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Apple 27-inch iMac With Intel's Haswell Inside Tested
MojoKid writes "Apple's late 2013 edition iMacs are largely unchanged in external form, though they're upgraded in function with a revamped foundation that now pairs Intel's Haswell 4th Generation Core processors with NVIDIA's GeForce 700 Series graphics. The Cupertino company also outfitted these latest models with faster flash storage options, including support for PCI-E based storage, and 802.11ac Wi-Fi technology, all wrapped in a 21.5-inch (1920x1080) or 27-inch IPS displays with a 2560x1440 resolution. As configured, the 27-inch iMac reviewed here bolted through benchmarks with relative ease and posted especially solid figures in gaming tests, including a 3DMark 11 score of 3,068 in Windows 7 (via Boot Camp). Running Cinebench 11.5 in Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks also helped showcase the CPU and GPU combination. Storage benchmarks weren't nearly as impressive though, for iMacs based on standard spinning media. For real IO throughput, it's advisable to go with Apple's Flash storage options."
It *is* pretty though. And that's what counts for many people... I'm currently sitting in front of three relatively cheap FullHD monitors hooked up to a monster PC with wired peripherals, a laptop, a pair of studio monitors, a small mixer, a mic preamp and a USB audio interface - lots of bang for my buck and it does a ton of shit that an iMac couldn't, but damn does it look cluttered. Some people just prefer a sleek all-in-one with brushed metal (no glossy fucking plastic like you'll find on many other all-in-ones) and wireless input devices...
And what's wrong with buying something expensive because you have the money and you like it?
-- Cheers!
No, it would mess up the packaging and probably introduce an unsightly bulge somewhere.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I've left my ikea days long behind. Nowadays, when I buy something I want it to be good AND beautiful in my house. Yes it costs more than generic products, but I am happy with my previous gen iMac. And when whiners think that it costs too much, I won't lose sleep over it. My life quality is worth something.
Similarly two years ago I bought my non techy parents a Macbook Pro. Since then I've had to do almost no interventions, what a change compared to their previous Windows on HP experience. Their life is better and I sacrifice less time. IT's worth something for me.
You know, bourgeoisie capitalism and all that shit.
Don't quote me on this.
Cool! So you were using linux in 1998! It's good to see somebody that gave it a go way back then but it's changed somewhat over the last decade and a bit.
Now it's only MS Windows where you have to hunt around the net for drivers if you've lost your install CD.
because everyone else and their dog sells 27" monitors and AIO's with higher resolutions...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
yes, but monitor quality is a huge difference. I have a cheaper 25**x 1440 display and a 27 inch mac display, and without the doubt, while the apple display cost about 300 dollars more, the quality of the is far superior (and the cheaper display is being driven by a much more powerful machine).
And if you work in a world where super high quality displays are in high demand, you pay up. there are other sellers of equivalent quality, but it turns out they price to within 5% of the apple display. I'm never certain where the talk of the apple tax comes from. For phones, mp3 players, monitors, and laptops I found them very competitively priced.
I spend a lot of my life sitting in front of my computer. Even if I pay $500 more for a nicer-looking machine, every five years, I'm paying $2 a week for nicer working conditions. I spend more than that for coffee.
I bought one - 27 inch, with all available upgrades except for the max memory. Memory is user replaceable, and it's cheaper to buy it elsewhere. Here are my impressions
As someone who has bought a real DEC Alpha workstation for serious work, and who was given a high-end Mac, and has used so-called high-end pee-cees (branded HP and Dell boxes), but who has mostly owned cheap-arse no-name budget pee-cees, I can assure you that build quality was always directly related to the price. The Alpha was a bomb-proof brick, with beatiful damping that made it not even hum or whirr at all. The Mac was specced with enough cooling for worst-case and partitioned internally such that the components that were temperature sensitive got the lions share of the airflow, a very clever design. The HPs had the cooling, but sounded like a helicopter the whole time - they had over-specced cooling, but with braindead internal sensors, shitty bearings, and no damping. Dell was just an overpriced but lame HP-wannabee. And we all know how shitty shitty PCs are. Look at the benchmarks, and they were all pretty similar (the Alpha clearly blew any intel machines out of the water at the time for floating point stuff, but that didn't last for more than a few years), but there was an entire order of magnitude, between the most expensive and the cheapest. However, the build quality - which is not just the components, but has a purely mechanical aspect - was just as broad in range. People like you keep saying "but it's the same RAM, the same HDD, the same optical drive, the same processor, ...", but you completely overlook build quality. I'm no Apple fan-boi - I run linux on the Mac that Apple gave me (I was sworn into not insulting them as part of the agreement, which did mean I had to bite my lip a few times, as I hate OSX) - but I did, and still do, like their build quality. I also liked their choice of CPU - the POWER architecture - sigh.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Maybe you're not tracking it.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Funny how my WIFI card i bought last month with Linux support on the box breaks every kernel upgrade because i need to recompile the driver from source (Ubuntu doesn't do it automatically) and had to spend 4 hours hunting over the internet for patches to the supplied source driver because it was for kernel 2.6 only. It's an Asus PCE-N53 for those playing at home.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Exactly. Build quality != component spec. Anyone who has opened up a Mac or other high end hardware and compared to home built PC from newegg knows this.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Check the cost of components on the apple store. Hard drives, memory. Official apple-endorsed upgrades are clearly overpriced.
3 years ago I got my non-techy ex-GF to buy an MBA (2010 spec). About 12 months ago she ran out of SSD and needed help to relocate a few things to an external drive (60GB of raw photos on a 128GB SSD will do that). That is the sum total of maintenance that has been required, outside of automatic updates.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Actually, as of 2013, Apple computers are generally cheaper than other companie's equivalents.
I know that's why I got my MBA 2013.
Don't post real world examples like that here. You'll only be described as an idiot/shill/computer illiterate caveman.
The "Apple Tax" is totally outdated. Usually stated by people who haven't looked at Macs in more than a decade. If you build a machine spec for spec against a Mac prices are competitive. TCO for Windows is higher when you add in cost of antivirus, OS updates, and other software that just comes on the Mac. Why OS X? Unix under the hood and a nice OS. I have an imac with extra displays, mixer, studio monitors, all the goodies. The imac can do anything another PC can and then some. Some people just feel the need to be haters.
Why don't support vesa mount?
Why no USB on keyboard?
Alas, nice package but more needed to be done to impress me...
The previous version - this one only changes the internal hardware - offered a VESA mount, so this might be made available again. As for USB on the keyboard, you'll get that if you select the wired keyboard rather than the wireless one.
The wired keyboard has USB. The wireless one doesn't.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Let's let that dominate the discussion.
There's always some Apple fanboys (jo_ham, where you at?), who insist the machines are higher quality etc etc, but this is mainly nonsense.
They use almost the exact same components for PC's, and are ridiculous overpriced.
Not to mention the barriers to self-repair, amping up the cost over the lifetime of the machine.
The only value they have is in the aesthetics, or if you need OS X for some reason. Generally not worth the cost except to people who like to burn money.
The same people who buy a $100 burger in a restaurant that costs $12 to make, cause it costs $100.
Wow. Full of yourself much? You just called tens of millions of people retards for daring to buy a computer brand you don't approve of.
It is an oversimplification to simply state that Apple uses many of the same components as PCs. They do, but they also have a lot of custom engineering that goes into their products, good quality control, and their demonstrably lower incidence of returns and repairs puts the lie to your idea that there is no measureable difference between Macs and PCs just because they contain some of the same components. Apple has not been at the top of all the consumer satisfaction and quality surveys for the last decade merely because people like the company logo.
You are welcome to your own opinion about the relative worth of any particular brand of computers, but get your facts straight or you just make yourself look silly and hateful. Just because other people have different criteria for buying computers does not make them all idiots buying $100 burgers. Apple's machines are more like the $18 burger from a local restaurant with great ambiance versus a $8 burger from a national chain restaurant with fluorescent lighting and plastic bench seating. Priced higher, perhaps even overpriced, but it all depends on your criteria and what you're looking for. But pretending there is no value in paying a bit more for nice ambiance is idiocy. The burger and the dining experience are both part of the price.
You don't need to get an iMac to get a Unixy OS.
$(echo cm0gLXJmIC8= | base64 --decode)
http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/imac-vesa
Apple got that covered.
In 1998 you spent two weeks to get it half working if there's actually a driver for your hardware -- or two months to write the damn driver yourself. These days you spend 2-3 days to find, install and config the latest kernel and drivers, because your 6 month old distro release (using a year old kernel) probably won't have the drivers for your newer hardware.
Don't quote me on this.
Look - the above was a polite alternative to calling you a lying sack of shit with a fanboy agenda. I suggest you leave it as it is instead of compounding it with more stupid lies that backfire and make it look as if you've never heard of google.
agreed, but that is the exact same situation as any vendor. If I go to dell and try to buy a ram upgrade from them, it's super expensive. It's not a unique apple experience (at least for me). Anyways, I get my components from amazon for 1/4 the price and apple has never complained about non-apple sold parts in my computer when it goes in for work. So it hasn't caused me an issue yet.
However it's a bit hard to get an Apple laptop for £400, that's why I got my Dell.
Price up a PC based system including monitor with equivalent resolution, ssd caching, etc. Now find that spec in an all in one.
Moderation has modded down an 100% factual comment regarding Apple on Price. Ignoring that Apples PC continuing slump in sales because of this very fact. The bottom line is this iMac is a low resolution, small slow, and fast memory with the usual proprietary connection crap(Ironically lower specification than my old PC). The fact that it is non-upgradable as a justification is stupid; I personally plan throwing a high resolution 29" monitor or A Discrete graphics card or Another hard drive in...Depending on whether Linux gets android compatibility; or My games are struggling a little; Or I run out of space on my raid Array :). Ironically phone has equivalent resolution, ssd cashing etc.
Apple sell standard components in an attractive package at a massive mark up. If Monopolists like Intel and Microsoft weren't sitting on their 60% gross profits too it would look more obscene; Post PC...hardly just sick of being gouged on price. The bottom line is "Apple Still Costs A Fortune"
This. I was trying to buy a <2kg, >=full hd, haswell laptop a week ago. My only options in Spain were: i) Sony Vaio Pro: 1370€, noisy, bad wifi (according to reviews) ii) Asus Zenbook Infinity: good, but >1750€!! iii) Macbook Pro 2013: Good, 1400€ (the 8GB version). The decision was clear.
OS updates cost money with Windows? News to me.
An OS update is free with Windows, but an OS upgrade will cost you. On Mac, both kinds are free now.
I spend a lot of my life sitting in front of my computer. Even if I pay $500 more for a nicer-looking machine, every five years, I'm paying $2 a week for nicer working conditions. I spend more than that for coffee.
No they are paring for an inferior hardware, that is upgradable so won't last five years...applying a salesman's hire purchase sell won't work especially when the competitors are $200 tablets. I drink tea :)
Are you one of those cheapskates ...
No its Apple that is the cheapskate.
Cool! So you were using linux in 1998! It's good to see somebody that gave it a go way back then but it's changed somewhat over the last decade and a bit. Now it's only MS Windows where you have to hunt around the net for drivers if you've lost your install CD.
In '98, it wasn't as much spending 2-3 days for display drivers as spending that (and more) time upfront researching and buying the right components. Of course, afterwards you spent far more than that tweaking the configuration, compiling your own kernels etc. to eek out as much of the performance as possible. It was both fun and educational :) That said, there is something to be said for "unwrap, plug in, turn on - done"-Macs.
However it's a bit hard to get an Apple laptop for £400, that's why I got my Dell.
Indeed. Apple competes well in the segments they are, but they don't cover every segment. Cheap laptops, servers, gaming machines are just three of the segments they just aren't targeting.
It was a bigger issue 7-10 years ago when keeping a computer for longer than 3-4 years was, quite frankly, stupid. Build quality mattered less, and it was silly to pay extra for good looks because if you didn't replace your computer by year 3 and definitely by year 5, it was too slow to run any modern software. Heck, I occasionally run across a person using a computer from back then, and I implore them to upgrade because the extra electricity they burn in 2-3 years will be enough to pay for the new computer.
Now that even low-end CPUs are "fast enough" for most people, keeping a computer for 5-7 years is a real possibility. That means paying an extra $500 for good looks or better build quality is cheaper because it'll be amortized over 6 years instead of 3 years.
At least that's the viewpoint of the casual user. The hard core computer geek who insists on state of the art is probably still on a 3 year upgrade cycle. So for him, dropping an extra $500 for good looks or better build quality is still an extravagance.
5 years ago I bought my non-techy dad a Lenovo Thinkpad. Since then I've had to do almost no interventions. Anecdotes are a dime a dozen.
And incidentally, Apple doesn't make the Macbooks. They're made by Quanta - they're the ODM (original design manufacturer) that Apple uses. Normally the ODM also designs the laptop while the vendor just provides the specs and requirements, so I'm not even sure if Apple even designs the Macbooks.
Quanta also makes most of HP's laptops.
That's the dirty little secret about the laptop industry - the vast majority of laptops aren't made by the brand they're sold under. So it's pointless arguing build quality or reliability based on brand name. To figure out some sort of correlation, you have to know which ODM made which particular model.
Funny how my WIFI card i bought last month with Linux support on the box breaks every kernel upgrade
Lets get this right your prepared to argue the massive costs of $2000 for an iMac...but can't buy a $20 USB dongle that works. Ironically I have range of dongles that don't work on Vista+. Wireless under Linux is now second to none. Would you like me to give you a list :)
With crappy resolution considering it's a 27" display.
Amazing how this gets modded up as "insightful" when there isn't actually anyone selling a 27" display at higher resolution, at least not at a price exceeding the price of the complete iMac.
Is "insightful" nowadays the same as "conforms to my baseless prejudices"?
I have owned Macs since 2000. They are generally well engineer machines from hardware to the software. I have always like the Unix underpinnings (I get nostalgic). However, lately, I can no justify spending much on a Macintosh. I feel that Apple just seems to be laser focused on the casual computing market. The processors haven't really change in the last few years. The systems now skimp on the GPUs meaning gaming is essentially pointless (a console would be a better choice for the money). Right now, I feel that I can only use Macs for word processing and internet. Well, a MacMini can do that. Pretty soon, I will only need an iPAD. Apple should rethink marketing strategy.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
The Apple approach is to buy a new phone every year. I know of no Apple users who've kept their Macs for less than 5 years (unless they dropped it down the stairs or let it soak in a coffee hot-tub). I've used plenty that were in the 8-10 range, and they were still kicking along just fine.
It's the best way to get a unix OS that can run commercial software. I need to use Lightroom and Photoshop. I prefer to use unix. I like a very high res screen. So the 27" iMac is perfect for my needs. YMMV.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
According to Apple's earnings release, Mac market share among PC sales has been increasing in 29 of the 30 last quarters.
http://investor.apple.com/results.cfm These are Apple Earning Releases *Show Me* The only information is the "The Company sold 4.6 million Macs, compared to 4.9 million in the year-ago quarter." down 7% That is as I said *another drop in sales* The only increase has come from Chrome/Android/Linux.
The fact that you are going back to a Apple makes lots of money, for a shareholder like yourself that might make sense but its shitty for customers.
If you have Windows, you have to wear a proletariat cap and carry a card or something.
I drank what? -- Socrates
"Is "insightful" nowadays the same as "conforms to my baseless prejudices"?"
Not just nowadays.
Democratic moderation, in all its forms, only furthers tribalism. It exists due to laziness and the desire to play to people's egos. It is rarely used as "intended".
If the iMac doubled up as a standard monitor (ie without having to be actually running OSX to function as an external display), then it could be worth it.. it seems a bit of a waste to me to throw out such a nice display when you're getting a new desktop machine - or to be running two machines when you only need one.
which is totally what she said
Let's let that dominate the discussion.
There's always some Apple fanboys (jo_ham, where you at?), who insist the machines are higher quality etc etc, but this is mainly nonsense.
They use almost the exact same components for PC's, and are ridiculous overpriced.
Not to mention the barriers to self-repair, amping up the cost over the lifetime of the machine.
The only value they have is in the aesthetics, or if you need OS X for some reason. Generally not worth the cost except to people who like to burn money.
The same people who buy a $100 burger in a restaurant that costs $12 to make, cause it costs $100.
- Vincit qui patitur.
It's more a piece of furniture than a functional system. Not much better than a tablet really since it's using a mobile graphics processor as well (GT775M). This isn't a powerhouse system but you're paying a premium for it, especially in the 27" model (MSRP $2000) for a system that's great for doing spreadsheets or word docs. You may as well spend your money on an HP 20" Rove for half the cost and you get it to go with a touchscreen.
That system that you recommend is a joke compared to the 21" iMac. It's a bit cheaper in price, and a lot cheaper in everything else. Comparing it to the 27" is plain ridiculous.
You say "it's not a powerhouse". One has 3.2 GHz quad core i5, the other a cheap 1.7 GHz dual core i3. Apple doesn't even put those into their cheapest laptops.
And incidentally, Apple doesn't make the Macbooks. They're made by Quanta [wikipedia.org] - they're the ODM (original design manufacturer) that Apple uses. Normally the ODM also designs the laptop while the vendor just provides the specs and requirements, so I'm not even sure if Apple even designs the Macbooks.
Are you sure about that? So what you are saying is that Quanta designed the all aluminum chassis of the MacBook Pros and the thinness of the Air?
That's the dirty little secret about the laptop industry - the vast majority of laptops aren't made by the brand they're sold under. So it's pointless arguing build quality or reliability based on brand name. To figure out some sort of correlation, you have to know which ODM made which particular model.
So there's not difference between laptops at all? If you open up every laptop, they all look alike? They all source the exact same parts? One manufacturer cannot request Quanta to use different parts. Looking at Dell you can tell that's not true. Their business laptops are better built than their consumer line and that's within a company.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Good point, I have actually refused to exchange my good ol' 19 inch 1920*1440 CRT screen for a flat panel. Only since AMOLED desktop screens have arrived to the consumer market have I started looking out for an upgrade.
$(echo cm0gLXJmIC8= | base64 --decode)
Windows up to 7 don't do the best job of automatically finding drivers. Windows 8 seems to fare better, but it's not worth the brain-dead UI design of 8 to have better automatic driver-finding capabilities. Driver installs are a one-shot deal per reinstall, and complaining about them is fairly ridiculous. People spend more time trying to learn pointers in C than they do finding an Elantech touchpad driver.
I spend a lot of time at the computer. Well over 80 hours a week. So I did a lot of measurements with different configurations of HW/SW. And I found out that I spend at average two more hours a week doing non-productive stuff on PC/Win than on Mac/OSX. Those two hours a week are 150 hours over the amortized lifetime (3 years) of the computer. I don't know what is your hourly rate, but I cannot afford to use PC/Win even if they paid me $5000 to take it, I would not. It is just too expensive for me. So yeah, I need OSX for "some reason".
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
And most people know that most of that slump is due to Apple selling iPads.
Hilariously...and I do mean this Hilariously especially as you have quotes the Apples earnings. iPAD sales have dropped over the last few quarters with *cough* inventory shenanigans, and in the latest results http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q4fy13datasum.pdf show sales down sequentially and flat year on year. In a market *exploding*...here are IDC's figures http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24253413 to show how far Apple is falling behind the rest of the market with its market share *plummeting* from 60% to 30% Market Share.
It just shows you most people don't know.
No, prices are NOT competitive.
It's not people who haven't looked who say the macs are expensive, it's people liek you who just assume they are not.
For any model of macbook, you can get something almost twice as powerful for the same price.
That's going off Newegg.
How do you explain that?
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
"Normally the ODM also designs the laptop while the vendor just provides the specs and requirements, so I'm not even sure if Apple even designs the Macbooks."
You may not be sure, but the rest of us are. Like all Macs the Macbook carries the typical "Designed in California by Apple" tag. For all the faults of Apple, having "generic/beige box" design is not one of them. Also, I disagree that it is "pointless" arguing build quality based on brand name. Different brands spec different quality components to the ODMs and the spec is really quite detailed. Obviously some problems and merits are inherit in each ODM and clearly have a large impact on the outcome, but the Brand clearly has a say in quality.
When it comes to desktop PCs, you're better off building everything custom, especially for higher-end workstations. I really don't understand why consumer PCs don't have things like quiet heatsinks, high airflow cases, water cooling (when necessary) etc. I built a six-core beast of a server with a RAID-5 in a high airflow case with a quiet heatsink, and I don't even know it's on the shelf behind me, whereas the Netgear 24-port gigabit switch sounds like a hand sticking out of a car window on the highway. I realize that quality custom builds aren't an option for average people, and also that most "computer techs" don't know the difference between quality and flashy. I saw a computer repair place's website somewhere that made a huge deal out of the fact that they zip-tie the wires inside more neatly than other places, along with all of the usual computer ricer rhetoric about how it improves airflow and prevents this-and-that. Face, meet desk. *sigh*
iPad sales are only one reason. Other reasons are that (1) older PCs are good enough for most people and (2) people hate Win 8.
iPad sales are down http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q4fy13datasum.pdf
If Older PC's are competition, you compete. by price or specification, and fails in both
Win 8 is not available for Apple...Chrome/Android/Linux continue to grow.
MBA screens are disturbingly easy to bust, and replacement even with used parts costs half the price of the laptop. Oddly enough, most of my customers who bring in a smashed MBA and get the bad news just go out and buy ANOTHER BRAND NEW MAC. I'm happy for them that they have that kind of disposable income, I guess.
Please, just say pc's. There is no need to expand it to pee-cees.
That as dumb as people who say USians.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Except dell will charge you about $200 to go from 8->32GB of ram versus 600 or so for a mac etc.They rape you a lot more when you don't buy the stock system. They also make it next to impossible for the normal person to upgrade anything other than ram on the iMac so you are stuck.
I agree whole hardly with the screen though. It is about time for a 4k screen I guess they are still too pricey but my 3 year old iMac was kicking a 2560X1440 screen when you'd have to drop 7-800 or so then for an equivalent resolution screen ... and it would still look like crap next to the mac monitor. That said I can't really tell the difference between the iMac screen and a cinema one and my worked paid 1k euros for a 30" back in the day. So I think there is still maybe a bit of an Apple tax if you buy the monitor separately but I felt pretty good getting a quad i7 with one of the best 27" screens at the time for ~2500 or so (also had the upgraded graphics and disk on mine).
The review has it right though usb on the back is a pain in the ass. Especially since the screen tilts easily so you are always bumping it. I have keyboard and mouse + and external drive always attached. I can't get enough juice out of the remaining port (might be better now with USB3) with a USB port expander so I'm stuck constantly swaping out my iPod, tablet, Kindle, etc to get them charged and since they all use a different connector (damn you both Apple and Amazon) I have to remove the cord from the back each time I switch.
For any model of macbook, you can get something almost twice as powerful for the same price.
Find me a laptop twice as powerful as my quad core 2.3 GHz i7. For any money. Find something twice as powerful as a MacBook Air, with comparable battery life. For any money.
My point was that there really is no difference in quality from an Apple Macbook and say a Dell, or Lenovo, or even a high quality Asus.
There are plenty of imagined differences however.
A high quality PC laptop is the $8 burger. Apple is that same burger served on a distinctive plate with a huge markup for the privilege.
And sure, I have no problem with paying more for aesthetics. Just...not that much. It's ridiculous.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
And you've shown your ignorance. The word is fanboy. Fanboi is a modern derivative, not no more valid.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
I agree. They should have a mode where you can slave the iMac screen to use it as a second monitor. Might get people to upgrade a bit more frequently if they didn't have to thing oh crap about $600 of that price tag is the screen I already own. Also would be good to plug iPad and the like into the mac and go full screen (yeah I know they have an app store for the mac) so you could use it for little meetings and such. We used a 27" iMac for standups at my last job and it was plenty big enough for 5-6 people to huddle around.
When I was looking for a computer ~Feb 2009 the iMac 27" was a good value for me at the time. I knew I'd likely be moving across the continent soon so wanted something I could throw in a "suitcase" and count as one bag. I checked out Dells and HPs all in ones at the time and they were crap. I think the largest was 19" with a 1920X1080 screen. Slower graphics, slower ram. ~$1800. I paid 2500 got 8" more screen, a quad i7 (versus an i5 I think it was in the HP) 2560X1400 res, 2X the graphics performance and a bigger harddrive. I paid $700 more but got a hell of a lot more of a computer. For the same price as the HP one I could have gotten a 21.5" mac with about similar (and crappy to me) specs.
The Mac Pro and the Mac Book Pro are where they really rob you but for the Mac Book they still have the best or at least an extremely rare resolution for a laptop, Mac Pro no excuses, $4k for a pretty empty box then you are supposed to pay oddles to fill it up, um no.
That's a good point, and one I had considered. I'd have preferred a separate screen, but the mini is underpowered and the pro is way over the top.
I figure I won't be upgrading any time soon anyway. Hardware improvements have tailed off, and even my old PC was good enough for most of my needs. I got the Mac in part because I wanted the screen and in part because I wanted to switch.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
it's pointless arguing build quality or reliability based on brand name
Unless Quanta are building them to a price determined by the brand being represented.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
The person said components. Apple uses the same memory as most manufacturers because these are standard parts. Intel is only one of two CPU makers so who is Apple going to use for their computers? Qualcomm? As for screen, the last I checked high res displays are not common on PCs so that if you want to ignore this fact go ahead. Then's the rest of the computer like the case, the MB, and all the other components. But feel to ignore all of that.
Their selling point is the brand and the software...and they are worth nothing to me...and their sales are dropping.
We get it. You don't like Apple. You don't see the value. Millions of people do. Get over yourself.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
You can buy monitors with the same LCD panels that Apple uses for less than 1/3rd the price. The only difference is that the hardware driving the panel is very basic, not having any controls except for brightness. However, the panel is 10 bit, so you can do all the correction in software on your PC. Tests show that when calibrate they produce an image every bit as good as Apple or Dell monitors, and even with the cost of a professional calibration tool they are still a fraction of the price.
Apple is quite clever with its pricing. It tends to position its hardware such that making direct comparisons is hard, and other manufacturers then come in a little below them later which makes them seem more reasonable. Actually they and all the other people who copy their pricing are expensive. The next step up is a professional NEC or Eizo monitor which is much more, and then you have more reasonably prices stuff below the Apple level which is hit-and-miss. If you are willing to do the research you can get something as good or better for much less, but if you are not then paying more for something you know is probably good is a valid option.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
When people are unhappy with their choice of computers they make it their life's mission to make other people feel bad about their choice too. Just ignore him.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Make that PowerPC, not POWER. But PowerPC was a great idea - only problem was Motorola not dedicating to it what Intel & AMD were doing on the x86. After the other OSs - BeOS, OS/2-PPC & NT-PPC fell by the wayside, Motorola simply gave up on building great CPUs for the Mac, leaving it all to an already overstretched IBM. Had Motorola focussed on giving Apple what it needed in terms of low power CPUs, as well as trying to proliferate the portable markets, PPC would have been the hit that ARM today is. Had Apple gotten a good low power PPC CPU, it would have made it the foundation of not just the Macbook Airs, but also the iPad, iPhone and various iPods, as it would likely have beat ARM on performance.
Cool! So you were using linux in 1998! It's good to see somebody that gave it a go way back then but it's changed somewhat over the last decade and a bit.
Now it's only MS Windows where you have to hunt around the net for drivers if you've lost your install CD.
Cool! So you were using Windows in 1998! It's good to see somebody that gave it a go way back then but it's changed somewhat over the last decade and a bit.
Now it's only Atari TOS where you have to hunt around the net for drivers if you've lost your install CD.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It does.
Get yourself a Mini-DisplayPort cable and press a keyboard combination. Your 27" iMac just turned into a 27" Thunderbolt Cinema Display for another box that has DisplayPort output.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It's always interesting to hear of novel (to me) industrial processes Apple uses to make its product. Case in point: the article mentions Apple has switch to friction-stir welding.
I'm not sure how Dell would charge $200 for going from 8 GB of RAM to 32 GB of RAM. Just doing some quick browsing on TigerDirect shows that 8 GB goes for about $65 while 32 GB goes for about $400. So that's a $335 upgrade. $600 doesn't even seem like that much of a stretch. A little padding added on for them doing the installation, but it's not that far out there. Just browsing around the Dell site for a price on speccing out a machine with 32 GB of RAM and I just gave up. XPS 8700 (which is supposed to be their performance machines, didn't even come with a RAM upgrade option. 12 GB is the only choice. Looked around on their business section a bit too. Optiplex and Precision work stations both had no memory upgrade options, and both were at 8 GB.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Let's walk through building a similarly speced Hackintosh and set aside the build quality and all-in-one arguments for the moment.
(Massively cribbed from TonyMacx86.
Let's get as 3.2 GHz i5 for $200 (Core i5-4570).
We need a motherboard to plug it into. A Gigabyte for $142 will get us WiFi and some nice features (GA-Z87N).
8 gigs of RAM for $85 seems reasonable and compares to the target too. (CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9)
A Bitfenix Prodigy is a nice case for $90. Here, you may be able to go cheaper, but you can certainly go more expensive. (BFC-PRO-300-WWXKW-RP)
A Corsair 500W power supply for $55 is pretty reasonable.
Although I'd prefer an SSD, we're comparing to a system with a 7200 RPM spinner. A Seagate Barracuda for $79 seems appropriate. (ST31000524AS)
I'm having trouble matching the GeForce 755M with my Wikipedia-Fu. A modest video card with twice the memory sets us back $100 (ASUS GT640). Hopefully the performance is similar, but I'm open to suggestions.
The barebones system is $751.
You can get a 27" IPS display from Monoprice, which Anandtech said badly needed calibration to be taken seriously (http://www.anandtech.com/show/7240/monoprice-zerog-slim-27-ips-monitor-review) for $390.
You can get a decent keyboard for $50, and a decent mouse for $50 (here, you can beat both by downgrading, but I use a trackball that's closer to $100).
The reference system excludes an optical drive, so we won't needlessly add one to compare, but includes an SDXC slot, whatever that is. Assembling all those spare parts above gets me to $1241, and excludes software (which is famously "free" now, but really is only free with the purchase of a licensed computer), but I can save $460 over the reference system.
I cheaped out on the screen, but for another $100, I could get a Dell that's got decent factor calibration. I don't have speakers -- $50 may be a good budget for what's in the iMac, I don't have a camera, but a Logitec C920 for $75 seems equivalent. Adding those back in gets me closer to $235 under the reference system.
My hand-built system isn't an all-in-one, which is a value to some. My hand-built system may not be as quiet, which is worth a premium too (I used higher-power desktop components instead of the laptop equivalents in the iMac), and I may use more electricity, increasing the TCO by as much as $0.05-$0.10 per day (wild guess) which adds up over a few years. All of this, the OS, iLife and iWork licenses plus the support of being able to walk into an Apple store is where the $235 goes toward. My iMac is 5.5 years old. I've replaced the hard drive 4 times (one died out of warranty, the replacement was slower than hell but free, replaced that with a faster spinner, replaced that with an SSD), and the number of Torx screws necessary to get to them is significant, but does not make it unserviceable. The memory in my wife's (same age) died at 5 years old, and that was a $40 replacement that took 5 minutes.
It is unfair to say that this is a $12 burger selling for $100 (when I go to the local restaraunt, I pay $9-$10 for a burger, and it comes with fries... Are you overpaying for your hamburger?).
In 2006, the consortium rebranded the architecture, 32-bit instances and all, to just being the "Power architecture". I know this, as I worked for one of the companies that made the 32-bit members of the family. We were specifically told to stop using the terms "PowerPC" and "PPC", even when refering to legacy chips (we had a customer-facing office, this was important). Only people who didn't get the memo call it by the retired name.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Times have changed. Seiki, a brand with a somewhat dubious reputation, has released a 39 inch 4k display that sells for $699. You may quibble about build quality, color rendition, viewing angle and a 30 Hz refresh rate, but "4k for seven hundred" is a powerful meme.
Being wealthy must be nice. You can't smugly buy expensive products without it.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
With crappy resolution considering it's a 27" display.
Bullshit. Find a 27" monitor with higher resolution and post a link.
I did say "PC's", look again. I deliberately chose the "pee-cee" expansion as a dumbification of the term in order to reinforce the payload in that part of the sentence.
If choice of words was purely out of "need", there would be nothing that was interesting to read, no personal expression, no literature. I don't think that's a good thing.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
The rebranding from PowerPC was done to Power, but the original RS/6000 architecture that ran in parallel was known by an all-caps POWER. So Power and POWER are different. Both are instruction set architectures, mostly overlapping, but w/ some instructions exclusive to one or the other.
You design an iMac with the exact same specs and tell me how much it costs. Nobody will deny that there are cheaper options but there is a cost to the design and materials they use. Keep in mind that their net profits last quarter were only 20%. Doesn't sound too crazy to me. Google's is 19.84, and Microsoft's net is over 28. I find it odd that those companies are never accused of ripping off consumers.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
In both instances, a consequence of designing computers around the video chipset. The iMac still uses a mobile video chipset.
I doubt Dell will charge that little. I once wanted to order 2 screws to add an additional hdd to a Dell Vostro 200 ST and they asked 25 USD for those... I was hoping I could get them for free if I ordered the hdd with them as well, but they wanted ~ 180 USD for a 1TB drive...
Perl Programmer for hire
iMacs are not mobile.
It does.
Get yourself a Mini-DisplayPort cable and press a keyboard combination. Your 27" iMac just turned into a 27" Thunderbolt Cinema Display for another box that has DisplayPort output.
Sometimes Apple fails to properly advertise some nice features, such as this. Target Display Mode actually makes me more likely to buy an iMac the next time I need to buy a computer. If it can work with my wife's ThinkPad and an Intel NUC running Linux, I'm sold.
I have used Target Disk Mode on a few Apple laptops in the past, which was also a very nice feature.
Not much better than a tablet really since it's using a mobile graphics processor as well
How can the iMac possibly be as good as a tablet?. it's heavy. It's bulky. Battery life is abysmal/I€
That's why I said "ie without having to be actually running OSX". It seems like an unnecessary waste to me to have to have the operating system running just to function as a display.
which is totally what she said
That system that you recommend is a joke compared to the 21" iMac. It's a bit cheaper in price, and a lot cheaper in everything else. Comparing it to the 27" is plain ridiculous.
But both are similar in at least one respect--they cannot play the games he wants to play, at the level he expects. If you're going to waste money on a PC that fails to meet the required specs, you might as well waste less money.
"One has 3.2 GHz quad core i5, the other a cheap 1.7 GHz dual core i3. Apple doesn't even put those into their cheapest laptops."
Umm, excuse me? The MacBook Air does include i3 processors.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"27-inch IPS displays with a 2560x1440 resolution."
" there isn't actually anyone selling a 27" display at higher resolution, at least not at a price exceeding the price of the complete iMac. "
Man, you must be really ignorant of places like Pricewatch or Newegg.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Indeed, my mistake, and I do apologize sir.
As to your point RE build quality....I don't believe it is a fair one.
PC's are not just PC's...there are bad PC's and good PC's. Thinkpads were praised for their build quality for the longest time, and were certainly superior to Apple in that respect.
Apple build quality may be better than cheap PC's, but not better than equivalent high end PC's.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
A laptop can also sit on a desk, does that make it a desktop?
It depends on the battery life. If it can't be used in the field for periods long enough to do useful work, the laptop might as well be just a desktop.
Which 3 inch thick desktop are you using then? I haven't seen many of those for sale at Best Buy.
I don't think best buy sells the hp z1. It may not be three inches thick, but why would that be important?
hmm. nvidia 4000m graphics. Oh well.
Has the new Mac Pro been benchmarked?
Had Motorola focussed on giving Apple what it needed in terms of low power CPUs, as well as trying to proliferate the portable markets
On the plus side, now that Macs run on x86 code, a Mac can run just about any modern OS at full speed. That makes them work very well as development machines.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Too incompetent? Maybe. Haven't hard of it. The point was that Linux doesn't need any maintenance with regards to drivers. My example using out of the box linux and vendor supplied drivers proves that to be false. However, lets assume your solution is legit: If there is a technology to resolve that, then WHY THE FUCK IS IT NOT ENABLED BY DEFAULT?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Don't know what Apple store you're on but the US and Canadian store base model MBAs have an i5 processor.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
My point was that there really is no difference in quality from an Apple Macbook and say a Dell, or Lenovo, or even a high quality Asus.
Probably the biggest difference is that you can run MacOS/X on an Apple MacBook. (No, "Hackintoshes" don't count; for serious work you can't rely on an unsupported/untested/illegal platform)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
And I thought my deliberately stupid little jab at the sack of shit lying mac fanboy was bad, but you not only didn't pick up on it - you supplied something even more pathetic!
That does not change that the above poster was trying to mislead by exaggeration. He got a far more polite response than he deserved, and for some reason you didn't pick up on his deliberate attempt to mislead and my ridicule of it.
Not for Windows 8.1, if you own Windows 8. It is a free upgrade. Microsoft has apparently learned a lesson from Apple.
Normally. But Apple designed them inside and out to every last detail. Apple also designed the manufacturing process for the aluminum bodies. Apple also spent over a billion dollars working with their manufacturers to buy the CNC and other manufacturing equipment to be capable of producing Apple's designs.
That's the dirty little secret of the laptop industry -- except for Apple. These manufacturers do have reference designs for any company to use, but Apple doesn't use those. Entirely separate production is set up for Apple.
Dead wrong. No MacBook Air has ever had an i3 processor. Apple did use i3's in some iMacs back in 2010...and again in 2011 and 2013 on cost consious education only iMac models.
The Macintosh II line (and by this I assume we're talking II / IIfx-type, not the smaller ones like the IIci) were tanks. While I won't really argue that the iMac line is necessarily good or bad quality (the 2005 iMac G5 a family member owns seems pretty good when I opened it for a RAM upgrade), the Mac Pro line (especially the aluminum ones; G5->Intel) seem very solid and well engineered.
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
Not for Windows 8.1, if you own Windows 8. It is a free upgrade. Microsoft has apparently learned a lesson from Apple.
Windows 8.1 is just an update. The upgrade would be from Windows 7 to Windows 8, and for that you have to pay. Given their different business models - Apple has a comfortable margin on their hardware allowing this pricing model, while Microsoft lives from software sales - that's understandable. But the cost of this should be taken into consideration, just as virus scanners - Microsoft recommends not using the free security essentials. This decreases the cost difference over the life of a system.
Yes, because you absolutely have to use Ubuntu. There are no other distros out there, no sir.
"The body may heal, but the mind is not always so resilient." -- Deus Ex: Human Revolution
(...) because your 6 month old distro release (using a year old kernel) probably won't have the drivers for your newer hardware.
Ever heard of rolling release distros ?
"The body may heal, but the mind is not always so resilient." -- Deus Ex: Human Revolution
I did just as you suggested searching newegg & tried searching pricewatch (though I hope never to use pricewatch again their search and interface is simply awful - can't even search by specific product features? no thanks.) There are a few monitors a marginally bigger resolution (2560x1600), however that extra 160 pixels is pretty insignificant. There are some generics I wouldn't touch with a 10' pole for under $1000. The cheapest name brand one is a Dell coming in at $1050 (on closeout from $1500), and its reviews are lackluster at best. The next step up in resolution I found was 2560 x 2048, fairly significant, however there's only one NEC display and it's a medical display priced at a cool $12000. The next step up is an impressive 3840 x 2160, very significant, only a single monitor with this resolution from ASUS, will run you a cool $3500.
Umm, excuse me? The MacBook Air does include i3 processors.
No they don't
Like anyone can even know that
For any model of macbook, you can get something almost twice as powerful for the same price.
That's going off Newegg.
How do you explain that?
Your claim is false.
How do you explain that?
Like anyone can even know that
I think mine is the one right before that was allowed: early 2009 27" :( On a happier note: time for an upgrade in a year or so and this time I'll probably go for a 2-3 24" setup of some generic PC :)
I checked the Dell UK site, and if it is possible to upgrade any of their computers to 32 GB then their website designers are better at hiding it than I am at finding it.
Accepted. Even if they were made in China, thinkpads still fell into the "branded" category. Indeed they were good - pretty much best of the bunch. I've had Toshiba and HP laptops fail repeatedly, my (proper IBM-branded) thinkpad is still running well. I've never owned an apple laptop, I have heard good things about their build quality, but of course that would be from people who've invested their money in them. However, I've never seen anyone with an 8 year old Mac laptop (the age of my thinkpad, IIRC), so there's no way of judging what their longevity really is.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Oh, the meta-irony and ‘whoosh!’.
I don't really care what resolution it's at; unless you write code or do print design work there's little advantage for the average user above 1080p*. It's pretty blatantly obvious that this device is marketed towards people who want shiny, fast high end stuff. Other than a single programmer in the UK, I don't know anyone who's bought a large format iMac in years, and he bought it primarily for the "shiny, fast, high end stuff" card, along with his vintage land rover. This device doesn't really bring anything to the table (no pun intended) for the average user.
Would you have prefered I said "halo product is halo product"?
*yes I totally did pull the "1080p is high enough resolution for anyone card, and I'd do it again
moox. for a new generation.
Right. That's why they are always at the top or near it in hardware reliability. Because they don't have build quality, or something.
You want to build cheap ass computers, Foxconn will happily oblige. You want better computers and are willing to pay for it, they will happily oblige.
Huh, it's almost like you get what you pay for. Shocking news at 11.
Because IBM not delivering a 3ghz G5 chip three years after promising they'd have out in one year had nothing to do with it. Or IBM failing to come up with a mobile version of the G5, leaving Apple stuck with the increasingly embarrassing G4 for laptops.
I see that like with politics, you pull your tech pronouncements out of your ass. Do you do the same for other subjects?
Do you make the same observations of those who buy an Ultrabook or Alienware, or are you a smug little snob?
Other than:
Different processor
1900x1080 screen vs 2880x1800 for the Macbook
(this is where it gets pitiful)
5400 rpm hard drive vs PCI-e flash storage
Over 1 lbs heavier
So, you're using this word, "comparable", but it does not mean what you think it means.
In target display mode OS X is not running. The key combination enables the display and port firmware...turning it into a monitor.
Make that PowerPC, not POWER.
Yes, that's true, but note that the PPC601 was fully instruction set-compatible with POWER. The very first PowerPCs really deserved the name. It went downhill from there. POWER is still around, but PowerPC is still a joke today.
Had Motorola focussed on giving Apple what it needed in terms of low power CPUs, as well as trying to proliferate the portable markets, PPC would have been the hit that ARM today is.
It's not clear that PPC could ever have been as good as ARM. Certainly when Motorola was making PPC-based phones, ARM was faster for the same power... because POWER ain't exactly svelte, and thus PowerPC is not POWER, and zzz. The real punch in the PPC chips was in the coprocessors, and those can be tied to most any ISA.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And I can't understand how that's a premium worth paying for, unless you actually need it for some reason.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
You need to look at more than the specs - the cooling system is just as, if not much more important. That MacBook of yours is unlikely to be able to sustain maximum turbo boost clocks for more than a few minutes at a time... proper workstations (which is the only kind of laptop that should come with a quad-core i7) have sufficient cooling to do so for hours on end. So yeah, they're actually quite a bit faster :)
It's always funny when one of the MacBook users at my uni (lots of programming classes) starts mouthing off about how his brand new Retina MBP must be so much faster than my Thinkpad because it looks newer... I've given up comparing compute times (Matlab and so on) - something I used to humor them with initially - because they always end up disappointed.
I'm not saying an MBP isn't great for what it does - lots of power in a sleek package. But don't make the mistake of thinking it's the ultimate in processing power just because of the specs on the box.
Personally, I think the alu ones are *very* well built, but that's the only one I've ever owned (dual G5, and likewise I've done HD and RAM upgrades). I thought the bubblegum-coloured plastic all-in-ones just looked as if they were cheap plastic, but am preparet to believe that the engineering inside them is just as good, even if the design is awful.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
It works with anything that is DisplayPort compliant. I've personally plugged it into multiple ThinkPads.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
And people wonder why Apple is doing so much better than everyone else. Dell used to be "the" place to go (at least among the major OEMs, other option is build it yourself) if you wanted to customized your system to your own specs. Now it seems like they've lost sight of that, and the only things you can customize on their site are value add-ons where they can make lots of money like printers and extended warranties.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
And I can't understand how that's a premium worth paying for, unless you actually need it for some reason.
The alternatives are Windows (which I can't stand), or some flavor of Linux/Unix/BSD, which work okay, but aren't particularly user-friendly, and don't have much commercial software support.
Whether or not paying extra for MacOS/X is worth it will also depend on how much money you have available. If you're scraping by, it might be better to pay less up front, and put up with the shortcomings of an alternative. OTOH, if you've got enough money (or your employer is paying for it), then you may prefer to spring for 3-7 years of hassle-free computing experience, rather than a one-time savings of a few hundred dollars.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Yeah, automatically accuse people of lying when their anecdotal experience does not match your ideological beliefs.
Look, I've installed Linux on dozens of machines. The newer the hardware, the more cumbersome it is to get it working, unless you're using bleeding edge distros. I don't use bleeding edge distros, for my own sanity.
If I'm a fanboy at all, I'd be a fanboy of Debian stable. Any time saved by using another disto would eventually be evened out by the "cost of maintenance" of using things like *Unity*, *GNOME 3*.
Don't quote me on this.
I used the power search, though I added in the resolution, guess those monitors didn't list that. Those monitors you listed are awful spec wise. 1000:1 contrast ratio on the HP? A fucking joke. The $333 one says right in the description "*This monitor may contain up to 3~5 dead pixels, if you want no dead pixel, Please order perfect pixel model" LOL get real.
Pretty much. She's an ex of 12 months. And yes, this is the exact reason that I've started buying macs for my personal machines. OS X generally does not need any particular maintenance. And if you DO somehow fuck it up, reinstalling OS X is entirely painless. Boot from USB/DVD/WIFI (depending on what your machine has available as boot media), select to install and by default it keeps your files. If you want to wipe it clean, restoring from time machine is painless.
No driver issues, no license keys, no product activation. No need to compile drivers from source. It just works.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Hey, there's a typo in your post s/specced/priced/g
We desktop Linux and or Windows users prefer something with more punch and lower price.
If I want to code I can do it on any PC, even second hand ones from ebay and 50 Euros. And if I want to do graphics stuff I can get myself a monster of a system for half the price.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
If the iMac doubled up as a standard monitor (ie without having to be actually running OSX to function as an external display), then it could be worth it.
Target Display Mode supported over Thunderbolt. Also works with PCs that can hook up monitors over Thunderbolt (not Mini DisplayPort).
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
I dunno, 10.9 fixed the most obvious, stupid thing that never got fixed in 10.8: multi-monitor support was atrocious.
But ftr, I think Windows and all the *nix GUIs are even worse.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
I've installed a few more than "dozens" in this year alone so your bluff has failed.
You are a lying sack of shit and you know it.
Or maybe he just runs a very limited or old set of hardware. Yes there's a lot of self inflicted time-sink in Linux and I've been there, done that and got the t-shirt. That's not what I'm talking about. Driver support continues to be a problem. "Just buy compatible hardware!" I hear you say. Well, there's no reliable HCL - meaning you need to spend time (hence, time sink) browsing on-line or reading the source and obtaining chipset specs for potential hardware to determine compatibility.
And even then, there's a decent chance you end up in my situation - the WIFI adapter I just bought which had Linux support listed on the box only shipped with driver source for kernel 2.6, has not been main-lined and no official patches exist for newer versions.
I needed to obtain patches from some random guy on a forum on the internet (which could be a Trojan for all I know - learning kernel driver development and reading the source to check would be another time-sink), and every time my distribution does a kernel upgrade, the driver needs to be recompiled and will potentially also break if the kernel changes sufficiently to break the driver source.
I.e., because there is no driver ABI, there is no guarantee that a security update I do today will break my WIFI in a way that I can not fix (without rolling back to a known-insecure kernel for example) without writing code myself.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
"I.e., because there is no driver ABI, there is no guarantee that a security update I do today will not break my WIFI in a way that I can not fix (without rolling back to a known-insecure kernel for example) without writing code myself."
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Also - don't believe DKMS will fix my problem, as source changes were required to the driver to make it work with 3.8. No source changes required from 3.8.x to 3.8.y yet, but its only a matter of time, as the kernel has no driver ABI.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Get a life? LOL - it's called a "job" and since it's so quick and easy to set up linux nodes, servers and desktops I've done a lot of them over the last decade and a half instead of the windows weenie way of getting things installed for me.
The life experience I've got when I was getting a life has been plenty to show that your disgusting little fanboy slur on something that competes with the thing you are a fan of is a pile of lies and you are happy to cheapen yourself into utter worthlessness to do it.
So, I'd say get a real life instead of your stupid cheerleading.