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When can we realistically expect new iMac / Leopard??

B

Bongolo

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 18, 2006
206
0
Hi guys,

As a recent switcher and proud owner of a C2D MBP, I have decided to buy an iMac.

I have started saving & hope to be patient enough to wait until the next revision + the launch of Leopard.

I know it is a bit of guesswork but some of you guys have been using Macs for decades and may know how this sort of thing works.

So, realistically, when can expect an iMac revision + Leopard?? :confused:

TIA

/Bongolo
 
My money is sometime in April.

In fact my money is that new MBPs with hi-res LED monitors will come out sometime in May/June too, by then Leopard would have been released :)
 
pknz said:
I will say March for iMac. Leopard in 'Spring.'
Click to expand...

If that's the case we can narrow it down further and say it will be unveiled during that event on Feb 20th.

Since australia is a topsy turvy place I actually have to look it up on the wiki :rolleyes:

Spring is one of the four seasons of temperate zones, the transition from winter into summer. Astronomically, some Western countries consider spring to begin with the spring equinox (around March 20 in the Northern Hemisphere, and September 23 in the Southern Hemisphere), and ends with the summer solstice (around June 21 in the Northern Hemisphere and December 21 in the Southern Hemisphere). Such conventions are by no means universal, however. In Chinese astronomy, for example, the vernal equinox instead marks the middle of spring, which begins around the time of Lichun (around February 4). In the Irish Calendar it is counted as the whole months of February, March and April. In meteorology, it is (also by convention) instead counted as the whole months of March, April, and May in the Northern Hemisphere and September, October, and November in the Southern Hemisphere.
Click to expand...

April is good bet!

Anyway Mar 20th is also a Tuesday :rolleyes:
 
My money's on Tuesday April 10th for Leopard and around then for iMac revisions.

There's nothing to upgrade the iMac to currently, the next upgrade point will be the Santa Rosa platform revision around April.
 
Santa Rosa -> iMacs?

Chundles said:
My money's on Tuesday April 10th for Leopard and around then for iMac revisions.

There's nothing to upgrade the iMac to currently, the next upgrade point will be the Santa Rosa platform revision around April.
Click to expand...

Do we know that the Santa Rosa platform (i.e. 2nd gen Core 2) will be picked up for the iMacs? Seems that Apple is pretty happy with the processors since going from Core to Core 2. If so, how long after S.R. is released in April would you expect until the iMacs ship with it?

Is it worth the wait (I'm looking to buy >10 iMacs for an office environment)? Is there anything besides processors changing soon (i.e. price)?

Thanks!
 
dasbear said:
Do we know that the Santa Rosa platform (i.e. 2nd gen Core 2) will be picked up for the iMacs? Seems that Apple is pretty happy with the processors since going from Core to Core 2. If so, how long after S.R. is released in April would you expect until the iMacs ship with it?

Is it worth the wait (I'm looking to buy >10 iMacs for an office environment)? Is there anything besides processors changing soon (i.e. price)?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I would expect that the iMacs will use the Santa Rosa platform, but how long it will take after its released for Apple to use it in the iMac is difficult to say.

I doubt that price will change (they just dropped the prices of the iMacs when they released the 24" model).
 
Ahh... let the processor wars commence once again. So silly.

I wish we'd all realize that the amount of time your computer spends even CLOSE to it's maximum processor usage is somewhere in the ballpark of 1%. So for that 1% of your day, Santa Rosa will fly. The rest of the time, plain old washed up C2D will work just as fast - and frankly, if you want to be honest, so will Dual and Quad G5s. I have a dual 2.5 G5 at home, a Quad 2.6 Xeon at the office, and use a C2D MBP regularly... and guess what? They all run just about the same! And yes, that's using Pro Apps all day (Photoshop, Illustrator, Aperture, Flash, etc.). Yeah, yea, I know, Universal Binary, yadi yada. But even that speed bump will be less about processor and more about native code.

So the moral of the story is, if you need/want a machine, get it when you're ready (even if that's now). The updates are almost always nominal, especially considering the Intel switch is fairly new. The only real significant boosts in speed you'll see come when you increase RAM usage and throughput (which did actually happen from PB to MBP, and recently with the max RAM bump) so those are things to wait for if its relevant to you. But don't wait around for processor updates... it's pointless and almost nobody does the kind of computing where the difference in speed is relevant.

Now Leopard is another story, and perhaps worth waiting for. But I think it's fair to say we wont see Leopard until mid-late March at the earliest. So if you can hold out until then, go for it. You'll save the upgrade cost.
 
Bongolo said:
Hi guys,
...

So, realistically, when can expect an iMac revision + Leopard?? :confused:

TIA

/Bongolo
Click to expand...

Keep an eye on the next Intel mobile chipset revision -- aka, Santa Rosa.

The iMac won't change do anything until Intel starts shipping those chipsets in volume.
 
Sun Baked said:
Keep an eye on the next Intel mobile chipset revision -- aka, Santa Rosa.

The iMac won't change do anything until Intel starts shipping those chipsets in volume.
Click to expand...

i doubt that. they work independently from intel on a new imac and when the product cycle goes into a new round they'll release a new machine. there's no reason for waiting for santa rosa or any other technology.
 
damien341 said:
i doubt that. they work independently from intel on a new imac and when the product cycle goes into a new round they'll release a new machine. there's no reason for waiting for santa rosa or any other technology.
Click to expand...

Yes there is, because otherwise only the form factor would change, and Santa Rosa will offer some pretty nice new features.
 
im sticking with my MBP till imacs with blue ray drives are released as standard, hopefully shouldn't be long now. what are the chances of that being the next imac?
 
Recently there was info to suggest that both the Santa Rosa chipset will be delayed. Instead of April, think late August to September. I don't know what Apple will do with the iMacs in the next three months, but it won't rely on a delayed Santa Rosa. And Conroe is also out as the heat factor has kept Apple away, not to mention it would require a completely different motherboard. I think the only iMac revision we may see this spring to coincide with Leopard may be a return of a color or two, say either a Product (Red) iMac (though I think that may end up being a MacBook color) or a Black iMac. A lot of people (myself included) have been hoping to see an anodized aluminum iMac, a la the Cinema Displays, Mac Pros and Minis, however the issue there is that the Apple remote transmits through the white plastic near the :apple: logo. While they can make a portion of the plastic translucent black or red, metal on the other hand, notsomuch. The Mini solves this problem by putting the receiver at the far right edge of the optical drive.
 
holding out

I'm holding out for an imac (yes, i posted the same thing this time last year, still waiting - upgraded the ibook instead). this time i'm just holding out for tiger/ilife07 as soon as it comes out i'm in line for it.

so do you think they'll be a RAM upgrade? if i was to buy one today i'd want 2gig... in a 20" imac. it'd be great if that was the standard! :p

... and a faster dvd burner, please! everything else i'm happy with.
 
Ah! The waiting game, eh? I'm playing it myself, too. Still. I was ready for a new iMac when the 24" model was introduced. Alas, it wasn't the iMac I'd hoped for (see my sig). So, still no new iMacs since then. Maybe no truly interesting new iMacs this spring, either. What to do then? My current original G4 iMac (April 2002) is turning five years old soon. Man, and has it started showing it's age at times!

Yes, I too wish Apple and Intel would hurry up and do something substantial that will help make a new - and really interesting - iMac a real possibility soon. And with interesting, I mean a next-next generation processor/architecture (be it Conroe or Santa Rosa), a current high-end GPU, a motherboard architecture that will accept more than 3GB of RAM, a video-in port (HDMI or DVI) and of course... Leopard.

But then again, how long can one wait? It was my birthday in August, and friends started giving me copies of Windows XP and Windows games, since I would soon have my brand spankin' new Intel iMac. Not. Too bad. How long will this waiting game keep me happy? And don't start about buying a new Mac now if I need it. Because, well, frankly... I don't need it. I just want to replace my ageing computer and have a truly current one that will last me about as long as this one has/will.
 
damien341 said:
i doubt that. they work independently from intel on a new imac and when the product cycle goes into a new round they'll release a new machine. there's no reason for waiting for santa rosa or any other technology.
Click to expand...

Apple requires VOLUME shipments from Intel, or any new technology that going in all the machines.

Until they get them, a 10k unit shipment in a month/quarter isn't going to allow Apple to ship anything.

Apple's required volume is quite a bit, with 100's of thousands needed in the first couple months.

Apple is tied to Intel's ability to actually ship a new product. We might not get these things until Intel delivers Santa Rosa in Apple's required volume.

Sucks, but that's what happens when a single chipset is inside a range of products chewing up 1-1.5 million of them every few months.
 
Sun Baked said:
Apple requires VOLUME shipments from Intel, or any new technology that going in all the machines.

Until they get them, a 10k unit shipment in a month/quarter isn't going to allow Apple to ship anything.

Apple's required volume is quite a bit, with 100's of thousands needed in the first couple months.

Apple is tied to Intel's ability to actually ship a new product. We might not get these things until Intel delivers Santa Rosa in Apple's required volume.

Sucks, but that's what happens when a single chipset is inside a range of products chewing up 1-1.5 million of them every few months.
Click to expand...

If that's the case how is it that PeeCee makers are able to roll technology out sooner than Apple?
 
iW00t said:
If that's the case how is it that PeeCee makers are able to roll technology out sooner than Apple?
Click to expand...

They have a lot of chipsets in all their product lines.

Even if they get a palty 10k units, they are just extra machines they sell. And can market -- even if they sell out.

Helps having a rather robust product mix. Add new machines as the parts come out and kill off old machines whenever you want.

Apple "replaces" a product line each time they revamp a machine.

Which means needing the volume to continue shipping the machine and the volume needed to cope with the new product rush.

This is a problem with such a shallow product mix -- 2 chipsets for all the computers Apple makes isn't a lot.

Edit: big difference between needing a million units in the first 3 months to revamp all the Apple notebooks vs. Dell taking them in small batch quantities.
 
Silentwave said:
Yes there is, because otherwise only the form factor would change, and Santa Rosa will offer some pretty nice new features.
Click to expand...

Sorry if I'm behind the times but what nice new features will there be of practical use. (non-programmer/developer)
Thx
 
dmaxdmax said:
Sorry if I'm behind the times but what nice new features will there be of practical use. (non-programmer/developer)
Thx
Click to expand...

For one, Robson Flash Caching? Also 800MT/s FSB, and the GMA X3000 for the integrated graphics models. Also this thing called WWAN internet but i'm not sure how that might be implemented.
 
fansub said:
im sticking with my MBP till imacs with blue ray drives are released as standard, hopefully shouldn't be long now. what are the chances of that being the next imac?
Click to expand...

i hope you really like that MBP coz if you are waiting for a BR iMac as standard, you'll be waiting a LONG time. I can see BR being offered as an (expensive) option, but not standard.
 
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