how about a 29” display with no bezels in the same foot print. at the same price.
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iMac Redesign for 2018?
- Thread starter Solo2392
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You can be pretty sure that the RAM bay door will have gone next time round.
I was in an Apple Store this afternoon. The 5K iMac has such a gorgeous display. However, performance is poor for such an expensive machine. I have a self built PC with an i7, 32GB RAM and M2 and SATA SSDs and it flies. Everything happens instantly. Loading Word and Excel in the Apple Store took forever. I still fancy one though
Apple iMacs in the stores have Fusion drives, but IIRC they don't necessary even use the Fusion part in store for some reason.
For some reason Office is always slower on the Mac than on Windows. However, it's much better on a full SSD system. But even on my full SSD i5-7600 system it was slower to load than my old Phenom 1055T Windows 10 PC with a little over half of the CPU performance of my i5.
The good news though is if you have lots of memory, everything is cached in RAM anyway.
You must be walking around with a hood over your head if you think the 5K iMacs' performance is poor. Remember that the Apple stores stock only standard configuration 5K iMacs, which sport Fusion drives, and I'm sure the 1 TB Fusion drives' 32GB SSD portion is not nearly enough room to hold the Microsoft Office suite of fat, bloated applications.
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The problem is that Microsoft only very reluctantly brought its Office applications to the Mac. The Mac counterparts are getting better, but they have never been as good as the Windows versions (no surprise there) and Microsoft has never made much of an effort to optimize them for OS X.
No, just reporting on real world like for like experience.
Word and Excel load instantly on my PC. Seriously, absolutely no obvious delay. As I said, I still fancy the 5K iMac but I'd be going backwards in some respects.
To expand on what I was saying above. These are my two desktops:
Windows 10 Phenom II 1055T (PassMark 4975) with SATA II Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB SSD and 8 GB RAM
10.13 High Sierra iMac i5-7600 (PassMark 8850) with Apple PCIe 1 TB SSD and 24 GB RAM
Office 16.13 is relatively slow on my iMac, but Office 2007 is lightning fast on the Phenom.
Office 2011 on the Mac is faster than 16.13, but still slower than Office 2007 on Windows.
Video encoding is much faster on iMac than the Phenom though. The Phenom isn't in the same league.
Yup. Office is not very well performance optimized on the Mac, as my results show. I hear the Office:mac coding team is pretty small though, so they are doing the best they can with limited resources.
That's what I would guess. I can imagine that Microsoft was dragged kicking and screaming into supporting Apple. That's why I don't think Microsoft Office performance on iMacs is a good measure of the hardware's capability. I don't think too many people plunk down the cash for 5K iMac primarily to run Office apps, nor do I think that how fast they start is as important as how fast they run.
For the price, the performance is absolutely sub-par. A throttled CPU running nearly always hot and an average GPU. I'd call that pretty meh for the price tag.
The price/performance of the iMac really hinges on whether you want a 5k display. I'm not sure if there are any other 5k displays on the market at the moment, apart from the Apple/LG one - which costs $1300. Even the 21.5" iMacs offer full 4k 4096x2304 displays c.f. the 3840x2160 UHD displays that are usually sold as HD. If you want 5k or true 4k, that makes the iMac amazing value.
Of course, if you really wanted a desktop that lets you connect the display of your choice then that's not such a good value proposition.
The trouble is, the entry level iMacs are really let down by the spinning rust. I guess Apple have done their research and decided that the people who buy Macs in stores just want to see "1TB" on the box...
...maybe so they can use APFS?
What usually gets lost in the discussion of liking or not a Mac redesign vs. going to back to Windows is OS X (now MacOS). Before my first Mac in 2007 I was a Windows guy, building my own machines and keeping my friends' Windows machines running. I still run Windows 10 under Parallels because Adobe Reader under OS X won't automatically select paper trays according to PDF size on my printer, so I run Windows 10 on occasion for certain large document printing.
I can tell you that I wouldn't switch back to Windows as my daily driver if someone gave me a Windows computer for free. Just keeping Windows 10 intact and up-to-date on the virtual machine involves multiple reboots almost every time I use it, nor will it even shut down without a 10-minute "updating" procedure. It reminds me of the 100's of hours a year I used to spend on the floor inside computer cases moving cards around slots trying to get things to work properly, and then doing scavenger hunts for drivers and patches and constantly having to update Windows over and over again. And seeing how Windows 10 operates that hasn't changed. And then I got my Mac, my time on the floor went to zero, and except for an occasional 15-minute (free!) OS update and an SSD upgrade about three years ago, the iMac has taken care of itself.
Yes, you can get a lemon from Apple, and they often don't have the absolute latest and greatest hardware components, but if you don't get a lemon, and most people don't, MacOS is simply there for you, every day, year after year, ready to work. Windows machines deteriorate steadily even if they're not "defective," need to be rebooted often to be kept in their best, and have constant hardware/software/firmware issues that often become intractable.
That's why I find amusing these discussions of bezels, and poor Word performance, and system value "compared to Windows." All minor compared to the dedicated caretaker you need to be or have to maintain Microsoft Windows.
I can tell you that I wouldn't switch back to Windows as my daily driver if someone gave me a Windows computer for free. Just keeping Windows 10 intact and up-to-date on the virtual machine involves multiple reboots almost every time I use it, nor will it even shut down without a 10-minute "updating" procedure. It reminds me of the 100's of hours a year I used to spend on the floor inside computer cases moving cards around slots trying to get things to work properly, and then doing scavenger hunts for drivers and patches and constantly having to update Windows over and over again. And seeing how Windows 10 operates that hasn't changed. And then I got my Mac, my time on the floor went to zero, and except for an occasional 15-minute (free!) OS update and an SSD upgrade about three years ago, the iMac has taken care of itself.
Yes, you can get a lemon from Apple, and they often don't have the absolute latest and greatest hardware components, but if you don't get a lemon, and most people don't, MacOS is simply there for you, every day, year after year, ready to work. Windows machines deteriorate steadily even if they're not "defective," need to be rebooted often to be kept in their best, and have constant hardware/software/firmware issues that often become intractable.
That's why I find amusing these discussions of bezels, and poor Word performance, and system value "compared to Windows." All minor compared to the dedicated caretaker you need to be or have to maintain Microsoft Windows.
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There's no indication that any of the Macs have generally throttled CPU's, as #gusping inaccurately implied. Yes, there may be slight thermal throttling during extended periods under full load of the most powerful CPU's, but that's a common safety feature.
Yep. The main issue with the iMac is fan noise, not throttling.
However, with my i5-7600, fan noise isn't a significant issue either. The only 27" where it commonly can be a major issue is the 7700K.
Agree with most of what you say except Winrot slowdown is a thing of the past. Haven’t experienced that since Vista.
My 7700K is whisper quiet , then again I don't do anything in the least bit taxing on it 
Never seen the fans go above 1200 rpm ever
Never seen the fans go above 1200 rpm ever
Do Apple stores still wipe and re-image the demo machines every night?
That could partially explain performance deficiencies aside from the spinners, if an app hasn't been launched during the day and hasn't built a cache. Try that on a 21" with the slow laptop drive and it can take ~20 bounces before an Office app finishes launching the first time it's attempted.
Say what you will about MS Office dev team through the years, but being "dragged" to bring Office to the Mac is not one of them. Word has been on Macs since 1985 and Excel began life that same year as a Mac-only app. Word 5.1a is still the best, most capable, but no-filler word processor I've ever used, and I've used them since WordStar. The "Snow Leopard" of Mac word processors, if you will.
Gates was nothing if not a businessman, as well as a poker player who didn't leave anything on the table. Mac versions of what would come to be known as Office apps only cemented its place as the dominant suite, even if they were crummy and didn't generate as much revenue, compared to the Windows versions.
I do agree that MS does a better job of backward compatibility with Windows, especially with older hardware. Installing 10 on an old, unsupported C2D Dell machine that was running 7 resulted in no loss of performance. If anything it probably ran a little better, and more so after some RAM was added to give it more breathing room. Contrast that to Apple, where system software updates are now a potential minefield, even if one is using the latest hardware. Quite sadly the tables have turned in that respect.
Back to your regularly scheduled programming...
That could partially explain performance deficiencies aside from the spinners, if an app hasn't been launched during the day and hasn't built a cache. Try that on a 21" with the slow laptop drive and it can take ~20 bounces before an Office app finishes launching the first time it's attempted.
Say what you will about MS Office dev team through the years, but being "dragged" to bring Office to the Mac is not one of them. Word has been on Macs since 1985 and Excel began life that same year as a Mac-only app. Word 5.1a is still the best, most capable, but no-filler word processor I've ever used, and I've used them since WordStar. The "Snow Leopard" of Mac word processors, if you will.
Gates was nothing if not a businessman, as well as a poker player who didn't leave anything on the table. Mac versions of what would come to be known as Office apps only cemented its place as the dominant suite, even if they were crummy and didn't generate as much revenue, compared to the Windows versions.
I do agree that MS does a better job of backward compatibility with Windows, especially with older hardware. Installing 10 on an old, unsupported C2D Dell machine that was running 7 resulted in no loss of performance. If anything it probably ran a little better, and more so after some RAM was added to give it more breathing room. Contrast that to Apple, where system software updates are now a potential minefield, even if one is using the latest hardware. Quite sadly the tables have turned in that respect.
Back to your regularly scheduled programming...
Your problem is not applicable to everyone. Windows updates are scheduled and they impose a reboot outside your normal working hours. That way you should have an updated computer all the time, no maintenance needed. The problem is that you use a VM which is probably in a shutdown state most of the time. You don't need to do anything to it. It will update itself and will eventually reboot if you leave it open for a while. The Mac can also update itself (even in sleep mode). This is a non-issue.
PS: yeah some updates will be slow. The system is doing backup of the files in case the update goes wrong and you need to restore it to the previous condition (which doesn't exist on the mac). If you turn it off, the system will update itself faster.
Well then the 7700K is unnecessary for you.My 7700K is whisper quiet , then again I don't do anything in the least bit taxing on it
Never seen the fans go above 1200 rpm ever
I actually don't get all the Win10 hatred. I needed a new machine urgently August of 2016, my trusty 11"MBA finally gave up the ghost. NONE of the Apple laptops appealed to me. 1) they were a bit 'boring' and 2) every single keyboard was absolute rubbish. EVERY one of them. I had 2k to spend and nothing to buy from them.
When I looked at my needs I realized that most of my casual work was being done on the 7+. My laptop was really just to write, do web research and access my external drives. Maybe movies when I travel.
I live in MS Office, Safari/Edge, Kodi media server and Finder/Explorer.
Ended up buying a ThinkPad Yoga 260 and it's been rock solid. The keyboard is a dream. Touch screen does come in handy once in a while. I like the tent mode for movies. The tablet part sucks, but who cares? I don't need to use it. It's too long and skinny for one and the size makes it awkward. Doesn't bother me, I think I used the included stylus once and then gave up on it.
For my needs, this has been a fantastic buy. I've never really had to mess around with Windows much. It updates itself quietly in the background and the underlying OS (given MY needs) is pretty invisible. No viruses or malware. The whole tiling thing I don't completely understand, but again, for MY personal needs who cares? I've got my 5 or 6 frequently used programs on a dock at the bottom. If I need an app I don't go hunting for it. Cortana is one click away and that's the same workflow as my old Mac where i'd use spotlight.
Windows 10 is just fine. Frankly, while some of the options are gimmicky, I'm seeing more innovation coming out of Redmond these days. Apple's been making some ridiculous decisions. Mainly the keyboard. I'm an author. When you're writing up to 10,000 words in a heavy session you NEED a keyboard that is comfortable and you can fly on. The ThinkPad has been a DREAM. Keyboard is usually my first decision maker for a new machine, screen is next and unless Apple does something to their laptop line, they will be losing customers. I'm coming back to the family but refuse to buy any more laptops. I'll shift my mobile needs to the ipad pro and keep a desktop at home for when I need multiple monitors etc.
I don't get all the Win 10 hatred around here. Sometimes it seems like people haven't really tried it.
eV
Yes, I can see that. What really annoys me is the reinstalling. Recently I re-installed Windows 7 Professional on a friend's laptop after I replaced her HD with an SSD. She didn't want to restore from a backup because she was complaining that Windows had become (of course) slow and glitchy. So first you install the original OEM system. But to update to the present you have to go through literally about eight reboots because Windows is unable to update itself from the past to the present in one shot. It sees a bunch of updates initially, reboots. It sees new updates, reboots. It sees new updates again, reboots, and so on and so on. And then of course I have to do a driver hunt for all the installed hardware. Hadn't done a Windows reinstall for years and it was the same nightmare that takes hours of attention. With a Mac you put in the original operating system, and you update to the current operating system. Done. Is Windows 10 the same way as Windows 7?
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You don't know that. One doesn't have to be pushing an i7 to the limit of its 8 hyperthreads to see the speed advantage of the 4.2GHz clock rate along with its bigger cache that the chip has over the available i5's, especially for the relative pittance Apple charges for the upgrade.
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I don't see the hatred. I certainly don't hate Windows, I still use it. I just think that the user experience between the two systems is galaxies apart. Windows is still the market king, so obviously it has many adherents. I know this is the Trump Era, but it's still possible to discuss the relative merits of two things without characterizing one as hate of the other.
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Yes I actually do know that. Firstly, he said he doesn't do anything the least bit taxing on it. Secondly, I have had both the i7-7700K iMac and the i5-7600 iMac. I returned the i7 iMac because of fan noise.
With any significant CPU load lasting longer than a minute the i7 would ramp up the fan. In contrast, I can run the iMac i5-7600 at full load for a good 9+ minutes before the fan hits max.
On the flip side though, with regular daily surfing usage and that sort of thing the two machines felt identical. The benefit of the i7-7700K is that it was faster for hard core computing stuff, but with fan noise.
With an video encoding test we did here:
i7-7700K: 10 minute encode, but with fans at maximum within 30 seconds.
i5-7600: 12.5 minute encode, with fans at maximum after about 9-10 minutes.
In other words, the i7 was 20% faster than the i5 for full-load video encoding, but a heluvalot noisier, with the fan at max throughout almost the entire encode.
If you actually need the speed advantage of the i7, you are going to get the fan noise. If you never see the i7's fan go above 1200 rpm, you don't need the i7.
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BTW, when the new hex-core iMacs come out next month, I'd say most people here might want to avoid the i7-8700K for the same reason. The i5-8600 non-K will be as fast as the current i7-7700K, but without the fan noise. Yes, the i7-8700K will be significantly faster, but if you don't like fan noise, then don't get it if you don't really need the extra speed.
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I certainly agree with you about fan noise in general, although I've seen people go both ways on fan noise with the i7. My i7 will arrive in about a week and I intend to take full advantage of my 14 day return window (spread nicely across the WWDC dates) if fan noise is a problem.
Why would you buy now? Did you get a killer deal or something?
If you bought from Apple, there is no advantage to buying now (other than getting it a couple of weeks earlier). Even if you got a refurb price, the refurb prices on the 2017 models after the 2018 model announcements would either be the same, or better.
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Ah yes.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/imac-redesign-for-2018.2049419/page-19#post-26062889
It seems you bought from Apple.
Yeah. I've run out of patience with my 2007 as my daily driver, and I have other uses waiting for it. The only way I'll return the new guy is if they announce some refresh or update at WWDC that will be happening immediately or SOON. If I have to wait until the Fall (which at this point could be 5 months from now) I'll keep the new i7 (unless of course the fan noise is annoying...).