DVD, selling them for much less and gaining much wider adoption than Blu Ray is.

No. the Chinese have invented yet another format. CH-DVD borrows some tech from HD-DVD but it isn't HD-DVD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Blue_High-definition_Disc


They have invented several new technologies to boost the dominance of Chinese manufacturers for the market for those goods. Ironic, in a rant on the narrow, proprietary actions of Sony, to invoke CH-DVD as something as a counter example.

CH-DVD is cheaper in part because leverages the large pirate disk pressing infrastructure already in place in China. There are more titles in CH-DVD than Blu-Ray in part because there are more pirates participating. So the disks are cheaper. You can cut a good chunk out of the costs if you don't pay for the IP that you are selling.

The difference between Blu Ray and HD DVD is minimal. If HD DVD returns at an acceptable price, it is going to give Blu Ray a run for its money.

HD DVD is dead. Get over it.



As for digital downloads. If download a fully tricked out Blu-ray DVD with 1080p, all the audio, etc. so that fill up the most of the DVD space for most folks that will blow your ISP provider agreement if do several of those per month. If everyone did it the current net will start to have congestion problems.

 

[Target362]

hear, hear. this is a major problem with this forum. there are a handful of uber users, total techno geek types, that think that what they demand is what is what the world demands. forgetting that they are perhaps .5% of the market.

Thats a problem everywhere

 

[charlituna]

I did hear, however, those Laptop Hunter ads put a huge dent in Apple's sales. It was so bad, Apple actually asked MS to stop running the ads.

Apple asked MS to stop running the ads outright, however.

I'll say it again: It is weak to ask a competitor to stop running a series of ads outright.

But Apple did ask MS to stop running the ads. That shows significant weakness.

You have no idea what was said. You are taking Kevin Turner from Microsoft at his word about what was said. That Apple called and whined about the ads and demand that the bullies shut up.

Instead of what was more likely which was a call informing the Microsoft Legal Department that the ads were misrepresenting the prices by a margin of $100-300 and thus in violation of several laws and if they were not pulled/changed immediately, Apple would have no choice but to start appropriate legal action.

As for the counter ads, Apple has tons of ads about how easy, trouble free etc the Mac is. they didn't need to waste time and money on special ads just to counter the rather lame Laptop ads.

Apple asked because MS were still using outdated MacBook Pro pricing after Apple had dropped their prices. Therefore the ad was incorrect and "misrepresented" Apple's products.

correct. and Apple had a legal right to skip being nice and making a polite call and just sue them. cause there are laws against giving out false facts. and yes those laws say if the facts change you must change with them.

Also, lets clarify the information in the reports. It is not that Apple has 91% of the computer or even laptop market. they have 91% of the $1000+ laptop market. nothing about sub $1000 laptops or any desktops has been said.

which tells us that when one has the money and inclination to spend a lot on a laptop, the winner is Apple by a few noses (bodies and tails). but doesn't speak to total power, which we know Apple does not have.

 

[zw-gator]

What if people want to watch movies on the go?

Remember, its what the consumer wants, not a select few.

Blu-Ray on a laptop? LOL

My laptop already gets hot enough when I play 1080 content off the HD, it would light on fire trying to read that off a BD.

 

[andy721]

Blu-ray won't be in the iMacs off hand but you would have to pay extra for it to be fitted in. Trust me, never fails Apple loves the Extra buck.

2nd They will reduce the price in only iMac nothing else on the apple store line to -$100 and that's as high as it would go, but you could also do the student discount which subtracts another $100.

Watch how accurate this will be when this happens.

 

[litosclone]

I know this will never happen. But the new iMac will have a touch screen and mimic the Cintiq 21UX. I can dream!!

 

[mixel]

Blu-Ray on a laptop? LOL

My laptop already gets hot enough when I play 1080 content off the HD, it would light on fire trying to read that off a BD.

Errr.. A lot of not particularly expensive laptops have BD drives already. Much cheaper than MBPs or even MBs here in the UK.

 

[Target362]

Blu Ray is just not catching on like Sony hoped it would. They won the format war and decided to charge far too much for most people. Another proprietary debacle for the company that has tried and failed at it many times before.

You do realize that Blu-ray is still young?

and the players, as well as the movies have gone down in price from a year ago.

In the mean time, the Chinese have adopted and are running with HD DVD, selling them for much less and gaining much wider adoption than Blu Ray is.

Source?

HD-DVd is DEAD.

The difference between Blu Ray and HD DVD is minimal. If HD DVD returns at an acceptable price, it is going to give Blu Ray a run for its money.

as said above, its dead and not coming back.

Given the choice, I would rather not pay for a Blu Ray drive, I've found downloading HD content works better for me than purchasing $35 BRay discs.

Yeah, downloading it illegally.

It's widely expected that content delivery is going to be achieved through the internet anyway, so it would make more sense to go with the cheaper option.

but not anytime soon, and when it does, (and I mean 100% ) you will still have to pay for it.

Blu-Ray on a laptop? LOL

My laptop already gets hot enough when I play 1080 content off the HD, it would light on fire trying to read that off a BD.

why not? There are plenty of laptops that have blu-ray. doesn't mean it will over heat.

Blu-ray won't be in the iMacs off hand but you would have to pay extra for it to be fitted in. Trust me, never fails Apple loves the Extra buck.

if it is, expect it to be standard on at least one model.

2nd They will reduce the price in only iMac nothing else on the apple store line to -$100 and that's as high as it would go, but you could also do the student discount which subtracts another $100.

Not everyone is a student though





[/quote] Charge too much. A one of the best selling blu-ray players over on Amazon.com at the moment is sub $200. The data burners are mostly already down below $200 (all of them on newegg). I realize folks want blu-ray to be as cheap as the mature DVD equipment was that it is displacing, but get real. At one point DVD players and burners went for $300+ too. [/quote]

Exactly, as I said above, its still young.

HD DVD is dead. Get over it.

+1

As for digital downloads. If download a fully tricked out Blu-ray DVD with 1080p, all the audio, etc. so that fill up the most of the DVD space for most folks that will blow your ISP provider agreement if do several of those per month. If everyone did it the current net will start to have congestion problems.

most blu-ray movies ship with a digital copy already, so you have one for the computer, and one for your collection in your living room.

 

[Target362]

Errr.. A lot of not particularly expensive laptops have BD drives already. Much cheaper than MBPs or even MBs here in the UK.

Exactly.

 

[charlituna]

Did Apple give Microsoft four to six week's notice that they'd be dropping prices?

If so, the Microsoft haters would have a better case.

not at all. the laws don't require advance notice. they do require that you don't give out false facts.

Microsoft had other ads which they could have put in place of the bad one or two. they didn't.

also it takes maybe 1-2 days to redo ADR and trim out the few frames that show the actual price and get the new version out there. trust me, I work in said world, I've done it.

It's not like "Oh, Apple changed their prices at 16:00 - we need to have corrected ads for the 18:00 news programs and the evening prime time".

actually you would. you might get a day or two grace by the offended company but that's it.

As it was. the price drops were announced June 8. on July 16th we got the news about the phone call. about a week after that, the ads had changed.

so over a month of bad ads

But the law and courts would certainly make a distinction between an ad that was a blatant lie when first shown, and an ad that's was just a couple of weeks out of date.

nope. bad is bad. the law is point blank. if you give a fact it must be correct. be it a competitor or your own.

the only way around it is if the price is for a special sale. say like Labor Day Weekend and you clearly say that the price is X-Y days only.

Apple doesn't care about the economy. It had been going sour for at least a year before and they did nothing until MS ran those ads.

again, assumption on your part.

you assume that Apple changed the prices due to the whole ad issue. which begs the question, why wait so long. why not drop the prices after the first ad, which was in March. why wait 3 months.

maybe Apple dropped the prices because the price of the parts dropped. maybe Apple dropped the prices because they didn't want the annual game of dropping them 3 weeks after their big back to school sale was over (when actually they didn't drop the prices but up'd the specs so same diff in the end) and parents freaked and gripped about the change occurring after the return period had ended.

 

[AidenShaw]

nope. bad is bad. the law is point blank. if you give a fact it must be correct. be it a competitor or your own.

That's why I said and courts - the courts have discretion to consider the seriousness of the infraction (was it "with malice", for example).

It's not worth the effort to find and document cases where Apple used lies in it ads. ("First 64-bit desktop" comes immediately to mind.)

All-in-all, the "Microsoft ran the ads for a few weeks after the price changed" issue is pretty mild.

 

[charlituna]

All-in-all, the "Microsoft ran the ads for a few weeks after the price changed" issue is pretty mild.

not really.

IF they could prove that it would take 7 weeks to make the corrections and IF they could prove that they had started the work the moment they found out that the prices had changed, you might have an argument.

but the fact is that they did not pull the ads and replace them when they found out (which doesn't not take 7 weeks to do). which is part of what the law requires. and the courts would never buy an argument for forgiveness.

So when do we think these compelling new features will turn up? I think it's too much for Apple to update iPods, release Snow Leopard AND update iMacs all in one month. Any thoughts?

actually I think if they are going to update the desktops this fall they would be best off doing it with Snow Leopard. then they can look good to the customers buying those machines and have SL pre installed and no one has to pay for the update disks, deal with the drop in copies etc.

so I think they might do this in September and if the ipods are going to be updated this year, do that in October-early November.

 

[andy721]

You do realize that Blu-ray is still young?

and the players, as well as the movies have gone down in price from a year ago.



Source?

HD-DVd is DEAD.



as said above, its dead and not coming back.



Yeah, downloading it illegally.



but not anytime soon, and when it does, (and I mean 100% ) you will still have to pay for it.



why not? There are plenty of laptops that have blu-ray. doesn't mean it will over heat.




if it is, expect it to be standard on at least one model.



Not everyone is a student though

Charge too much. A one of the best selling blu-ray players over on Amazon.com at the moment is sub $200. The data burners are mostly already down below $200 (all of them on newegg). I realize folks want blu-ray to be as cheap as the mature DVD equipment was that it is displacing, but get real. At one point DVD players and burners went for $300+ too. [/quote]

Exactly, as I said above, its still young.


+1




most blu-ray movies ship with a digital copy already, so you have one for the computer, and one for your collection in your living room.[/QUOTE]


Yeah but you can do student through the website regardless if you are one or not. Everyone was in school at some point, but I guess they look at it as if they want students now not in the past. Yes there will be one model with blu ray built in but don't look at it as the cheapest of all.

 

[Target362]

Yeah but you can do student through the website regardless if you are one or not. Everyone was in school at some point, but I guess they look at it as if they want students now not in the past. Yes there will be one model with blu ray built in but don't look at it as the cheapest of all.

But that is lying, and not a very "cool" thing to do.