New Mac stuff.

[andrewc]

No new 27" iMac , so it looks like I made the right call in getting a 24", rather than hanging on.   


A more powerful Mac Mini , the Studio with separate 27" display.  A bit spendy though, at £1499 for the basic display.  https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/buy-mac/mac-studio-display


https://www.macrumors.com/2022/03/08/apple-announces-powerful-mac-studio-with-companion-studio-display/

[ian]

Bah, I was holding out for a new 27 inch (or bigger) iMac.

[Beardy]

I was hoping on a new 27” iMac as well, but now I suspect I’ll be looking closer at the Mac Studio and a 3rd party monitor, possibly one of those curly ones or maybe a duel monitor setup. Not as spouse friendly as an iMac mind.

[ian]

The Mac Studio is overpowered for my needs, I could get away with the Mac Mini, but ultimately this 2015 iMac will soldier on for another year or two, though I might have to pay someone to extract that teeny fly wedged in the corner of the display. I like the tidy footprint of the iMac.

(I did finally throw in the towel and ask the mothership to replace my Windows PC with a Macbook. Honestly, Windows is a disorderly pile of poo where every task takes twice as long and I've given up trying to get on with it and my experiment in using two OS.)

[chrisbainbridge]

I noticed my son had a MacBook and was slightly surprised. He told me they were a cutting edge fintech group worth north of $10billion what else would they use?
He plans to fully retire at 45!!

[toontra]

I think I'm going to bite at the entry level Studio.  I'm still using a 2008 Mac Pro (with flashed firmware to make it think it's a 2012  ) for music & video production.  It does its job but won't take the latest software and is quite noisy, and probably rather power hungry.

Pisses me off that Apple think $1 = £1 though.

[Beardy]

Although I agree with the £1<> $1 and also get miffed about it, when you consider the sterling price includes 20% VAT it makes it slightly less of a gouge.

[Mr Larrington]

Ent just the Mega-Global Fruit Corporation of Cupertino, USAnia who work to a 1:1 exchange rate – many (most?) USAnian TechCos do and have been for about forty years.

[Kim]

Yeah, it's normal for computery stuff to be priced in dollarpounds, shirley?

[ian]

I suspect when you add everything up, for tech, dollars are pounds. US prices are quoted without sales tax so unless you can teleport to Delaware, it's probably cheaper to buy one in the UK.

[Jaded]

I was hoping on a new 27” iMac as well, but now I suspect I’ll be looking closer at the Mac Studio and a 3rd party monitor, possibly one of those curly ones or maybe a duel monitor setup. Not as spouse friendly as an iMac mind.

I love the thought of two monitors fighting for your attention. 

[Beardy]

I thought I might have got that wrong, but decided that it was right.  I can’t blame my dyslexia here either because because I spelt it correctly.

[StuAff]

Tempted by a Studio- wait times for anything other than a Max with 32GB RAM currently showing at 10-12 weeks. I'd want the Ultra (don't need, want…and I'd want to keep it a good few years anyway), but I'll hang fire until the Pro finally launches, see what that looks & prices like. Not in a rush to upgrade from the cheesegrater.

27" iMac might be back at some point. Pundits seem convinced it's dead, but I remember all the times pundits got it wrong…

[Beardy]

I suspect they’ll see how the Studio and the new monitors fare in the market place first. If they think they’ll start to lose market share I’m sure a new 27” iMac will appear.

[ian]

I suspect they're doing that – the top-end is low market size and the big iMac was a reasonable cost proposition (I think mine was around £1700 back in the day). A Studio plus 27-inch display is £3.5k minimum, so I can guess they'll not be roaring off the shelves, and it leaves a big gap.

[Mr Larrington]

El Reg reports that the chaps at iFixit have, not without a certain amount of difficulty, done a teardown on a shiny new Mac Studio.  FruitCo may have heard of the notion of upgradability but appear to have no lorry truck with it, so good luck if a memory module goes “phut” once the thing's out of warranty

[jdsnape]

El Reg reports that the chaps at iFixit have, not without a certain amount of difficulty, done a teardown on a shiny new Mac Studio.  FruitCo may have heard of the notion of upgradability but appear to have no lorry truck with it, so good luck if a memory module goes “phut” once the thing's out of warranty

I agree that apple devices aren't as repairable as they could/should be - SSDs in macbooks should definitely be replaceable for example. However, it turns out that there are actually good engineering reasons for having the memory soldered down (a twitter thread, sorry, but the key Asahi linux guy explains it here: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1506235075448696838 )

[toontra]

Looks like you'll have to bite the bullet and up the RAM to what you think may be needed in the future when ordering.  Hopefully SSD modules will be available from 3rd party sources at some point and a software/firmware update to allow self-installation (buying from Apple will no doubt be a rip-off).

[DaveJ]

The memory is part of the M1 chip, so there aren't any memory modules to go phut!  And there's no prospect of upgrading memory one you've bought the machine.

Dave

[PaulF]

I’ve been playing with the new “Universal Control” feature which allows you to move from one machine to another by moving the cursor to the side of the screen. Once you move off the first machine and onto the second the mouse/keyboard control the other machine

[Kim]

I’ve been playing with the new “Universal Control” feature which allows you to move from one machine to another by moving the cursor to the side of the screen. Once you move off the first machine and onto the second the mouse/keyboard control the other machine

PSA for people who aren't just running macs: There's a open source fork of Synergy (cross-platform software to do this that's been around for ages, but lost the plot and went commercial) called barrier:  https://github.com/debauchee/barrier

[ian]

Finally playing with a shiny new iPad Air (which mostly seems to be an iPad Pro minus a few features to maintain product segmentation). Blimey, it's fast (admittedly my last iPad was about twelve years old) – I suspect the M1 chip is a bit overkill, but I'm not complaining. The screen is wonderful. Even has a proper file manager (I'd never had a reason to notice it on my iPhone). Bless.