27" (2560x1440) 16GB RAM Quad for $1,999.00

[Gna]

Launched today: the new iMac; a dream workstation for photo and video editing.

[azrussell132]

$1999.99 gets you 4 gigs of ram not 16. 16 gigs would be (gulp) $3399.00.

[ronjon]

I was talking with a friend of mine about this model today. This thing is right up my alley, though I wonder how well it will really do on the market. It's essentially a prosumer computer. I don't think it's good enough for the pro market, and it's overkill for most of the market. With the extra room on the smaller models, I think people will flock there.

Personally though, I really can't think of anything else I'd like it have. It's nearly perfect.

[Gna]

Stop drooling!
Want some of my Kleenex?

[azrussell132]

I stopped drooling when I saw that it only comes with a GLOSSY screen.

[Athena]

I played with the new iMacs today. They are definitely nice - my kids enjoyed playing the games on them. I'm not into glossy screens either though.

Russell - do you have a Mac?

[Gna]

Originally Posted by azrussell132

I stopped drooling when I saw that it only comes with a GLOSSY screen.

I had iMacs and MacBook Pros with matte screens for years. Then changed to glossy screens as they became available. Would never want to go back!
Reflections can be managed by either slightly moving/rotating the iMac, or its tilt. Or by adjusting the offensive light sources. Your reward is a jaw-dropping brilliant image that matte screens cannot begin to produce.

But the proof of the pudding is in the eating: go see 'm IRL, side-by-side in a store with the same image (from a USB stick with test files that you bring along). Then you'll really know what the difference is. Not before.

[chris78cpr]

I'm buying one of the new 27" iMac's next week to replace my aging 20" iMac! I wasn't a fan of the glossy screens at first but have little or no problems with my new MBP when using it indoors so i imagine my iMac will be fine if it's positions correctly. I could always just get a hood for it too?

[Athena]

I played with the glossy/antiglare screened Macbook Pros yesterday at the retail store and must say I do still prefer the antiglare. It's all a matter of personal preference though and a bonus to us all that they offer both. It's a good idea to go into one of the stores and see for yourself which you prefer.

[Paul Shields]

Count me in as an imac lover, but only with the anti-glare screen . The new 27" actually looks to be good value if you were just about to splash out on a mac pro and similar screen. Until they come up with a non-reflective coating though I'm not going to upgrade from my 24" just yet. To tide me over I recently built a quad core 'hackintosh', and feed that to a 30" screen. You can never have too much screen real estate .

[Athena]

Paul - if they offered the antiglare screen on an iMac you'd buy that over a Mac Pro? I'm about to purchase a Mac Pro - suggestions?

[Paul Shields]

I think I would yes. I like the all in one aspect. I don't need lots of drive bays (all my storage is available over the network). The CPU performance of the new imacs is a match for a mac pro, and you can even spec out an i7 chip now. It'll take up to 16GB of (expensive) RAM so that limitation has gone (my current imac can only manage 3GB). The 27" screen gives you the same horizontal pixels as the 30" screen I'm using to write this. It'll make a great media centre. Little things like a built-in SD slot, decent quality speakers, isight webcam are all very useful. If it's anything like previous imac's it will also be very quiet, which is important for me.

A quick look on the mac site (uk) shows that for around £1600 I could get the 27" quad core i5 with 4GB of RAM, or for £1900 a mac pro with 2.6GHZ Xeon and 3GB of RAM. I think the imac is better value personally, particularly if you don't already have a high res monitor. Just so long as you don't need things like hot swappable drives nor the need to upgrade your graphics card or CPU in the future - which I doubt would be a particularly near future based on the high spec of the 27" model.


Just a shame that the screen is glossy, but plenty of people don't seem to have an issue with that so maybe it's just a personal preference thing...?

[edk]

My 2 bobs worth, I use a non glossy Samsung Syncmaster (PC )at home, and the Glossy iMac at UNI. The glossy iMac is in a relativley low lit room with more ambient rather than direct light. I have experienced virtually no difference between the two. It really comes down to the environment the screen is to be used in, in a store one screen may look better than the other, just bear in mind that your space at home may have very different lighting.

[Athena]

The monitor I plan on using with the Mac Pro is a Samsung Syncmaster. I'll likely upgrade it next year, but for now it'll work find, yes?

[Paul Shields]

I guess it'll work fine.

If you're looking at a monitor upgrade then from all accounts the panels in the new imacs are of good quality and should equal any equivalent stand alone monitor. You have to spend a lot more money to get better than that. I think there's a danger of chasing your tail when aiming for the "best of the best" - everything else then becomes a weaker link that also needs improving.

The imac's are good enough - or probably more than good enough - for photo editing (assuming adjustments to your environment for reflective screens).

That's just my opinion of course. You need to try them out in your usual environment and see for yourself. It's a lot of money to blow on something that may not be right for you.

[Athena]

My biggest attraction to the Mac Pro is the processing power and the storage capacity. Is that justified? Or am I overshooting? My desktop had two internal drives and still I had a bunch of external ones. I don't want to deal with all that.

[Paul Shields]

I think the new imacs have near enough equivalent CPU performance to a mac pro., and the higher specced ones start with a 1TB drive, which can hold a lot of stuff (just make sure you're strict with regards to backups ). It'll be interesting to see the benchmarks once they're in the hands of the reviewers. I suspect they'll easily hold their own with the mac pros. For me it would be a no-brainer - a quieter desktop experience, lots of performance, and a nice screen thrown in compared to the extra expense of a mac pro, but only you can decide if that's worth the loss of "upgradability" compared to the pro systems.

[Athena]

So a quad iMac has equivalent performance to an 8 core Mac Pro?

Can you explain this processor stuff to me? A LOT of the cost of a Mac Pro is in the processor choice.
Do you order a quad or an 8 core?
A single 2.93 or two 2.26s?
Really tighten the belt and order two 2.66s?
If you order a quad, can you upgrade it later to an 8 core?

And what is all the talk about quiet? In the retail shop I couldn't hear the Mac Pro, but it was a pretty crowded and not at all quiet place...

[Paul Shields]

Depends on how you determine "better". The comparison I did earlier was between an £1900 Mac Pro with a single 2.6 Ghz quad core Xeon and the £1600 iMac with a 2.6Ghz quad core i5 (US and Swiss prices will no doubt be different but the relative difference should remain similar).

When you start going down the route of 8 core Mac Pro's then you've moved the goalposts (and price comparisons) a bit as the imac won't obviously scale in that way.

the mac pro will be upgradable should you purchase a single CPU now and want to expand later. When you get to multi-cores a lot of the benefits may not be realised unless the applications are able to run in a highly parallel way (i.e. are multi-threaded). You may even find a single highly clocked (multi core) CPU can do some tasks more quickly than lower clocked dual multi-core CPU's. Best bet is to check out some benchmarks, particularly around things like Photoshop rendering, to see if the extra processors (and costs) are worth it.

As for noise. I believe the new mac pro's are pretty quiet, but my tolerance for noise is very low so if it emits more decibels than my imac (which is whisper quiet) then I'd class it as noisy .

[Athena]

Interesting info Paul - thank you.

I'd been to several photog's sites and saw that most of them with Mac Pros have 8 core machines, so figured that was the best way to go. But maybe I am wrong?

With the other things I'd like on the machine, the price difference between a quad 2.93 and a dual quad 2.26 is very small - only 350 Swiss Francs. What do you think the performance difference is there?

Where can I go for the benchmarks you mentioned?