{"id":24653,"date":"2019-03-20T15:54:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-20T19:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=24653"},"modified":"2020-04-24T09:46:57","modified_gmt":"2020-04-24T13:46:57","slug":"imac-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/03\/20\/imac-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"iMac 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apple<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Apple today updated its iMac line with up to 8-core Intel 9th-generation processors for the first time and powerful Vega graphics options, delivering dramatic increases in both compute and graphics performance.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

The 21.5-inch iMac now features 8th-generation quad-core, and for the first time 6-core processors, delivering up to 60 percent faster performance.<\/p>\n

The 27-inch iMac now for the first time features up to 9th-generation 6-core and 8-core processors, delivering up to 2.4 times faster performance.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It’s great to see an update, and without a price increase, but I’m not sure this is what people were hoping for. The case seems to be unchanged, and so likely doesn’t address the dust<\/a> or thermal issues.<\/p>\n

There’s no T2 support and, if Apple keeps the same schedule, that means two more years to wait. I understand that the T2 might be too expensive for a lower end model, and not applicable to the hard drive configurations. But for a 27-inch iMac that’s $1,899–$5,249 with an SSD? Even the $799 Mac mini has one.<\/p>\n

Then there’s the mystery of no SSDs in any of the base configurations. Sure, have an optional Fusion Drive for those who don’t want to pay for a 2 TB SSD. But the default configuration should be an SSD. They really are not that expensive to buy third-party, and Apple must get better deals than we do. Is this the case of perfect being the enemy of good—insisting that all Mac SSDs must be high-end<\/a> ones, even though cheaper SSDs are still way better than hard drives? Or is it just all about margins?<\/p>\n

Lastly, I wonder whether Apple planned to hold out on SSDs for so long. If the standard configuration is going to have a hard drive, then the case should be designed for it. But since 2012 the 21-inch<\/a> iMac has only supported slow laptop hard drives. The case, the OS, and the file system were not optimized for hard drives, and yet that’s what the default configurations include.<\/p>\n\n

Upgrade<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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After nearly two years, Apple has released new iMacs, and Jason has an exclusive interview with Apple’s iMac product manager, Colleen Novielli.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Jason Snell<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The $1099 base model non-Retina iMac remains unchanged, the desktop equivalent of the $999 MacBook Air—an old model anchored to a low price.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

What this means is that these new iMacs have closed a bit of the gap between the highest-end iMac and the lowest-end iMac Pro. You’ll need to pay extra in configurable options, but the highest-end eight-core iMac should creep close to iMac Pro territory in terms of processor and graphics performance.<\/p>\n

Of course, all that performance comes in a familar shell—it’s the same iMac cooling system as before, which means if you stress out the iMac you will hear the fans. My friend Stephen Hackett ended up switching from a high-end 5K iMac to an iMac Pro in order to get a computer that was silent under heavy load, thanks to the iMac Pro’s superior (and quiet) cooling system.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Marco Arment<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Nice to see an iMac spec-bump, finally.<\/p>\n

Shame they haven’t included the T2 and its huge security benefits. I was hoping to see all Macs with T2 chips by the end of the year.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Maynard Handley<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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So option 2 is use cheap low-end slow flash and driver. Personally that’s the path I would take. Sure, there’d be mocking about the slow flash, but IMHO it’s a better tradeoff than HD!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Paul Haddad<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The 6 core CPU is non hyperthreaded, which is crazy on a $2300+ machine.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Wojtek Pietrusiewicz<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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iMac early 2019. 1TB SSD = $700. Samsung 2TB NVMe M.2 = $500.
\nSamsung 1TB 970 Pro = $350. 970 Evo = $250.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Colin Cornaby<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The weird thing is the Vega GPUs Apple is using... don’t exist? If they’re custom slower versions of real Vega, that’s a big bummer. Still not shipping a high end consumer GPU on the iMacs?<\/p>\n

I’d guess it’s a power and heat thing. Vega requires a good amount of power and runs hot. Unless they really wanted to up the power supply in the iMac full Vega might not be an option.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Ian Spencer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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It took two years for this? It’s a $450 upgrade to not have a three year old GPU that was slow even when it was new. And that upgrade isn’t even to the mid-range Vega 56. Yikes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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This is an industrial design that deserves to last years. It still doesn’t seem possible to get displays of this caliber at these prices in the PC world — or at any<\/em> price for 5K in an all-in-one.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Llyod Chambers<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Why would you go with 32GB memory from Apple, when it costs less<\/em> to install 64GB?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Howard Oakley<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The one feature about them which concerns me is their continuing use of rotating hard disks, alone in the cheaper configurations, or as part of a Fusion Drive if you need more and faster storage. There are two issues which you need to consider: using the APFS file system on a hard disk, and the Fusion Drive itself.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

APFS works on hard disks, and has done so in release form for around a year now, but it hasn’t been designed to get the best out of them, in contrast with HFS+. Although I haven’t been able to find good performance comparisons, all those who I know who use APFS on hard disks consider its performance to be relatively poor.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

If almost all data read from and written to the hard disk in the Fusion Drive passes through the SSD as a temporary buffer, the SSD will see a great deal more write activity than would be expected for its size. […] Evidence from some with older Fusion Drives is that this can lead to worryingly early failure in SSDs, which appear to have aged much more quickly than would be expected.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Snell asked Novielli about the base-model iMacs that retain a spinning hard drive. She acknowledged that it’s a cost-based decision; I still think it’s indefensible. The drives Apple uses in the base-model iMacs, and even the Fusion Drives in the step-up models, don’t perform acceptably running Mojave<\/a>. The base model iMac is simply not a good product and should be purchased by nobody, so it’s hard to see why it’s still available.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Tom Bridge<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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And they also ship by default with old, slow 5400rpm hard disks that came to the marketplace in 2007 in 1TB capacities. When Hitachi released the first Deskstar with 1TB that year, at a whopping price of $399, they boasted a cost-per-GB of $0.40. Now you can have a SATA SSD for less than $0.25 per GB, and an M.2 SSD for $0.35 per GB.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Chance Miller<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Apple has also quietly lowered select upgrade costs. For the MacBook Air, Mac mini, and MacBook Pro, SSD upgrades are now slightly cheaper, while RAM upgrades for Mac Pro have also seen a price drop.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n