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New iMac in late 2009?

tough time

i'm having a tough time with this. What if i ordered on the 8th, and then if for some reason some sweet deal comes out on the 9th could I return it?

I'm really jacked to get an imac. now that i've decided to make the switch, i'm excited. I just don't want to buy a product right before they upgrade it. I know everytime you buy a computer and walk out the door its obsolete, but i'd like to get the most of my money.

My main hangup is Blueray. How hard is it to put in a blueray into an imac if they become available? is hardware exchanges a real pain?
 
powderd said:
i'm having a tough time with this. What if i ordered on the 8th, and then if for some reason some sweet deal comes out on the 9th could I return it?

I'm really jacked to get an imac. now that i've decided to make the switch, i'm excited. I just don't want to buy a product right before they upgrade it. I know everytime you buy a computer and walk out the door its obsolete, but i'd like to get the most of my money.

My main hangup is Blueray. How hard is it to put in a blueray into an imac if they become available? is hardware exchanges a real pain?
Click to expand...

I doubt if there will be a substantial hardware upgrade until Q1 2010. We certainly won't see an iMac with Blu-ray before then, if at all. Any change between now and January will likely be a minor hardware change, a price drop, or both. Putting any new hardware (other than RAM) into an iMac isn't easy and voids the warranty.
 
Roller said:
I doubt if there will be a substantial hardware upgrade until Q1 2010. We certainly won't see an iMac with Blu-ray before then, if at all. Any change between now and January will likely be a minor hardware change, a price drop, or both. Putting any new hardware (other than RAM) into an iMac isn't easy and voids the warranty.
Click to expand...
Curious, does putting in RAM yourself void the warranty? I would imagine just opening the machine voids it.
 
zedsdead said:
No, but it loses the warranty on the RAM obviously.
Click to expand...

Not on the RAM that you're installing - RAM that you purchase from a third-party vendor is meant to be installed by the end user. For example, OWC's warranty says that only "damage that is the result of mishandling, incorrect installation, or incorrect use" isn't covered. I don't know if Apple's warranty technically covers RAM that you've removed and then put back, but that's not likely to happen.
 
So, if you can't wait and have to buy one now, which graphics card do you choose? 9400m, gt120, gt130, ATI 4850.

The macrumors post (quoted below) implies that the H264 decoding is only compatible with the 9400m, and therefore this is the only chip with both the H264 and OpenCL capabilities. Was going to get the GT130 for better performance until I noticed this -



From June 10:
"MacRumors had previously reported that the latest MacBook Pros offered hardware acceleration for H.264 video playback. While Apple has previously included graphics cards that have contained hardware support for H.264 decoding, the company has only recently taken advantage of this hardware acceleration. Mac OS X Snow Leopard's specs officially acknowledge this support but it appears to be limted to the NVIDIA 9400M graphics processors found in recent Apple laptops and desktops. Unfortunately, it does not appear that this support will extend to older video cards. Hardware decoding of H.264 video improves the performance of video playback while leaving your computer's CPU free for other tasks.

Meanwhile, Apple also details which GPUs will be supported for their upcoming OpenCL API. OpenCL will allow developers to easily offload additional processing tasks to the computer's GPU. Some tasks may find greater benefit from this than others, but could potentially offer substantial performance boosts. The list of supported GPUs include:

- NVIDIA Geforce 8600M GT, GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 8800 GTS, Geforce 9400M, GeForce 9600M GT, GeForce GT 120, GeForce GT 130.
- ATI Radeon 4850, Radeon 4870"
 
So, let me get my info straight. If I open my iMac and put in say some RAM I bought from Crucial it does not void my Applecare warranty? Cracking open my iMac just sounds like it could cause me a firestorm if I ever run in to a problem and need Apple to fix it.
 
Man-Droid said:
So, let me get my info straight. If I open my iMac and put in say some RAM I bought from Crucial it does not void my Applecare warranty? Cracking open my iMac just sounds like it could cause me a firestorm if I ever run in to a problem and need Apple to fix it.
Click to expand...

You don't need to crack open your imac to install RAM. Apple made it very easy to do, on the bottom of the imac is a screw, you unscrew it, the RAM is visible and you upgrade.
 
thedoor1 said:
So, if you can't wait and have to buy one now, which graphics card do you choose? 9400m, gt120, gt130, ATI 4850.

The macrumors post (quoted below) implies that the H264 decoding is only compatible with the 9400m, and therefore this is the only chip with both the H264 and OpenCL capabilities. Was going to get the GT130 for better performance until I noticed this -



From June 10:
"MacRumors had previously reported that the latest MacBook Pros offered hardware acceleration for H.264 video playback. While Apple has previously included graphics cards that have contained hardware support for H.264 decoding, the company has only recently taken advantage of this hardware acceleration. Mac OS X Snow Leopard's specs officially acknowledge this support but it appears to be limted to the NVIDIA 9400M graphics processors found in recent Apple laptops and desktops. Unfortunately, it does not appear that this support will extend to older video cards. Hardware decoding of H.264 video improves the performance of video playback while leaving your computer's CPU free for other tasks.

Meanwhile, Apple also details which GPUs will be supported for their upcoming OpenCL API. OpenCL will allow developers to easily offload additional processing tasks to the computer's GPU. Some tasks may find greater benefit from this than others, but could potentially offer substantial performance boosts. The list of supported GPUs include:

- NVIDIA Geforce 8600M GT, GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 8800 GTS, Geforce 9400M, GeForce 9600M GT, GeForce GT 120, GeForce GT 130.
- ATI Radeon 4850, Radeon 4870"
Click to expand...

I'm in the same situation. What you say is correct according to Apple's specs page for Snow Leopard. But it's unclear to me whether have this functionality on the 9400M outweighs the advantages of the other GPUs.
 
To complicate things further, the GeForce 120 and 130 are rebranded versions of cards/chipsets that DO support H.264 acceleration, according to an Nvidia support document. So it's unclear why they don't support it on the iMac under 10.6 according to Apple's documentation. Take a look at this thread in the Apple discussion forum - we're not the only ones wondering.
 
bry223 said:
You don't need to crack open your imac to install RAM. Apple made it very easy to do, on the bottom of the imac is a screw, you unscrew it, the RAM is visible and you upgrade.
Click to expand...
thanks, I wasn't aware of that. I actually do not have an iMac yet. I am in the process of buying one.
 
Roller said:
I'm in the same situation. What you say is correct according to Apple's specs page for Snow Leopard. But it's unclear to me whether have this functionality on the 9400M outweighs the advantages of the other GPUs.
Click to expand...

Those other graphic cards are significantly better. Go with the ATI card if you are customizing.

Also, from what I understand, every iMac has a 9400 in addition to the other cards since it has been incorporated into the chipset.
 
Man-Droid said:
thanks, I wasn't aware of that. I actually do not have an iMac yet. I am in the process of buying one.
Click to expand...

No problem, I'm wanting an iMac right now, I'm going to wait until the 2010 refresh since Ive been using a hackintosh.
 
Rhythmac.com is always a nice source to get an idea of when.

http://www.rhythmac.com/history/imac

Here you can see all the past updates of the iMac and all other Apple hardware. It says October based on the average of previous updates. The iPod statistics part is especially interesting:

http://www.rhythmac.com/history/ipod

As you can see, the iPod Classic has only been updated in september for the past four years (counting this year), and we are (almost) certain of an update this september (090909).

Like clockwork.

Ian
 
bry223 said:
No problem, I'm wanting an iMac right now, I'm going to wait until the 2010 refresh since Ive been using a hackintosh.
Click to expand...
Same here. I'm hoping they release them sooner than later. I'm sitting on the money. I just don't want to buy one at a point when they are a few months from releasing updated machines. It's happened to me before with Mac. I was much less informed then. I purchased a 17" powerbook several years ago. 2 months later they released the Macbook Pro and I got stuck with a $2000 laptop that dropped in value by almost half within less than 60 days. Not doing it again.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1 like Mac OS X; sv-se) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7C116a Safari/528.16)

any new rumors about Imac in this fall?
 
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