Apple iMac Goes Core i5, i7; Mac Mini Updated

Those new iMacs really are pretty good deals imo. I know I'll get negative votes to the extreme for saying a Mac is good value but $1999 for a Core i5 system or $2199 for a Core i7 system with a built in LED 27" display with a 2560x1440 resolution (beyond Full HD) is a relative steal.

As a comparison, a Dell XPS 8000 with similar specs comes out at $1069 (without Bluetooth). Considering the cost of LED display panels and the fact that Apple's $899 for its 24" 1080p LED panel is meant to be a relative steal for the cost of manufacturing, the extra $930 for an LED display with that resolution is really quite reasonable. When you factor in things like Education or Higher Education discounts, the iMacs really start to look very attractive price wise.

Adding the fact that the 27" built in display can be used as an external display for a separate device, I'd have to think long and hard about buying an Octo core workstation or a 27" Core i7 iMac and Core i7 gaming machine for pretty much the same price.

This is great news for Apple users. I think it may be time to look into one of these 27" units.

Mac OS Users: Tom's is currently conducting a poll with regards to a Mac OS forum.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/32340-12-forum

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] unix-forum

It's about time. Now they'll keep these processors for a year and a half, always at the same price point, and claim to be faster than newer windows-based machines.

Not quite. They tend to update their iMac lines every 6-9 months. The average is about 7 and a quarter months. True they'll keep their price point though which is why its always worth buying Apple machines when they first come out. Macs tend to be pretty good value for money just after a line's been refreshed. Some models have been considerably cheaper than PC equivalents for quite a while after release (such as all Mac Pros until the Nehalem based ones).
The benefit though is that since their prices remain pretty constant also because there are only a few models to choose from and also since Macs are so fashionable and desirable, they retain their value very well. I.e. the resale value of one of these iMacs will not have dropped very much at all in six months. In three years time they'll also be worth a fair chunk more than similar priced Dells etc.

The 27" LED display makes these a fair bit better value than any PC and will stay so for a while imo because of the cost of LED displays of this size.

For anyone considering ever buying an iMac, now is certainly the best time ever.

wow where are all the PC guys, this looks like a Mac© LoveFest®

they went core i7 about an year ago. oh well what`s an year behind nowdays and at 2k $ pricetag for a computer with 1 radeon HD 4850 card inside ...

The only thing that I like Mac is it Apple Cinema Display is a true 24 color LCD, not like most of PC LCD where its only 18 bit emulation .

@ohim

i5 came out when? a month or so ago? and the i7 in there is the 860. Don't call mac people ignorant when your post is clearly biased and misrepresenting the facts

as you can clearly see i pointed out only i7 and talking about it as architecture not the model number in particular. Shall i continue about the graphic card too ? I got to admit macs are pretty nice computers too have on desk they look awesome ,but the price tag for the components inside ... to be honest nobody gives a shit about how my computer looks at home , only i will be able to see it so why pay overprice for the gear ? here you go the lack of PC user flame.

Or a $2k price tag for a machine with an LED backlit 1440p 27" IPS panel. Which makes it a relative steal. The 4850 isn't a bad card and is pretty much the best mobile graphics solution currently available and thus pretty much the best that can fit in this form factor.

If you're a gamer, you won't be buying a mac for gaming. If you're not a gamer then a 4850 is pretty respectable graphics.

Well, I will admit I like the 27" Core i7 iMac, but this is real life, and I got bills and a mortgage to pay. The only core i7 machine in my future is that new HP Dv6t Quad laptops, which is selling for $799 (using coupon code: NBSC314243) with the Core i7 720QM cpu, 3GB DDR3 ram, 320GB 7200rpm hard drive, 1GB nvidia GeForce GT 230M, and DVD+-RW drive.

Again, the 27" Core i7 iMac is a nice machine, but $2,199.00 is completely unrealistic for me. I am looking for a quad core computer for my next machine to run (and also write) highly threaded applications, but there is this thing called a recession and it actually does affect some of us.

I also do not understand why Apple couldn't make a Core i7 Mobile Mac Mini. Before you all jump all over me about costs, the 720QM Core i7 Mobile cpu costs the same price as the Core 2 Duo T9400 (2.53 GHz mobile cpu).

I would've been willing to pay $799 for that, or even $899 if they included a GPU with dedicated Vram.

Well, at least Windows 7 is a major improvement. I think the only thing I will miss when I switch back is going to be the chat client Adium. It's funny how there are so many developers for the Windows platform, and yet no one could make a chat client that works as great as Adium. I've Digsby, Pidgin, AIM, etc... on the Windows side.

IMO this is not such a great deal.

$1200 for a 21 inch display and core2duo? Such a computer and monitor can be had for the $500-$600 range.

$2000 for an i5 or i7 system? That's ridiculous. On newegg, you can get a good i5/i7 processor from $200-$300. You can build a computer with an i7 and HD 5850 for $1000, 1080p monitor included. Granted this is pre-built for you, but if we are going to call it a deal the price should at least be in the same ballpark as building it yourself.

The 2560 x 1440 display sounds nice, but do you really expect to get any performance at that resolution with an HD 4850? Even if the HD 4850 could perform at that resolution...the only source material that is capable of beyond 1080p is PC games...and this is a Mac.

But if your not gaming then what is the use of 1440p? Not trying to flame or anything....I just really want to know!

FYI...LED TVs are available at 32" for $800.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6889101201

Although things like heat dissipation will play a role the biggest factor will be that Apple wants the Mac Minis to be the entry level Mac. As such it has to be less powerful than all the other Macs. Apple would rather users buy an iMac than a Mac Mini + a third party display. Having a $799 Core i7 Mac Mini would also completely kill the entry level (and stupidly overpriced) Mac Pro.

They are actually pretty price competitive with competing all-in-ones, I just checked. But the problem is that Apple insists on their release cycles, while other PC makers trickle down new hardware through their lineups as it becomes available. So at launch, an Apple product is price-competitive, but just months in it isnt.

I agree with a lot of the pro Mac comments above, but they are all missing a new component that sounds like a first in computer design. Each iMac has two built-in 17 watt high-efficiency audio amplifiers that is supposed to kick-ass over the old system.

Mac Mini Server has my interest.

With the software the comes bundled with every Mac these are some great deals that will force Microsoft's hand.

Not true, the desktop space for one thing would be great and many to most cameras take pictures larger than that. If you bootcamped it or just Mac written games, there are some you know, you could down scale the game down to 1920 x1200 or less to make it playable.

i tried working out a spec similar to the imac core i7 27" w newegg prices. you can config for only $1700 tax included. my appreciation for the imac 27 is the LCD, what what running inside is way behind what pc can offer. and i believe the corei7 is an i5-860 running at 2.8. what they have is not a triple channel system. its a good multi media for movies... but serious gaming, i doubt it. and with $2000 i can build a better spec plus 2 pieces 27" inches and the ati 5850.

Anyone know which version of Snow Leopard server the new Mini comes with? It's an amazing deal if its the unlimited licence one, a mediocre deal if its the 10 client one.

[Quote]both 21.5 and 27-inch displays use IPS panel technology.[/Quote]
Thank god!

9400M is so 3 years ago. They pop for an i5 and i7 but stick with moldy graphics. They could have at least gotten some 9600GTM, thats not a bad chip overall.

There's no way you can get a computer with a 21" 1080p LED based IPS display for $500-$600. Find me a 21" 1080p LED based IPS panel for that money and I'll take it back. Yes you can build a machine with a 1080p display for far less than the iMac 27" but you will not have a display of even remotely as good quality. LED TVs are a different ball game and fitting 1080p into 32" isn't exactly hard or expensive to do. 2560p is a tad harder.

To give you an idea of the value of the display in the 27" iMac:

LG do a 1920x1080 24" for $329.95. (LED TN panel)
Apple do a 1920x1200 24" for $899.00. (LED IPS panel)
LG do a 1920x1200 24" for ~$1600 (RGB LED IPS panel)
HP do a 1920x1200 24" for $1919.99 (RGB LED IPS panel)

LaCie do a 2560x1600 30" for $3399 (RGB LED IPS panel)
Samsung do a 2560x1600 30" for $3345 (RGB LED IPS panel)

As you can see, the jump up over single link DVI resolutions results in quite a price hike and the jump to IPS panels over Tn panels results in a hike in price too (as do RGB LED over LED). The word is that Apple's 24" display is very well priced for an RGB LED IPS display of its caliber. Since a non LED but still IPS panel still costs at least about $1049 for the two year old Dell model, you can do some pretty rough maths to see that a 27" LED IPS panel would cost somewhere around $1200-$1500 at a guess. I've even heard some people considering getting a 27" entry level iMac at $1699 and using it as a display for a workstation since its only $300 or so more than a Dell 3008WFP 30" display and yet has nearly the same resolution, nearly the same size, a far superior backlight, similar panel quality and yet comes with a whole computer inside which could always come in handy one day.

Snow Leopard server only comes in one form, unlimited license only. $499 when bought separately.



They're using nVidia's chipset with the integrated 9400m in the Core 2 Duo iMacs. That's the latest integrated graphics nVidia do. Considering the first 9 series desktop chips from nVidia were released on February 21st 2008 and the 9400m first shipped (in a Mac before PCs) on October 14th 2008, its hardly fair to say that they're using chips that are "so 3 years' old. The 9400m is perfect for users who don't need any kind of graphics power at all but could still do with stuff like video decoding etc.

Desktop space? How much desktop space do we need? At that resolution font would be unbearably small! I understand the photo editing argument for professional photographers, but for the vast majority of people just printing out standard sized pictures 1440p is way over kill. If you are going to scaled down to 1080p, what is the point of having a 1440p monitor? Check the graphics benchmarks, the HD 4850 is not even playable at 1080p.




I can config for much less than $1700...(these are all very conservative prices, you could find a better deal) the i5 is roughly $200, motherboard $150, 4 GB RAM $150, CPU and Case $100, 1 TB Hard drive $100, OS $100, HD 4850 $100, 28" 1080p 3ms response monitor $300. Total = $1200. With a HD 5850 instead of HD 4850 it is $1350. Much better deal IMO considering usability of 1440p is rare, and my hardware config is better.

So Where's Blue-ray?

I didn't read that the 21" screen is LED. I thought that was offered only on the 27". But that is beside the point. Does the average consumer even care about having an LED screen? Who is going to pay that much just to get an LED over an LCD monitor? The resolution is the same, the screen size is the same, the average consumer won't care. The extra $400 is pretty hefty for a very incremental upgrade.

I disagree. As good as Intel's new Core i7 Mobile cpus are, they can not hold a candle to their desktop or workstation big brothers. Although, to most people, a 720QM would be far more than they need, which I assume would definitely eliminate most people's need for Apple's $2000+ quad core offerings.

Like I said above, I would absolutely love a that 27" iMac with the Core i7 cpu, but it's cost prohibitive. I am juggling a mortgage, car loan, bills, and my tuition for grad school. I haven't seen a pay increase in well over a year, and probably won't see one until late 2011 because of the budget issues and economy, unless I find another job before then (which is unlikely given how terrible economy is).

But, I would like an inexpensive quad core machine, which I can take to class in the evenings. Especially since I am going to be doing Parallel Computing course(s) in the Spring, which is what my planned focus is.

1440p is overkill because?? 1920x1200 was considered overkill just a few years ago. 1280x1024 was considered overkill just a few years before.

2560x1440p is in no way overkill for normal users. You can have so much more stuff up at once. I've got loads of windows open on my display right now. When I work at writing reports or coding, its incredibly useful to have multiple windows open at once and being able to see them all. My productivity is definitely higher and using such a display is far more enjoyable. Think about it this way, would you rather work at a small classroom sized single person desk or would you rather work at a dining table?

As far as your specs go, your choice in monitor is seriously poor in comparison. Comparing a $300 monitor to a 2560x1440p LED display with an IPS panel is like comparing a Suzuki SX4 or a VW Passat Jetta S to a BMW M5 because "they're about the same size and have five seats".

Scratch $400, the price increase from LCD 1080p to LED 1080p is even greater than $400.
What it boils down to:

LCD 28" 1080p 3ms response for $300
or
LED (your specs and prices) 27" 1440p for $1200 to $1500.

Do you really think that is worth it?

I feel what you're saying. I'm sure Core i5 chips will end up across Apple's line up but not until after the MacBook Pros have got them first. The non i7 iMacs and all the Mac Minis, MacBooks and MacBook Pros currently use pretty much the same internals, all based off an nForce chipset. Right now Apple doesn't have much choice in terms of i5/i7 mobile chipsets with semi-decent integrated graphic. NVidia's pulled out of the i5/i7 chipset development game and Intel's only mobile iX chipset available is the PM55 which doesn't have integrated graphics.

Unfortunately you fall into a small niche of users that need something quite specific at a budget. As a programmer who deals with parallel code in academia, I quite understand why you need an i5/i7 machine. Luckily I've had a quad Mac Pro for three years now so I can do a fair bit on that but I'd really like to get a Nehalem based 8 core machine soon but Apple's latest Mac Pro pricing is far too prohibitive and ridiculous.