The following is wild unsubstantiated wild guessing:

I believe the Mac Pro will have one more update. After that the Apple Television set and Retina Display Macs will hit the market. At some point in the future the iMac will be come an iPad with expanded features. Since the monitor will need to be integrated with touch for the combined OSX/iOS experience, Mac pro machines with separate monitors need not apply. Because people will be accustomed to buying through the app store via iOS devices, the iMacs will sell apps effortlessly due to familiarity and a new breed of Mac users who only experience buying software through the app store infrastructure making Apple lots of money.

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Please "Like" the Meiwah restaurant page because you love the place or you pity me [www.facebook.com]

I'm a fan of the Mac Pro and I agree its days are numbered. Certainly one more generation, maybe two if we're lucky.

As for a touch screen iMac, probably not. Even Jobs said it was unlikely, making the gorilla arm reference.

And Apple TV, highly doubtful. It's too low of a margin business. Apple doesn't do anything low margin.

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"They don't call me Colonel because I'm some dumb a$$ army guy" Colonel Homer J. Simpson

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It won't be a low-margin TV. It'll be a gargantuan iPad.

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vision63
It won't be a low-margin TV. It'll be a gargantuan iPad.

Exactly. If they did make one it would be so expensive nobody would buy it.

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"They don't call me Colonel because I'm some dumb a$$ army guy" Colonel Homer J. Simpson

I still don't understand why they put server processors in a workstation. At the rate they update them, the workstation CPUs quickly out perform Apple's offerings.

The gap between iMac and MacPro is astonishing. I think I will probably be a Hac user for a long time, simply because I don't believe in just one HD in a computer as it quickly becomes the bottleneck. And I don't believe in server CPUs in a workstation as I never need them.

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M A V I C
I still don't understand why they put server processors in a workstation. At the rate they update them, the workstation CPUs quickly out perform Apple's offerings.

The gap between iMac and MacPro is astonishing. I think I will probably be a Hac user for a long time, simply because I don't believe in just one HD in a computer as it quickly becomes the bottleneck. And I don't believe in server CPUs in a workstation as I never need them.

A pizza box with one free drive bay, upgradeable graphics card, and one expansion slot is what I have wanted for about 10 years. Something in the middle since about the time that the lampshade iMac divided the product line, before the original POS G4 mini came out.

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in tha 510.

[www.geek.com]

remember 2khappyware.com ?

[www.wired.com]



"Since setting up shop in April, John Fraser has been doing a roaring trade selling low-cost, configurable Mac clones based on older Gigabit motherboards from Apple Computer. Fraser is now working on a machine he calls the CoreBox (pictured). "

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[www.giyf.com]

Yeah, what the Mac mini was supposed to be.

Or a new version of the IIci/si would be a very successful form factor.

I guess there are some builds at tonymac that may be essentially that - and once Apple sells ivy bridge machines, the built-in graphics support could make a new version of the iBox possible (just don't sell the OS pre-installed)!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/21/2012 07:46AM by sekker.

When I started teaching the first thing I noticed were the MP's. They take up a lot of room at the work stations and I asked about using iMac's, especially when the crunching power of the Pro's was kind of wasted with what they were being used for. Guess what? They're all being replaced this Summer with 27" i7's at quite a savings.

The only way an iMac could become touchy-feely iOS-friendly would be to lie it down, and make it a slightly-elevated table-top. That would be a disaster waiting to happen: think coffee mugs, kitties, toddlers. . .

I agree that a small, low-priced Mac tower capable of holding two or three HDs would be nice. That would make RAID 1 possible as a built-in option.

/Mr Lynn

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mrlynn
The only way an iMac could become touchy-feely iOS-friendly would be to lie it down, and make it a slightly-elevated table-top. That would be a disaster waiting to happen: think coffee mugs, kitties, toddlers. . .

I agree that a small, low-priced Mac tower capable of holding two or three HDs would be nice. That would make RAID 1 possible as a built-in option.

/Mr Lynn

Some kind of swinging arm design you keep on a desktop and swing it over when you need it. Rebirth of the G4 Imac design perhaps?

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Please "Like" the Meiwah restaurant page because you love the place or you pity me [www.facebook.com]

Quote
DP
When I started teaching the first thing I noticed were the MP's. They take up a lot of room at the work stations and I asked about using iMac's, especially when the crunching power of the Pro's was kind of wasted with what they were being used for. Guess what? They're all being replaced this Summer with 27" i7's at quite a savings.

YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM

(so am i !)

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I tried moving to an iMac a few years ago. I had a Sawtooth G4 with 4 drives in it, then a G5 tower with 3 drives in it. Tried a 24" iMac and external FW drives... just didn't feel right. Now have a MacPro with 5 internal drives, the boot drive being an SSD. If I had to switch to an iMac with one regular hard drive right now, I'd be very frustrated.

I'm REALLY hoping for at least one more iteration of the MacPro. Having just added a second quad-core CPU to my formerly single quad-core model, I have no plans on upgrading anytime soon. But in 3-5 years, I'll probably be in the market for another machine, and I hope that there's a tower of some kind available.

the Mac Pro is a very expensive hard drive enclosure.

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mattkime
the Mac Pro is a very expensive hard drive enclosure.

Yeah but there is something I just don't like about drive and monitor heat combined in one machine. Maybe i am being irrational but I am a Mac Pro first person.

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Please "Like" the Meiwah restaurant page because you love the place or you pity me [www.facebook.com]

Another old time tower user that has little use for the limited capabilities of the iMac, not to mention the PITA it is to work on them. My tower has all PCI slots in use as well as the additional two SATA plugs on the motherboard. I especially enjoy the ease of swapping drives and PCI cards on the MacPro and frankly consider the iMac to be inferior in many respects to the versatility of a MacPro. While many users have no need of anything more than the iMac, there are still many of us that do need the additional flexibility and ease of access to the MacPro. As a computer tech I frequently work on the iMacs and each time I am thankful that I still have a powerful tower that can do so much more than an iMac.

To answer the inevitable next question of what can I do that the iMac can't?

1. Two Nvidia 8800 cards that run three conventional LCD monitors and one 42" LCD TV
2. Highpoint RAID PCI card that provides four eSATA ports that connect 8 drive RAID box (requires two SATA ports) and two other HD's on SATA bus.
3. OWC SATA PCI card that connects two additional external HD's over SATA bus.
4. OWC SATA to eSATA connector cable that plugs into two unused SATA ports on MB and fits unused slot on MB between two video cards in the wide PCIe slots for same.
5. Four internal HD's two dedicated to SL & TimeMachine backup the other two for Lion and TimeMachine backup, allowing me to effortlessly switch between SL & Lion at will.

Try doing all of that with an iMac?

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mattkime
the Mac Pro is a very expensive hard drive enclosure.

That is a gross inaccuracy, it is far more than that, see my post directly above this one for examples.

much cheaper to build a hackintosh if you need raw power.

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Bill in NC
much cheaper to build a hackintosh if you need raw power.

That is true for the single-processor end of "raw-power", but as you move into dual-socket motherboards with Xeon processors (think Dual-Hexacore MacPros) you end up paying a ton for just those components no matter who you buy from.

Also, many places that will buy and actually utilize the capabilities of a MacPro will not be considering a DIY solution.

I have a Hackintosh at home; I have a MacPro at work and that is the way it should be IMO.

The only way an iMac could become touchy-feely iOS-friendly would be to lie it down, and make it a slightly-elevated table-top. That would be a disaster waiting to happen: think coffee mugs, kitties, toddlers. . .

Only for stupid, careless people who probably shouldn't have a computer.

Or at least not a Mac.

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RAMd®d
The only way an iMac could become touchy-feely iOS-friendly would be to lie it down, and make it a slightly-elevated table-top. That would be a disaster waiting to happen: think coffee mugs, kitties, toddlers. . .

Only for stupid, careless people who probably shouldn't have a computer.

Or at least not a Mac.

If Macs were restricted to obviously superior beings like you, Apple would have sold maybe three by now.

/Mr Lynn

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DP
When I started teaching the first thing I noticed were the MP's. They take up a lot of room at the work stations and I asked about using iMac's, especially when the crunching power of the Pro's was kind of wasted with what they were being used for. Guess what? They're all being replaced this Summer with 27" i7's at quite a savings.

I need the details on the surplus sale!!!!

~A