iMac - page 10

The new 27-inch iMac launched today has room for two internal hard drives, including a solid state drive (SSD) that could halve boot times.

Apple suggests putting the operating system and key applications on the SSD, and everything else on a traditional Serial ATA drive, which come in 1 TB or 2 TB capacities.

The iMac’s product page says:

To give your iMac a real performance boost, configure your 27-inch iMac on the Apple Online Store with an optional 256GB solid-state drive. You can choose it as your only drive or have it installed in addition to the built-in hard drive, allowing you to store the operating system, critical applications, and important files on the solid-state drive and your other files on the hard drive. Because solid-state drives have no moving parts, the computer can access data at over twice the speed of hard drives. Which makes starting up your iMac and launching applications faster than you ever thought possible.

This is the first time the iMac has been offered with dual drives. It’s not cheap, however: A top-of-the-line 27-inch iMac with a 2 TB traditional drive and a 256 GB SSD costs $2,899 — a $900 premium over the base $1,999 price.

Apple Tuesday updated its all-in-one iMacs with Intel’s Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 processors, confirming rumors that the Cupertino, Calif. company would completely replace the Intel Core Duo line of chips powering the desktop machines. The low-end 21.5-inch iMac now sports a 3.06GHz i3 processor for $1,199.

The mid-range 21.5-inch iMac is powered by a 3.2GHz i3 chip for $1,499, while the high-end 27-inch iMac includes a 2.93GHz Quad-Core i7 processor for $1,999.

This morning the Apple Store is down and backs up rumours that product updates and introductions could be imminent.

Rumors have circulated recently about updates to the iMac and the Mac Pro, as well as the introduction of a 27-inch Cinema Display and a “Magic Trackpad“.

We’re not sure yet whether new products will appear, but this is a good sign. It’s also typical of Apple to release/update products on a Tuesday.

We’ll keep our eye on the Apple Store and be sure to inform you when it’s back up and if there’s new goodies to check out!

If you’re tempted to pick up a new iMac sometime soon, you might just want to wait: according to Apple Insider, new iMacs may well be imminent.

According to their sources, Apple is informing distributors not to expect any further stock of the entry level, 21.5-inch, 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac, while advising other retailers to sell off their existing iMac models.

Such moves generally tip a hardware refresh. In this case, we’ll probably just see a speedbump, except for the entry-level iMacs, which boast last-generation Intel Core 2 Duo chips instead of Intel’s quad-core i5 and i7 CPUs. The most obvious assumption, then, is that the low-range iMacs will get Intel’s low-end quad-core processor, the Core i3.

If true, this rumor’s worth getting excited about if you’re looking for a new iMac. Let’s just hope that the update brings something beefier than just an updated processor to the table. USB 3.0 support would be very nice indeed, Apple.

According to LOOPRumors, Apple intend to host a special event in the next sixty days to reveal a refreshed, touchscreen iMac, and will come preinstalled with both OS X and iOS. A hybdrid iMac/iDevice, as it were.

Needless to say, it’s a lie, and you have to be pretty gullible to believe it. While it looks likely that Apple will try to merge OS X and iOS over time, it’s not going to happen in the next “sixty days.”

How’s this for customer service? Steve Jobs personally intervened to get a dodgy iMac replaced. Author Michael J. Weber bought a new iMac, but his Apple machine was a lemon. Perhaps emboldened by Steve Jobs’ recent email responses to customer emails, Weber didn’t waste any time going straight to the top to complain about it:

Steve,
Received a 27″ i7 iMac today that would only boot in verbose mode. Whatever happened to “It Just Works”? This was a top of the line unit built to order in Elk Grove, CA — not China. And it booted like a Gateway 2000!

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This is Iggy. Along with this cat, Iggy is the first in a new generation of iLolcats. They will appear on YouTube in ever increasing numbers, playing with their owners iPads until somebody makes an app called CatToy or CatNip or iNip or PadCat or something.

Wait, I typed that as a joke, then searched the App Store. There are already several cat toy apps. Whatever happened to balls of string?

This cat, on the other hand, totally fails to get it.

It was inevitable that Apple’s 27-inch iMac would eventually be stripped off the computer guts that drove it and pared down into Apple’s long-anticipated update to their original LED-backlit Cinema Display… and now that the 27-inch iMac’s perpetual quality assurance problems seem to have been ironed out, it looks like that’s just what we’re going to see.

According to Apple Insider, sources have told them that the 27-inch display has been floating around Apple’s labs for sometime, referenced by the codename “K59.”

The only thing stopping Apple from releasing K59? The cost of the 2560 x 1440 display panels. The 27-inch iMac is already an absurd deal, the equivalent of getting a top-of-the-line cinema display and getting a computer built-in for free. If the K59 can be delivered for a significantly lower price point, some of us might be looking at 54-inch desktops in our immediate futures.

After January 27th’s unveiling of the iPad, it became abundantly clear that Apple has meaningful plans for iPhone OS outside of the smartphone arena. In fact, given the App Store’s runaway success, it’s just good business sense for Apple to try to get iPhone apps on as many devices as possible: not just phones, portable media players and tablets, but more traditional laptop and desktop machines as well.

The question is, then, when will OS X and iPhone OS begin to converge? When will OS X become compatible with iPhone OS?

In a recent New York Times blog post, Nick Bilton examines this very question, and talks to a former senior Apple Engineer to get to the bottom of whether or not iPhone apps could run natively on OS X one day.

Swede and Apple enthusiast Anders Norman saw his every possession melted and charred in a cataclysmic home conflagration that gutted his entire apartment.

The only item left standing? His aluminum iMac: dirty, singed, partly melted, but still cheerily humming along.

The announcement of the iPad has done a lot of things: it’s stoked up excitement in the Mac using community, it’s got a bunch of developers feverishly coding exciting new stuff, and it’s got retailers and cell phone companies the world over drooling over the money they can make from it.

And it’s also somewhat upset my plans for buying a new Mac.

In the wake of widely reported yellowing and flickering display issues on Apple’s line of 27-inch iMacs, rumors have it that Apple has halted production until they get to the bottom with the problem.

Apple’s denied the production halt, but if a UK-based Apple Authorized Service Provider speaking to Gizmodo is to be trusted, the situation’s a lot more dire than Apple is letting on.

Rumors abound that Apple has halted its production of 27-inch iMacs until they can finally get to the bottom of the yellowing, flickering display issues, but if you’ve already got a gorgeous 27-incher, Apple has just released a second firmware update which will hopefully get to the bottom of any issues you’re having.

The update notes are, as usual, sparse:

Updates the display firmware on 27-inch iMac systems to address issues that may cause intermittent display flickering.

This is following on the heels of a late December update that changed the graphics firmware on the iMac’s ATI Radeon HD 4670 and 4850 GPU, which didn’t seem to do much to solve the widely-reported display issues plaguing Apple’s most gorgeous desktop to date.

Hopefully this one will do better: the update is only 294KB and can be downloaded now through Apple Support.

Apple’s troubles with their 27-inch iMacs just never seem to come to an end.

In December, Apple notified its authorized resellers that new volume orders would be pushed out about two weeks, following numerous complaints about screen flickering and yellowing issues with the showcase Mac, as well as numerous complaints from customers who received broken iMacs in shipping.

Just last week, Apple finally started shipping replacement 27-inch iMacs back to their authorized resellers… but today, Apple Insider is reporting that those same machines now have an estimated three-week ship time when ordered through Apple.com.

In truth, it seems like there’s a load of issues here: while the 27-inch iMac indisputably has some screen issues that need to be further investigated, mostly, it’s just a victim of its own success: it was the best-selling desktop system in America last quarter.

Still, it’s got to be frustrating both for prospective customers and Apple themselves that they just can’t quite seem to squelch the last of their 27-inch iMac issues. Let’s hope this is the last one.

Back in November, our own personal Aleister Crowley of Cult of Mac, Leander, sat down and interviewed Ken Segall, the originator of the iMac name. According to Segall, Steve Jobs recognized he was “betting the company on the machine and so it needed a great name.” The only problem: the name Jobs had his heart set on was so bad it would “curdle your blood.” The original product name? MacMan, says Gizmodo.

Luckily, at the end of the day, iMac won out… but it wasn’t because Jobs let himself be swayed, according to Gizmodo’s sources, but rather because the name was already trademarked by a company called MidiMan, who had released a serial-to-MIDI adapter under that brand name. Apple made an offer; Midiman declined; Steve Jobs fumed and Segall got his way.

A few months after the gorgeous — albeit issue prone — 27-inch iMac exploded everyone’s socks, Dell has just unveiled their own 27-incher, the UltraSharp U2711, which matches the iMac’s resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 and throws in HDMI 1.3, DisplayPort, two DVI-D ports, VGA, composite video, component video, four USB ports and an 8-in-1 multicard reader

None too shabby, and Engadget loves it. But man, what is up with the price? Dell says that their new display will go on sale next month for $1049. Granted, the 27-inch iMac is $650 more… but you get a frickin’ top-of-the-line Mac along with it.

On the other hand, Dell does tend to discount heavily through coupon codes and the like, so I imagine we’ll see the price fall over time. In a few months, then, this might be worth considering, if you want to give your laptop another 2500 odd pixels of horizontal real estate.

Dell actually makes quality displays, and I doubt the UltraSharp U2711 is any exception, although it’ll be interesting to see if the display, once shipped, is prone to the same yellowing problems as the 27-inch iMac.

Apple’s 27 inch iMac is the sexiest machines in Apple’s already sexed-out line of computers, but it’s been worth waiting to buy one: the first batch had numerous problems, including cracked screens, flickering displays and a yellow, nicotine-like graphical patina.

Rumor had it that Apple was scrambling to replace faulty ATI Radeon HD 4670 and 4850 GPUs on their iMacs, which strongly implied the problem was hardware, not software. Nevertheless, Software Update has just pumped out a Graphics Firmware Update for the 27-inch iMac that “address[es] issues that may cause image corruption or display flickering.”

Jury’s still out on whether or not this solves the widescale problems people are having with their iMacs. Any cultists out there with a 27-incher who can tell us how their baby is handling its new medicine?

It should be no surprise to anyone that the newest iMacs catapulted to the top of the sales charts when Apple released them in October. But just in case you have any bets going on the matter comes sweet analyst confirmation: Apple computers topped the list of the most popular machines sold at retail in October, according to the NPD Group. Gentlemen, collect your outstanding beers and pony rides.

In “The Proposal,” Sandra Bullock plays a Canadian-born, bulletproof book editor who finds herself stuck in Sitka, Alaska while waiting to marry her assistant to get a green card.

After her cell phone gets stolen by an eagle, she picks up a replacement at the town general store — what could be more Alaska? — and then goes to the only Internet cafe around.

And has to answer all of her 37 urgent messages with a handful of dimes on a coin-operated modem system — via a iMac G3.  This in stark contrast to the late-model iMac she had in her New York fiefdom.

It was one of the only bits in the movie that made me smile. I kind of wish I hadn’t sold mine, old as it was…

Gizmodo’s Brian Lam tested the new 27-inch Quad-Core i7  iMac and found it’s a beast. Geekbench benchmarks showed a 2x to 3x improvement over the Core 2 Duo model, but most impressive was a real world DVD ripping test, using Handbrake:

On the Core i7 iMac, it took 43 minutes to rip a DVD, Storm Riders, a surfing film from the ’70s featuring Gerry Lopez (my favorite) and others. On the Core 2 Duo machine, it took 147 minutes! I know this is basically a DVD read test coupled with decoding and video conversion, but the results have me excited because this is a real task that takes my computer a long time to do, performed by a program that hasn’t been revised in a year.

Benchmarked: The Quad-Core i7 iMac is Super Fast

Meet Ken Segall — the man who dreamed up the name “iMac” and wrote the famous Think Different campaign.

Segall is a veteran creative director who worked at Apple’s agency, TBWA\Chiat\Day, back in the day.

“I’ve put in 14 years working with Steve Jobs on both Apple and NeXT,” says Segall. “I’m the author of the Think Different campaign and the guy who came up with the whole “i” thing, starting with iMac.”

Segall collaborated closely with advertising legend Lee Clow, chief creative officer of TBWA\Chiat\Day, whose retirement was widely — but prematurely — reported last week.

In this exclusive interview, Segall talks about working with Steve Jobs, how Jobs initially hated the word “iMac,” and the importance of the Think Different campaign to Apple.

Following reports of problems playing Flash video on the new iMac, here’s some footage of a quick video test I conducted. (Hit the jump).

BTW: Don’t miss our comprehensive review of the humungous new 27-inch iMac.

Thanks Dane for fixing the video.

Here’s a couple of videos of the new 27-inch iMac in action as an external display. The new iMac is the first that can act as a monitor for another machine, but will only work with devices that output DisplayPort video, like newer MacBooks.

In these videos I’ve hooked my MacBook Pro (13-inch) to the iMac using Belkin’s Mini DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort cable, which is available from Apple’s retail stores for $29.99.

Previously I tried to hook up the iMac using DVI and HDMI cables (and appropriate adaptors), but it didn’t work.

See the monster iMac in action after the jump.

Thanks Emil. And thanks Dane for fixing the videos.

BTW: Don’t miss our comprehensive review of the humungous new 27-inch iMac.

To use the new 27-inch iMac as an external monitor requires a very specific cable to work: a Mini DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort cable, to be exact.

It does not work with a HDMI cable or a DVI cable, even when they are strung between a pair of Apple-branded Mini DisplayPort adapters.

There seems to be a lot of confusion about the issue on the web and even at Apple’s retail stores.

The sexiest all-in-one computer has long been the iMac, and last year’s 24-inch model was a beauty. But oh my Lord, the new 27-inch machine induces crazy lust. Look at the size of that screen!

I just returned from the Apple store with one. I went to buy the new Magic Mouse. They were out of stock, so I bought the new iMac instead — it comes with a Magic Mouse.

Crazy, I know. I just couldn’t help myself. We’ve already got a 24-inch model, but the 27-inch is so much… bigger.

Yeah, like 3-inches of extra screen makes a difference. But it does. The screen is simply HUGE. There’s no other word for it. If you’re sitting right in front of it, hunched over the keyboard, you have to physically MOVE YOUR HEAD to look from one corner to the other. You get motion sickness if there’s video playing, like being in the front seats of a movie theater.

Thanks to this big beautiful screen, the sexiest desktop in the world got a lot sexier. The question is though: is the screen too big?

Full review after the jump, including real-world benchmarks and tons of pics.