What to expect from iMac 2012 - Discussion

[Duckypoos]

I'm not savvy on screen technology, but would it be conceivable that the smaller iMac ( current 21.5" or possible 24" ) get a resolution bump to 2560x1440 ?

Or is this not possible at those screen sizes ?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[SuperDudeMax]

Usb 3.0

The thing people seem to forget when saying 'It would be more expensive to not have USB 3.0' is that Apple could use all of the right hardware to have USB 3.0 but just disable it in OSX. Apple doesn't even have any drivers for it.

 

[Confuzzzed]

GPU and other components notwithstanding, the last iMac update happened some 6 months after Intel launched the 2011 processors (sandy bridge). Clearly there was a capacity issue, so this time round they have c50% more capacity than 2011. Still, the prospects of a July / August refresh MUST not be overlooked completely. Apple have a way with supply chain so MAY have got their hands on some processors BEFORE Lenovo, Dell and HP, so a May 22 or May 29 launch still possible BUT lets be honest here. Nobody really knows and there are ZERO signs as yet of a major redesign which makes me think if it will happen it is months away.

 

[Chippy99]

The thing people seem to forget when saying 'It would be more expensive to not have USB 3.0' is that Apple could use all of the right hardware to have USB 3.0 but just disable it in OSX. Apple doesn't even have any drivers for it.

Or as I keep saying, they could save a few pennies and use the 6 series chipsets which don't have usb3 support. The new 7 series chipsets are available, not mandatory!

 

[Chippy99]

There's not much Thunderbolt stuff to buy as is, so i doubt USB 3 will hurt sales of Thunderbolt products that much.

I don't mean hurting Thunderbolt sales. I mean hindering its development.

People are desperate for new, lower priced Thunderbolt peripherals at the moment and you have to assume (hope) this is stimulating 3rd party development and adoption. If USB3 appears, most people will suddenly not care two hoots about Thunderbolt. Most people want nothing more than a faster external backup disk of faster memory stick. And they don't want to pay £600 for a 240GB external SSD drive (LaCie) that contains 2 x £100 SSDs and a Thunderbolt controller.

 

[iEdd]

I don't mean hurting Thunderbolt sales. I mean hindering its development.

I think that's governed more by adoption of Thunderbolt on mainstream PCs than USB3's omission on Macs.

Apple held out with USB2 for ages too. It didn't really change much with FireWires success – and, like this situation with Thunderbolt, one is expensive and performance-oriented; the other is cheap and cheerful.

 

[Commenter]

Just throwing this out there for discussion:

What if “The new iMac” is either going to be just a refresh in late May (or later), or a Retina iMac with maybe a few other surprises/redesign (maybe later in the year, maybe along with the new MBP/MBAs [see point below])

I know it’s a little pie-in-the-sky, but the case for a Retina iMac this year:

- Supposedly the Retina display is not a significant cost increase in the new iPad

- Also, Apple will be saving at least some money on this year’s comparable CPUs, and most other components probably have come down in price in over a year
- On top of that Apple could take a small initial hit on margins (like with the The new iPad), or even justify a small price increase, or both​

- I don’t care that much about Retina, but people seem to really value it, and it seems to be a valuable differentiator
- If anyone can push the technical limitations in order to provide something technically amazing/“impossible”, it’s Apple

- And it maybe doesn’t have to be quadruple the resolution, but just higher
- “Sharp is expanding production scale through April to meet market demand” of hi-res IGZO LCDs, of which there will be a 32-inch, 3,840 x 2,160-pixel panel
- 3,840 x 2,160 in a 32-inch panel would be 140 ppi, which isn’t unprecedented for Apple to actually sell in a Mac—it’s almost exactly the same density as in the 11-inch MacBook Air I’m writing this on​

- Re production scale, not nearly as many Macs are sold as iOS devices (last quarter thrice as many iPads with real-life, shipping* Retina displays were sold as Macs)
- GPUs can now drive 4K (even the Intel HD 4000)
- Most things in the iMac are already mature and upgrades are not that compelling; in particular, CPUs are already so fast that marginal increases are decreasingly valuable
- On top of that, Ivy Bridge is less compelling of an upgrade for desktops and for computers with discrete GPUs

- 7-15% increase in CPU performance
- Power consumption improvements not as relevant
- GPU performance improvements irrelevant​

- What’s not mature in the iMac are either problems with the current design or problems inherent to an all-in-one (or what Apple will insist on doing with an all-in-one), ergo either moot or another reason for trying to push a redesign
- It would be a better marketing push to upgrade all Macs to Retina at the same time, instead of only the MacBooks first (for which there already is mounting “evidence”), and the iMac is the only other Mac that would have to be upgraded to Retina (e.g. not the mini or the Pro)

If technically and economically feasible, a Retina iMac sounds much more compelling businesswise, for Apple than just another refresh, and maybe it’s possible


* not all iPads shipped were Retina, but they increasingly will be and the point stands

 

[Jesper.Nielsen]

Sorry if this is a silly question but do we even know for sure that a refresh is coming ? Just because intel have released new processors does that guarantee an iMac update?

This is to true! People seem to base the whole "the releas is just round the corner" on the buyers guide and Ivy Bridge. Im not meaning to offend all of you people with fancy statistics and general apple knowledge, just saying...
"cough" Macpro updates "cough"

 

[Smartie]

I'm starting to think that we may be in for a surprise and not an update at all in the near future. The surprise that I can think of is the following.

• Discontinue the iMac, or leave it as is as with the iPod classic.
• Launch a Mac Mini which is more powerful, like a "Mac Mini Pro" that will go with a Apple Thunderbolt Display in a package

This would

1. Drive thunderbolt sales/scale (minor effect)
2. Enable a design that allows for replaceable HDD for those interested
3. Delete the optical drive, which I believe is in the interest of Apple
4. Still keep the nice form factor with a small box (Mac Mini size'ish) and a great looking display

On top of this I think that we will see at least double the resolution on the screens, simply based on the fact that 10.7.4 supports it.

This move would allow Apple to slim their palette of products further, and satisfy many consumers. My only question that can make my whole scenario impossible is if the Mac Mini design with a more powerful setup would make it impossible to keep heat/fan noise down... Here I'm not technically savvy enough to judge the possibilities.

Regarding a launch window in this scenario I have no clue, but most likely it is a while out because we haven't heard any rumors of this move yet.

What do you guys think, am I crazy or can this be a possible scenario?

 

[Seamaster]

People are getting carried away with all this talk of retina displays. Apple went to town explaining at the iPad 3 launch that "retina" means different resolutions depending on the average distance between the eye and the display. What that tells me is that we might see retina displays pretty soon on the MBA (hence the support in ML), but it's going to be much longer before they're ubiquitous on the desktop.

 

[theSeb]

I don't mean hurting Thunderbolt sales. I mean hindering its development.

People are desperate for new, lower priced Thunderbolt peripherals at the moment and you have to assume (hope) this is stimulating 3rd party development and adoption. If USB3 appears, most people will suddenly not care two hoots about Thunderbolt. Most people want nothing more than a faster external backup disk of faster memory stick. And they don't want to pay £600 for a 240GB external SSD drive (LaCie) that contains 2 x £100 SSDs and a Thunderbolt controller.

Why would Apple care about hurting or hindering Thunderbolt? It does not make any money for Apple. Intel is the one that cares and they are showing that they accept USB 3 is here to stay, by including it on the chipset. It's actually funny that thunderbolt is not native on ivy bridge.

Apple could indeed use the previous SB chipset, but in today's world I am not sure that would save them any money.

 

[Commenter]

People are getting carried away with all this talk of retina displays. Apple went to town explaining at the iPad 3 launch that "retina" means different resolutions depending on the average distance between the eye and the display. What that tells me is that we might see retina displays pretty soon on the MBA (hence the support in ML), but it's going to be much longer before they're ubiquitous on the desktop.

As I mentioned, the iMac would presumably be around 140 ppi (versus the iPad's 264 ppi and the iPhone's 326 ppi), which would be precisely in line with Apple's stated reasoning

 

[dayloon]

if you look at the buyer's guide you can see that this is the longest time since a refresh. That can indicate that the new imac is due soon.

But the buyers guide is based on nothing but statistics, no facts. The reason for my doubt is as follows :

1)Everywhere is full of stock
2)There are NO rumours at all
3)People are talking about WWDC but when was the last time an iMac refresh was launched at WWDC?

 

[forty2j]

GPU and other components notwithstanding, the last iMac update happened some 6 months after Intel launched the 2011 processors (sandy bridge). Clearly there was a capacity issue, so this time round they have c50% more capacity than 2011. Still, the prospects of a July / August refresh MUST not be overlooked completely. Apple have a way with supply chain so MAY have got their hands on some processors BEFORE Lenovo, Dell and HP, so a May 22 or May 29 launch still possible BUT lets be honest here. Nobody really knows and there are ZERO signs as yet of a major redesign which makes me think if it will happen it is months away.

2011 makes a poor comparison; the delay was waiting for the Thunderbolt chipset.

 

[lifeguard90]

2011 makes a poor comparison; the delay was waiting for the Thunderbolt chipset.

agreed, and in no way should that many month delay correlate to mean that 2012 must follow. ivy bridge is out an running, announced just a few weeks ago and PC vendors are shipping in the next two weeks. so Apple is really not "losing' a race sooner the better, but must get volume for release/ apple does not do mac pre order. so if June is what it takes, fine. Personally, i would not want to see the new iMac up online at Apple but see a "4 week ship time" pre order now. Thats worse

 

[DeF46]

Just throwing this out there for discussion:

What if “The new iMac” is either going to be just a refresh in late May (or later), or a Retina iMac with maybe a few other surprises/redesign (maybe later in the year, maybe along with the new MBP/MBAs [see point below])

Well I definitely hope that's not the case for those of us who like to game on iMac. It might be just about OK if Apple added a high end, desktop quality GPU to drive the resolution, and even then...

On the plus side, scaling a game at exactly 200% ratio might not look as bad as it does now.

As it is now, if you want to gain some FPS under Windows without horrible scaled graphics, you have the option of using "Centered Scaling" in the Catalyst Control Center, which maintains 1:1 pixel ratio and adds black bands around the image (or you can go windowed).

So for gamers, you'd have more limited options. It would be only 200% scaling, assuming it doens't look as bad as on the 27 inch (huge pixels from 1280*720). If you wanted to use the "centered scaling" it would be too small.

EDIT:

I would add also I feel it's too early, even for Apple, to go desktop Retina. Most people these days are still working at lower than 27 inch. Even the majority of enthusiast PC gamers still are not gaming at 27 inch. Source: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Seems too early to go Retina on a desktop.

As a late 2009 iMac owner I'm more than happy to upgrade to a boring new CPU and GPU. But I'm still excited by the rumors of a new design.

 

[Commenter]

Good points

Also, of the not-many 27" monitors around, it seems a lot aren't even the 2560 x 1440 of the current iMac

 

[Crazy82]

The thing people seem to forget when saying 'It would be more expensive to not have USB 3.0' is that Apple could use all of the right hardware to have USB 3.0 but just disable it in OSX. Apple doesn't even have any drivers for it.

This seems like a very dumb ideé for Apple to do, if thay have the hard where why not use it. Seems moore likely of Apple to use the old chipset if thay don't want the USB 3.0. But i think thay will include USB 3.0.

----------

I'm starting to think that we may be in for a surprise and not an update at all in the near future. The surprise that I can think of is the following.

• Discontinue the iMac, or leave it as is as with the iPod classic.
• Launch a Mac Mini which is more powerful, like a "Mac Mini Pro" that will go with a Apple Thunderbolt Display in a package

This would

1. Drive thunderbolt sales/scale (minor effect)
2. Enable a design that allows for replaceable HDD for those interested
3. Delete the optical drive, which I believe is in the interest of Apple
4. Still keep the nice form factor with a small box (Mac Mini size'ish) and a great looking display

On top of this I think that we will see at least double the resolution on the screens, simply based on the fact that 10.7.4 supports it.

This move would allow Apple to slim their palette of products further, and satisfy many consumers. My only question that can make my whole scenario impossible is if the Mac Mini design with a more powerful setup would make it impossible to keep heat/fan noise down... Here I'm not technically savvy enough to judge the possibilities.

Regarding a launch window in this scenario I have no clue, but most likely it is a while out because we haven't heard any rumors of this move yet.

What do you guys think, am I crazy or can this be a possible scenario?

I think this is a possible senario but i realy hope you are "CRAZY" and that this ain't happening!!

----------

But the buyers guide is based on nothing but statistics, no facts. The reason for my doubt is as follows :

1)Everywhere is full of stock
2)There are NO rumours at all
3)People are talking about WWDC but when was the last time an iMac refresh was launched at WWDC?

I am whit you, but sometimes shuld be the first and now when Steve -"rest in peas" Apple maybe make a turn around and change everything by for example release iMacs at WWDC. I still doupt thay will but just say new CEO and board of Directors may change everything!!

 

[kitsunestudios]

EDIT:

I would add also I feel it's too early, even for Apple, to go desktop Retina. Most people these days are still working at lower than 27 inch. Even the majority of enthusiast PC gamers still are not gaming at 27 inch. Source: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Seems too early to go Retina on a desktop.

As a late 2009 iMac owner I'm more than happy to upgrade to a boring new CPU and GPU. But I'm still excited by the rumors of a new design.

Apple could try and do the same trick they did with the iPad, and upgrade the graphics processor with the screen. Remove the ODD to add a second ATI graphic card in Crossfire; that should be plenty powerful for a 4k screen.

Odds of that happening are very low though, IMHO; Apple's never touched Crossfire/SLI, even on the Pro.

 

[cocky jeremy]

But the buyers guide is based on nothing but statistics, no facts. The reason for my doubt is as follows :

1)Everywhere is full of stock
2)There are NO rumours at all
3)People are talking about WWDC but when was the last time an iMac refresh was launched at WWDC?

But those statistics ARE facts.

 

[dayloon]

But those statistics ARE facts.

lol. Yes they are but which one of those points to an update ? How do we know that the new CEO doesn't have a different plan for the imac and a current refresh is not part of that plan ?

 

[Digital Skunk]

lol. Yes they are but which one of those points to an update ? How do we know that the new CEO doesn't have a different plan for the imac and a current refresh is not part of that plan ?

True, and I like your point about stock being pretty plentiful. Most vendors won't get new stock of certain electronics when an update is imminent. It's a trait that Apple is notorious for and there are plenty of iMacs, no new SKU numbers, and no leaks about this or that.

If I didn't simply need a my iMac, I would've waited, but those that are waiting are going to be waiting at least a few months more.

 

[cocky jeremy]

lol. Yes they are but which one of those points to an update ? How do we know that the new CEO doesn't have a different plan for the imac and a current refresh is not part of that plan ?

I'm not saying Cook doesn't have a different plan. All i'm saying is the buyers guide is based on past updates, and those are facts.

 

[Nandifix]

I'm pretty sure most users will have an average functioning Mac or PC at home that they can use just until the new iMac is released

 

[iMacFarlane]

These facts are statistics!

I snooped a bit and came up with every date the iMac was refreshed (including it's initial introduction). I calculated the 'Age' of each version in days when a refresh hit the streets. I then tabulated (in quarters, or 91 day increments) a frequency table showing the count of times an iMac aged a certain number of quarters prior to refresh. Pasting graphics on this site eludes me, so here's an old school approach:

6|...............................
5|.............O.................
4|.....O.......O.................
3|.....O...O...O...O.............
2|.....O...O...O...O.............
1|.O...O...O...O...O.......O.....
..-1-|-2-|-3-|-4-|-5-|-6-|-7-|-8-
iMac age in quarters at refresh



So, statistically speaking, the 7 quarter (583 day refresh!) point can be considered an outlier, with the remainder settling in to a tight grouping between 3 and 4 quarters. We are now in the 5 quarter zone. Barring something radical, the refresh should occur . . . approximately . . . three months ago.

Hang in there, everyone. It's going to be cool, whatever it is.