“The high end iMac now supplies a screen larger and with significantly more pixels than [Apple’s] standalone 24″ LED Cinema Display model (which for $899 sports a 1920×1200 resolution), providing a 2560×1440 native resolution nearly as large as the company’s 30″ Cinema Display HD (which delivers 2560×1600 but costs $1799),” McLean reports. “With all those pixels on the new 27″ iMac, Apple couldn’t resist giving users the option to use the screen for more than just the iMac (note that the 21.5″ iMacs do not support video input).”
McLean reports, “Being able to support DisplayPort input also opens the possibility for users to connect a Blu-Ray player, TV tuner, or other device to their iMac for non-computing display purposes. The wide screen display is now a cinematic 16:9 aspect ratio, the same as HDTVs.”
More info in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dev” for the heads up.]
@ ecrabb
RAID storage, for one. also gotta have PCI cards for everything from multi-track audio editing to DVR capability. And no, external drive interfaces are not fast enough. great for photographers, bad for HD A/V content creators.
Your needs may vary, but there’s a reason that serious computer users choose the “overpriced” Mac Pro (or PowerMac, the prior workhorse).
that’s one difference between creators and fanboy consumers: creators actually need and will pay for horsepower, but they don’t flaunt the model year or clock speed or GPU part number for bragging purposes alone. Fanboys buy a large tin can and rear wing, then rev their engine at every stoplight, trying to tell everyone how impressive they think they are.
Could it be possible that we are moving towards the day when a person could have a MacBook Pro for home and travel and an iMac at work and use not only the iMac’s large, beautiful screen but also its 2 (or 4) processors in addition to the MacBook Pro’s? Seems a shame to use that screen from your MacBook Pro but have the processors sitting there doing nothing. Just a thought.
I’ll wait until the iMac 27″ can come with SSD.
@bkire: “I’ll wait until the iMac 27″ can come with SSD.”
Why do that, when you can simply replace the original drive with a 10krpm drive in your iMac? I’ve done that with my past three iMacs. Works like a charm and is very much faster than the stock 7.2krpm drives. Besides, the 10krpm drives require less current and run 5˚C cooler than the Apple-supplied drives.
Does this mean Apple may release a 30″ inch LED for desktops soon because the 27″inch iMac at 2560×1440 is pretty close to Apple 30 inch Cinema Display at 2560×1600 or do you guys think Apple may discontinued the 30 inch and replace it with either a 27 inch LED or go bigger 32″ LED for desktops?
Looks to me like Apple just launched their first TV.
Why wait for it to get SSD? Just replace the drive with an SSD. has anyone any experience in running os x on SSD? Does OS X support the trim() command on ssds?
I’ll be replacing my 30″ cinema display with a 27″ imac when the time comes but it’s working fine now so I can’t justify it
iPhone/Touch + cables + iMac + remote = portable HD media server
@Emil
Bad news for you – you will probably be waiting a decade or so for that 30″ display to crap out. I’m still using the original 22″ cinema display from almost 10 years ago.
But I, too, am hoping for a new 27-30 inch display for my next computer upgrade. It might be the iMac, although I was planning on the next Pro revision. The iMac would save me tons of bucks, obviously.
I’m looking forward to seeing some performance data. From what I’ve seen so far in the Pro line, the quad core chips tend to work faster than the octocores for most routine tasks because of the difference in processor speed. But that was before Snow Leopard. I haven’t yet seen anywhere that SL has improved that situation with Grand Central.
> Bad news for you – you will probably be waiting a decade or so for that 30″ display to crap out. I’m still using the original 22″ cinema display from almost 10 years ago.
You’re telling me… I have a barely used spare too! But I’ve been waiting for the follow up to the 30″. And waiting. And waiting. The one thing I don’t need is an iMac as a screen.
@ecrabb:
I know dozens of people who own Mac Pro towers. To be perfectly honest, not one of them has a real need for such a monster. Most of those folks have never installed extra drives, PCI cards, or anything else. I guess they just feel powerful with all that muscle sitting next to their desks. Whatever rings your bell…
@LiM
Don’t think of it as an iMac as a screen. Think of it as a screen that’s an iMac. When you price it that way (compared, say, to the 24 inch cinema display plus a hard drive, plus a new Magic Mouse, plus a USB/FW hub) it actually comes close to making a lot of sense. Especially if you also happen to need to run Windows occasionally (but not necessarily on your main system) and don’t want to mess with rebooting in BootCamp, or with virtual machines in Parallels or VMWare. And the new Home Sharing feature of iTunes 9 makes this even more attractive.
This is AWESOME. But in typical Apple fashion they are going to really limit this feature that should have been on every single iMac since the beginning.
I have a 24inch and WISH I could do this with mine.