OWC will cut a hole in your new 27-inch iMac, put an eSATA port behind it
By Tim Stevens 
posted August 2nd 2010 9:36AM
posted August 2nd 2010 9:36AM
posted August 2nd 2010 9:36AM
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@DoctarPeppar
Yeah I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that iMacs already have FireWire 800 which has a powered bus and is fast enough that drives can't actually saturate it.
Because people who aren't too bright really love needing to power all their external devices SEPARATELY. I mean where's the challenge in being able to just plug a drive in and have it power on? That's too easy, we need to make things more difficult.
@Jack
Drives can't saturate it!?!? WHAT!?!?
Even the cheapest seagate 7200.12 sata drive can do 125 MB\s.
One eSATA connector = 300 MB\sec...which just happens to be enough to allow for HD video editing (you need fast storage or else you get dropped frames). FW800 can't do that. Just do the math, idiot.
@Jack
And don't forget, you can daisy chain FireWire. USB can't do that, nor can eSATA.
@HighestRanked1
You can only daisy chain firewire if the end device actually has an in and out port. Some do, some don't -- and with audio and video equipment, it's actually NOT reccommended to daisy chain. But anyways, that's a stupid excuse -- get a friggen USB hub..and with eSATA there are port multipliers. Believe it or not there are also firewire hubs so you can chain devices that don't have an in\out port. Either way your excuse \line of reasoning is BS.
guys, apple didn't put a gamecube controller port on the iMac! What a lame computer, I can't even transfer my pokemon to it
What amazes me even more is that not even the Mac Pro has an eSATA port, despite its being billed as the high-end pro-grade Mac. Yeah, their target market never needs a high-speed storage interconnect.
@John H
The Mac Pro's still use 1066mhz DDR3 and 3Gb\s SATA too.
Apple _used_ to be at the forefront with all the new and fast standards, but not anymore. Oh, and USB3 and BluRay? Forget about it...will probably never see any of those on a mac. It's like they have stopped catering to their real target audience and started catering to the masses of idiots who don't even know what usb3 is.
@DoctarPeppar
The new Mac Pros use 1333 MHz RAM. And most drives can't saturate a 3Gb/sec bus, so having 6Gb/sec is really just a "whose penis is longer" contest in most cases. If you actually need 6Gb/sec (most people don't), that's what PCI Express slots are for.
@Jack
I'm not talking about the internal SATA ports; I mean they don't have an eSATA connector for hooking up external drives, never mind whether it's 6 Gbps or not. I realize they have FireWire 800 for that purpose, but come on.
@Jack
Hm...they must have just up'd the ram spec cause the MP my work bought last year (the 2x4core Nehalem) has 1066mhz ecc ram.
One of the most popular storage devices in the industry right now are the micron \ crucial c300 6gb\s sata SSDs which perform a LOT faster when hooked to a 6gb controller. Like I have said before, Apple used to be the ones pushing new tech...that was one thing I always liked about them, it gave their customers an advantage over the competition besides "looking cool" -- and if you don't care about fast storage then yeah you probably won't give a shit, but what about the customers who DO care? It's not like you can get a PCIe add-in card...it's a one size fits all machine.
Wait,
I know I'm out the loop when it comes to Mac products but, they don't even support swappable PCI cards so stuff like this is a quick plug in? I mean, really? :\
@LiveFromThe215
They do on the Mac Pro, the only Mac physically big enough to take them.
Apple don't resond to market forces. They ARE a market force. No eSata on Apple products means no future for the standard if you ask me.
@DrCollossus Just like SD cards, eh?
@N900
And USB.
@DrCollossus
And HDMI
@DrCollossus
So you're saying that 6gbs SATA, USB3, BluRay, eSATA, and HDMI have no future? Because no apple products support any of those (except the mac mini finally has HDMI).
@DoctarPeppar Wow. From someone so sharp they can't even spot sarcasm when they see it that really stings.
Reported, btw.
@DrCollossus
u mad?
@DrCollossus
The problem is that with some things, the most sarcastic and absurd representation you can possibility come up with can still be perfectly realistic and sincere. Some things are just a parody of themselves. No matter how much you try to outdo the real thing, you just can't.
@DrCollossus
Reported!!! Internet police gonna come get me!!!
OH NOEZZZ...fucking loser rofl.
@DrCollossus
It's difficult to read sarcasm sometimes.
@ynp
Every Mac supports HDMI. Don't you know that HDMI is simply a repackaged DVI port? I plug my 2007 MacBook Pro with a small DVI/HDMI adaptor to my Sony Bravia to watch Hulu all the time.
Newer Macs also support the next generation of video interfaces: DisplayPort. Allows daisy-chaining multiple monitors, on-board power, and orders of magnitude superior bandwidth, speed, color gamut and color range over HDMI.
An eSATA connector with a 90° would make it somewhat cleaner looking
Uh, no. FireWire 800, powered bus, the end.
The eSATA is underneath, not on the back.
That makes a bit of difference, but not a lot.
the imac is marketed as a user friendly, straightforward, less-cable mainstream desktop computer, and not as a peripheral control center with tangled wires for the hardcore geek of today.
@shizzledmg
Yeah but don't you think that some people actually want a little more flexibility and power but don't wanna shell out the cash for the mac pro?
We're talking about minor adjustments to the product that would make a major difference.
@shizzledmg
Imac user
"I need a need external hard drive, Well I can choose USB and eSata"
"well, seems like esata is faster but not supported on my computer"
PC with esata port user
"I need a need external hard drive, Well I can choose USB and eSata"
"eSata is faster I will go with that"
@DoctarPeppar
not really, there are enough external harddrive options for the mainstream imac user out there.
other than that, the avarage computer user don't even know what a sata, esata or a ssd is, they google or they make a search on wikipedia to get an idea about sata hdd's.
you guys really need to distinguish here, there are geeks and techblog whores, but there are considerably much much much much more "normal" computer users out there without the know how, they just want a stable, beautiful no-brainer computer for gaming, communication and other basic stuff.
Typical Apple. What a shock, they'd rather price gouge you than give you the universal ports and inputs that everyone else has.
@kenny goo
Maybe the severe ignorants believe that but the actual market for eSATA is actually quite limited and few PCs actually come with it. The consumer market has little need for it at the moment as USB and FireWire are the standards. However there is actually no need for Apple to build eSATA because it is a dying format, next year LightPeak will take over.
@HighestRanked1
Currently the standard is USB 2.0 (480Mbps). Pretty much the only company using Firewire 800 (786Mbps) these days is Apple, which gives it a very small appeal and usable marketshare, so I'd hardly call it a common standard.
eSATA on the other hand is faster than both of them with SATA I (1.5Gbps) or SATA II (3.0Gbps) depending on the device. Many external hard drives these days have eSATA ports (much more so than there are external HDDs with Firewire), and many laptops these days have eSATA ports as well. When it comes to transferring large amounts of data or doing a back up/restore from an external source, USB 2.0 is painfully slow, and that's why you have eSATA.
USB 3.0 (4.8Gbps) and Firewire 3200 (3.2Gbps) are faster than eSATA II, but the former of which has little to no mainstream use, and the latter of which doesn't even exist yet. Not to mention that the forth coming eSATA III (6.0Gbps) is faster than both of them anyway. And LightPeak? Yea. Good luck with that. If they somehow manage to replace every A/V and data cable in existence with one format, it'll be years out.
USB 3.0 was announced in late 2008 and two years later we barely have any devices out there. FireWire 1600/3200 was announced in late 2007 and there aren't any devices out there. LightPeak was just announced last year. How long do you think it's gonna take for it to have *any* market adaption?
As usual, Form > Function.
I don't get all the hate?
This is awesome.
You don't really need an eSATA port on a Mac Pro because you can easily put the drive inside.
However on a 27" iMac an eSATA port would be very welcome.