Will there ever be a new large iMac (Pro)?

[jasoncarle]

I'm finding myself torn on what storage to get. Currently, the upgrade to 8TB costs $2,600 on the new iMac and I use my iMac as a media server as well. I know 8TB SSD from Apple to store media is beyond excessive, but I don't love my current solution where I use the 12 South backpack and keep an external SSD permanently mounted to my computer.

Wow, that's so needlessly expensive... Look what you could do with that money instead.

edit: Just did the math, that one is the best deal too at $41.41 a Terabyte. Also, it's just an example.

OWC 56.0TB ThunderBay 4 Four-Drive Thunderbolt... at MacSales.com

TB3SRE56.0S 56.0TB OWC ThunderBay 4 Four-Drive Thunderbolt (40Gb/s) External Storage Solution with Enterprise Drives and SoftRAID. The "just right" RAID for all storage needs. Powered by SoftRAID advanced RAID management software. Includes Thunderbolt cable.

eshop.macsales.com

 

[Traverse]

Wow, that's so needlessly expensive... Look what you could do with that money instead.

edit: Just did the math, that one is the best deal too at $41.41 a Terabyte. Also, it's just an example.

OWC 56.0TB ThunderBay 4 Four-Drive Thunderbolt... at MacSales.com

TB3SRE56.0S 56.0TB OWC ThunderBay 4 Four-Drive Thunderbolt (40Gb/s) External Storage Solution with Enterprise Drives and SoftRAID. The "just right" RAID for all storage needs. Powered by SoftRAID advanced RAID management software. Includes Thunderbolt cable.

eshop.macsales.com

True - but I don't want to keep another box on my small desk with a fan.

Currently my iMac has 1TB and I have a 4TB SSD in an OWC enclosure that sits on a 12 South backpack. It works well enough. I was just toying with the idea of an 8TB iMac and then getting the OWC dual enclosure with 2 4TB SSDs and having a completely silent always-connected Time Machine backup and all inclusive storage.

It's frivolous, but I've been putting a bit of money back every month so I figure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[CWallace]

I guess, but for media storage having it on-machine seems overly expensive. I mean if you were editing film as your job, I could understand it since the work revenue would more than pay for the cost of the storage. Plus you're going to want to have off-machine backups of it anyway.

I have my media on a Drobo 5D which is then cross-backed up to a WD Essentials 8GB and a 8GB RAID1 I cobbled together from some old drives.

I just hope that a solid configuration for this new model is $2500-3000 since Barclays has formally ended their Apple Rewards card (it will now become just a general points card) so instead of 18-24 months, I will only get the 12 months SaC using my Apple Card.

 

[Moonjumper]

I plan of having most of my storage in an external Thunderbolt SSD box (I was going to go with the OWC Express 4M2, but some reviews say each of the 4 SSD bays only gets 1 lane of PCIe, far short of NVMe potential). External storage is storage I can transfer to a new machine, therefore making upgrading far cheaper (and so more likely), and much better for temporarily hooking up to another Mac if the iMac needs to go away for repair (a previous iMac spent a month at the Apple Store across 2 visits as they couldn't get parts and didn't fix the problem first time)

Apparently the OWC Express 4M2 is very quiet, but any fan noise in an external device is because there is heat in there, therefore not generated inside the Mac itself, meaning internal fans are less likely to be used.

 

[smoledman]

Very disappointed in VM performance with core i9, 10 core machine. Maybe Parallels is the culprit, or maybe W10 virtual machines can't run well on macOS no matter what anyone tries. I know my next computer is going to be an Intel NUC with eGPU.

 

[Traverse]

I guess, but for media storage having it on-machine seems overly expensive. I mean if you were editing film as your job, I could understand it since the work revenue would more than pay for the cost of the storage. Plus you're going to want to have off-machine backups of it anyway.

I have my media on a Drobo 5D which is then cross-backed up to a WD Essentials 8GB and a 8GB RAID1 I cobbled together from some old drives.

I just hope that a solid configuration for this new model is $2500-3000 since Barclays has formally ended their Apple Rewards card (it will now become just a general points card) so instead of 18-24 months, I will only get the 12 months SaC using my Apple Card.

I'm really torn on the price structure. One on hand, I'm not really expecting the 24" to be much more expense (if at all) than the current iMacs. Sure, it'll cost more to manufacture, but unless Apple keeps the 21.5" Intel iMac around for a bit, I think they like the lower-tier price point. Normally I'd absolutely expect them to keep the old version around similarly to what they did for the MacBook Pro non-retina, but I'm not sure they want to keep selling intel chips.

Now if the 27" really does increase to 30" to 32" all bets are off. Plus, I feel like the 27"-class iMac's pricing has been extremely varied over the years with models ranging from somewhere like $1899 to $2,499 when they went Retina. Again, I think Apple wants a $1,800-$2,000 large iMac story, so I'm not sure a starting price of $2,499+ makes sense since they won't want keep intel models around. However, if they were going to keep a legacy computer around for a bit it would be the recently updated iMac.

Who knows. I know I'm very interested in Apple's new press release or keynote because I think there are way more unknown's than usual for their product strategy.

 

[jasoncarle]

True - but I don't want to keep another box on my small desk with a fan.

Currently my iMac has 1TB and I have a 4TB SSD in an OWC enclosure that sits on a 12 South backpack. It works well enough. I was just toying with the idea of an 8TB iMac and then getting the OWC dual enclosure with 2 4TB SSDs and having a completely silent always-connected Time Machine backup and all inclusive storage.

It's frivolous, but I've been putting a bit of money back every month so I figure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I also like a clean desk, but I like not paying apple prices for storage more. Have you considered network based storage instead of having it on the Mac?

 

[Traverse]

I also like a clean desk, but I like not paying apple prices for storage more. Have you considered network based storage instead of having it on the Mac?

I have, but sadly there is no where I could keep something like a Synology or Drobo where it wouldn't be in someone's bedroom disturbing them at the moment. So I was optimizing for size and sound.

Still, I could get an OWC Mercury Dual mini (bus-powered 2.5" drive enclosures) and a few more 2TB or 4TB drives and hang them off the back I suppose. I would like an always running Time Machine - right now I have to get a large drive out of a cabinet once a week to do Time Machine.

 

[jasoncarle]

right now I have to get a large drive out of a cabinet once a week to do Time Machine.

I could not do that. It would drive me nuts.

I don't know your situation, and am only spitballing ideas here. I have one of those OWC devices on my desk and its awfully quiet 99% of the time.

 

[Alwis]

True - but I don't want to keep another box on my small desk with a fan.

That is exactly the reason why I got thenew iMac with 4TB SSD, I disliked my prior external drive very much. Not only because it was cluttering the desk but also the finder always needed some seconds, displaying the beach ball, when the external drive was sleeping and e.g. a file dialogue was shown, even when not accessing the drive.

I figured, that I would be annoyed by the price only once but by the external drive every day for the next years to come. Beside that, bigger SSDs have a greater endurance too.

But honestly I do not know if I would have been willing to pay for the 8TB drive if I needed this much space.

 

[Freida]

I wouldn't take any news from 1st April as valid.

Yup, that's me! The larger iMac has always been a bit too big for me.

Also...

New iMac

Release: Seemingly imminent due to discontinued configs and new model identifiers found in beta code. Possibly at an event this month. Design: Reduced bezels, similar to Pro Display XDR. Flat edges and back. Maybe some extra color choices a la iPad Air. 23-24” for the smaller model, 27-32” for...

forums.macrumors.com

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1377751158039711748

I think a 4K display is perfectly fine for most people. It's certainly an upgrade from the 2K displays on most MacBooks.

If they made an 18" or 20" iMac again, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

Do you think it'll still remain 16:9? That's one thing that I hope will stay.

 

[proximity]

My take on the 8TB SSD option vs an external RAID

I've been running a Promise Pegasus R6 since 2012. 8-9 years have gone by fast, and it's still going strong. But stability is poor against Apple Silicon, and Promise doesn't officially support Pegasus R6 anymore. So I want to get new one which is supported and stable. But before doing so, I looked into the alternatives.

The OWC Thunderbay is the best size vs performance vs price. But it uses SoftRAID XT which is buggy and not supportet by Apple Silicon yet. Support for SoftRAID is poor and finding issues for current users is easy. So there is a red flag right there. There are some "in between's" suchs as Lacies Big disks. But there is a price vs performance issue there. The most stable solution seems to still be Promise. So I had another look.

The more disks the faster the performance on the Promise systems. 4 is few, 8 is many. 6 is just right. The price for a Promise Pegasus32 R6 24TB is the same as 8TB of SSD storage inside the iMac. (about $2000-$2400 USD)

It hits me that when I would buy a 24 TB enclosure, I don't need all 24TB to be fast. My Lightroom library would fit into 8 TB. So I'm better of spending $2000 for 8TB SSD inside an iMac and a cheap external disk for the rest, rather than a new Pegasus32.

 

[AutomaticApple]

I wouldn't take any news from 1st April as valid.

You think they would've revealed that it's a joke shortly after... ?

 

[Freida]

Who knows, I usually stay away from internet on 1st April.

You think they would've revealed that it's a joke shortly after... ?

 

[AutomaticApple]

Who knows, I usually stay away from internet on 1st April.

Maybe it's best to just stay away from the internet in general.

 

[Freida]

Hehehehe, that is true most of the days also

Maybe it's best to just stay away from the internet in general.

 

[BlueTide]

I'm finding myself torn on what storage to get. Currently, the upgrade to 8TB costs $2,600 on the new iMac and I use my iMac as a media server as well. I know 8TB SSD from Apple to store media is beyond excessive, but I don't love my current solution where I use the 12 South backpack and keep an external SSD permanently mounted to my computer.

Each to their own, I was battling at that question some years back too, but in the end chose to just suck it up and get a NAS. Much like you stated, I wanted it to be quiet and away from sight too, but in the end:

• I need back-ups anyway, not just for myself but for the household. Having on-device storage alone is a no-go when a kiddo can pour glass of milk onto your machine for no apparent reason. Or whatever.
• Cloud storage alone was not going to be enough.
• Sharing stuff to multiple machines and/or taking new machines into use is just easier if it is centralised.
• 10Gb Ethernet is not cheap, but compared to onboard flash... And for actual use, it is fast enough.
• WiFi access to files is nice too. And surprisingly fast even for Lightroom. Not that I recommend, but it is doable.
• The storage is going to run out anyway, no matter if it is 8TB, 2TB or what. So having an expandable solution sounded like a smart idea.

 

[UltimateSyn]

Looking like another Tuesday with no event invitations.... I have a feeling they'll hold the event on April 27th, but I still wanted it to be the 13th

 

[Freida]

If anything, the invitation etc. would be tomorrow, not today. Because whenever there was a bank holiday Apple moved it to wednesdays and seeing we just had easter monday then if there is invite it will be tomorrow.

Looking like another Tuesday with no event invitations.... I have a feeling they'll hold the event on April 27th, but I still wanted it to be the 13th

 

[AutomaticApple]

Looking like another Tuesday with no event invitations.... I have a feeling they'll hold the event on April 27th, but I still wanted it to be the 13th

We still have an hour for the possibility of invitations. Hell, maybe even a few hours after that.

If anything, the invitation etc. would be tomorrow, not today. Because whenever there was a bank holiday Apple moved it to wednesdays and seeing we just had easter monday then if there is invite it will be tomorrow.

When has this happened before?

 

[Freida]

It happened few times in the past.
Do you know why Apple does tuesdays? Its because they meet up on monday to recap everything after a weekend etc. and green light the announcement/release for the next day and then next day (tuesday) the press department (or the relevant department) just publishes it (it usually happens super early so almost like first thing in the morning).

So, if there is bank holiday, this whole procedure is shifted by one day. So wednesday becomes tuesday

When has this happened before?

 

[Homy]

TSMC is starting the mass production of A15 at the end of May, Apple announces iMacs with A15X/Z/M1X at WWDC in June available in July/August? On the other hand since there already are traces of new iMacs in Big Sur they may "only" have M1 and be announced before or delivered right after WWDC June.

 

[Freida]

Shhh.....Don't say it out loud - AutomaticApple doesn't like WWDC release

TSMC is starting the mass production of A15 at the end of May, Apple announces iMacs with A15X/Z/M1X at WWDC in June available in July/August?

 

[Freida]

P.s.: I don't think A15 has anything to do with this though. M1X is based on A14 and it would be way too early to get A15 variant, unfortunately

 

[Moonjumper]

TSMC is starting the mass production of A15 at the end of May, Apple announces iMacs with A15X/Z/M1X at WWDC in June available in July/August? On the other hand since there already are traces of new iMacs in Big Sur they may "only" have M1 and be announced before or delivered right after WWDC June.

That sounds about right, but in that scenario, iMac availability could be the week after WWDC.

P.s.: I don't think A15 has anything to do with this though. M1X is based on A14 and it would be way too early to get A15 variant, unfortunately

Annual timetables could be adjusted to have Apple Silicon lead the introduction of a new generation, especially as Macs will benefit most from the additional performance, so it is possible the iMac could be based on the same generation as A15.