What to expect from iMac 2012 - Discussion

[Overg]

For those who wait for the retina, I am sure that at least at first it will be a add on to the iMac line as was in the macbookpro, also I am sure that it will cost another 700$ if not more.
I also have to say that retina to the iPhone was amazing as you hold it very close to the face.
The iPad retina ,while very nice, isn't that amazing as the iPad is much further held than iPhone. Now if we look on the minimum distance one have to seat in order to work with 27" the retina will be even less effective. So I just waiting to speed bump.
And this "dude" you refer to has many connections in apple.
I bet he is right.
( hope he doesn't though)

 

[Confuzzzed]

And this "dude" you refer to has many connections in apple.

Be that as it may, he got the first of his story wrong, didn't he? So was forced to retract / offer correction. It's in that correction that he offered 'fall'. Maybe he was a burned bull of retina iMac and was being super cautious in what he said subsequently?

 

[Mister Bumbo]

Could someone perhaps shed some light on who this "Marco" is? And his past history with predictions etc. ?

 

[Confuzzzed]

Read his blog! He doesn't even know the difference between Xeon processors and mainstream commercial CPU cycles, so how can he be trusted to know what's what? Just another man's opinion...Sod him. Am still gunning for late July

 

[nuckinfutz]

Could someone perhaps shed some light on who this "Marco" is? And his past history with predictions etc. ?

Co-founder of Tumbler and developer of Instapaper. He's a solid guy and connected enough that I could definitely see some insiders throwing him a bone.

 

[cypress822]

I was going to wait, but another five months with a windows machine was too much torture for me to bear.I just bought a new iMac on Friday, I went for the i7 and the 2gig gfx so I have to wait til dec 6th for delivery, aim finding it fairly hard to wait til then, so waiting for a refresh would have been impossible. Just get a new mac, who cares if they are ten or even fifteen percent faster after the refresh, what's that slight increase worth when compared with five or six months without a new mac?

did i read this right...you bought a computer yesterday, which you won't get till December???

 

[Razorhog]

did i read this right...you bought a computer yesterday, which you won't get till December???

I find this ludicrous myself. If you're going to wait, you might as wait for a refresh.

 

[Overg]

Marco is well connected as someone pointed here, I guess he have some friends that work in apple and tell him few things.
He also note that it came from multiple sources.
So we left with logic:
July with ML
Or rumors
fall oct/nov

 

[lucasfunkt]

I don't quite understand the desire for a SSD?

It's too small to store enough stuff on so what do you use it for? You'd either fill it up in no time or constantly have to keep moving things to and from it, which is a pain in the arse.

 

[xtn]

I don't quite understand the desire for a SSD?

It's too small to store enough stuff on so what do you use it for? You'd either fill it up in no time or constantly have to keep moving things to and from it, which is a pain in the arse.

I don't completely agree with you there. SSD is much faster and more stable. Sure, right now it's storage capacity doesn't match HDD (neither does price for that matter), but R/W capabilities are much faster with SSD. Plus, for creatives like me wanting SSD's, we keep most of our media on external drives anyway. I do a lot of video editing and would like to have all my applications (FCPX, CS6, etc.) boot from an SSD. An iMac that was solely SSD would potentially mean a smaller/thinner profile too. It really comes down to how you use your Mac. For you, an SSD may not make enough difference.

 

[AppleDApp]

I don't quite understand the desire for a SSD?

It's too small to store enough stuff on so what do you use it for? You'd either fill it up in no time or constantly have to keep moving things to and from it, which is a pain in the arse.

I think in several cases users want an SSD and an HDD. the SSD would be for the applications and the OS. The HDD would be for all the data. SSD's are a lot faster then traditional mechanical drives.

 

[cypress822]

photo editing and video editing via iphoto and imovie seems very cool with ssd...but i dont have enough room to place my iphoto and imovie libraries to a 250gb ssd....i only have enough room for the os and applications . i have over 250gb just with iphoto and imovie libraries. how does ssd help me.

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I think in several cases users want an SSD and an HDD. the SSD would be for the applications and the OS. The HDD would be for all the data. SSD's are a lot faster then traditional mechanical drives.

but what is the advantage of that if the app pops up quick, but can only utilize its data at hdd speeds?.

 

[Scythe5]

Agreed. But have also been wrong in the past been too optimistic so who knows. At present I'm weighing things up like this:

Evidence supporting July refresh

(1) no retina, no bottleneck
(2) GPU releases this week
(3) provide opportunity for core academic market to benefit from back to school promo
(4) CPU benchmarking scores filtering out
(5) 57% vote July 24th https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1384568/

Against July refresh

(1) this dude who's saying 'fall'
(2) SSD capacity constraints (bottleneck) if rMBP experience is examined
(3) lack of detailed parts/spec/inventory numbers leaked yet
(4) how Apple has treated the Mac Pro community

Bottom line for me is that I will have a new computer come 1 Aug.
If wants to wait 500+ days to upgrade their machines, more power to them. I get off the bus at the end of July.

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I know that $20.99 is the AU$ price... Maybe it's info from aus.

Ahhh that is an Australian website.

DOH!

 

[xtn]

photo editing and video editing via iphoto and imovie seems very cool with ssd...but i dont have enough room to place my iphoto and imovie libraries to a 250gb ssd....i only have enough room for the os and applications . i have over 250gb just with iphoto and imovie libraries. how does ssd help me.

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but what is the advantage of that if the app pops up quick, but can only utilize its data at hdd speeds?.

cypress, do you really think you're going to notice much of a speed difference if you're only using iMovie and iPhoto? if those are your most cpu intense programs you plan on using, the ssd option probably isn't worth the extra cost to you. like my post says above, it depends on your needs. why not just get external storage you can connect with thunderbolt to keep all your data on?

 

[cypress822]

Never thought about that...Interesting idea!!

 

[nagareru]

cypress has a point. Even if you use FCPX (which sucks) or cs6 it will still access data at HDD speeds if you keep your data in a HDD. I get the pop-up difference with some programs between HDD and SSD like C4D or AE. But it still seems like a lot of money just to pop-up programs quicker.

 

[Lancer]

I don't quite understand the desire for a SSD?

It's too small to store enough stuff on so what do you use it for? You'd either fill it up in no time or constantly have to keep moving things to and from it, which is a pain in the arse.

I agree, for me without splitting files to a HDD I'd need at least 512Gb but that is way too expensive. I'll probably go for the 1Tb HDD depending on the 2Tb upgrade cost and already have most of my media files on external HDDs anyway. Hopefully the 27" iMac will allow for a SSD to be put in later and I might do that in a couple of years when they'll cost way less. Also it would then give the iMac a boost in speed like many older iMac owners are finding now.

I'd rater opt for a better video which can't be upgraded later over SSD or more RAM.

JMHO

 

[lucasfunkt]

photo editing and video editing via iphoto and imovie seems very cool with ssd...but i dont have enough room to place my iphoto and imovie libraries to a 250gb ssd....i only have enough room for the os and applications . i have over 250gb just with iphoto and imovie libraries. how does ssd help me.

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but what is the advantage of that if the app pops up quick, but can only utilize its data at hdd speeds?.

Yes that is exactly what I was wondering.

What I'm questioning is what is the great want for an SSD if you can only have around 100GB of data on there, you would fill it up really quickly and not have to keep moving things to and from your HDD/external drives.

Seriously what is the use of having an SSD when the majority of your stored data will be else where? What would the SSD be used for?

 

[iEdd]

did i read this right...you bought a computer yesterday, which you won't get till December???

It has to be a troll post, surely? Waiting for the updated iMac and maxing it out BTO will only be about ~2 weeks from launch, max. And launch is most certainly before halfway through November = new iMac well before this old one would arrive.

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Seriously what is the use of having an SSD when the majority of your stored data will be else where? What would the SSD be used for?

That's assuming you can't fit all your stuff on an SSD. I live below my means in terms of storage. HDDs have grown so fast, yet I can comfortably fit everything in 200 GB. I can now move to SSD and enjoy the sizes grow as technology evolves without ever having to compromise available space.

As for the other situation, you put your OS and apps on the SSD. I suspect you haven't owned a computer with one? The HDD is THE big bottleneck for a lot of tasks. Booting, launching apps, paging –*all become lightning fast. I'd never consider a computer without one.

 

[nagareru]

Unfortunately most people do have and require working with more than 200~600gb of storage. So what is the benefit for those who would end up accessing data at HDD speeds?

 

[lannisters4life]

Unfortunately most people do have and require working with more than 200~600gb of storage. So what is the benefit for those who would end up accessing data at HDD speeds?

"most people"?

 

[xtn]

Unfortunately most people do have and require working with more than 200~600gb of storage. So what is the benefit for those who would end up accessing data at HDD speeds?

When you by a Mac what are you looking for with that price tag? Reliability? Aesthetics? OS? An upgrade? My guess is you want all of those things and more. The truth is that SSD's are the drives of the future. They have no moving parts which makes them more reliable and quieter. They're smaller which means less real estate is used up. They handle data in a much more efficient way than an HDD's fragmentation method. They also produce about 3 watts of heat vs. 12 watts in an HDD.

Lifetime ratings are calculated differently depending on the kind of drive. For HDD, they use "mean hours" which can be anywhere from 3-5 yrs. For SSD, they are rated according to "load cycles" which, after conversion, usually works out to about 5-10 yrs. Typically, SSD's last 50% longer, but obviously, this all varies depending on the user and their typical workload. Think about the oldest flash drive you have -- how old is it? I'd venture a guess that it's older than any HDD you have. Now, that may not be the case, but the truth is that SDD will last longer than HDD. And for Apple, a company that generally is an early adopter of newer, better technology (ie. Retina displays, Thunderbolt, SSD's, etc) you can expect them to eventually move all their products to SSD's.

For me personally, if I'm going to shell out a few thousand dollars for a so-called "state-of -the-art" desktop computer, I want that computer to be state-of-the-art, and, for me, that means SSD. I plan on buying an iMac whenever the next models come out and I want it to last me for another 6 years like my MBP has (if possible). I believe an SSD makes that a very real possibility. Yes, I've had a MBP for 6 years that obviously had an HDD, but I've replaced that HDD once so it really only lasted me 3 years (Remember its average "mean hours"?).

I keep saying it, but this all really comes down to preference. Do I think the next iMac will be solely SSD? I doubt it. My guess is it will be a hybrid, with the possibility of a super-upgrade with a higher price-point and solely SSD. I still use and will continue to use HDD's for my data storage because I have so much to store and it is more economical for me at this point. But I want SSD because I want my next Mac to be the best damn machine possible for the money I'm willing to spend.

 

[Apple souce]

any chance that the new imac is delayed because they're waiting to release it with a new redesigned keyboard and/or mouse?
Just trying to figure out why it hasnt been silently released yet if all the components have been available for some time

 

[Scythe5]

The general consensus, I think, is that a redesign is not in the cards this year.

Only Apple knows when and IF they will release something. Everything else is speculation.

 

[radiohed]

Hi guys
'am waiting for the new iMac for quite a while as well..

Wasn't Apple going to get power back from the heat of the GPU ? But that wouldn't give any suggestions for the GPU, would it..?


Well, have you already seen the Vizio AIO ?
- I think it's not so bad and their mentality is pretty nice as well - The Verge article

I'm willing to compare the Vizio side by side with an iMac. I bet it looks like total junk next to the iMac. I'm not an Apple fanboy, I just know the difference isn't just a price, it's about build quality.