Slashdot Mirror
Apple Will Ship A Pro iMac Later This Year, It Won't Feature Touchscreen (buzzfeed.com)
Apple's expected update to its iMac line will arrive later this year with some previously unexpected additions: pro models. From a report: "We have big plans for the iMac," Phil Schiller, Apple's SVP of worldwide marketing, said during a recent reporter roundtable at the company's Machine Shop hardware prototyping lab. "We're going to begin making configurations of iMac specifically with the pro customer in mind." Just what those configurations will entail, Apple won't yet say. Nor will it comment on the possibility of an iMac Pro moniker for the more powerful machines in the lineup. Company executives are, however, quite happy to confirm a feature the pro iMac will not have: touchscreen. "No," Schiller said when asked if Apple would consider building such a thing. "Touch doesn't even register on the list of things pro users are interested in talking about. They're interested in things like performance and storage and expandability."
Apple will make you use dongles and raise the price for their toy Macs. Real (PowerPC) Macs have been out of production for a decade.
Apple has a serious problem with storage on MBP. For their price points they should start at 512, with 1T being the norm and all lines having a slight increase to access 2T. If iMac is going to be like MBP why would anyone care?
Number of people who want touchscreen desktops?
Nonsense, M$ knows that you want a touchscreen desktop that looks and works just like an ipad.
Jobs died and so did the Vision at Apple. Jobs had the Vision of what Apple was. Now they wander around with no clue as to what kind of company they are, coasting on momentum. I wonder sometimes if the people running Apple use Windows 10 on their Macs.
No trackpoint. Still.
Pass.
I'm hoping they put in really BEEFY GPU options...I want a new iMac to work on pictures, video editing and with Davinci Resolve, which is a resource BEAST...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
"[...] the list of things pro users are interested in talking about. They're interested in things like performance and storage and expandability."
Uhmm... If they knew all along, I'd like to hear him explain the latest MacBook Pro model.
I'm really looking forward to running Aperture on one of these new Pro iMacs!
#DeleteChrome
They should patent this LCD panel with no touch screen malarkey. Keep other companies from stealing the idea.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
"Tasks that previously would have required the Mac Pros of old are now being well addressed by today’s iMac."
And creative tasks that require a high-end machine, where once creative pros would turn to Mac Pros, are now being well addressed by high-end Windows workstations, that, you know, allow newer CPUs than Sandy Bridge.
John_Chalisque
The iMac is really cool, sleek, pretty, minimal, yeah... but many pros I know already have monitors they like. How about a little love for their other desktops (mini and Pro)! I'd also wager that most "pros" aren't, in general, people with white offices and squeaky clean desks on which art-like computers sit.
And keep your confounded sticky fingers off my screen!
Otherwise, yeah, a long-time Mac user drifting away from the fold. Then again, there aren't many systems left that aren't larded with proprietary sh** that fubars something in Linux. And Windows is not to be abided.
... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
debatable but in 2017 it's becoming more or less a standard feature on any iMac-killer Windows 10 all-in-one PC.
A "small" internal SSD is fine. Like 1TB. I would be running an external RAID encloure anyways. I can't see having less than 8TB for editing 4K videos anyway.
But what I REALLY would like was a workstation like the old Mac Pro. My late 2013 iMac runs OK(the big 4gb graphics card and fastest cpu) still but it bothers me that I have to replace everything, including the screen. I can extend the life of it now that I make more and more in 4K by getting a faster external RAID.
So what I think what I will do is that I will build a 8 core hackintosh workstation so that I can get a proper workstation to run FCP X on now that Apple don't make one and haven't done for some time.
They want to sell less for more...
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Well at least they heard the bit about 'expandability and storage' - two things completely absent from the trash can Mac Pro. Unless you count paying extra for less performance by way of Thunderbolt, which I don't.
Thunderbolt might take care of the storage bit by way of 10gbe and fiber channel adapters. It is a sorry excuse for GPU expandability though, especially since Apple has gone out of their way to prevent GPUs from working on Thunderbolt by way of software lockout.
Skip the 'pro iMac' and just make a Mac Pro like you had in 2010, except with 2017 hardware inside. How fucking hard is that?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Why do they need new ways? They still haven't fixed a lot of the old ways yet.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Actually, my Linux Mint's are just running well, yesterday I needed to scan some documents, so a picked up from basement my old Canon LED USB scanner that is not working on OSX anymore, no drivers. Connected to the Mint and in like 5 seconds I was burning documents using it, no pain, no drivers to install, nothing. EAT that Apple & Microsoft!
Wake me when they release a standard Pro tower not this garbage can!
I sometimes spend 2-3 hours playing games with hands constantly moving in the air. Don't understand what's up with Apple's claims that an occasional swipe on the screen will immediatelly make people collapse with exhaustion. Trackpad will still be there, even make it a second screen if you want to be fancy.
I understand the objection when technology was poor quality or for budget devices. But now Apple is just being obnoxious.
A touch screen might make sense if the computer is used as an instrument panel, but by and large it's an ergonomic disaster for common computer use.
Just as an aside, and not tackling the question of whether touchscreens make sense on desktop computers: There's a difference between "a lot of manufacturers have jumped on the bandwagon of including this feature," and "this is a useful feature that people will use an appreciate."
Unless it comes with 80 PCI-E lanes, it doesn't deserve the name.
In my opinion, the real gap in Apple's lineup isn't "an iMac with more professional features," but instead "a consumer-grade headless Mac that can be used for gaming." I really don't understand why they won't make one.
They could release a small upgradable tower, which I'm sure a lot of people would like. They're not going to, though. That's not Apple's style. However, they could make a more consumer-grade Mac Pro, running a single Core i5/i7 processors instead of Xeon processors and a single Nvidia 1060/1070/1080 instead of dual AMD Fire Pro cards. Drop all the hardware down a peg from workstation-grade to consumer-grade, and drop the price to reflect that. I think you'd have a system a lot of people would buy.
Or if you don't want to do that, just make bigger version of a Mac mini that can hold a laptop-grade Nvidia CPU instead of using Intel's chips. Maybe something vaguely in the class of an Alienware Alpha. Hell, just cram a discrete GPU into one of the existing Mac mini lineups. They used to do that, and I suspect they could overcome any technical challenges if they wanted to. They put discrete GPUs into the 15" Macbook Pros.
Some people may point out that there aren't as many games for macOS as there are for Windows, which is true. However developers might be more inclined to create Mac ports if there were gamers using Macs, which might be more likely if there were Macs with appropriate gaming hardware. And even ignoring that idea, you could always set up a dual boot into Windows for gaming on a Mac, if you had hardware appropriate for gaming.
Once, long ago..., Slashdot was a place of serious programmers. They were interested in the philosophy of open source programming. They were committed to the development of good open source software, of promoting its use and development. They were interested in the technical challenges that it's development created, and they discussed the various facets of the issues involving open source software. Now...now there are only people like us discussing the latest Mac! Ha ha ha ha! We've destroyed them ALL! We've RUINED THEIR WEBSITE! HA HA HA HA HA! BWAHAHAHA!
Apple's tendency to withhold 'features' available elsewhere in the market because they're NIH or defeat some other aesthetic (like fingerprints so often do) is gonna but them with touch. John Q. Appleseed will walk up and pinch to zoom, then not apologize because he knows fingerprints ruin the sublime compute environment Apple have graciously provided.
Both of them use the keyboards and ignore touch.
Every single Surface pro I see used is used with the keyboard and they use the trackpoint spot on the keyboard cover. When I had the Surface Pro I tried to use the touchscreen. It's pretty darn useless if you are doing any real work.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And costs 1/3 what an iPad Pro + dongles would.
ganoo plus linocks on the desktop is for people who want to have a premium experience theming Gnome and using TWMs
The old Mac Pro (4U aluminum chassis) had:
- Four drive bays, and you could get an aftermarket tray to add SSDs/
- Easy RAM upgrade
- Interchangeable GPU(s) -- it would take nVidia or ATI boards.
- Two network drops
The "replacement" Pro garbage can had stuff soldered in place, no upgrade option for GPU and a form factor that didn't allow upgrades, in addition to being abhorrently expensive and never updated. Not to mention having to do simple things like expand hard drive space with daisy chained expensive Thunderbolt stuff strung together like Christmas lights. I remember the mocking Jeff Goldblum Apple ad asking if PC stood for "Perpetually Cabled". In the old system you could keep all that stuff internal and using PCI, which was still faster.
When we retired the old Pros, we replaced them with MacBookPros -- the garbage can just priced itself out of contention, and into the realm of "can we do the same thing Linux or Windows instead, since that garbage can is now more expensive than some really decent servers we bought recently"
and in the past apple tryed to push gaming but the only really good systems where the high imac or the old mac pro with a 3rd party video card.
e-net $30 more 10-gig-e $100 from apple and it uses the TB3 bus.
$$$? There are many more iMac users than Mac Pro users. I would guess 10:1 would be a conservative estimate.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
debatable but in 2017 it's becoming more or less a standard feature on any iMac-killer Windows 10 all-in-one PC.
Which people then proceed to never use; because the app and OS support for it is so dodgy.
Just as an aside, and not tackling the question of whether touchscreens make sense on desktop computers: There's a difference between "a lot of manufacturers have jumped on the bandwagon of including this feature," and "this is a useful feature that people will use an appreciate."
DING DING DING!!! WE HAVE A WINNER!
You have EXACTLY hit the nail on the head!!!
Well at least they heard the bit about 'expandability and storage' - two things completely absent from the trash can Mac Pro. Unless you count paying extra for less performance by way of Thunderbolt, which I don't.
Thunderbolt might take care of the storage bit by way of 10gbe and fiber channel adapters. It is a sorry excuse for GPU expandability though, especially since Apple has gone out of their way to prevent GPUs from working on Thunderbolt by way of software lockout.
Skip the 'pro iMac' and just make a Mac Pro like you had in 2010, except with 2017 hardware inside. How fucking hard is that?
Thunderbolt may make less sense on a conventional "tower" peripheral card cage disguised as a computer; but it makes a HELLUVA lot of sense on laptop and All-In-One designs.
$$$? There are many more iMac users than Mac Pro users. I would guess 10:1 would be a conservative estimate.
Add at least TWO zeros to that.
And by "works" you mean after you've manually configured files, got told to RTFM which doesn't exist, got yelled at online by people who think you should automatically know what to do, then sacrifice a goat in the hope an obscure posting from three years ago will do the trick.
If Linux just "works", why is it people on here repeatedly post about not having sound or cameras or drives working even with the latest packages and instead have to jump through hoop trying to get the above to work?
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
You took the words right offa my keyboard.
It's not 1999 loser. You must be retarded. My grandma uses Linux.
And I'm sure that either her name is Ada Lovelace, or she didn't set it up herself.
She can take an iMac out of the box and be up and running in less than 10 minutes.
Both of them use the keyboards and ignore touch.
Every single Surface pro I see used is used with the keyboard and they use the trackpoint spot on the keyboard cover. When I had the Surface Pro I tried to use the touchscreen. It's pretty darn useless if you are doing any real work.
And yet, with all the Surface commercials, it's ALL they advertise...
But is still a touchscreen desktop which no one wants except for children
They're interested in things like performance and storage and expandability.
Not doing too well on that front after they switched to the trashcan.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
4 years old now, but its going to be released next year by which time it will be 5 years old anyway...
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Thunderbolt never made sense. External PCIe makes some sense. Thunderbolt itself is a mishmash of standards and ports and protocols running on top of PCIe with all of the security issues that comes along with attaching shit to your PCIe bus. So why not skip the expensive controllers, proprietary implementations, ridiculous cables, and just use external PCIe?
if you dazzle with brilliance, baffle with bullshit
if you can't dazzle with brilliance, baffle with bullshit
Well, they still haven't gotten over losing the tablet war. They see millions using their iPads and Android tablets and figure that being able to touch stuff is the killer feature. They never seem to get that making a UI that people can and want to touch is where the real magic lies.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Mostly because PCI-Express does not really support hotpluging. True, the spec states that it "should" be possible, however there are no consumer-available devices where it works properly.
Being able to plug/unplug a high performance device without cycling the power is worth some extra layers given that the alternative is to dump PCI-express entirely and design a new main bus technology that supports it natively.
My UID is prime and so is this number: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.
I don't know that it doesn't work, but if people were buying external PCIe devices they'd get it working.
Even if the native lanes coming off the CPU were unable to support it until Intel/AMD got around to it in a generation or two of there being demand for it, it would be trivial make a PCIe device that was nothing more than a hotplug enabler with a bracket for ports for the external cables. And of course it could be implemented via a muxer that many mobos already have or via the chipset (which usually provides some PCIe lanes of its own).
As usual, this is pure propaganda bs! The machine is junk, very very expensive junk and the marshable "article" is actually a paid one. Slashdot is not that informative venue once was... it is ALL commerce. Cant trust it.
Yet targeting the exact group of professionals which a pro iMac would target. And by all accounts doing a much better job, partially due to its touch screen.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Apple fangirls out in full force, what is this a tech blog.
Don't forget, on some revisions, the two SATA ports in the optical bays too - I have an SSD plugged in there. Those aftermarket trays were interesting, but I always found them to be way more expensive than I could justify.