Has anyone heard any rumours around the 2010 iMac? I am waiting to pull the trigger on a 27" after selling my MacBook but it seems about time for an update - I'd like some better standard GPUs which seems inevitable.
To be honest, the cards available on the macs are depressing. Though the lack of games and 3D max probably justifies the depressing video cards. As for a mac refresh. I think they need to seriously phase our their core 2 products. Core 2 has been obsolete for a long long time now. They would probably wait for the intel sandy bridge before anything. Maybe they can get some low end ATI 5000 series cards into the mix. Nvidia cards is out of the question since there is no low end GTX 400 series cards yet.
you think the average mac user gives a toss? if apple can keep selling outdated hardware in shiny shiny cases then why would they stop?
Well, the operating system runs fine with the old hardware, so there's less of a boost to be gained from using the latest hardware, unlike with Windows.
Macrumors state don't buy one as an update is upcoming based on previous releases http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#iMac
But if you are buying an iMac for games you need your head examined. However, if you are buying one because you are a Final Cut, Aperture or Photoshop user and need a big screen and you rely on the frankly sublime Time Machine to make regular backups of your libraries, then it's a very good buy. I'd go for the i5 or i7 one personally. I don't know what Sandybridge is going to bring to be honest, but it's best to wait and see what happens. The Mac is due a big announcement after all of the mobile stuff that has been happening. The old i7 27" won't vanish immediately.
but what happens when it bricks a year down the line? would you need a backup of your backup? yo dawg
I built a photoshop-happy friend of mine a 12GB i7 build for £1500, overclocked it to 3.2GHz and now it loads his rather ridiculously large files much faster than any Mac he's touched. All his backups are managed admirably by Win7 on a network-storage basis, you just need to spend a little time setting it up. Due to the cost difference between the two platforms and the clear performance difference in favour of PC I can't honestly say you'd be right about PS on Mac being the best option.
They're unlikely to go at the same time - if the time machine breaks, replace the drive and create a new backup. If the drive in the mac breaks, restore from the time machine. You can also create a separate Aperture vault, to be on the safe side.
For £1500 I'd have stumped up another £134 and bought the i5 27" imac. Having built an i7 rig, I'd rather have the iMac, personally. I use my macbook pro through an external monitor, keyboard & mouse more than my desktop. I only use that for games these days.
What's effectively a laptop bolstered to a screen is not my idea of design hardware, especially if something should go wrong which with tortured production machines it often does. Arguably Macs were better for their screens but the new iMac screens are lacking compared to the old ones. The iMac for instance did not feature a 4870x2 (tbf this card was bought before the i7 rig and was simply transplanted). Given that CS5 supports hardware acceleration you will see significant increases in smoothness when performing computationally complex tasks such as zooming incredibly large image files. For your average at home user an iMac may be suitable but when you start producing seriously large images with hundreds of layers that's where the PC pulls away from the iMac.
plus a decent overclock on a PC is relatively painless (on i5/i7 anyway), but want a bit of extra peformance on a mac? wallet please...
PC buying rule #284: Buy a PC with a standalone monitor, or else in a couple of years you'll be forced to buy another screen just to get a faster CPU. If you must have a Mac, go for a proper desktop if you can afford it, or a Macbook Pro if you can't, with an external monitor if necessary. If you don't have to have a Mac, you can get a very powerful Windows desktop for the price of an iMac.
The only Macs I'd consider using are the Macbook Pro (top end) for lighter stuff or the Xeon based desktops - though in both cases only if they were gifts. You can spend £800 on a Windows PC and outpace everything Apple sells that doesn't use a server/workstation CPU...
Does the 27" iMac use the same LG IPS screen as the 27" cinema display? or is it the same TN crap. Then again the 27" cinema display has been ruined by the crappy LED backlight.
Just build a PC. I dont understand how people can buy obsolete hardware for such overpriced expense. Then again, PC's in stores are junk too. PC building Cheesecake! EDIT: lol I didnt know that F T W translated into 'cheesecake' on bit-tech!
