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Rumors of June Launch for Updated iMacs Begin to Build

iMac 2012:

- Ivy Bridge, quad-core max still
- New AMD GPUs (possibly desktop class now that the optical will not be there)
- No Optical Drive
- Slightly Thinner
- Same chin, unless screen size increase, then it can be reduced more. Otherwise there are simply too many components in it.
- Anti-reflective glass, no matte or retina display yet
- 4gig RAM standard still
- USB 3.0 added, possible removal of Firewire (Thunderbolt to Firewire cable can be used)
- 1 TB drive standard, up to 3tb option (this is causing the case to be as thick as it it...the hard drive needs to go if the iMac is to get really really thin).
- highly doubt the blade SSD's as standard, but that would allow reduce in thickness....currently prices are too high.
- SSD drive option to 512

Same prices. Don't expect anything crazy. There are no signs of a major overhaul at all. The coolest thing would be a Retina Display, but the pricing on a display with that many pixels in a 27" size is likely too much right now.
 
Last edited:
Frankied22 said:
Is this true? Have they usually done hardware bumps around the time of a financial call? snip........
Click to expand...

No it's not true. Earnings announcements and HW releases are not statistically (meaningfully) correlated.

cheers to us all
JohnG
 
johnnymg said:
No it's not true. Earnings announcements and HW releases are not statistically (meaningfully) correlated.

cheers to us all
JohnG
Click to expand...

The only connection is that Apple does not release hardware before conferences calls. Dont expect any updates until after the call on the 24th.
 
Moonjumper said:
The Mac Pro is overkill for many users. It would be nice if they could engineer some of the expense out of the Mac Pro chassis so that it would be cost effective to put in an i7 processor and other reasonably price components.
Click to expand...

The chassis isn't that much of an expense to Apple now, not after so long in production. The $2,499 Mac Pro uses pretty cheap components really, the processor is $284 (Apple pay less), the memory costs barely any more than SO-DIMM at the same capacities, the graphics card is mid range. You can get the same level of components in $1,500 workstations and quality gaming systems quite easily. Just Apple's pricing choices - which stand out more when its the only real system you can really compare like-for-like to other companies products. Of course for many paying $1,000 more for the same hardware to get OS X and be in Apple's ecosystem is an acceptable cost.
 
strausd said:
As for the Mac Pro not being as upgradable, I agree and disagree. Mac Pros are not as upgradable when under OS X because of hardware support. But then you are not comparing like terms. You are comparing two workstations with different operating systems.
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It's part of owning a mac. If you buy a mac, you are buying OSX. They are one and the same. IMO, hardware incompatibilities with the OS are a valid reason to state upgrades are limited. If I wanted to build my own PC, I could just do that, OSX be damned.

As for it being discontinued, I stated it was a rumor. Do I think it will happen? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not.
 
InuNacho said:
So by 2012 I won't be able to buy a Mac Pro a computer designed for Pros or an iMac designed for Prosumers/Pros without any kind of optical drive at all?
Golly, I guess professional people don't use optical media at all.
Click to expand...

Well not by 2012 seen as we’re almost a quarter of the way through, I may even have been a little ambitious with EOY 2012 and I admit I’m wavering a little on the Mac Pro, but by EOY 2013 I believe Apple will handle optical drive needs via an external peripheral like they do with the MacBook Air.

Professionals are already a minority of Mac users and those that use optical media are a minority of that minority, and even then those that do require optical drives are more often than not using third party offerings because the Apple supplied optical drives simply doesn’t have the capacity for today’s HD video requirements. For the rest of us professionals, S/FTP, Dropbox, iCloud, thumb drives, SD cards, email, VPNs, portable hard drives, etc… are so much faster, more effective than optical.

Optical media had its day, but is on the wrong side of the adoption curve. Like the floppy disk and ADB before it, Apple doesn’t cling to dying technologies for the sake of backwards compatibility; they kill them and and advance the industry. Eliminating the optical drive and eventually the hard drive removes almost all the moving parts on a Mac and the two single biggest points of failure; it reduces cost in production, in materials and in soft costs like the Genius Bar and shrinkage through returns/defective units; it reduces the weight & physical size and lowers energy requirements.
 
scoobydoo99 said:
Why in the world would you upgrade a computer? I have owned numerous PCs and Macs and never in my life have I upgraded a computer (other than adding RAM). People love to tout the "upgradability" of PCs, but in reality, by the time you want to upgrade the video card (or some other component other than RAM), you really need a new motherboard, but then you need new faster RAM to take advantage of it, oh and while you're at it, you may as well get the new processor, and, and...oh, you just bought a new computer.

It's always better to just buy the new model and get ALL the technology improvements at once. Considering the high resale value of Macs, its cost effective too.
Click to expand...

I bought my first iMac last year with the last new model refresh. The statement above was along my reasoning as well, basically it was time for a new PC and I liked the idea of an all in one. I've built all my PCs since college and the last time I was looking at upgrading I thought I would go through my last couple builds to see what it had cost.

I realized I was replacing my PCs every 2 - 3 years at a cost of 1700 - 2000 (without monitor). The reason for this (as scooby states above) was the upgradability of the Tower system is somewhat lost with the next generation of technology. When I would upgrade a white box or custom built system I would always replace the Power Supply and Hard drives along with MOBO, CPU, Ram, and Video. The reason for replacing the PS and HDs (raid0 with 1 backup drive) in my opinion they are limited life items that I have seen fail in my 2 - 3 yr PC life cycle.

I will not argue the fact that a custom tower can easily be upgraded and repairable by the end user within the 2 - 3 years of use but when its time to upgrade I was buying a new system not really upgrading the original. I will also not argue the fact that you can build a faster system, certainly with a better video card option but in general overall performance is in line with my custom systems i had been building. I don't play games as much as I had in the past so the video card limitations of the iMac systems were not as important to me (but I do hope they address this in future iMacs) and the final reason I moved to an iMac (besides the OS) was the resale value.

When I'm ready to upgrade I hope to sell my current iMac for about thousand and put that toward the next purchase. I paid about 2500 for my current i7 iMac with Applecare and if I can get 1000 for it that will bring me down to 1500 for a new system that I would normally be paying 1700 - 2000 for.
 
zedsdead said:
iMac 2012:

- Ivy Bridge, quad-core max still
- New AMD GPUs (possibly desktop class now that the optical will not be there)
- No Optical Drive
- Slightly Thinner
- Same chin, unless screen size increase, then it can be reduced more. Otherwise there are simply too many components in it.
- Anti-reflective glass, no matte or retina display yet
- 4gig RAM standard still
- USB 3.0 added, possible removal of Firewire (Thunderbolt to Firewire cable can be used)
- 1 TB drive standard, up to 3tb option (this is causing the case to be as thick as it it...the hard drive needs to go if the iMac is to get really really thin).
- highly doubt the blade SSD's as standard, but that would allow reduce in thickness....currently prices are too high.
- SSD drive option to 512

Same prices. Don't expect anything crazy. There are no signs of a major overhaul at all. The coolest thing would be a Retina Display, but the pricing on a display with that many pixels in a 27" size is likely too much right now.
Click to expand...

I'll take one of those, thanks!
 
iSayuSay said:
Really? On what base that you're saying iMac is the best desktop solution?
Click to expand...
No.

I'm saying for the price and what each machine does, an iMac is better for many many people. The Mac Pro is simply overpriced overkill for a lot of people. If the Mac Pro was priced more inline with some of the Windows box towers then I'd say sure go buy a Mac Pro. But this is just not the case.
 
Apple needs to move their entire Mac line onto the same SSD sticks that the MacBook Air uses. It's faster and saves space. I would never go back to a traditional HDD computer if it doesn't have atleast a boot SSD.

Also, optical drives you would think will soon get the boot from the MacBook Pros, if not the iMacs as well. I would love to see the iMac designed in such a way that allowed easy swapability of the hard drives and SSD stick etc. but I think these days have past and Apple is totally moving to a non-user serviceable product, which in my opinion is just fighting against what people want for the sake of fighting.
 
Matariel said:
They do, It's called a Mac Mini.
I'm a little surprised you haven't heard of it.
Click to expand...

^ No where near the power.

The antiglare screen (it'll be a coating like you get on plasma tvs more than likely) is a nice touch. I really hope that USB 3 is built into this model and that the i7 drops to being the standard high end iMac.

I'm still interested in how the high end iMac will stack up to the low end Mac Pro. And we still need a genie to tell us the future of the Mac Pro...
 
Left wifi fixed first

The wifi of the "OLD" imac is still not working for a lot off IMAC users and APPLE is refusing to give a working solution for every body.

No IMAC for me and mnay others. DO a quey on wifi problem IMAC and you will see the lack of support and not giving a solution.

AIR DROP not working, nice feature without WIFI.
 
dickie001x said:
But that's only another two weeks!
Click to expand...
But May in general is already an extra 2-3 weeks from what we originally expected, so it's really more than a month extra.

bushido said:
half the companies i go to, and im not talking about some little building in the woods would be screwed without an optical drive on their daily business. its a desktop after all ... how much smaller do u want a desktop to be :confused: it already has no "tower" and thats still rare as it is
Click to expand...

Companies can easily go buy the external drive if it's THAT needed. I don't care if the iMac gets thinner or smaller, but i'd like the space inside to be used for more important things than an ODD that most people don't need. Also, the ODD creates a lot of extra heat. Even if they took it out and replaced it with another fan, i'd be fine with it.

Ryth said:
I have to say I think HP outdid Apple with that HPZ1 all-in-one design.

http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/workstations/z1_features.html#.T4BqpNlwlBk

THAT is what the iMAC needs to be...with the ability to swap out drives, memory and the graphics card

Thumbs up HP...you actually make the iMac and Apple look behind with this design.
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Are you kidding? That thing is uggggglyyy. Looks like something from 1995. Yuck.
 
cocky jeremy said:
Are you kidding? That thing is uggggglyyy. Looks like something from 1995. Yuck.
Click to expand...

I was talking about how HP outdid them with coming out with an all-in-one that is upgradable.

They could do this with the iMac....honestly it needs to be done.
 
Best Buy discounts

I thought this would be the case. I was in Best Buy yesterday and noticed a small (~ $50) discount on the standard 27" iMac and thought they were probably trying to clear the channel for a soon-to-be-released upgrade. June seems a little far out if sales are starting in April, though. Time will tell.
 
Maybe Apple can make drives and graphics cards pop up like toast in a toaster:D

I'm waiting for my late 2010 iMac to get off AppleCare. I'll either sell it for a new one or have a third party upgrade it. I'm leaning toward a new one

Frankly speaking I've gone the upgrade route with some older desktop Macs (hard drives-internal/external, tweaked firmware, CPU, memory) and the return is short lived. Too many bus bottlenecks, OS upgrade issues and heat issues. But it was fun living on the edge until the meltdown.

That said my desktops, Macbook Pro and iMac's usefulness seem to meet my needs longer than iOS mobile devices. So I don't mind hanging on to them longer as opposed to the iPhone and iPad.
 
Ryth said:
I was talking about how HP outdid them with coming out with an all-in-one that is upgradable.

They could do this with the iMac....honestly it needs to be done.
Click to expand...

If you notice how many g's he used in the word ugly you will see your argument can't ever possibly be valid. :(
 
Ryth said:
I was talking about how HP outdid them with coming out with an all-in-one that is upgradable.

They could do this with the iMac....honestly it needs to be done.
Click to expand...

If i could use a car analogy, HP computers to me are like Caterham cars, whereas the iMac is like an Aston Martin. They're both really fast and really good cars, but the Aston Martin was designed to be amazingly designed, fast but never be touched under the hood by anyone other than the manufacturer, whereas the Caterham is really fast but designed to be tinkered around with or even rebuilt from scratch by the customer if they want. Now there is market for both cars, but would you buy a Caterham that tried to be an Aston Martin? Would you also expect Aston Martin to ever make a kit car?

The two companies cater for different markets, HP shouldn't really try and outsell Apple, and Apple should never feel the need to make an iMac fully upgradable. Well that's my view anyway :)

This is coming from someone who owns a Mac Pro. As much as i love the Mac Pros and desperately want a new one, i wouldn't be surprised if they scrapped it, because it doesn't really fit their image anymore.
 
Ryth said:
I was talking about how HP outdid them with coming out with an all-in-one that is upgradable.

They could do this with the iMac....honestly it needs to be done.
Click to expand...

I'd rather have the nice style of the iMac. If i needed an upgradable Mac, i'd buy a Mac Pro.
 
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