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iMac next likely update?

B

BrentTen

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 1, 2007
2
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Hello everyone, very nice forum you have here.

I'm Mac person- have a G5 iMac on my desk at work and an older G4 iMac at home.

My family is planning to purchase a new Intel iMac sometime after Christmas.

Is there likely to be an update in the next few months? I gather from reading around the forum that some of you have a good sense of the next processor upgrade and so on. Will the next one likely have a 512 Meg video card?

Thanks in advance-

Brent
 
Don't think an upgrade is possible for at least another 6 months. (July or August most likely).
I am myself buying an imac on 1st January and it will be my first mac purchase after almost three years. (currently on a G4 mac mini and a G4 ibook)
I'll say go for the current version as the problem regarding the screen have been fixed.
 
im in the same boat as this guy, ill only have enough money to buy it around march, will there be an update around then??? i dont wanna wait till july either :( (the pc im running right now is slowly dieing......1.8gz atholon xp O/C too 2.4 ghz- 256 mb ram) it will be my first mac aswell i want it to last :)
 
It's anybody's guess. Apple generally has a 6 month cycle between speed bumps but that was during the PowerPC years. Now that they have gone with Intel their product cycles have been more spread out. For instance this latest iMac is an update from the white iMac which was a year between each other. The Mac Pro is approaching a year since the last update.
To The OP, if you want your iMac shortly after Christmas go ahead and get it because there's no way anyone will know what Apple is going to do.
 
i would at least wait til after jan 15 considering its not that far away. you never know what apple will unveil at macworld. i am actually waiting to buy my imac after macworld myself
 
Richard.John said:
They certainly won't change the form factor but may offer upgraded CPUs.
Click to expand...

CPU updates, aka the old speed bump with some slight configuration changes.

Though the updated CPU will likely have 50% more cache, so it can be a significant improvement even if 2.8GHz stays the top machine.

However, RAM should be an interesting thing to see if Apple updates that bus this next round.
 
Thanks everyone, plenty of view points to ponder.

I suppose waiting until January 15th is pretty logical.

My wife still hasn't forgiven me for buying a 60 gig iPod a week before the iPod video came out.

I like everything about the stats on the current iMac other than the video card- it seems like 512's have become the norm on PC's. Of course either would be a big step up from the 64 I have on my current machine.

Thanks again-

Brent
 
BrentTen said:
Thanks everyone, plenty of view points to ponder.

I suppose waiting until January 15th is pretty logical.

My wife still hasn't forgiven me for buying a 60 gig iPod a week before the iPod video came out.

I like everything about the stats on the current iMac other than the video card- it seems like 512's have become the norm on PC's. Of course either would be a big step up from the 64 I have on my current machine.

Thanks again-

Brent
Click to expand...

I doubt an update is coming on January 15th...are the Penryn Mobile's even ready yet? I really don't see anything happening to the iMac until the summer...however, it is always safe to wait until a major Apple event like Macworld, because you never know.
 
zedsdead said:
I doubt an update is coming on January 15th...are the Penryn Mobile's even ready yet? I really don't see anything happening to the iMac until the summer...however, it is always safe to wait until a major Apple event like Macworld, because you never know.
Click to expand...

the mobile penryns are expected in January so i would see apple wanted to jump and that wagon shortly after that.
 
BrentTen said:
Hello everyone, very nice forum you have here.

I'm Mac person- have a G5 iMac on my desk at work and an older G4 iMac at home.

My family is planning to purchase a new Intel iMac sometime after Christmas.

Is there likely to be an update in the next few months? I gather from reading around the forum that some of you have a good sense of the next processor upgrade and so on. Will the next one likely have a 512 Meg video card?

Thanks in advance-

Brent
Click to expand...

There is not a single member of this rumor web site that is affiliated with Apple, everyone here is a John Doe consumer just like your self so i say go out and buy what ever Mac your budget will allow and enjoy :)
 
basesloaded190 said:
the mobile penryns are expected in January so i would see apple wanted to jump and that wagon shortly after that.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing that at MacWorld, they will announce that the iMac's will be upgraded to Penryn's and will be shipping in March/April... but the way they have waited to announce the upgrade for the Mac Pros, that is highly unlikely.
 
No big changes for a year, possibly a entry level speed bump (2.2 GHz?) at springtime, but nothing big,
 
I will agree with those stating a summer update at the earliest. A speed bump is always possible, bu not anything major until at least the summer.
 
Remember, Apple tends to update the consumer macs (iMac, mini, eMac, back in the day) for the back to school push. That would make a January update less likely. They also don't like to do many updates at once, and would prefer to spread them out so as to get the most press possible for each product line. given that there will be pro line updates, I'd doubt there would be much going on iMac wise. Of course, I bought a dual g5 2.0 when 10.4 came out and was totally burned a few months later when the shift to intel was announced, so maybe my mac timing is not all it could be... ;)
 
Personally I would not be so bothered with a CPU upgrade and Intel wont have them ready until January anyway. However there are a few news on the GPU side of things which would be worth waiting for and that already are available on the market.

Anyway, wait til the 15th at least :)
 
Does Apple wait until most of their stock is sold or do they start selling the older stock at lower prices when they have speed bumps? I wouldn't mind getting the current iMac at a lower price when they have a speed bump to save some money.
 
themoonisdown09 said:
I'm guessing that at MacWorld, they will announce that the iMac's will be upgraded to Penryn's and will be shipping in March/April... but the way they have waited to announce the upgrade for the Mac Pros, that is highly unlikely.
Click to expand...

I think that is the least likely outcome. Apple never announces product changes in advance. Except the iPhone, which is because they had to disclose it for FCC reasons.

Who knows when they will make a change. Product updates have been slower lately, and without a new chip on the horizon it's unlikely they'll change.
 
Le Big Mac said:
Apple never announces product changes in advance.
Click to expand...

You obviously haven't followed Apple very long. There have been several examples of Apple announcing something new at a Macworld, etc. and then stating that it would be available in 2-3 months. The most recent example I can think of (besides the iPhone which you quoted) is the Apple TV. It was announced in the fall of 06, detailed at Macworld 07, and then shipped in March.
 
BrentTen said:
Hello everyone, very nice forum you have here.

I'm Mac person- have a G5 iMac on my desk at work and an older G4 iMac at home.

My family is planning to purchase a new Intel iMac sometime after Christmas.

Is there likely to be an update in the next few months? I gather from reading around the forum that some of you have a good sense of the next processor upgrade and so on. Will the next one likely have a 512 Meg video card?

Thanks in advance-

Brent
Click to expand...


I wouldn't expect to see an iMac update for another 8 months. There just isn't anything major on the market to make it worth updating.

Also a 512 meg gpu would be hard pressed in an iMac for two reasons. Most require extra power not directly supplied by the motherboard, Apple is not big on this clearly seeing even in the Mac Pro a 7300 card is standard. Also I think it would be next to impossible for the iMac design to handle the heat generated by higher performace video card. These are not gaming machines.

Unless your interested in gaming its just not needed I use quite a few pro apps, photoshop cs3, final cut, shake and I have yet to find anything it can't handle.

Extra ram is all I needed to add I run with 3gig.
 
jnc said:
Well I think we have some shareholders and employees among us... :cool: but yeah, no one capable of divulgation.
Click to expand...

I love when people use the term share holders when it comes to Apple, like someone is sitting down next to Steve having coffee in the morning deciding what to do next.

I own about 700k of GE stock and Jack Welch never ask my opinion.
 
According to the buyers giude, the average update for the imac is 185 days and it's been 120 so far, so there should be an update around 65 days from now, give or take 30.

I don't know what everyone is saying about a summer update. The last update was like 11 months (330 days) from white imac to alum imac, but if you look at the last 4 or 5 updates, you can see that it was 2 months, then 6 months, then 3 months, and then 5 months.....all of those with the intel chipset. Granted, it might not have been a major overhaul, but a speed bump does count as an update and I know one of those updates from Core Duo to Core 2 Duo, but those chips are the same size, but different motherboard? I don't know. Getting those new chips, mortadello or perynm or whatever it is (is it just me or do they sound like types of cheeses? or did I just list cheeses?), might or might not be hard to put in. I would think that a smaller chip that doesn't use as much power or put out as much heat would be easier to put in an alum imac than just a faster chip of the same size that might put out more heat.

But then again, I do not built computers or claim to know a lot about them. As my moniker says, I make movies, which, as you can tell in this post, makes me sound smarter than I really am....which is not that smart. See, I'm already using bad english.
 
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