Beware the new Macs (various)

[musicman691]

Well Apple did an update to various pieces in their computer line. There's now a 13 inch Retina Mac Book Pro (sealed and not user upgradeable of course). New Mac Mini's with quad core processors but integrated Intel video.

Then there's the iMacs. Slimmer (supposedly like 5mm thick). Optical drive - gone. Firewire port - gone. Does have USB3 ports and Thunderbolt (1 on the 21.5" and 2 on the 27") so you have a place to plug in your adapter cables for FW. They did keep the Ethernet port though. No user upgradeable ram in the 21.5" but there's 4 slots in the 27" for ram. Scary are the hard drive options - you can get standard spinning drive or what Apple calls a fusion drive that's a hybrid of SSD and spinning platter. According to the person giving the spiel at the Apple event online the fusion drive swaps programs back and forth from the SSD to the platter depending on how much a program is used. Not cool for PT. 21.5 " not available until November and the 27" December. i5 chip stock with i7 available - pricing on the Apple store is only for the i5. Can't even order them now or see what prices would be for various options. Here's the link to the iMac page: http://store.apple.com/us/browse/hom...ac/family/imac

My take - if you want an iMac go to the refurb store. Just got a 27" 3.4 Ghz i7 quad core for $1914 shipped to NJ.

[Emcha_audio]

So beside being thinner, there's actually no advances in them (.1 ghz cpu improvement from the basic top of the line mid 2011 imacs) and you're losing some components that some people still use without having to get an adapter. At least the graphic chip isn't bad an nvidia gtx 660 mx with 1 gig of ddr5. But overall it doesn't look at all like an improvement.. Wooopididoo for being so thin and light that your hyperactive cat can rub against it and it slides off the desk. Better screw it on the desk because if you sneeze it will fly off and splatter on the wall!!

[Dism]

Originally Posted by musicman691

Well Apple did an update to various pieces in their computer line. There's now a 13 inch Retina Mac Book Pro (sealed and not user upgradeable of course). New Mac Mini's with quad core processors but integrated Intel video.

Then there's the iMacs. Slimmer (supposedly like 5mm thick). Optical drive - gone. Firewire port - gone. Does have USB3 ports and Thunderbolt (1 on the 21.5" and 2 on the 27") so you have a place to plug in your adapter cables for FW. They did keep the Ethernet port though. No user upgradeable ram in the 21.5" but there's 4 slots in the 27" for ram. Scary are the hard drive options - you can get standard spinning drive or what Apple calls a fusion drive that's a hybrid of SSD and spinning platter. According to the person giving the spiel at the Apple event online the fusion drive swaps programs back and forth from the SSD to the platter depending on how much a program is used. Not cool for PT. 21.5 " not available until November and the 27" December. i5 chip stock with i7 available - pricing on the Apple store is only for the i5. Can't even order them now or see what prices would be for various options. Here's the link to the iMac page: http://store.apple.com/us/browse/hom...ac/family/imac

My take - if you want an iMac go to the refurb store. Just got a 27" 3.4 Ghz i7 quad core for $1914 shipped to NJ.

Fusion drives aren't new, and certainly not a mystical Apple technology.

The point of a Fusion drive is that it has a small SSD block (typically 8-32GB) which acts as a cache for the large platter. Supposedly, as far as performance goes, the computer shouldn't even notice the swapping. I doubt Pro Tools itself would have a problem with it, but I wouldn't recommend recording to the same drive (as per usual with system drives).

With 4x USB3 and a TBolt port, it shouldn't be an issue though.

[devbc]

I'm really curious about the new Fusion drives. I have been waiting on the new Mac Mini to come out, and I'm really tempted by the non-server i7 quad upgraded to 2.6GHZ with 16GB RAM. I'm a bit disappointed that I can't opt for the server version with a 750 GB HD at 7200rpm with a 256 GB SSD, but the Fusion drive (if it's not [bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep] for PT) looks pretty interesting. Anyone know if you can designate Pro Tools to run exclusively off of the Fusion drive? I'm worried about what I've read about it "intuitively" swapping which apps run off of the Fusion drive.

[Dism]

Originally Posted by devbc

I'm really curious about the new Fusion drives. I have been waiting on the new Mac Mini to come out, and I'm really tempted by the non-server i7 quad upgraded to 2.6GHZ with 16GB RAM. I'm a bit disappointed that I can't opt for the server version with a 750 GB HD at 7200rpm with a 256 GB SSD, but the Fusion drive (if it's not [bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep] for PT) looks pretty interesting. Anyone know if you can designate Pro Tools to run exclusively off of the Fusion drive? I'm worried about what I've read about it "intuitively" swapping which apps run off of the Fusion drive.

All it means is that it will prioritize the apps you are using. If you are using Pro Tools, it will be on the SSD block, and therefore be faster loading and performing.

Realistically, it shouldn't have any affect at all on regular use, since all drives have a cache to begin with. A Fusion drive is basically a platter drive with a really big cache.

[nst7]

Also, the performance should be increased. These are the newer Ivy Bridge processors, not the Sandy Bridge from the last ones. So although the Gigaherz numbers may look similar, they're not (same goes for the Mac Mini).


As for the prices, they look to be pretty similar to the last round (and the last couple of years).

So the top-line 3.4ghz 27" will most likely be $2199, just like the last ones (but again, 3.4ghz Ivy bridge, not Sandy bridge).


And from what it looks like, there doesn't seem to be a second internal hard drive option (we'll know when OWC or Ifixit.com cracks one open).

But between Thunderbolt and USB 3.0, there are plenty of options for externals without the bandwidth limitations of before.


Another thing, these now officially go up to 32gigs ram, so that means that most likely, they actually will take 64. That seems to be the pattern with OWC's offerings-whatever Apples says officially, you can expect to double that.

[Dism]

Originally Posted by nst7

Also, the performance should be increased. These are the newer Ivy Bridge processors, not the Sandy Bridge from the last ones. So although the Gigaherz numbers may look similar, they're not (same goes for the Mac Mini).


As for the prices, they look to be pretty similar to the last round (and the last couple of years).

So the top-line 3.4ghz 27" will most likely be $2199, just like the last ones (but again, 3.4ghz Ivy bridge, not Sandy bridge).


And from what it looks like, there doesn't seem to be a second internal hard drive option (we'll know when OWC or Ifixit.com cracks one open).

But between Thunderbolt and USB 3.0, there are plenty of options for externals without the bandwidth limitations of before.


Another thing, these now officially go up to 32gigs ram, so that means that most likely, they actually will take 64. That seems to be the pattern with OWC's offerings-whatever Apples says officially, you can expect to double that.

There really isn't much of a benchmark difference between Ivy and Sandy. At the end of it all, it's maybe 3-5% difference in CPU performance. The biggest factor is the on-die GPU, which should only be relevant if you are not using dedicated graphics. It's why I stuck with Sandy on my build. Ivy is really more for laptops than anything else, since it uses significantly less power to produce essentially the same results as Sandy Bridge.

One should also note that they don't seem to be offering a 6-core option in the iMac this time around.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by nst7

Also, the performance should be increased. These are the newer Ivy Bridge processors, not the Sandy Bridge from the last ones. So although the Gigaherz numbers may look similar, they're not (same goes for the Mac Mini).


As for the prices, they look to be pretty similar to the last round (and the last couple of years).

So the top-line 3.4ghz 27" will most likely be $2199, just like the last ones (but again, 3.4ghz Ivy bridge, not Sandy bridge).


And from what it looks like, there doesn't seem to be a second internal hard drive option (we'll know when OWC or Ifixit.com cracks one open).

But between Thunderbolt and USB 3.0, there are plenty of options for externals without the bandwidth limitations of before.


Another thing, these now officially go up to 32gigs ram, so that means that most likely, they actually will take 64. That seems to be the pattern with OWC's offerings-whatever Apples says officially, you can expect to double that.

Originally Posted by Dism

There really isn't much of a benchmark difference between Ivy and Sandy. At the end of it all, it's maybe 3-5% difference in CPU performance. The biggest factor is the on-die GPU, which should only be relevant if you are not using dedicated graphics. It's why I stuck with Sandy on my build. Ivy is really more for laptops than anything else, since it uses significantly less power to produce essentially the same results as Sandy Bridge.

One should also note that they don't seem to be offering a 6-core option in the iMac this time around.

nst7:
These new machines have everything glued together (what Apple calls the chin to the case, etc.) so prying these cases apart will take some doing. Heard this in the event from the presenter (about things being glued together at least that's the way I understood him).

dism:
It's difficult to know exactly what's available in upgrades from the basic machines as the store isn't yet set-up to do that so who knows about options and prices. Is there a 6 core i7 anyway?

What I don't understand is why the thinness? Apple appears to have done nothing to the stand so the front-to-back measurement is less than an inch smaller, if that. Which wouldn't mean squat on a desktop.

[Dism]

Originally Posted by musicman691

dism:
It's difficult to know exactly what's available in upgrades from the basic machines as the store isn't yet set-up to do that so who knows about options and prices. Is there a 6 core i7 anyway?

There are a few 6-core i7s. Not for the 1155 chipset, though, which is what I suspect these are. However, the last generation of iMacs did have a 6-core special order option. These new ones do not appear to. They also don't seem to be able to be configured with a second drive option. Why does it feel like we're going back in time to when all storage was external? Should I be breaking out the 5 1/4" floppies again, and the SCSI drive?

[John_Toolbox]

Well I'm sticking with my 09 imac for a few more years. I originally thought I'd be upgrading after 3 years, but there is absolutely nothing I have to have from this or the mac pro line.