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Will there ever be a new large iMac (Pro)?
- Thread starter krazzix
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A worthwhile wait if we were guaranteed stable software, but who knows woth Apple atm. Don’t even get me started on Catalina. I only updated a month ago, and it’s still a POS on my 2018 mini. I’m sure Windows is more stable...
I can’t speak for other devices, but on my 2019 iMac, purchased about 3 months ago, Catalina is rock solid. Not a single issue despite being pushed through a reasonably heavy workload 10 hours/day.
I think some of my issues aren’t helped by the 2018 Mac mini. It’s affected by widely reported USB-C/HDMI port issues, which impacts monitors. That on top of the freezing/stability issues does my head in. But... I’m too lazy to restore to the previous version of Mac OS which name escapes me... Mojave?
Completely fine with this. I haven’t used many of the additional features added over the past 3-4 years. I just want rock solid stability. I’d like that on iPad OS too....
Back to the iMac - maybe they could add FaceID to Mac OS and introduce it on the iMac
Legacy stuff is NOT supported. It’s being deprecated. No active development effort are made for it. It’s just there for compatibility purpose. It doesn’t pose imminent problem either.
As I said, the effort needed to bring iPadOS to the level of « power » of macOS is colossal versus stripping down macOS and dropping it on ARM. I’m not with you on that point.
Not sure if this was already discussed, but assuming redesign is in the horizon — what is the chance having target display mode supported?
No problem on Catalina on my old MBP 15 late-2013 since the .3 release of Catalina. .0,.1,.2 were not stable, but since .3 it’s working just as expected.
I always clean install the .1 version from USB.
I always clean install the .1 version from USB.
I'd arguably feel better with macOS 10.15.5 than 10.16.0 on a Late 2020 iMac (Pro)...
Hopefully 10.16 is more like 10.6 - light on features, heavy on stability and performance improvements.
I'd 2nd that. I'd rather they had the iMac £599 to £999. Mac Pro £999 to £1999.
I remember the old quadrant fondly before things got out of whack. Bondi Blue iMac or a Blue and white Tower. Great value, decently priced. Greatly missed.
The current set up...is a lot messier in value equations. Though, ironically, we have 5 desktop models. But still no headless in the £1k-£2k area. I'm discounting the Mini. It's a £499-£999 computer at most. I don't take it that seriously without the dGPU.
Azrael.
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A snow leopard release would not go amiss. True.
A tidy up before going into Mac ARM next year?
Azrael.
Oh boy I may still just go refurb iMac pro to avoid catalina lol
iOS is just Mac OS stripped down. It's lighter. Things are added from a more modern and Swift language (more efficient) manifesto.
The big battle is mouse vs touch 'surface' layer. But that has been addressed with the latest 'pointer' tech' in iOS. And that might come back to Mac at some point as mouse tech' is rebirthed with even more contextual finesse. With iPad apps being deployed to a 'pointer' platform I find it amusing that the iPad gets pointer tech'. There's a blurring of the lines. By the time we wake up we'll be on Mac ARM with the ground having moved beneath us.
There's probably (still?) a lot of stuff that can be just binned when drop 'full' (minus 'binned' legacy) Mac OS onto ARM.
They either trim Mac OS onto Mac ARM or they expand iOS into the 'trimmed' Mac OS for ARM and allow touch where the products mandate it.
So the stripping down makes sense in terms of what you say. They did that to get the underlying OS and APIs onto iOS hardware. I suppose it's the amount of stripping down required. I guess Apple's already on that as we speak. There will be a 'fuller' Mac OS running on ARM somewhere and probably performing better than we think.
I suspect the next transition is far better prepared for technology wise than the last one. There's a 1 billion iOS device ecosphere for the Mac to join. Better to join that party sooner than later. We're never going to have Mac gaming parity with Windows. Better to just join up with iOS and make 'Mac' more attractive from a 'write once' deploy on multiple platforms for developers.
I hope some of that made sense. I'm not a programmer. It's just my view of what seems to be going on. Once you can easily deploy tens (hundreds) of thousands of iPad apps...(millions if you include the iPhone...) on a Mac you pull the trigger and the Mac becomes Mac ARM with shipping hardware. Software will not be the problem. You'll just have legacy hold outs. eg. CAD, Lightwave 3D etc.
But Apple have billions. They can secure key software by helping with dev' costs and incentives. Partnerships. Plus Mac Intel is going no where with the sheer amount of Mac Intel machines (100 million + base...) for a good few years yet. Still a massive market there.
Azrael.
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Spot on. Open GL was effectively 'dead' on the Mac long before they deprecated it. It far underperformed the Windows version. We had GPUs doing almost half of what Windows gpus were doing. *booooo. **Shame....!
When eg. WoW (warcraft) went Metal I noticed the step up in performance. And that's just with the single Mac dev' Blizzard have working on it... Their target platform is prob' windows.
Sooner or later, Dev's will have to go Metal. When Mac goes Mac ARM. They'll have no choice.
I don't see Apple budging on that. This is the company that put Mac OS 9 in a coffin, quickly left PPC behind like a stink (whilst mac evangelists were throwing themselves on its dying altar...) and charges $700 for wheels.
Azrael.
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Yeah. No kidding. Bah.
I think it was a lot better strategy wise.
More consumer product friendly.
Azrael.
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Surely next week (which brings us close to the end of May...) or it's WWDC?
So it's still the nebulous 'imminent?'
Azrael.
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I'd like target display supported. Didn't they take that out of the past 1 or 2 iMac revisions?
Azrael.
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I think we’ll very much see 10.16 at WWDC. Apple has held a tight schedule on all their OSes and WWDC has always been the place to do it. There may be a month or two delay in actual release this year, but macOS at WWDC is clockwork.
True. Very much so. They aint leaving Mac out of the WWDC. There would be riots in lockdowns everywhere.
Apple's OSes beat the drum. The next big beat is WWDC. The cohesive ecosphere from large screen devices to small screen devices really is 'one big' platform and it's making Apple great money.
I doubt any OS will be deprecated this year.
'Clockwork.'
Azrael.
It was totally a better strategy....at that time, with the following that they had then. But times have changed and the range of customers Apple today is much greater than it's ever been in history. Apple has simply adapted to fit the times.
But that said, I don't think their product strategy is perfect. I still think the iPad lineup is a mess and seems to be in a constant state of flux. But just adding a third option to a product category is a step in the right direction in my opinion. The iPhone SE is the perfect example of this. It's a welcome addition to the iPhone lineup and truly covers the affordability tier where iPhone can be enjoyed by even more people than ever before. I hate to say "What Steve would have done...", but he seemed adamant in moving forward with product design and quickly abandoning the past. Because of that, I don't believe there would have been room for an SE with a six year old iPhone 6 design in his quadrant strategy. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but the Mac mini was a result of team planning, not necessarily Steve's vision. Again, under Steve's quadrant strategy, the iMac was the consumer product, and the Mac Pro was the pro product, and that was it. It didn't have space for the Mac mini, but it has become a beloved product by many Mac enthusiasts, both consumer and professional.
I feel like Steve Job's product strategy is just far too simple for today's times, and at the same time, Tim Cook's current lineup is too convoluted in some areas. If Tim can find the right balance between him and Steve, then I think Apple can nail it. He does need to tighten things up and scale things back to simpler times, but not too simple, if that makes sense. But I don't feel like we're quite there yet.
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Not me. If my only options are a 24" iMac with laptop parts at $2000+ or a Mac Pro at $6000+, I'll gladly deal with three models of iMac and one each of the Mac mini and the Mac Pro.
That being said, I do fully agree with those who feel that Apple should retire both the iMac "HD" and the 2-port 13" MacBook Pro. There is no need for an HD model when you could drop the 4K model by $100 and the 2-port 13" MacBook Pro is pointless with the 13" MacBook Air.
Switching to Arm should have no relevance to the functionality of macOS, and very little to the portability of apps from iOS. Apple switching is most likely to be for control, cost, and performance reasons, not for making macOS more like iOS.
iOS forked of from OS X as it was then. The codebase is very similar. If programmed to Apple standards, iOS code to macOS, or vice versa, is just a checkbox.
The big differences between iOS and macOS are the use cases. These variations include controls, file system access, multitasking, and floating/full screen apps. While there has been convergence, the primary uses that all apps need to support are still at the opposing ends.
This means the barrier to most iOS (and iPadOS, but I still think of it as iOS) apps coming to macOS is not chip architecture, it is the need to design for new control formats, and often to re-layout the entire app to support screen use (for example, buttons big enough to touch with a finger are far too big for a macOS interface). I have two iOS games hopefully coming out in the next few months, but I have no intention of porting to macOS because I would have to change too much, and there is not the market there. Most productivity apps started on macOS and went through a lot of work to get onto iOS because there is a big market. You can see how different many of them are, and that is because of the way they are interacted with, not because of the Arm chips.
Many see the move to Arm as a worrying move towards iOS interaction. I do not, it is a chip change, not an OS functionality change. This is why I think we will get an iMac design change now instead of at the Arm switchover, to show the new chip architecture can support all the machines Apple currently has, plus maybe some new ones to show the extra flexibility gained.
I think they could do something similar with 3.
Entry level - 23” iMac, Mac Mini, MacBook 12, iPhone SE/SE Plus, iPad/iPad mini.
“Prosumer”- 30” iMac, Mac, MacBook Air 12/14, iPhone/Plus, iPad Air/Air mini.
Professional- 32” iMac Pro, Mac Pro, MacBook Pro 14/16, iPhone Pro/Max, iPad Pro 11/12
I'd go:
Consumer: 13" MacBook Air | ~24" 4K iMac | iPad | iPhone SE / iPhone
Prosumer: 14"/16" MacBook Pro | 27" 5K iMac | iPad Air / iPad Pro | iPhone Pro
Professional: 16" MacBook Pro | iMac Pro | Mac Pro | iPad Pro | iPhone Pro
The iPad Mini and Mac Mini seem to have their strongest niche in the business / corporate world so I would keep them around, but I would not necessarily be advertising them hard.
The iPad Air seems to be one of those "Tim Cook Parts Specials" where the supply chain was already making the parts, so let's cobble them together into something we can slot between the iPad Pro and the iPad. I'd prefer Apple work to try and combine it and the iPad into a single model, but iPad shipments have benefitted from the $329 MSRP so not sure how much you could or would sacrifice from the Air to knock, say, $150 off it's price to become the new entry-level iPad.
Consumer: 13" MacBook Air | ~24" 4K iMac | iPad | iPhone SE / iPhone
Prosumer: 14"/16" MacBook Pro | 27" 5K iMac | iPad Air / iPad Pro | iPhone Pro
Professional: 16" MacBook Pro | iMac Pro | Mac Pro | iPad Pro | iPhone Pro
The iPad Mini and Mac Mini seem to have their strongest niche in the business / corporate world so I would keep them around, but I would not necessarily be advertising them hard.
The iPad Air seems to be one of those "Tim Cook Parts Specials" where the supply chain was already making the parts, so let's cobble them together into something we can slot between the iPad Pro and the iPad. I'd prefer Apple work to try and combine it and the iPad into a single model, but iPad shipments have benefitted from the $329 MSRP so not sure how much you could or would sacrifice from the Air to knock, say, $150 off it's price to become the new entry-level iPad.
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I notice that Apple have announced Xeon versions of the Comet Lake S CPUs. Apple could simply go with regular Comet Lake S Core products for an iMac but they have the basis of a named iMac Pro for marketing reasons mainly to do with going all SSD if they so wished.
These xeons are rebadged Core series cpus. Strictly useless. Does not increase core count or cache, so no performance gain. It’s only more costly to support ECC RAM. Better go with real Xeons W-2200s.
W-1200s are just a way to get lower-core count CPUs into lower-end workstations to give PC workstation OEMs some more options (and Intel some more margin). As pldelisle noted, these are just K-series Core-i9, Core-i7 and Core-i5 binned for TDP and with overclocking disabled.
Apple would not use them in the iMac Pro since the W-2200 series are the true successors to the W-2100 series currently used, but I guess maybe we could have a 16" "MacBook Pro Pro" with the W-1290 and W-1280.
Apple would not use them in the iMac Pro since the W-2200 series are the true successors to the W-2100 series currently used, but I guess maybe we could have a 16" "MacBook Pro Pro" with the W-1290 and W-1280.