“Amid the excitement of Apple’s Tuesday event, which featured the iPad mini and the new Retina-equipped MacBook Pro 13-inch, iMac users got something they’ve been anticipating for nearly 1.5 years – the announcement of a new iMac,” Brian Westover reports for PC Magazine.
“The iMac has gone through several changes in its eight iterations. The bondi-blue plastic iMac gave way to the pedestal design, which in turn gave way to the all-in-one design, first in white plastic, and then in brushed aluminum,” Westover reports. “In that sense, the newest iMacs look a whole lot like the previous generation—glass covered displays, with brushed aluminum chassis and stand. There is, however, one major difference. The new iMac is a lot slimmer.”
Westover reports, “When viewed directly from the front, in fact, you could even mistake the new model for the old. View it at an angle, however, and the difference is stark—the new model is nearly an inch thinner, with 40 percent less volume and 8 fewer pounds… The new iMacs also benefit from Apple’s Fusion Drive, which adds a 128GB of flash storage to the hard drive, and dynamically manages the memory, shifting less used programs to the hard drive, reserving the speedier flash memory for the most often used apps for faster day-to-day performance. It’s also seamless, showing up as one logical drive without the need for user management.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
The Verge hands on Apple’s new iMac: Extremely thin, stunning – October 23, 2012
Apple unveils jaw-dropping all-new iMac – October 23, 2012
Nice but disappointed nothing revolutionary bridging iDevices with the Mac. Faster is about it. Looks the same — tired silver and black. Low priority result. I’ll pass — AGAIN!! Yawn!
@iMaki
MacFreek is a prime candidate for the new iMac. Someone who is ready for a new machine. Or, a new user. It may not be inticing enough to trading in a 2011 (2010?) iMac for the new one. But, OH MAMA, anyone who is in the market for a computer is going to love the new iMac. It is the sexiest beast in the category. Home Run…
I concur, I want to get one of the new imacs now more than ever! Hopefully Santa will get me one? lol…
iMaki, would you be willing to give us your desires and iMac color scheme (maybe Colorware?) of what will wake you up? Seriously.
iMaki, you remind me SO MUCH of comedian Bobby Lee (MadTV) every time he approached a beautiful woman and was shot out of the sky with her rejection. Invariably, he assuaged his deflated ego with a comical “PASS!” even though it was SHE who shot HIM down. He was never in her league to begin with.
Something tells me you cannot AFFORD the new iMac (beautiful woman), so you “PASS!” on it . . . feeling so superior and manly in the process. Right? Come on, admit it: If you COULD take a new iMac home, you WOULD. No need to lie.
Over the last few year, Apple has hit upon a gorgeous, iconic look for it’s products, so why would they want to stray from it’s identity, which is highly copied by other manufactures? This would be like people complaining about Rolex or the Porsche 911 maintaining a general look and style to their products.
+ 1,000
Old? I’m replacing my 2002 PPC iMac with the 27-inch model. My concern is where to donate my ancient machine.
No offense intended, Macfreek, but it is basically scrap. I work with equipment recyclers pretty extensively. There’s basically no value in any PPC machine apart from possibly a niche for the last generation (circa 2005). While it may power on, its days of useful work are behind it. Once you have your new iMac, have manually transferred over everything you can and then backed up the new machine, visit http://www.apple.com/recycling . Apple will take old machines off your hands for free and recycle them properly. If you drop it off at a school or other place with the intention of them putting it to use, you are really just saying “here, you throw this away for me”. I’ve seen this happen multiple times where a good-natured person dropped off very outdated computers at a school and the school just threw them into a closet to wait for the next electronic scrap drive.
All this said, if you are focused on making sure someone actually uses it and doesn’t just scrap it, you should check out ebay. 2002 iMac G4s go for about $30. They may just be getting scrapped, but that price is a little more than the parts would fetch, so they are likely being used. If you are talking about a G3 iMac, though, please just recycle it through Apple. Since it has a CRT it actually costs recyclers to money to get rid of them. The value of scrap being balanced by the cost of disposing the CRT.
Donate? Maybe just think of responsible recycling. 🙂
Despite what anyone else says, there are still many good ways to use an iMac G4. You can donate it to a library/school district that can’t afford new computers/iPads, you could pass it off to a young relative for a first computer/school computer, you could get $30-50 on Craigslist for it, you could donate it to a thrift store…
Around here, everyone’s going to turn their nose up at you for using an old Mac.
Are you familiar with Low End Mac? They have a very active user’s group – maybe someone there would have better suggestions than mine. 🙂
What do you do with a PowerBook G5?
Use it as warming trivet for unicorn roast.
@MacFreek
You can donate your old mac to the National Cristina Foundation.
http://www.cristina.org
They will be grateful and find a worthy recipient local to you.
Nigel,
Thanks for that link. I was unfamiliar with this organization. Checking out the needs of the non-profits within 50 miles of me was easy. Cool!
That said, my post above may still be true. In my area, none of the non-profits that were looking for Macs were wanting to take any that old. Your mileage may vary, though.
What’s the deal with the online Apple Store?
At the moment, it is not possible to order a “new” iMac.
You won’t be able to get a 27″ iMac until December?
Sure you can get referbs, but no new machines.
The Refurbished iPad with Wi-Fi 64GB (3rd generation) is $549, which is a pretty good deal.
There article is a little off but bad journalism is to be expected.
“While these are the same resolutions offered on the previous iterations, the new iMacs have upgraded from a TFT LCD display to an IPS (In-Plane Switching) panel, which boasts clear viewing from 178 degrees, and glowing with up to 300 nits brightness.”
Are you asserting that the Mid-2011 iMac does not use an IPS panel and instead uses a TN-Film panel? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T… … You are not talking about the same thing in your statement. All IPS panels and TN-Film panels are TFT LCD displays. The mid-2011 iMac uses an IPS panel. What is new is the way it is assembled. The lamination process and the reduced reflection of the glass is what’s new.
Bad journalism indeed.
I noticed this IPS nonsense, too.
Also, if the author would really want to compare new and previous generations of iMac, he would add “Weight” row, since it is one of the biggest changes — new iMac became like 4 kg (8 lbs) lighter than before.
I didn’t think I was going to want to upgrade my iMac to the newer model, until now. I think I hear an iMac calling, “buy me, buy me…”
curious, something revolutionary. Making it thinner and faster r nice, but it looks the same. Was hoping for kind of a giant iPad-style computer that maybe docks the pad and can be lifted and used like a pad. 27″ would be too big, but it’s time to be untethered from desktops so one isn’t confined to a single room. Not talking laptop here! Talking iPad-style iMac with some touch functionality with all the hardware benefits of a full desktop. I rarely use my silver 27″ iMac anymore and was hoping for a radical change to inspire me. Color? Well, something different than the last 3-4 silver and black ones. Don’t get me wrong, the new iMac rocks,but it’s not much more than the 2.7 GHz i7 Quad core I got three years ago. I’ve never the same computer this long in my life. 3 Years! Blame the iPad I guess.
Thanks iMaki,
Interesting. We all have our tech ideas but unfortunately most don’t have the resources to make them to try out. Guess we’ll see what the future holds. If your iMac is really holding you back I’ve got a spot for it. I’ll even pay shipping.
@iMaki
These ideas you mentioned you’d like in your iMac, sounds like…er…the iPad?!! ;D
It’s slimmer because they took out the Superdrive.
That was too soon. Apple was right to abandon the floppy, optical drives had made it obsolete. But the DVD is still important to most Mac owners, unless they’ve replaced their DVDs with digital versions. Doubt it.
Not interested in buying a peripheral just so I can play movies on a slimmer iMac.
“Not interested in buying a peripheral just so I can play movies on a slimmer iMac”
Wait, what? So you’re NOT interested in optical disc capability?
(If you were, it’s just ~$70 for Apple’s slim, self-powered optical drive peripheral.)
$70 on top of the already premium price? That’s stupid and the sheep are stupid for falling into this trap. I think we might have another Cube here.
I don’t care about this iMac. I’ll continue using my 2009 machine, which already has a Superdrive.
But it will be interesting to see how well the new iMac sells, once people realize their DVD collection has been invalidated by Apple. Most likely, they’ll sell a lot of iMacs and a lot of the inelegant peripherals.
Haven’t used the optical in… well cant remember so good riddance especially as it caused the death of my last iMac or at least the ability to reserect it when it initially died.
Will get this new one by New year and keep my present one as back up with older OS for any compatibility problems over time.
I do agree though when are Apple going to incorporate more seamless iPad features into the desktop really shows now that I spend time with my iPad. It really does look like they want to keep them separate rather than bring them closer together which from the beginning I assumed was their plan to create more Mac sales. Now even MS are trying to beat them to true seamlessness between mobile and desktop and their job is far more difficult to achieve AND they started so late by comparison.
Big yawn on the new iMacs. More money for less machine. Who cares it’s thinner, the thinest adds too many draw backs and less function. Will be sticking with my 2011 imac for the foreseeable future. No user upgradable memory(because they wanted to make it thin and look cool), poor placement of SD because they wanted to make it thin and look cool) and USB slots, 5400rpm drive unless you PAY for the high end model, no optical drive because they wanted to make it thin and look cool). So you get FAR less for more money and you pay for the “thinnest” Who cares it’s sits on my desk and I don’t look at it from the side. Have a memory module go bad then throw it out and buy another. Poor design, poor value and bad function. But, it looks cool. Who cares no upgrade here I need function over design, Steve Jobs was a master at giving you both.
My iMac will not use the latest operating system.
Time to give it to some loser and buy a new one.
FYI, while the 21″ appears at this time to not be user upgradable, the 27″ is: 4 user accessible slots.
For another $500 and if the 27″ is too big for your application? Then?
Bullsh#t Dave. Have a memory module go bad, and Apple fixes it in-store. You sound like a bit of a whiner and/or troll. In case you hadn’t noticed, Apple sells stunning industrial design as well as all it’s other attributes, and this one hits a home run, again. Faster, lighter, thinner, better screen, sounds like a winner to me and I’ll be replacing my 27″ iMac i7 as soon as they’re available. And they’ll sell up a storm.
Rubbish Dave. Have a memory module go bad, and Apple fixes it in-store. You sound like a bit of a whiner and/or troll. In case you hadn’t noticed, Apple sells stunning industrial design as well as all it’s other attributes, and this one hits a home run, again. Faster, lighter, thinner, better screen, sounds like a winner to me and I’ll be replacing my 27″ iMac i7 as soon as they’re available. And they’ll sell up a storm.
Odd, I don’t see any soldering going on at the apple store they have to send it out to have it repaired or they’ll do the iPod refurb replacement. . If the machine goes past the warranty you dope? Then it’s a huge industrial paper weight. Obviously you’re not paying attention to the complaints, as an Apple stock holder I am.
The full article says:
> “all 27-inch configurations are outfitted with Fusion Drive”
No they don’t. According to Apple Store you have to pay extra for this option.
I’m in the market to replace me 2010 iMac, but I need the DVD for creating DVD disks of my kids school performances to sell for the School Community Council, and the placement of the SD card slot is a deal breaker, I may just pick up a deal on the previous model from the reverb store.
Come on people this seems to be a repeating defense. If you want upgradable memory then buy the 27″ for an additional $500. How stupid is that? Many people don’t want a screen that big and for some it won’t fit in their existing space. If you have a memory stick go bad which is all too common you’ll have to throw your $1200 imac away and buy another.
Will upgrade five office machines due to fact faster rendering on photos and we work with a lot of photos and time is money ……
Will have five nice iMacs for sale with 16 gig ram in each ….. Difference between what we get for our slightly, look like new, with all packing and what we pay for new makes it more than worth it …..
I know I’ll be flamed, but I think the iMac concept has evolved into a really bad idea. Why integrate the computer into the display? Why can’t we have a small, upgradable box sitting next to the display, connected by a short cable? The heat problems, lack of user upgradability, and faster obsolence of the whole make the iMac a bad idea that won’t die. The iMac is the anti-green computer – need more memory, trash whole computer. Need faster processor, trash whole computer. Need faster GPU, trash whole computer.
> Why can’t we have a small, upgradable box sitting next to the display, connected by a short cable?
Already exists: Mac mini
Oh yea the mini is really upgradable. Why do dopes make lame excuses for apple. When my G4 Sawtooth was getting a little long in the tooth I upgraded the processor, hard drive and memory, got a few more years out of it. Not happening with the mmi. Apple is taking lessons from MS.