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Online Ad Evidence of Imminent iMac, Mac Mini and MacBook Updates?
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Just to clarify, I think the iLife & iWork suites are great, I just think Apple's recent annual updates of them have been "phoned in," and in the case of iMovie, even dumbed down. If Apple insists on updating them annually with minor tweaks the least they can do is offer an upgrade price to owners of the most recent previous version.
Oh yes, a Unibody Mac Mini... with quad-core low power Xeon... 9600M GT... 500GB 7200rpm HDD and 8gb of DDR3... now that would be AWESOME!
Re: not happening - Unless one could remove the thin display (tablet?) and take that with. Tho I suppose that would require a much larger media event than it appears we'll see. Was just a fun and unoriginal prediction.
Re: defeat the concept of the iMac - Huh? If the concept of a iMac is "all-in-one," then my prediction stays true (with a twist).
Regardless, newsflash - thin is in (hello over priced and poorly spec'd Samsung LED TVs or iPod touch or...). When it comes to electronics, current consumer spending trends seem to suggest they care more about the thinness of their devices than performance. Which should fit perfectly in the iMac target demo's wheelhouse. This demo surfs, email, chat, Word, iLife, iTunes, etc. And these user habits are easily met with a laptop-grade processor. Thus, I fully expect thinner iMacs.
Tv's are different because you can hang them on a wall for a smaller footprint. What do you gain with a thinner imac and the stand still goes back 7 inches. Its also not like you stand at the side of the imac all day or move it around. Do you expect the Macpros to get thinner?
....actually now that i think about it...the Macpro's are huge, so maybe they could lose a few pounds.
Apple fell into the clock speed war. So now people are expecting faster Ghz when it stopped being about that when the C2 line came out. It became a matter of IPC. Apple has a hard time selling IPC (IMHO) so they wait until the CPUs speed catch up to the existing line to upgrade.
Although with the Macbook Apple did lower the clock speed (2008 models versus 2009 models), so there is precedent.
With the huge gap between the iMac and the behemoth PRO, I've wondered for years why they don't offer a miniTower.
I love that people throw out unibody like it can apply to anything. People, all Apple did was take the age old technology of cnc milling and applied it to computers. It's not some revolution, it just makes sense when trying to make an aluminum body computer with durability.
It would make no sense to spend all that money/time/materials milling a mac mini, something that doesn't exactly need the durability you need in a laptop.
I love when Apple takes old tech and gives it a new name and people think its revolutionary...and I don't think I'd expect anything major out of this update. That way if they do decide to do something crazy (doubtful), then at least you'll be surprised and happy. But all this quad core talk makes sense to us, but when it doesn't happen we'll all just be pissed off and annoyed again.
jmpage2 said:
Bullcrap, almost everyone knows the difference between dual and quad core and will just calculate 2 x 3.06 or 4 x 2.66 which is best (though it doesn't really work that way).
Any salesman can easily explain this and a nice little graphic showing how much faster a pc is versus the top of the line imac will convince anyone.
Agree. How would it be hard to sell that? We've had to do it before when we went to dual core with the Core Duo architecture. It doesn't matter, because the old products won't be on the shelves anymore.
iMac shipping.
Not sure where all you guys find these sites showing 2-3 weeks for Mini Macs and iMac shipping? I just visited the Apple.ca site, went to the educational site and it shows a 24" iMac ships with in 24 hours, or if you altered the configuration, 2-4 business days.
I ordered our 24" iMac on Sept 18/09 and NO one can even give me an ETA. Seems to me like all Apple is doing is stoking the rumor mill to build hype around the supposed update/upgrade. We will all look silly if it is simply a supply shortage.
Not sure where all you guys find these sites showing 2-3 weeks for Mini Macs and iMac shipping? I just visited the Apple.ca site, went to the educational site and it shows a 24" iMac ships with in 24 hours, or if you altered the configuration, 2-4 business days.
I ordered our 24" iMac on Sept 18/09 and NO one can even give me an ETA. Seems to me like all Apple is doing is stoking the rumor mill to build hype around the supposed update/upgrade. We will all look silly if it is simply a supply shortage.
The potential of multi-threading can help make it "really work that way".
That's the point of Grand Central - so that 4*2.66 is obviously better more of the time.
Apple clearly told their dealers the low end Mac Mini is being discontinued, so I don't think it is just a supply shortage. Something is changing, just don't know what.
Just like the iPod camera rumor that spread world wide like wild fire nothing big will come of this latest Mini rumor. You guys are complete lunatics when it comes to these rumors.
Just like the iPod camera rumor that spread world wide like wild fire nothing big will come of this latest Mini rumor. You guys are complete lunatics when it comes to these rumors.
You mean forum members on macrumors.com are crazy about rumors?
Hogwash!
My One Cent
Someone made the reference a number of pages back that we are scared to refer to ourselves as 'the average user.' Not me. I am the average user. I appreciate a computer that embraces both form and function - when I bought my 13" Unibody MB this year I truly thought I had found the best of both worlds. As an admirer of the 'form' factor of the iMacs for a number of years, I can say with certainty that an iMac will be in my home soon. But I don't care about the number of cores, in fact I don't know what a core is. I built my first computer in 1979 or 1980 (a Sinclair ZX-81) with my Dad. I've owned countless machines since then and consider myself to be technically quite savvy - but I don't know what a core is and why I need 4 versus 2. Here's what I know: When I turn my MB on, or open it up. IT WAKES UP. LIGHTENING QUICK. I don't get a message that says "SL failed to quit properly, how would you like to proceed?" Wireless? Same thing - JUST WORKS. I, for one, am looking forward to what the new mcahines have to offer - both in form and in function. I think if it's thinner, GREAT. If it's not, o well, it's still the best looking thing out there.
Sorry for the longish post, it's just that I read these forums quite a bit and I constantly see people arguing over what 'the average user' needs or doesn't need and I think a lot of you are missing the mark on what an average user looks like.
Hopefully when the new machines are released, there's a little something for everyone.....
P.S. Daddy would really like a glass trackpad option on the new imacs ; )
Someone made the reference a number of pages back that we are scared to refer to ourselves as 'the average user.' Not me. I am the average user. I appreciate a computer that embraces both form and function - when I bought my 13" Unibody MB this year I truly thought I had found the best of both worlds. As an admirer of the 'form' factor of the iMacs for a number of years, I can say with certainty that an iMac will be in my home soon. But I don't care about the number of cores, in fact I don't know what a core is. I built my first computer in 1979 or 1980 (a Sinclair ZX-81) with my Dad. I've owned countless machines since then and consider myself to be technically quite savvy - but I don't know what a core is and why I need 4 versus 2. Here's what I know: When I turn my MB on, or open it up. IT WAKES UP. LIGHTENING QUICK. I don't get a message that says "SL failed to quit properly, how would you like to proceed?" Wireless? Same thing - JUST WORKS. I, for one, am looking forward to what the new mcahines have to offer - both in form and in function. I think if it's thinner, GREAT. If it's not, o well, it's still the best looking thing out there.
Sorry for the longish post, it's just that I read these forums quite a bit and I constantly see people arguing over what 'the average user' needs or doesn't need and I think a lot of you are missing the mark on what an average user looks like.
Hopefully when the new machines are released, there's a little something for everyone.....
P.S. Daddy would really like a glass trackpad option on the new imacs ; )
Most people don't know the difference between single dual and quad cores. Shoot the only system Apple seems to acknowledge the existence of multiple cores in is the Mac Pro. At least with the iMac and Mac Mini Apple doesn't advertise how many cores it has.
There are some of us that do know why they need 4 over 2 cores and it becomes irrelevant under Nehalem/Westmere.
On another note I nearly forgot about this from Dell. An Atom based nettop on the low end and at the higher end a nice Athlon II based, 780G sporting very small form factor machine with HDMI out.
Give me a break. Try encoding a couple of hours of HD video or hatching 1000 photos in Lightroom and tell me that the CPU in the iMac is fine for people. These aren't pro tasks, these are things many users do and the shouldn't have to own a $3000 mac pro to get decent performance when $1000 PCs can do these things easily.
Those may not be pro tasks to you, but I highly doubt the average consumer even knows how to do those things. If you want a good idea of who the average consumer is go to an Apple store and listen in on a 1 to 1 training thing.
Its not that the iMac shouldn't be able to do those things, but Apple has no need to give you power when it sells the machines just fine. Plus, the notebooks are their better machines.