new iMacs have arrived

who is upgrading? i am from my 2008 aluminum macbook! yay!

to iMac owners: do they historically have 2 HDD bays?

one of the options for storage is to have both a HDD and SSD. am i seeing this right?

1TB Serial ATA Drive + 256GB Solid State Drive

does this mean i can just get the 1TB option and buy and install myself an SSD from OWC?

thanks!

@ SSD, it would seem so, because they'd be really stupid to have different builds for different custom purchases.

I'm sold. Gonna get this baby. My Macbook 13" Aluminum non-pro served me well. Haha.

i just picked up the 13" macbook pro, the lower spec one, but its still a great machine, my first Mac aswell, im pretty damn impressed.

as im new to the Mac game, may as well ask while im here, any highly recommended things i should get for it, software wise?

-smurff

Thinking about getting a top end 27" imac. Anyone think there would be a benefit in getting the 3.4 i7 over the 3.1 i5? Primarily using it for lightroom, photoshop, final cut pro editing.

I think I'm just gonna stick with the 1TB drive and skip on the SSD as it extends shipping out to 4-6 weeks and I'll probably get a TB drive later on.

Definitely going with the GPU upgrade, 8GB RAM and Applecare.

Suggestions?

I got the 2010 update and love it. I'm sure these are even better, obviously. My i5 2.8 from last year should keep me going for a few revisions though.

kingdavidd wrote in post #12339308
to iMac owners: do they historically have 2 HDD bays? one of the options for storage is to have both a HDD and SSD. am i seeing this right?

Yes.

Unfortunately, it's an invasive procedure and unless you're good at taking iMacs apart it's not something you'd want to try. However, since the 27" has two Thunderbolt ports, you could use one of the upcoming 6g SSD drives with one of the upcoming external Thunderbolt enclosures (which should support 6g drives).

kingdavidd wrote in post #12339308
who is upgrading? i am from my 2008 aluminum macbook! yay!

to iMac owners: do they historically have 2 HDD bays?

one of the options for storage is to have both a HDD and SSD. am i seeing this right?

1TB Serial ATA Drive + 256GB Solid State Drive

does this mean i can just get the 1TB option and buy and install myself an SSD from OWC?

thanks!

No, it doesn't have two HDD bays. When you buy the HDD & SSD option, its a custom bracket that gets the job done. I think there are hacks to later add an SSD, but its much preferred to get it direct from Apple as a BTO option.

And no matte screens...

Get a small one and attach a second screen if you want?

^ Yes. Either this, or a low end MBP + second screen. Don't know yet. I hope to see some Geekbench results for the new iMacs real soon!

silvrbullet wrote in post #12339673
No, it doesn't have two HDD bays. When you buy the HDD & SSD option, its a custom bracket that gets the job done. I think there are hacks to later add an SSD, but its much preferred to get it direct from Apple as a BTO option.

boooo!!! the BTO option is too expensive!! argh!

I'm really happy with the Apple's computer line up now but thew new iMacs make me feel the Mac Pros are way over priced. I can get a 21.5 in 1080p LED back lit IPS iMac with a quad core processor and thunderbolt for 1200 dollars, but a Quad core Mac Pro starts at 2400.

Now I know thats not necessarily Apples to Apples, but it seems Apple should offer Mac Pros in 6,8, or 12 cores and not offer a quad core machine, when they have Macbook Pro Quad cores and iMac Quad cores almost standard across the line (the 13in MBP being the exception).

If this was last year when I was buying my computer for college, I would have struggled with 15in iMac for like 2300 dollars or pretty much similarly speced out iMac with IPS display for about 1400 bucks with Apple care, I think could proceed to get an iPad and still be cheaper than the MBP.

iSax1234 wrote in post #12343551
I'm really happy with the Apple's computer line up now but thew new iMacs make me feel the Mac Pros are way over priced. I can get a 21.5 in 1080p LED back lit IPS iMac with a quad core processor and thunderbolt for 1200 dollars, but a Quad core Mac Pro starts at 2400.

Now I know thats not necessarily Apples to Apples, but it seems Apple should offer Mac Pros in 6,8, or 12 cores and not offer a quad core machine, when they have Macbook Pro Quad cores and iMac Quad cores almost standard across the line (the 13in MBP being the exception).

The Mac Pros are also about to be updated any day now, so wait a bit.
Personally I wish Apple would still keep those quad core Mac Pro's and drop the price significantly so there would be a real alternative to a MacMini at the low end and a Mac Pro at the high end. Now there's only the iMac to fill in the gap, but nothing without a screen.

Levina de Ruijter wrote in post #12344583
The Mac Pros are also about to be updated any day now, so wait a bit.

(Wow, I just noticed that your last name is similar to mine. I think we're related.)

I want to get an iMac soon but I think I'll wait for OS X Lion because of the TRIM support for SSD. Right now TRIM is supported by Apple but only on there SSDs. Maybe with Lion's support, and using iFixit's help, one could swap drives to an aftermarket SSD for less. Apparently, it's easier to do then previous iMacs.

Also for Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom 3, I would love to know the speed differences between the i5 and i7 CPUs. An i5 might be more than enough. Heck, I've been using my PowerMac G5 for about eight years so whatever I get will feel fast to me.

Any SSD with a Sandforce controller, such as those from OWC and OCZ, will not suffer degradation on Macs.