27-inch iMac
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We shot this video about the new iMac on the iMac's upgraded webcam
A few first impressions of the 2020 27-inch iMac.
Apple updates the 27-inch iMac with new chips, finally makes SSDs standard
No, the exterior design still hasn’t changed, but under the hood the company is touting new processors and graphics, a higher-res webcam with improved low-light performance and a new audio setup that borrows the “studio-quality” mic array already found on select MacBook Pros. Most importantly, perhaps, Apple is finally (finally) making SSDs standard across the line, for both the 27-inch and 21.5-inch iMacs. As for graphics, the vanilla configurations have either an AMD Radeon Pro 5300 card or Radeon Pro 5500 XT, both 7-nanometer GPUs built on AMD’s RDNA architecture.
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27-inch iMacs hit Apple's refurb store
Apple introduced its new thin iMac models last year and now those beauties have landed in the company's certified refurbished outlet. As reported by Engadget and MacRumors, the refurbished 27-inch iMac is available for up to $270 off the regular retail price. The refurbished base Core i5 model sells for $1,529 and includes a 2.9 GHz Core i5 processor, 8 GB of RAM, a 1 TB HDD and a gorgeous 2,560 x 1,440 display. A 3.2 GHz Core i5 model is available for $1,699, and the Core i7 models are available starting at $1,869. Each refurbished model comes with a one-year warranty from Apple. [Via Engadget and MacRumors]
New 27-inch iMac's HDD, SSD and Fusion Drive options benchmarked
The folks at Bare Feats have put together a handy look at the performance of four of the five storage options available when custom-ordering a new 27-inch iMac through Apple. These include a 1 TB and 3 TB hard disk (a 7,200 RPM Seagate Barracuda), 768 GB solid state drive and 1 TB Fusion Drive. Their results with the latter are pretty impressive, but come with a noteworthy caveat. In their testing, Bare Feet found that the SSD option obviously performs best, offering a throughput of 440 MB/s when writing large files and 477 MB/s when reading large files. Small random transfers hit 208 MB/s when writing and 140 MB/s when reading. By comparison, the Fusion Drive managed 325 MB/s when writing large files and 482 MB/s when reading them (127 MB/s and 129 MB/s when writing/reading small files, respectively). The Fusion Drive saw a substantial (nearly 50 percent) decrease in transfer speed when attempting to move files larger than the free space on the drive's "fused" SSD portion, however. As for the traditional hard disk options, they performed about as well as you'd expect. You can check out the full benchmarks on Bare Feats -- a recommended read for anyone thinking of going built-to-order.
Fast, quiet, and skinny: A quick look at the new 27" iMac (Late 2012)
When Apple announced the new iMacs a few months ago, I paid attention. My "old" iMac was three years old and was in need of either a total reload of Mountain Lion, or an exorcism. The old machine was acting pokey, probably due to numerous OS and app installs and uninstalls, and there were those modern interfaces -- USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt -- that it lacked. Well, the day ordering opened up for the 27" iMac, I jumped on the chance to order one. Here's my first-few-days look at the latest big all-in-one from Apple. First, a bit about the specs on this unit. I ordered it with the 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7 (quad-core) CPU, 16 GB of 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM (which I'll upgrade to 32 GB once my credit card recovers from the shock), the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX graphics card with 2048 MB of RAM, and a 1 TB Fusion Drive. It has four USB 3.0 ports and two Thunderbolt ports, and can support other displays (DVI, dual-link DVI, VGA) through a proper Mini DisplayPort/Thunderbolt adapter. The machine being replaced was no slouch -- it had a 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7 CPU, 8 GB of 1067 MHz DDR3 RAM, and a 1 TB 7200 RPM HD. Port-wise, it had one FireWire 400/800 and four USB 2.0 ports. Now here's the funny part: from the front, the two iMacs look identical. They're sitting on my desk near each other, and there's very little that is visibly changed as you face them. Look at them from the side, however, and you see a major change. The old iMac is about an inch wide on the edges, the new one only 5mm thick at its thinnest point. Here's a bit of unboxing loveliness to look at: %Gallery-173445% There are other noticeable differences. The new iMac is completely silent. I can hear the hard disk in the old one rattling away (and perhaps that's because it is one of the Seagate drives that has been recalled...) and the fan makes a wee bit of noise. The new one? Doesn't make a peep. There's another audio change that became apparent last night when I was a guest on Chuck Joiner's MacJury podcast last night -- although I couldn't seem to route the sound to my headphones so that everything was actually still coming out of the iMac's speakers, it does an amazing job of noise cancellation so that there was no echo. Although the two displays are identical (according to iFixit's teardowns of the new iMac), Apple has been able to reduce reflection by 75 percent on the new iMac. The LCD sits right next to the glass on the display, and the other day when looking at the iMac when walking up to it, I noticed that the various layered windows looked almost three-dimensional. One other nice feature -- this iMac runs much cooler than the older model. The old unit would get quite hot; a quick reading today showed that it was at 103° F while in display sleep mode doing nothing, while the new unit was a cool 83.4° F. The boot time is amazingly fast. Timing it with a stopwatch from hitting the power button to the login screen took 11.6 seconds. Launching frequently used apps like Mail and Google Chrome is virtually instantaneous, since they're all loaded automatically onto the SSD part of the Fusion Drive. If I have one recommendation to TUAW readers, it's that you should get a Fusion Drive if you're getting a new iMac. [Not everyone agrees with me from a price/performance standpoint, however.] As you'd expect with the latest Intel processor powering this computer, the iMac is fast. I ran Geekbench on both my three year-old iMac and the new device for comparison. Here's the raw Geekbench score for both computers: iMac 13,2 (Late 2012): 14181 iMac 11,1 (Late 2009): 9913 Yep, the new iMac has 43 percent more raw performance than the model from three years ago. That's not entirely surprising, but it is nice... The numbers were similar when looking at the detailed performance figures: Integer Performance (Late 2012): 12275 (40 percent improvement) Integer Performance (Late 2009): 8771 Floating Point Performance (Late 2012): 21474 (37.5 percent improvement) Floating Point Performance (Late 2009): 15613 Memory Performance (Late 2012): 7569 (56.4 percent improvement) Memory Performance (Late 2009): 4841 Stream Performance (Late 2012): 8552 (108.3 percent improvement) Stream Performance (Late 2009): 4105 As fast as this new iMac is, it still can't hold a candle to the 12-core Mid 2012 Mac Pro, which lights up Geekbench with a top score of 25465. Then again, that Mac Pro configuration starts at $6,199 with two 3.06 GHz 6-core Intel Xeon CPUs and a low end RAM capacity of 12 GB... Is there anything I'm not thrilled about? Well, the location of the headphone jack and SDXC slot on the back of the device makes it difficult to plug in headphones and cards. And I wish that Apple had gone with a 1080p FaceTime HD camera in the iMac. iMac buyers shouldn't have to buy a third-party HD webcam to get better video input. There's one other little issue I've run into: a bus-powered external drive that I'm using won't power up when connected to one of the USB 3.0 ports. I have a funny feeling that I'll be buying one of Apple's $29 Thunderbolt to FireWire adapters in order to get my data moved over to the new iMac... or just buy a cheap and speedy USB 3.0 drive. While I'm still setting up the new machine manually rather than using Apple's Migration Assistant (more about that in a post by Erica Sadun), I'm finding the late 2012 iMac to be a worthy successor to its old office mate. That older iMac? My wife gets it to replace an old MacBook Pro.
Primate Labs posts new iMac benchmarks
The company that provides the amazing Geekbench benchmarking software, Primate Labs, has run its tests on the new 21.5-inch iMac and found that it's a pretty impressive piece of hardware. Primate Labs tested all of the configurations of the new iMac, but it's the top-of-the-line unit sporting an Intel Core i7-3770S clocked at 3.1 GHz that tops the speed test for all iMacs. To quote the benchmark post, "The benefits of the new Ivy Bridge processors are clear; the new high-end 21.5-inch iMac is almost 10 percent faster than the old high-end 27-inch iMac." The benchmark score for the high-end 21.5-inch iMac was 12,447, while that of the old (mid-2011) high-end 27-inch iMac was 11,410. A comparison to the high-end 2012 Mac mini shows that it's no slouch, either -- it came in at 11,595. Of course, if you want to kick some serious computing butt, you'll still need to get a Mac Pro -- the fastest 12-core unit weighs in at a Geekbench score of 22,271. It should be interesting to see the results for the 27-inch iMac that will be shipping in about two weeks. The top-end unit features a 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7 that will likely leave the 21.5-inch model in the dust.
Apple unveils next-generation iMac with slimmer design and Ivy Bridge, starting at $1,299
Who said Apple's event was all about the little things? Apple just unveiled its first redesign to its iMac desktop in three years. The new all-in-one makes the widely expected leap to Intel's Ivy Bridge Core i5 and Core i7 processors, but also represents a much leaner and meaner replacement for the 2009-era template -- its edges are just 5mm thick, and it's constructed with "friction stir welding" as well as a gapless, less reflective display that's laminated together with the glass. Screen sizes remain the same and include both a 21.5-inch, 1080p model and a 27-inch, 2,560 x 1,400 model -- sorry, no Retina displays this year. They share 720p-capable front cameras with dual mics as well as NVIDIA's GeForce 600-era graphics, up to 32GB of RAM and a panoply of storage options that peak at 3TB of spinning storage, a 768GB SSD or what Apple calls a Fusion Drive that mixes both 128GB of flash with 1TB or 3TB of conventional storage (a hybrid drive, for those of us who've seen it before). There's no optical drive unless you plug in a USB option. The 21.5-inch model ships in November, and will set you back $1,299 for a 2.7GHz Core i5, 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive; pony up for the 27-inch model at $1,799 and you'll get a 2.9GHz Core i5 as well as the same memory and storage. Apple's larger iMac doesn't ship until December, however, which will give some impulse buyers at least a brief respite. %Gallery-169056% For more coverage, visit our Apple Special Event hub!
Apple extends 1TB Seagate HDD replacement program to cover additional iMacs
Last year, faulty 1TB Seagate drives living in 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMacs purchased between May and July of 2011 were at the heart of Apple's HDD replacement program. Now, Cupertino has extended the initiative to encompass rigs sold between October 2009 and July 2011. Customers with an affected iMac are eligible to receive a free drive until April 12, 2013 or for three years after their desktop's original purchase date. Curious if your machine contains an afflicted hard drive? Simply visit the source link below and plug in your computer's serial number to find out. If you do need a replacement, an Apple Store or authorized service center will be happy to help -- just remember to back up your drive before parting with it.
27-inch iMac in short supply at Apple Stores
There have been persistent reports from a number of sources about shortages of the 27-inch iMac at resellers; now MacRumors is reporting that Apple's retail stores are experiencing short supplies of the popular all-in-one desktop computer. A survey of stock at the 249 Apple Stores in the U.S. through the "Personal Pickup" program shows that the two standard 27-inch configurations are out of stock at just about half of those stores. 120 stores are out of the 27-inch base model, and 135 stores have no current supply of the high-end 27-inch iMac. Most stores are showing pickup dates in the September 4 - 7 range. What's odd is that the shortages are limited only to the 27-inch iMac; the 21.5-inch model is still in stock at most stores. Apple is expected by many pundits to be working on updated iMacs containing the latest Intel Ivy Bridge processors, to be launched in the October timeframe. Although the blogosphere seems to favor a Retina display on any new iMacs, manufacturing constraints make that a possibility for next year, not 2012.
Apple initiates replacement program for 'small number' of iMacs with 1TB Seagate HDDs
Did you pick up a new iMac between May and July 2011 sporting a 1TB Seagate HDD? You should probably know that the platter might be of the prone to failing variety. No worries though, Apple's announced it'll replace potentially faulty drives at no cost to keep ya smiling, and your fixed disk a-spinnin'. Owners of registered rigs at risk are being notified via email, but if you skipped that form you can check the serial number on Camp Cupertino's website (linked below). After confirming that the machine's eligible, you'll be able to drop it off at an Apple Store or authorized service center for the swap. It's also suggested that you back up the drive prior to bringing it down; at the very least, it's an excuse to make use of that Thunderbolt port, right?
The joy and pain of upgrading a 27-inch iMac with an SSD (video)
As the old Chinese proverb says: "Time flies like an arrow." Just like that, today -- coincidentally the 27th -- marks the one year anniversary of my Core i7 27-inch iMac. No words can express the satisfaction of having such sheer screen estate and computing power all encased in one gorgeous body, but said joy started to fade recently -- ask my colleagues and they'll testify to my regular rants about the darn machine freezing up over the last few weeks. I've had it with the bloody hard drive, and being a geek who's pimped up his last two laptops with SSDs, I thought rather than just reformatting it, why not spoil my iMac with the same goodie that it clearly deserves? Read on to find out how the upgrade went.%Gallery-108375%
OWC will cut a hole in your new 27-inch iMac, put an eSATA port behind it
Say what you like about Apple, as a company it's not exactly on the forefront when it comes to offering standard connectors for peripherals. Case in point: the latest iMac revisions lack eSATA, something of a bother for companies that make external storage devices. Companies like OWC. So, that particular organization is introducing a service to add that to 27-inch iMacs, cutting a small hole into the bottom-right of the display and sticking an eSATA port behind it. It's a nice idea, the results look flush enough, and 48-hour turn-around time is great -- but $169 is hardly small change. You can, however, take that time to get a 480GB Mercury Extreme Pro SSD stuffed in there as well for a mere $1,649 more.
iMac's latest 27-inch iteration requires special parts for your own SSD in second drive bay
One of the few highlights of the refreshed 27-inch iMac is the new SSD option for its second drive bay. This sure is good news for performance addicts carrying some spare cash, but with the 256GB SSD addition costing from $750, some may prefer the DIY route to save a few pennies for that gold iPad. Sadly, it won't be as straight forward as sliding in a new drive -- e-tailer OWC noticed in its teardown that you'll be needing a mounting bracket and a couple of cables that are only supplied with Apple's own SSD. That said, if you can find a way to secure the drive in the bay, all you'll need are a SATA male-to-two-female splitter plus a left-angled SATA connector cable, and then a way to partially remove the logic board to access the free port. Yup, it's as easy as really complicated pie.
Belkin's AV360 Mini DisplayPort Converter lets you play Xbox 360 on iMac, costs as much as an Arcade
If you're inhabiting one of those quaint, downtown studio apartments in which your sink, oven, computer, and toilet are all within reach of your swiveling desk chair, and if that computer happens to be a 27-inch iMac, we have good news for you. Belkin has introduced its AV360 Mini DisplayPort Converter, which takes an HDMI input at up to 1080p and squeezes it into a Mini DisplayPort connector at 720p for display on your iMac. It'll also push stereo audio through and is HDCP-compliant, so even protected content from your Blu-ray player will get by. The cost? $150, which is cheaper than getting a second display, but an awful lot for a converter box with a single input -- especially when MonoPrice has similar offerings (which admittedly lack audio and HDCP) for under $10. But, if you don't have room for anything else, this will fit in nicely with you and your minimalist/affluent lifestyle. Update: We got it wrong on the MonoPrice reference here. That adapter goes the other way!
Apple paying back bonuses on cost of defective 27-inch iMacs
Gizmodo is reporting that Apple has begun refunding up to an extra 15% of the purchase price of the 27-inch iMac to those customers who bought defective units. The news broke yesterday with a UK-based Apple Authorized Service Provider/Reseller claiming that Apple is out of 27" screens in Europe, and they're dealing with a waiting list of customers already. So they're now offering up (to only certain customers so far, not an official policy) not only a full refund, but an extra 15% on top of the price, roughly $300 on the cost of a $2000 iMac. Gizmodo also points out that the refund doesn't include sales tax or shipping costs, so some of the 15% covers that as well. You won't be able to make money on this, but Apple is apparently offering up a small bonus to customers inconvenienced by the issues. Earlier this week Apple released another firmware update to address the flickering screen issues with the 27-inch iMacs but it seems that has not alleviated all the issues.
Apple releases another 27-inch iMac firmware update
Amid rumors that Apple has halted production of the 27-inch iMac due to display issues, Apple has released a second firmware update. The update, which is for iMac (27-inch, Late 2009) only: Updates the display firmware on 27-inch iMac systems to address issues that may cause intermittent display flickering. The update weighs in at 294KB and can be downloaded here or through Software Update. The first 27-inch iMac update was released on December 21, 2009 that updated "the graphics firmware on ATI Radeon HD 4670 and 4850 graphics cards to address issues that may cause image corruption or display flickering."
27-inch iMac gets another display firmware update, everyone else gets minor iTunes update
Still plagued by the annoying screen flicker on your precious 27-inch iMac, even after the previous update? Try this second attempt by Apple. While you're at it, there's also a minor update for iTunes which makes sure it actually "remember[s] password for purchases," as well as fixing a few sync and performance issues. Good luck with both and let us know if your iMac nightmare is finally over.
Apple finally brings official Windows 7 support to Boot Camp (update: 27-inch iMac fix)
Either Apple isn't operating on the Gregorian calender, or these updates are just straight-up late. Either way, we're pretty stoked to see the suits in Cupertino finally wise up and allow Microsoft's best OS ever to work on its machines, as it has today issued new Boot Camp software (v3.1) for both 32-bit and 64-bit users of Windows 7. The updates add native support for Win7 Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate, and in case that wasn't enough, they also fix "issues" with the Apple trackpad and add support for Apple's wireless keyboard and Magic Mouse. You'll also find model-specific drivers floating around to add even more support, and the Boot Camp Utility for Windows 7 Upgrade is said to "safely unmount the read-only Macintosh volume on Windows Vista" when upgrading from Vista to Windows 7. Hit those links below for all the bits and bytes that you've been so desperately waiting for. Update: we're hearing reports that the 27-inch iMac is responding to Windows 7 with the Black Screen of Death, so make sure you use this tool from Apple before installing Windows 7. Too late? Then you'll have to manually remove the offending default ATI drivers by starting from point 4 on this page (hold down Option key while booting up to select the Windows install disc, by the way), and then try the Boot Camp update again.
27-inch iMac gets a firmware update to assuage your display issues
Here's something that'll fix a bit of your 27-inch iMac ails. Apple just released a graphics firmware update 1.0. Order of the day? To "address issues that may cause image corruption or display flickering." Download away, and let us know if you troubled souls have seen some relief. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
