I'm not ready to upgrade yet!

[RichardI]

After letting the spec's. of the new iMacs sink in, I've decided I am not upgrading....yet. I love the idea of a big, LED backlit 27" display, a quad core processor, and a better graphics card, but there are still a couple of nagging issues for me. One is the superdrive. I cannot for the life of me figure out why Apple would stick such old technology into a beautiful new 'puter. 8X! Man, that is slow, slow, slow and old, old, old. Is this a power supply issue, or a commitment to a supplier? To me, it just doesn't fit with the spiffy new iMac.
The other thing is the video card - yep the newest and latest one - the top of the line one. ATI/AMD now have a 5850 and 5870 available. If you look at the "old" 24" iMac, it is 1920x1200 native resolution = 2.3 megapixels per screen. The new 27" is 2560x1440 native resolution = 3.7 megapixels per screen. that's a 160% increase. Leave it to Apple to up the resolution and leave the GPU alone. Anyway, I'll just bide my time until the graphics is bumped up. Love the new look and the Magic Mouse (ordered one for my current Mac) but an 8X
Rich

 

[richprice79]

Honestly regarding the 8x write speed anything over that can cause compatibility issues with other players and when burning movies anything over 4x can create issues. I have a 22x on my pc but never burn anything over 4x. I agree with the gfx card though even if they had to hold it back until the new cards are released I would wait but since they didn't I am ordering the 27" i7.

 

[BelowTheBelt]

I hear you about the silly Superdrive, I ordered the Panasonic drive that iFixit mentioned when they did the teardown. I have no problem booting into Windows to watch Blu Ray.

And the back up option will be nice as well

 

[Hellhammer]

I think 8x is the fastest laptop optical drive speed available. Seriously, who even needs it nowadays? Downloading is today and future!

 

[OldCorpse]

The superdrive doesn't seem much of an issue. As pointed out, faster burning speeds equal way more problems with coasters. The graphics card, sure nice to have a newer one, but I'm not sure waiting is going to be the answer here - it is my understanding that they went with the current card partially due to heat issues. That means it may be a long, long wait for a better card in an iMac enclosure.

By far, my bigger objection is lack of SSD option. Sure, I can replace it myself, but that runs into my other objection - Apple really should have made the HDD user serviceable on the iMac. I'm really not looking forward to opening the iMac, hunting for a suitable SSD drive, finding a bracket that will hold the drive, shorting the fan as one user had to do (!) and the general hassle. Apple really should have had an SSD option in a user serviceable HDD compartment. The SSD is the single biggest performance bottleneck for a computer nowadays - far bigger than the graphics card.

And the matte option - for some of us who have to do a lot of video editing or photo editing that's a big issue.

But even so, I'm gonna go with this update. Quad chips and 27" IPS LED screen, up to 16GB RAM? I'm sold!

I'd rather buy this update, even it it's not perfect than wait years for the perfect one that'll never come. I sure as heck would not wait for a faster superdrive (what??!!) and the GPU that's in there now is adequate unless you plan on playing some super intensive games (I'm not a gamer at all, so I don't care about that).

 

[itommyboy]

I've decided to hold off as well. I think the latest updates are nice and a move in the right direction but my 24" 3.06 from April has the same 8GB DDR3 and the same ATi gpu as the "new" iMacs. For me a slightly bigger LED screen (although IPS is a welcome upgrade) and an i7 isn't enough for me to toss another $2,500 at this year.

The main reason I did not ante in this round is the GPU. It's not that I'm so much a huge gamer anymore, as the ATi 4850 blows WoW and COD4 and L4D and the like away as is. It's that I simply look for a bit more future proofing when ready to lay out my hard earned dollars for a new computer. It's the reason I bought my latest iMacs last update. We needed/wanted some newer computers at the time. Being a fairly researched and dare I say lucky speculator, I figured this current round of iMacs would not have newer gpu's in them quite yet. Turns out that was the right call; yes even a blind squirrel as they say. I envision the next round of iMacs in May or June boasting later model cards and most likely dual gpu configurations, and my wallet opening up for yet another "latest and greatest - for now" gadget.

 

[spcdust]

I'd rather buy this update, even it it's not perfect than wait years for the perfect one that'll never come. I sure as heck would not wait for a faster superdrive (what??!!) and the GPU that's in there now is adequate unless you plan on playing some super intensive games (I'm not a gamer at all, so I don't care about that).

Believe it or not I've been wanting to update my iMac for the last 2 years but haven't been inspired by the revisions in that period. I initially got excited about this update and then found myself stressing over the lack of Blu-ray and perceived concerns about the GPU to the extent I was going to sit this update out yet again for the next one. I had to metaphorically punch myself and went ahead and placed my order for a top of the line iMac. The perfect iMac is an individual perspective and likely will never exist - as far as the GPU goes....the iMac has never been at the cutting edge of GPU cards so who knows on the next update - you might be surprised but they could stick with the 4850?

This revision is definitely the best one for a while - with the Core i7 desktop class CPU it's arguably the most significant update since Apple went over to Intel.

 

[ucfgrad93]

I'm not upgrading either. My macs are too new and do everything that I want them to. I would love a new 27" iMac, at this point in time, I'm not going to upgrade.