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Apple Updates the iMac With New Intel Processors and a Better Webcam (theverge.com) 51

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
Apple is announcing updates for both the 27-inch and 21.5-inch iMacs. It's updating the processors inside to Intel's 10th Gen Comet Lake processors and also switching out the webcam to a higher-resolution 1080p HD sensor instead of the low-res 720p found in other Macs. From a report: SSDs are now standard across the line, and there will be a bunch of new configuration options -- including a "nano-texture" version with less reflective matte glass. The 27-inch iMac starts at $1,799, is available to order today, and will ship this week. The 21.5-inch iMac starts at $1,099 and will ship next week. Apple is also giving the iMac Pro a small spec bump, making the 10-core Intel chips the new baseline for $4,999 -- also shipping next week. (Oddly, the iMac Pro is not otherwise getting updated.)

This is not the major redesign that has been rumored (and hoped for), nor is it the first ARM-based Mac. Instead, the 2020 iMacs look identical to the last generation, including the large black bezel all the way around the screen and the big metal chin at the bottom. Apple says that, as it noted at WWDC, it intends to support Intel-based Macs for many years to come. The webcam might be the biggest day-to-day upgrade for most users. It's 1080p, but Apple says that the new T2 chip enables some new features beyond the improved resolution like tone mapping, exposure control, and face detection. Apple says the improved camera features will work in any videoconferencing app, not just FaceTime.
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Apple Updates the iMac With New Intel Processors and a Better Webcam More

Apple Updates the iMac With New Intel Processors and a Better Webcam

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  • The iMac Osbourne edition. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @11:31AM (#60365075)
    Get it you want a guaranteed Intel machine, but it will only last a few years as Apple discontinues support for intel. PowerPPC macs died in less than five years.
    • The title says that you don't actually know the story. Osbourne had stopped building the old model and started shipping the new model. Then a newly hired idiot manager found 200,000 motherboards for the old model. He decided on his own that throwing them away (as he should have) would have been a waste of money, so he purchased everything needed to build another 200,000 old models. Some stuff he had to pay for the nose because it was outdated and not normally available anymore.
      • Sounds like everyone ditched the old version of the story for the new version and your old version of the story isn't in demand anymore.

    • At least you'll be able to run Windows or Linux on it. If you get the ARM ones when they come out, it's going to be a while before a good Linux implementation comes out, if you can even run other OSes on it and it isn't locked down. I doubt you'll ever see a Windows implementation that runs on it.

      • I don't understand why you would pay a premium price to install Linux on it. If that is your only requirement then many other models would work much better.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by SDLeary ( 652447 )

          Dump Parallels on a Mac, and you can run another Intel based OS at the same time, with less overhead than you would have with an emulation layer on an OS for a differing architecture. This is helpful if you are a developer and need to test on other OS's. Or, hell, even a casual gamer, and the macOS doesn't support one of your chosen games (mine is the Close Combat series).

          SDLeary

          • That works with the Intel Macs, not so much with the upcoming ARM based chips as far as anyone knows...

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by SDLeary ( 652447 )

              Yes! I was responding to the previous post from ArchieBunker stating they didn't "...understand why..."

              There is Rosetta 2, which will allow Intel based macOS apps to work on the new ARM based systems. This will, more than likely, have a noticeable impact on the performance when running the intel based apps. Parallels is an Intel based app, so it might work, but with a further impact on performance. It is still early days on this though, so until we get to the point to where they will allow developers to com

        • I think the idea is that you would buy a Macbook and be able to run any of the three major operating systems (Windows, MacOS, Linux) natively. They were basically the do-all machine. I don't think anybody ever bought one solely to run Linux on it, but there was a point in time where you couldn't get a comparable quality Windows laptop, so it really wasn't a terrible choice. But now if you can only run MacOS on them, they lose a lot of their appeal.

      • Believe Apple has already said the ARM Macs can run Linux. Also a fair chance there will be Windows options but it will likely have to be via emulation or the ARM version of Windows (which I can't think of a single reasonable use-case for at this point).

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by teg ( 97890 )

          Believe Apple has already said the ARM Macs can run Linux. Also a fair chance there will be Windows options but it will likely have to be via emulation or the ARM version of Windows (which I can't think of a single reasonable use-case for at this point).

          Apple demonstrated Linux running on their Apple Silicon at the WWDC event - it was running inside Parallells, if memory serves. In any case, Linux running on ARM is not a new thing. Linux on ARM today is running on systems ranging from Raspberry Pi [raspberrypi.org] to Amazon EC2 [amazon.com].

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by EvilSS ( 557649 )
          Unless Apple strikes a deal with MS, or changes how they sell the ARM version of Windows, it won't be running on a Mac. Microsoft doesn't sell Windows ARM by itself, it's only sold to hardware partners. Maybe they change that, but I don't see why they would. They already have a version of Office for MacOS on ARM. It can run x86 apps (used to only be 32 bit apps though I think they recently added support for 64 bit, maybe) but it's emulated and I wouldn't be shocked if it was buggy as hell for a lot of bigg

      • Why would anyone spend that kind of money for a box to run Linux on, when Linux runs quite well on much less expensive hardware? What would be the point?

      • I doubt you'll ever see a Windows implementation that runs on it.

        Given that Windows on ARM already exists, I think we'll see it on the ARM Macs somewhere down the road. But it may not follow the BootCamp model - maybe a hypervisor (but closer to the bare metal than the current versions available on Mac).

    • Re:The iMac Osbourne edition. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @12:00PM (#60365151)

      If by "died" you mean "were no longer listed for sale", sure. If by "died" you mean "were no longer supported", no.

      The last version of OS X to support the PPC architecture was Mac OS 10.5, which was released roughly two years after the start of the Intel transition. 10.5 continued to get support updates from Apple for four more years, until 2011, a full six years after the start of the Intel transition. Even so, there's nothing stoping you from using those computers today. I played a Mac OS 9 (Classic) game on my Mac OS 10.4-running PowerBook G4 just a few months ago. But OS updates aren't the only way of offering support, of course.

      In fact, you might recall that Apple allowed for Universal app binaries, wherein a single .app package contained binaries for different chip architectures. Those never went away, so you can still find people publishing Universal app binaries to this day, packing in support for PPC and Intel architectures in one, tidy package. Moreover, the Universal 2 app binaries Apple announced a few weeks ago with the ARM transition also support PPC binaries, so a Universal 2 app package can be executed without issue across all of PPC, Intel, and ARM if the developer chooses to do so.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by antdude ( 79039 )

        I recently installed Mac OS X Tiger v10.4 into an old PB G4. I wanted to install Leopard v10.5, but it doesn't do classic OS 9. I wanted to keep both. I also plan to install Linux to have three PPC OSes.

        Where can we get those updated packages with newer softwares? I'd love to run updated web browsers and stuff.

        • I don’t think there’s a list anywhere of compatible software, but I actually just linked in another thread to the blog of a guy who maintains a modern Firefox port for PPC. You can find more here: http://www.tenfourfox.com/ [tenfourfox.com]

    • Get it you want a guaranteed Intel machine, but it will only last a few years as Apple discontinues support for intel. PowerPPC macs died in less than five years.

      This update is different than it was for the PPC transition though and we should see intel systems around for longer in parallel, and supporter for much longer after because it's an easier transition (just the endian-ness being the same helps a lot). Buying an Intel Mac today should see at least ten years of support.

      Also of course, you'd be able t

    • I suspect we'll be buying a number of the last Intel Macs for our users at work. Anyone that needs to run Windows software as well will likely want an Intel Mac while a solution is developed, tested, shown to actually work on the ARM Macs.
  • There's a PowerPC Mac (MacPro, eight core G5) under my desk. Have to turn it on to see if it is still running. Got it for free when my then company had layoffs and had no need for the development machines anymore, so it must be nine or ten years old.

    • You are either bad at lying or don't know a thing about Macs. There never was a Mac Pro with a PowerPC processor. They were called Power Macs back then. And there is no such thing as an 8 core G5. The most cores you could get in a Power Mac G5 would have been 4 from a dual socket system with two dual core processors. Apple erroneously advertised that setup as a "quad core".

      • A Mac Pro, by any name, is a Mac Pro.

        • No its not and that still doesn't address how your mystical Power Mac has twice as many cores as it was ever offered with.

        • No, Apple didn't call them a "Mac Pro" until the Intel transition. If it's running a G5 then it's a PowerMac. Unless it really is 9-10 years old, in which case it would be a Mac Pro and is running some kind of Intel processor. The newest PowerMacs are close to 15 years old now.

  • Matte screens again (Score:3)

    by nicolaiplum ( 169077 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @12:01PM (#60365153)

    Apple is having another period of pulling their heads out of their asses long enough to hear the complaints about high gloss screens that only work perfectly in their windowless research lab with its indirect lighting everywhere and no fingerprints or dirt on the glass.

    Buy while you can.

    I still miss my matte-screen Macbook Pro, retired due to being too slow a few years ago.

    • Apple is pulling their heads out of their asses just to watch and laugh as customers willingly bend over to spend $500 for the matte screen upgrade. IKYN, it is a $500 option on the 27" iMac.

      I hate glossy screens, prefer matte screens, and was excited to see a major manufacturer like Apple apparently listen to users finally and begin to offer matte screens again. Then I saw what it costs to get one and realized once again Apple is doing it just for the $$$.

    • To be fair, the anti-reflective coatings on the MBPs are pretty good. The first 5 years or so after Apple switched to glossy screens were hideous; like looking at a mirror. But the coatings gradually got better, and currently they're among the best I've seen on a modern laptop. The best anti-reflective coating I've seen by far was the one Sony used on their high-end laptops (when they were still making laptops). Those were impressive - glossy, but you could put a lamp behind your head pointed at the scree

  • 10-gigabit and T2 pci-e SSD's on the DMI bus?

    • Apple does a shitload more validation for the DRAM it puts in Macs, that's where at least part of the expense comes in.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hawk ( 1151 )

        some years ago, I looked at the math.

        Apple appears to be speccing at about another half a standard deviation out. So while the silicon is the same, their rigor changes chance of memory failure from "unlikely" to "extremely unlikely."

        I generally haven't found the extra cost worthwhile, but it depends upon what you're doing. The last time I bought upgraded memory from Apple in an upgradable machine was the SE/30--at the developer price, it actually cost less to order the 4/80 model than the 1/40 and upgrad

  • mac pro base now even more overpriced on cpu!
    Nice job apple!

    • Gather round children and let ol' ArchieBunker tell you about the olden times when commercial UNIX was king of the high end desktop. Companies like Sun, IBM, HP, and SGI sold many machines. A Sparc 1 box from 1989 would set you back $20,000. An SGI Indigo 2 desktop would cost $60,000 in the early 1990s with hardware OpenGL and SDI video options. An SGI deskside Onyx or Crimson (think mini fridge size) could easily reach $200,000. So now you see why a $50,000 Mac Pro isn't such a big deal. People paid those

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ellbee ( 93668 )

        You bet. I had many $35k - $75k (in ~1990 dollars) workstations on my desk way back when. Today a $5 RPi Zero runs rings around them. People complaining about $100 just don't get it - it's the value of the work getting done, not the cost of the tools.

      • Gather round children and let ol' ArchieBunker tell you about the olden times when commercial UNIX was king of the high end desktop. Companies like Sun, IBM, HP, and SGI sold many machines. A Sparc 1 box from 1989 would set you back $20,000. An SGI Indigo 2 desktop would cost $60,000 in the early 1990s with hardware OpenGL and SDI video options. An SGI deskside Onyx or Crimson (think mini fridge size) could easily reach $200,000. So now you see why a $50,000 Mac Pro isn't such a big deal. People paid those prices for a reason. I have a few SGI boxes myself including an Octane. It's current configuration would have set you back $31,000 in 2001 or so.

        Irrelevant, as in those cases, you had to buy the boxes to run equally expensive software necessary to do the jobs they were used for. Now, you can build a more capable machine for far cheaper to run the same software as you would run on the apple.

  • Isn't there a way for me to spend even more money for one of these lower-performing Apple products?

    Like, does it come with a $999 stand made out of that ridiculously rare element known as "aluminum"?

    • Tell you what, I have some apple stickers.  For $6500,  I'll stick one on my forehead, and kick you hard in the beans.  I have 4 stickers in inventory, and I'll let you have them all for $25k.  However, each kick will get progressively weaker.

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