I'm expecting something similar to the MBP approach, where they add a model for 4K at around a $3K price point. If they can't do it at $3K they'll probably wait another year.
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Other than Haswell, any other expected updates to next iMac?
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I'm expecting something similar to the MBP approach, where they add a model for 4K at around a $3K price point. If they can't do it at $3K they'll probably wait another year.
I could be wrong of course. You make a good point on the air & we'll soon have the Pro on PCIe, so why not the next iMac? Normally after a major design change they just do a small bump.
Same design, same screens. Possibly Thunderbolt 2, but I doubt it if we're going to see them in late August.
Highly likely we'll see 780M(X)'s, which will be a slight bump over the existing 680MX.
(I'd almost buy an iMac now, given the tiny upgrades, but I like to have the "latest" thing).
Highly likely we'll see 780M(X)'s, which will be a slight bump over the existing 680MX.
(I'd almost buy an iMac now, given the tiny upgrades, but I like to have the "latest" thing).
Spinning drives won't die entirely for a while yet.
They just won't be for primary storage exclusively.
4k uncompressed video means we're going to see spinning drives around for a good long time yet.
Also, fusion drive can really help a hard drive's performance to make it "good enough", but a LOT bigger than SSD. The spinning drive achilles heel is random access. having a flash drive between the OS and the mechanical disk allows many small random writes to be serialized into one big write, which is much more efficient.
read-ahead and caching can help with reads, too.
don't think that the performance of fusion drive is as good as it will ever be yet either - this is tech that will require tuning and likely a few years to get completely right.
Exactly. I plan on setting my next system up with both an SSD and a HDD to get the best of both worlds. Also putting a copy of OSX on both in case either dies on me.
Fusion looks nice but I can think of use cases where it would be detrimental (especially with a small SSD) so I would prefer not to use it. Great for someone who wants 'it just works' but fingernails on the blackboard to others. The really interesting point will come when SSD technology is mature with lots of drive lifetime data (currently there are conflicting reports on them) and their cost goes down.
A possible solution for you would be a Fusion Drive plus an external SSD. That is what I'm looking at. I'd have the OS and most things on the Fusion drive and use a small (probably 256GB) SSD to hold things that I want guaranteed on the SSD. This would include Aperture libraries with the photos being referenced and on the fusion drive. It would also be a couple of games that can lag when they need to access data while playing.
Of course if Apple drops the price a lot for their SSDs, I might look at a 512GB internal SSD for the system disk and an external hard drive for photos and the iTunes library.
I think there is no reason not to put in this refresh too the Nvidia chips especially that the 780M is the new kind of mobile GPU (7% better than 680MX)and maybe with 3GB vRam and maybe nvidia will announce again with the 27iMac the 780MX version
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My plan is to have an internal HDD and an external SSD. As much as I grimace at the thought of booting off an external it saves me from several problems that I have with fusion (for example, I do not want a frequently listened to song on the SSD and I do not want to use up its available writes with fusion moving things back and forth all the time). Since SSDs will get better from year to year (look at pretty much any storage solution, they get better, cheeper, and bigger) this allows me to upgrade as needed (I tend to keep my machines much longer than their expected lifes) whereas with an iMac an internal limits your upgrades. I would keep a copy of OSX on my internal drive so I could boot off of it as needed however in normal practice I would boot off the external.