Apple's skinny new iMac line: Farewell, optical drives
Adds 'Ivy Bridge' processors; removes built-in CD, DVD spinners
The new 7.85 7.9-inch iPad mini and the upgraded fourth-generation iPad weren't the only bits of kit featured during Apple's "a little more" event this Tuesday in San José, California. Also announced was Apple's new eighth-generation iMac lineup.
Sadly, the event also signaled the end of the presence of optical drives built into Apple's desktop machines.
The four new iMacs – two each of 21.5-inch and 27-inch models – were touted by Apple's marketing chieftan Phil Schiller as having "an amazingly thin edge" that's a mere "5 millimeters thin."
Thin is elegant and all, but such a sylphlike dimension makes the inclusion of a built-in optical drive an impossibility. An SDXC card slot remains, but it's now on the back of the all-in-one, and not on the more easily accessible side, as it was previously.
Schiller made Apple's intentions to eventually eliminate optical drives from their remaining homes in the non-Retina Display MacBook Pros and the all-but-forgotten Mac Pro when, discussing iMac options, he said, "And for those who are still are stuck in the past, yes, you can get an optical drive; we offer a great [$79] SuperDrive that plugs into USB."
Stuck in the past, indeed – he's referring to a past in which you could easily install software from a third-party CD or DVD rather than from Apple's online Mac Store, or watch DVD-based movies rather than ones downloaded from the iTunes Store.
The new eighth-generation iMacs: 21.5-inch and 27-inch
This further increase of Apple's control over your content-access options, however, is offset in part by some of the advances in the new iMacs. For example, the new iMacs are powered by 2.7GHz to 3.2GHz quad-core 3rd Generation (aka "Ivy Bridge") Intel Core i5 processors in the stock models, with 3.1GHz and 3.4GHz quad-core 3rd Generation Core i7s available as options for the top 21.5- and 27-inch models, respectively.
Graphics specs now range from the "Kepler" Nvidia GeForce GT 640M with 512MB of GDDR5 memory at the entry level up to a GeForce GTX 675MX with 1GB of GDDR5 memory at the top end. A GTX 680MX with 2GB of GDDR5 memory is an option on the top-of-the-line model only.
Stock hard-drive storage is 1TB across the line, with the 21.5-inch models' drives spinning at 5400rpm, and the 27-inchers at 7200 rpm. Options include a 1TB Fusion Drive – which The Reg discussed earlier – on the 21.5-inchers, and a 3TB hard drive, 1TB or 3TB Fusion Drive, or 768GB SSD on the 27-inchers.
In addition to the SDXC slot mentioned above, the new iMacs' portage is what you might expect: four USB 3.0, two Thunderbolt, a Mini DisplayPort, and an RJ-45 port for 10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet. Wireless connections include 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0.
To achieve its extreme thinness, the iMac's display is laminated directly to its glass, a process that Schiller said shaved 5mm off its thickness. "That's a huge difference," he enthused, noting that the entire display system is 45 per cent thinner than previously. The IPS displays' resolutions, by the way, are 1920-by-1080 pixels in the 21-inch models and 2560-by-1440 in the 27-inchers.
Apple has also responded to complaints from more than a few iMac owners that their displays were too susceptible to glare by adding what Schiller referred to as a "plasma deposition" process that added a nanometer-thick anti-reflective coating to the new displays.
"You can go home and tell people, 'Today I heard about plasma deposition'," Schiller said with a wee bit of condescension. He neglected to add, however, that you can also go home and tell people, "Today I heard about the end of optical drives in desktop Macs." ®
COMMENTS
Re: "Never worked well anyway!" I do not have a huge quarrel with the trend towards............
..........slimmer and more lightweight machines meaning that some equipment that has been traditionally built in now becomes a peripheral. I in fact installed a blue-ray player in our front-room HTPC and any ripping I need to do is done by means of an external drive via a USB port. I do however have a considerable problem with snide gits representing the company concerned saying things like "And for those who are still are stuck in the past" by way of brushing off questions about that design decision.
Incredible...
These are not computers, they are things. A lamp as an example.
Do you need extreme thinness from a desktop device? at the cost of losing functionality? Big fat no on both. More functionality in the same size box as before please.
Can't even rip a CD on a machine over 2 feet across.... that's some 'design' right there.
And thinness matters in this space WHY?
OK, I can understand why you want your phone to be thin (although past a certain point what does it matter? - width and height become what controls which pocket it can fit in, and you cannot change those values too much without it becoming unusable as it has to span the distance from ear to mouth and be wide enough to display a usable amount of information. I'd rather have thicker with more battery.)
I can understand why you want your tablet to be thin (although the arguments above come into play again).
I can understand why you want you laptop to be thin (although the arguments above come into play).
But WHY do you care how thick your desktop is?
Re: Niche legacy hardware?
Hey Mr Designer, here's my USB drive/Dropbox account/etc.
Re: @ Mr Client with the optical disk
As far as I know the last two generations only had back mounted USB ports. Unless you had a wired keyboard in which case it has 2 on the back of the keyboard.
I can confirm that plugging a USB stick into the back of the iMac has always been a pain. Unless you reach around and just stab it at ports in the back until you find the right one then you have to swivel the whole thing round. So every time you want to plug in or unplug anything you have to readjust the tilt of the screen.
In practice most people buy an external USB hub and use that which is hardly an elegant solution. I really don't see the point of making the iMac smaller if it means you have to have your desk littered with peripherals.
