Apple re-arms the iMac with 10th-gen Intel Core silicon
- Reference: 1596614413
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/08/05/imac_upgrades/
- Source link:
The 27-inch model now offers tenth-gen Intel Core i5 processors with six or eight cores at 3.1GHz or 3.3GHz, or a Core i7 with eight cores and 3.8GHZ clockspeed that bursts to 5.0GHz. Apple’s specs suggest the Core i5 on offer are the model 10500 and 10600, but the specs offered for the i7 match no products mentioned on Intel’s [1]Ark list, which mentions the 10700K and 10700KF as offering the eight cores and base speed of 3.8GHz that Apple advertises. The Core i5 models offer the Radeon Pro 5300 GPU and the i7-equipped machine adopts the Radeon Pro 5500 XT.
There’s also an option to add what Apple calls a “nano-texture glass option” that enhances brightness, colours and contrast and has previously only graced Apple’s $US4,999 Pro Display XDR. It’s a $500 addition to the new 27-incher.
The iMac Pro now offers a 10-core 3.0GHz Xeon as its base configuration.
The 21-inch iMac has gained solid-state disks as standard.
Prices start at $1,099 for the 21-incher, $1,799 for the 27-incher and $4,999 for the iMac Pro.
All of which is lovely. But also disappointing because Apple has promised that it will soon offer its own Arm-based silicon across the Mac range and that doing so will make the machines mightier and more interesting than merely adding this year’s Core product.
Apple fanbois may disagree and make what could well be the last ever Intel-powered iMac upgrade a collectors’ item. ®
Get our [2]Tech Resources
[1] https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/series/195734/10th-generation-intel-core-i7-processors.html
[2] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Their older hardware is good enough (and that's the problem)
All the developer machines at my company are 2015 MacBook Pro’s, some bought brand new, some refurbished from Amazon for just over £1,000. New ones _are_ better, but not that much better.
Re: Their older hardware is good enough (and that's the problem)
The only reason I have to upgrade is Apple's bullshit planned obsolescence.
Older iMacs (like the 2011 one I have) are barred from running the latest versions of MacOS. And therefore I can't run the latest Xcode. Which means I can't release any iOS apps.
Yes, the machine still works - it's probably one of the most underused computers in the world. But it's completely and utterly useless to me now.
(I'm not upgrading anytime soon though. Fuck Apple.)
Re: Their older hardware is good enough (and that's the problem)
I'm currently running a late 2012 21" iMac as my main work from home machine, if I need a bit more beef I have an i7 Mac Mini Server, also late 2012 with 16gb RAM and a new SSD. I don't run the Mini as my main machine as it's only plugged into a regular 24" monitor that's not as pleasing to the eye as the iMac.
I also have a thunderbolt cable to make the iMac appear as a second screen for the Mini if I need dual displays.
I'm due a work laptop upgrade soon, I'm actually holding off the upgrade to see the new Arm MacBooks, as they may come within budget instead of an HP Probook
Re: Their older hardware is good enough (and that's the problem)
I don't think Apple expect people to upgrade their iMacs particularly often. They just keep improving the specs in line with current tech. It's not a bottom of the line beige box which is creaking when you buy it, your Mac should really last until something fails, or they drop OS support, unless you run particularly demanding software.
“nano-texture glass option”
I sometime wonder if Apple are just trolling their critics!
Re: “nano-texture glass option”
They're definitely trolling their customers
The top end iMacs come with Intel i9, not i7. Maybe that’s why you can’t find them.
Apple said it would take two years to replace everything with ARM, starting at the end of the week. So I would expect a few intel updates in the next two years. And I expect only machines to be replaced where they actually have a _faster_ ARM chip, so replacing 10 core intel i9 will take a bit longer.
Given the general long life of Macs (annoying OS-based planned obsolescence aside), could the announcement of impending ARM chippery see a bit of Osborne Effect?
Though on the flip side who knows how/when that's going to work out, and I'm sure most seasoned Reg readers will adopt a bit of a wait-and-see attitude whilst all the fanbois find all the bugs etc.
On a personal level I'm most concerned about how the move to ARM will impact my use of virtualisation for x86 stuff and my small collection of games.
The so-called Osbourne effect was a new manager hired by Osbourne, who found 200,000 or so old motherboards for the old model that were supposed to be dumped; he decided that was such a waste of money that he purchased all the parts needed to turn them into 200,000 old model computers, some at high prices because the outdated parts were not manufactured anymore, and then tried to sell 200,000 computers that nobody wanted after draining the company's cash reserves.
> The so-called Osbourne effect was a new manager hired by Osbourne
Nope. Osbourne suffered from three issues:
1) Competition from other companies selling cheaper and better hardware, which drove down sales...
2) ... which led to a marketing push for the new machines, which drove down sales of existing kit...
3) ... which led to some bright spark coming up with the idea of trying to refurb and sell off the mountain of obsolete kit they had as a result of 1) and 2)
Without 1) and 2), the company wouldn't have had the unused inventory. And arguably, without the chilling effect 2) had on pre-orders, they might have had the cashflow to pay for the refurb - the $2 million quoted on Wikipedia is a fair amount of cash even today, but it still only works out at about $10 per refurbished machine, which would then presumably have had a retail price somewhere north of $1000.
(OTOH, there's always the chance that if they had completed the refurb, the cheap machines would have flooded the market and depressed sales of their newer models even further. You pays your money and you takes your chances...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect
Eh?
I thought the Osbourne effect was that they announced the new model prematurely. Their sales tanked because nobody wanted to buy the “old” (current) model and the new model wasn’t ready, hence they went bust.
Have I got my history wrong?
From the 1980s through to the 2000s, each upgrade would bring a significant boost to productivity. More recently, the difference for many users is less noticeable - Photoshop taking 0.1 seconds to apply a filter as opposed to 0.2 seconds, for example, is not world changing.
So, one would expect the Osbourne Effect to be rarer these days.
Arm Shwarm
>>Apple fanbois may disagree and make what could well be the last ever Intel-powered iMac upgrade a collectors’ item. ®
This, IMO. I rushed to buy the Mac Mini 2012 for similar reasons when they ruined the 2014 iteration. I'm still on that MacMini and I suspect I might hold out until the final Intel model (rumours of a refresh are rafe) because I have no idea how running Parallels is going to work on Arm.
Imagine paying $4,999 and ending up with an i7.
Their older hardware is good enough (and that's the problem)
21" model with a decent second monitor would be a more than adequate set up for me.
I have one of the 2016 27-inchers and it's been a great value machine, still blazingly fast and with the 5k Retina display. But that's the problem: that machine is more than good enough and there's not much tempting me to upgrade. In the same way I have a 2015 Macbook Air which is still - IMO - better than the new models.
Basically I'm not seeing anything from Apple that's tempting me to upgrade. Even if these machines are better than my current setup, they are not *that* much better that I'd bother for a considerable time, at which point they'd probably be available second hand. Have we reached a point where hardware several years old is good enough for most people? See also: phones.