Apple’s week of product releases

Mac
#1

I can’t believe this hasn’t already been discussed on an Apple forum, I guess people are busy.

Well, so has Apple, with a stream of hardware releases in the week preceding its 25 March video streaming service announcement.

On the one hand it is superb marketing, keeping media focus on Apple in the lead up to its media event. On the other hand it implies Apple thinks the new video service is so important it must get all the boring hardware out of the way first. The Gripping Hand though is that the pent up demand for these products can finally be satisfied.

So far we have had

  • A new iPad mini;
  • A new iPad Air;
  • New iMacs;
  • New upgrade options for iMac pro;
  • Price drops for storage upgrades from disgusting and ludicrous pricing to less disgusting and ludicrous pricing;
  • Wireless AirPods,
  • New iPhone cases and Apple Watch bands.

And a couple more days yet to come. Will we see the legendary but as yet vapourware airmat?

The iPad mini of course will face a lot of pent up demand.
The iPad Air seems really good for its price and a great replacement for the 10.5 inch iPad Pro I am using right now. What it does t have in comparison to a pro is not that important IMHO.

The iMacs are particularly welcome for me, as it is well due time to replace my 2011 model. The form factor has not been updated, which might in fact be good as I can upgrade the RAM rather than pay the quite frankly evil upgrade prices Apple charges. It also means that it doesn’t yet have the T2 chip, for good or ill. Probably because at the low end the iMac still has spinning platter Hard Drives which the T2 firmware can’t support, being iOS based?

Anyway, I was astonished once I specced out a high end iMac to replace my top of the range 2011 model. It’s close to 3x the price I paid back then, cracking $6k.
I specced down a bit and got it to between $4k and $5k. Is there really that much performance difference between a six core i5 and an 8 core i9? I will go for the Vega 48 of course, and save some money by hanging storage off the back, another advantage of not having the T2. I can boot off an external TB drive.

The other thing, considering the price of an upspec iMac, is to consider waiting for a refurb or deal on an iMac Pro. It’s space gray after all😁

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#2

HN has the iMacPro at 10% off till Monday. Not sure if this is base model only, but brings the price close to top spec iMac

#3

ten Percent off is not unusual for a standard configuration of any Mac at JB’s. You would be silly to pay more and won’t give Gerry Harvey any money.
It actually is worthwhile on an iMac pro, although you only get the Radeon Pro Vega 56.
That would do me though. I will look out for greater deals, and look at the performance of the new iMac line against it once people start benchmarking various configurations. Might actually beat the iMac Pro for less.

#4

I love my iPods and have used them nearly every day for many hours so while they mostly work fine they do wierd power things ocassionally like tell me one pod isn’t charged but charging it for 5 minutes shows it back at 100%… but only every now and again. Maybe a failing battery… maybe?

I also sometimes get strange connectivity issues, although mostly when walking under powered tram lines so a more reliable connection would be nice.

But the question is will the new H1 chip provide any benefits when using older phones or does it require something on the phone side that’s only present in certain models onwards?

#5

I think the H1 is all about AirPod performance. As long as it can connect to a Mac device, it’s sweet.
I don’t think it is important on non Mac devices.

Also I find it scary when I get interference from power lines etc. what does that imply it does to your body, in a cumulative sense?

#6

Can I ask why? Personally I’d rather spend that money on a larger SSD and an i9 chip (by way of comparison the i5 benchmarks at around 13000 whereas the i9 comes in at over 20000 - according to a workmate who got he figures based on the processor models/speeds listed on CPUMark that match those in the new iMacs.)

#7

Longevity.
I just put a Vega pro 64 in master entropy’s gaming rig, so I would like the flash iMac to be vaguely competitive.
But mainly, I don’t upgrade that often, so longevity.

Anyway, I am thinking 27 inch, i9, Vega 48, 512GB SSD for $4379.

And I will get myself a decent NAS.

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#8

Fair enough

#9

was waiting for the AirPods, have decided to wait for the next iteration

#10

I thought there would be riots in the streets given that Apple actually raised the price of the base 21.5-inch iMac while keeping the specs the same — especially given this is a machine that was released in June 2017 — but nope, nothing.

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#11

Yeah me too. Some nice tweaks for new buyers, but for me I’d prefer to double tap for Siri anyway and I only have to charge my case once a week, so no biggie about plugging it in. Noise cancelling and waterproofing though…those are worth upgrading for, so hopefully next gen.

#12

I’m much the same, don’t care too much about wireless charging or Siri and my connection is nowhere near flakey enough to warranty $250 worth of more of the same.

#13

Yeah, unless they’re going to offer much better sound quality than EarPods, I’m not sold on the AirPod phenomenon. I just think that there are other offerings out there that are worth $350.

#14

It’s already beyond most/a lot people, I’d say, so - just more of the same.

#15

You would think they were beyond the reach of most people, and too rich for me, but the airpods are everywhere. I have a crew of twenty somethings working for me at the moment, and they all have them.

#16

I’m more concerned at them leaving a 5400RPM drive it in. They provide a terrible user experience. I spent last week dealing with one such case, in a base 2017 iMac where the user is frustrated beyond belief with it.

I don’t get it with Apple. They could put in a SATA SSD, but no its either 5400RPM under 100Mb/s drives which are slow as all get out or expensive M.2 (or whatever propriety tech Apple is using) SSDs 3.2GB/s read speed. Sata SSDs would provide more than enough performance for base iMacs.

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#17

An equally valid complaint, now that the iMac is the only machine in the lineup that comes with a spinny disk as standard.

That said, speculation says it’s possible that Apple could be waiting for a more substantial redesign before putting an SSD in the iMac, along with a T-series security chip.

#18

I heard the spinning disk is the main reason for lack of T2 - as it’s an SSD-only controller chip (i.e. NVMe or the like, not SATA). My guess is they don’t know how to get rid of the Hard Drives, as they probably have good data to suggest that people use lots of storage on desktops.

Good money to be made in the Apple Authorised Service Centre space upgrading iMacs to SSD. You can throw a 2TB Samsung Evo for peanuts these days.

#19

If you use a authorised service centre to upgrade the storage, what does that do for warranty?

#20

Re updated Macs, I haven’t bought a desktop computer since 2009, I don’t see that changing anytime soon. I imagine many others feel the same, so expect more discussion with MacBook updates.