That's all well and good if it actually ships in September. I can wait a few months. But man...if there are delays, shortages on parts with how the world is now or delays because the demand is higher than expected it could technically push into October-November. If I was just using my computer for browsing the internet I wouldn't care to wait but with all the zoom meetings, design work and audio production I'm working on Apple is really putting me in a bad spot.
Just a few months from a new iMac release but I'm really feeling age on my 2010 i3 27". Literally the WORST time to need an iMac in history.
Also, I just have a really hard time believing they are going to announce an Intel iMac with new phones and tablets releasing. Anything is possible but it seems like a bad move. That's why I thought June/July was a sure shot. It's before the big push for AS, it will have some time to shine and sell on it's own with no competing products, then September for Mobile releases then AS focus in 2021. I just made sense...now, who the heck knows?
This is the last time I hold on to a computer this long. Should start looking while things are still going good rather than when it's critical.
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The good news is I just bought a Samsung T7 2TB SSD External drive to move everything to. When I finally get a new Mac I'll have some good space to keep it clean of nonsense and It'll make for an easy transition. If I can't buy a new iMac now, I mine as well start getting everything else ready.
You make a good point of doing things from a position of strength and perhaps not waiting 'as long' to get a new computer...ie to the point of it being mission critical. (I've learned my lesson there.)
I see a future where I have Mac, PC and (an AS Mac Mini as back up server.)
Bases covered.
You're doing the right thing preparing for the move and making use of your time.
Unchartered waters regarding the iMac release. Given the current situation, we haven't see a great deal out of Apple this year other than spec 'meh' releases, minute bumps from the parts bin...and a rather good 'promise' of what is to come via the WWDC2020.
I think the best release, ironically, was the 'value for money' iPhone. (The cash cow...) with 'flagship' performance for £400. Which proves Apple could do cheaper Macs if they had the 'will' to do it.
That was a decent move. As the economies are broke. People are getting laid off. Money is alot scarcer for a great many more people. And it might get a lot worse.
I hope the new iMac tries to focus on value for money. The traditional time frame for an iMac release is October/fall time. (And recently March of last year...) Given how long the Mini took (two years for a 'meh' update...) there is no guarantee this iMac won't suffer a similar fate. But the iMac is a much more important product. From a design and marketing point of view.
It's the one product that is really overdue a significant overhaul inside and out.
Azrael.
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There is speculation the 5600M is an Apple-only part and I think Apple and AMD might be using HBM2 for the 5600M because it replaces the previous Vega 20 which also used HBM2. The rest of the line uses GDDR6 so I would expect all of the AMD iMac parts to also be GDDR6.
HBM2 is also more power-efficient than GDDR which is why the 5600M can do what it does while still only drawing 50W. With Vega already a power-hungry GPU, adding power-hungry GDDR5 on top of that would have blown the thermal budget. AMD also bet - wrongly - that HBM2 pricing would see sharp decreases. Instead, it saw increases and that is part of the reason why the 5600M BTO option is so bloody expensive beyond Apple's usual markups.
RDNA is apparently power-efficient enough versus Vega that AMD can "afford" to use GDDR6, which is cheaper than HBM2 (and I expect GDDR6 is better than GDDR5 in terms of power-efficiency). So I would expect the RDNA 1+2 GPUs to be using GDDR6.
Good post.
It didn't work out the way AMD wanted on HBM. And that initial gpu release with it only had 4 gigs of GPU memory.
Now bigger stacks are doable and happening but at a price.
Azrael.
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There are great things on the tech' horizon.
PS5. AS Mac.
An Intel iMac should be substantial.
Big Sur.
But we're going to have to wait for them.
Highly frustrating.
But September appears to be the nexus of when the dominoes start to fall...
Even if you want to build a PC. New, best GPUs in years...release? September.
RDNA2 and Ampere will fall from September (though some peg Ampere as a possible August release...that seems ambitious to me...)
That's alot of dominoes.
Azrael.
