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New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac
- danford 12y ago>1.4 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost Speeds up to 2.7 GHz, Intel HD 5000 graphics, 8GB of memory and a 500GB hard drive. Eh.. I got similar specs in laptop form for about half the price on black Friday last year. I'd like to get something like this for a desktop but I'm afraid my Ubuntu might have some issues on the hardware. I'll wait until I find it slightly used for half the cost. On a side note: Is absolutely everything Apple does "HN worthy"? Can someone explain to me how this product is new or innovative or really interesting?
- noir_lord 12y agoIt's "interesting" because it broadly aligns with the interests of the HN users which is why it got voted to the top. I'm also not an Apple user but I still read the stories about what they are up to as I find them an interesting company to watch.
- joesmo 12y agoConsidering that no one else makes a decent desktop or laptop anymore and hasn't for years, I'd say this is quite newsworthy.
- danford 12y agoWell this is just your opinion. IMHO, I think you are incorrect. I think you and people like you do more harm to the image of Apple than good and I think your post adds no value to this discussion.
- Morgawr 12y ago>I'd like to get something like this for a desktop but I'm afraid my Ubuntu might have some issues on the hardware. I'll wait until I find it slightly used for half the cost. You might want to look at something like https://system76.com/desktops/model/sabc2 https://system76.com/desktops/model/sabc2 It's similar in the idea, it will support Ubuntu (or Linux in general) 100%, no drivers problems. Obviously it's not branded Apple so some people might not like it.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- nacs 12y agoYour laptop had a 21.5" IPS display? That sounded cynical but leaving out possibly the most expensive component on the iMac to compare it to a generic laptop with a smaller screen on a Black friday sale doesn't make sense.
- mchanson 12y agoApple probably cutting prices because upcoming back to school. They just did a price cut on their Macbook Air line as well.
- ChikkaChiChi 12y agoThese are new models at new price points. It's Apple attempting to be "budget"
- ansimionescu 12y agoI bought an iMac in 2012 for £860 (student discount, original price £1000) and sold it one and a half years later for £600. I also bought a 13" Sony Vaio S for around £1200 in 2011 and had to sell it 6 months later, because it was a total piece of shit. I got £650 for it. So I'd argue that buying cheap plastic crap is in fact the non-budget option.
- Pxtl 12y agoIt's frustrating to see Sony fail like that - Sony was Apple back when Apple was doomed. I keep waiting for a Win32/Android company to position themselves as "Apple without the Apple OS". Sony has succeeded there with the Xperia line, but their laptops don't reflect that.
- rsynnott 12y agoAccording to the former president of Sony, Apple kind of agreed: http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/02/05/steve-jobs-wanted-sonys-vaio-computers-to-run-mac-os-x http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/02/05/steve-jobs-wanted-...
- mikeash 12y agoThat's how it always is. See the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-rich-were-so-rich-vimes-reasoned http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-ri...
- mgkimsal 12y agohaving just bought the $1299 model last year, glad to see they're trying to offer a cheaper model. Lowest used to be $1199 a few years back - another $100 to $1299 (essentially $1400 with tax) was a big hit to take. Yes, $200 is just $200 - these new $1099 ones aren't free, but... this may make the difference between someone getting a new one vs not. 1.4ghz seems awfully slow, but... I suspect for a lot of what many people do - email, youtube, Facebook, a bit of iTunes music, this will be more than fine. But maybe not. I'd rather people not have a horribly bad experience on something too underpowered for the software. That said, they pushed out the retina mbp a couple years ago(?) and that experience was not all that great (imo) - laggy window drag, etc.
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago1.4GHz isn't as slow as you think due to Turbo Boost. The effective clock speed is much higher, it just runs in lower-energy mode most of the time. Speaking as someone with a MacBook Air who does software development (compiling large projects like the Zend engine).
- hackety 12y agoThe number of gigahertz is irrelevant these days - unless you're doing heavy computation or playing games.
- DCKing 12y agoI do all my development work (which involves a lot of heavy Scala stuff) on a 2012 MacBook Air, which is a wee bit slower than this one. The CPU really is not a problem. There's no SSD or 'Fusion Drive' in this one, which will make it bog down a lot. It's a shame that Apple won't go for a $999 model with a 64GB SSD or something. Should be enough for classrooms and anyone who wants a basic computer.
- bluthru 12y agoYeah, a fusion drive would be a perfect default for this type of computer. It would feel fast while still giving a regular desktop user plenty of space for their media.
- tmikaeld 12y agoToo bad Hackintoshes are illegal, could get a lot more hardware for that kind of money.
- freshyill 12y agoAnd the cost of significantly more complexity and a far from optimal user experience. A hackintosh is fine for a very minute slice of the population. Even building a PC, except for hard-core gamers, isn't really a thing anymore.
- Touche 12y ago> And the cost of significantly more complexity and a far from optimal user experience. I've never done a Hackintosh (very happy with other unixes), but is this true? Certainly more complexity with setting it up, but afterwards? If you follow http://www.tonymacx86.com/home.php http://www.tonymacx86.com/home.php and get hardware they recommend and follow their guides isn't it pretty close to Apple's own computers?
- Gracana 12y agoUpgrading the OS is always a little trickier and scarier than it otherwise would be, but no, it's not too bad.
- drbawb 12y agoMy old man managed to build a Hackintosh and a "Hackbook Pro" just fine, following the tonymacx86 guides so far as I know. I helped him assemble the tower because he had never built a PC before, but he installed Mac OS himself. The machines have minor problems on occasion; but to be frank I don't expect any computer to work with 100% reliability. For instance a problem my dad w/ the hackintosh tower stemmed from storing `/Users` on a secondary hard drive. Occasionally the hard drive would not mount quickly enough and Mac OS would create skeleton home directories under `/Volumes/<drive2>/Users` which would bork the login. Plus the volume can no longer automount since the path `/Volumes/<drive2>` now exists. --- The HP ProBook works really well but it has had strange issues w/ the wireless card. For some reason the wireless card lost the region code stored in its firmware. As a result Mac OS no longer sees the wireless card. (System Profiler shows the hardware, but refuses to recognize it as an "Airport Express" card.) Humorously: the utilities to reflash Atheros firmware don't run on Mac OS. --- I have to admit that I'm a bit jealous. The "Hackbook Pro" runs much faster than my actual MacBook Pro of similar vintage (late '11).
- tekgo 12y agoComparing this on the store page[1] this is a significant jump down from the $1,299 iMac in CPU, graphics and hard drive space. Seems like the Mac is taking a page from the iPhone line and selling last year's model as a cheaper option. [1] http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/imac http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/imac
- pling 12y agoCan I replace the disk with an SSD easily? Probably not! :(
- projct 12y agoComes with an SSD build-to-order option, or a fusion drive option, which is a SSD + large HDD with the SSD as a block-level cache.[1] If it's the same as last year's model[2], it isn't that hard if you are used to working on laptops or mini-itx cases. Just have to be careful about dust, have a few torx bit screwdrivers, and some adhesive strips which you can find for $15-20. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_Drive#Design http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_Drive#Design [2] https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac+Intel+21.5-Inch+EMC+2638+Teardown/17829 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac+Intel+21.5-Inch+EMC+263...
- pling 12y agoI already have 3 SSDs floating around that I know are good (Samsung 840 Pro). I wouldn't want to kick out for another 256Gb SSD when I already have one. Not only that, those fusion drives are terribly unreliable from experience. Regardless of that, that process is HELL compared to another machine. The thing I'm typing this on now (Lenovo T400) requires any old screwdriver you have lying around and 2 mins. 1960s point to point wired televisions are easier to repair.
- was_hellbanned 12y agoI wouldn't want to kick out for another 256Gb SSD when I already have one. All current Macs[1] currently use PCIe SSD drives, which are not interchangeable with SATA SSD drives. They are, however, around 10x faster than SATA SSD drives, which is something people never seem to mention when comparing 'specs'. [1] with the exception of the 13-inch non-Retina MBP, which is presumably being phased out.
- pling 12y agoIt doesn't make any difference for me. Getting crap into RAM the first time is all I care about rather than sustained transfer.
- dsr_ 12y agoThis has a 1920x1080 display. I fail to understand why someone would buy this over a Mac Mini and an external display: cheaper, more powerful, ability to change displays, only two more cables (power and data for the display). Anyone care to enlighten me?
- hackety 12y ago1) it's thin and pretty 2) self-contained. Only a power cable is required. Makes a neat desk. 3) it's completely silent (but then again so is a mac mini) 4) the higher-end models have an actual graphics card (mac mini has very bad graphics)
- teh_klev 12y agoThe "x 1080" in the display dimensions make me sad. It's a shame this is becoming the norm on medium sized panels and not 1920x1200.
- hackety 12y ago1080p is fine for 21". (Until they go retina). Mind you, the 27" has 1440p.
- projct 12y agoI think the extra 180 pixels of vertical resolution is what he's worried about. I am too, that little bit helps a lot, even with the dock hidden and off to the side of the screen.
- randallsquared 12y agoIt's "becoming" the norm? That was happening 6-8 years ago. Now 1080p has been the norm for something like two upgrade cycles, and anyone who currently cares about resolution beyond that is looking at 1440p or more.
- hollerith 12y ago
- smackfu 12y agoGlad they are moving a little downmarket. My friend wanted a new computer, and I figured an iMac would be perfect for her, because she just plans to sit it on a desk. But then I looked at the prices... who wants to spend $1299 on a desktop machine nowadays? And that's with no SSD, so a Macbook Air is probably going to be faster for a lot of stuff in day-to-day to use.
- brudgers 12y agoMy guess? This suggests the old paradigm Mac Mini's lifecycle may be winding down because this targets Apple's core market in a manner consistent with the rest of Apple's product lineup and the not-all-in-one Mini doesn't no matter how much communities like this one love it.
- ncw96 12y agoI don't understand this product. For the same price, you could get a model with much better specs from the Apple Refurbished Store. Anyone who has ever bought Apple Refurb knows that the products are essentially new. http://store.apple.com/us/product/FE086LL/A/refurbished-215-inch-imac-27ghz-quad-core-Intel-Core-i5 http://store.apple.com/us/product/FE086LL/A/refurbished-215-...
- rsfinn 12y agoI agree with the bulk of your statement, which is why the last three Apple computers I've bought with my own money have been refurbs. However, people that walk into an Apple store to buy a computer don't want to buy a "used" computer. (Or people placing bulk orders for enterprises or educational institutions, either.)
- Pxtl 12y agoThis is really closing the already-small-gap between Apple and their competitors in the All-in-one space. I've been shopping for an All-in-one and it's thoroughly unimpressive - to get something with Apple-level quality, you really have to pay an Apple-level price... and at that point, you start wondering why shop with a brand with a worse reputation than Apple? I mean, I like Asus hardware, but I wouldn't want to pay Apple prices for Asus hardware.
- gambiting 12y agoIn my experience of looking for an all-in-one: if you want apple-quality but from any other manufacturer, be prepared to actually spend more money than you would on an iMac. Obviously with an iMac you are not getting a touchscreen that is standard on every other AiO,but I can't say I would use such feature.
- Pxtl 12y agoWait, iMacs don't have a touch-screen? I honestly didn't know that. This says both a lot about touch-screens and about how little I know about iMacs.
- mikeash 12y agoApple's only puts touchscreens on devices that run iOS. Touchscreens on computers running desktop OSes can be useful, but they're also pretty deeply compromised due to the "gorilla arm" effect and the fact that the UI is just not designed for it. That's fine for some people and companies but it's not how Apple does things.
- Pxtl 12y agoOf course. In hindsight it's obvious - Apple does something right or not-at-all, and Touchscreens on a normal desktop interface isn't "right". Hence the MS invention of Metro interface and the new shallow-slanting all-in-one devices to avoid gorilla-arm.
- judk 12y agoRidiculous. 128GB SSD is far more useful than a 500GB spinning disk. We stream media from cloud storage now.
- kennyledet 12y agoIt's 1080p, I think I'll pass this year. No reason to get this when I have a late 2013 rMBP still kicking strong.
- HugoDias 12y agoOh boy, $1,099 for an iMac? Here in my country this piece of tech costs nothing less than R$ 5.799 ($2576.99!!!!!)