Up Close with the New 27-inch iMac's User Serviceable Memory Panel
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 23, 2012 3:17 PM ESTBoth of the 21.5 and 27-inch iMacs use SO-DIMMs, however the 27-inch model does allow for end user upgrades. Remove the power cable and there's a button that will pop out a little panel giving you access to the system's SO-DIMM slots. The 21.5-inch model needs to be taken apart to gain access to the memory slots unfortunately.
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tookitogo - Friday, November 30, 2012 - link
It's not. It's a function of Core Storage, a filesystem-level technology.GenSozo - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
What will Apple invent next?GoodBytes - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Simple,- Slap an ultrabook internal inside without the battery instead of a laptop
- no more dedicated graphic card
- use the metal back a heatsink extension for the processor like some ultrabook, and high end laptops,
- make the power supply external
This will allow them to make the monitor even thinner.
They can also use a laptop monitor instead of a desktop, remove the color processor of the IPS panel (dropping it down to an eIPS panel), and make it even thinner.
They can also, adapt MacOS for ARM processors, like Windows 8, and then they put the iPad internal inside, and make it even thinner.. more thin than the iPad due to the lack of need to have a battery.
There is just so much they can do, and I expect to see that. Thinnest makes people impressed, and it's great marketing. It reminds me of computer monitor and TV that are "super thin", where they are nothing more than a bare-bone panel, and the plugs are put horizontal instead of vertical, so your DVI/HDMI cable sticks out like tumor, and not on defeats the entire purpose (not to mention that the stand still consume the same amount of space), but also make it look ugly. Anyway.
epobirs - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
My first thought was that the new MacBook Air was really big. Like the Osborne suitcase of MacBooks.Makes me wonder if a portfolio sized portable like that would be a viable product.
web2dot0 - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
You are about as misinformed as you can get.To dismiss Apple's innovation is like saying MacBook Air is not the father of Ultrabook. Get used to it.
It's not a laptop. It uses a DESKTOP CPU, and desktop HDD.
It has the makings of a laptop, but it's not. That's why iMac is so interesting.
It's a hybrid laptop/desktop designed to suit the needs of non-power users .. which is like 99% of the population.
Otherwise, why don't we all just buy a souped up Eurocom Laptop and call it a iMac? Please don't simplify the problem because it makes you look misinformed.
MacOS for ARM on a iMac? Makes no sense. ARM cannot compete with Intel in pure CPU performance. You think they have the resources to compete with i7? Plz ....
iPad inside a iMac? I'm not even going to response to this non-sense.
Thank god you don't work for Apple, because the stock price would drop to $0 if you were in charge.
Penti - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - link
It's practically the same power as a Mac Pro no, has extension via Thunderbolt for professional hardware so it's more then a consumer unit. It's actually used as a workstation at most places. Consumers would be happy with the performance in a MacBook Air 11 or Mac Mini with HD4000-graphics.ARM doesn't compete in the high-end at all, but it's not ARM that designs Apples ARM-ISA CPU's any more it's Apples guys in Texas/Cali. They won't compete in the high-end either. A A6 is already a 0.5B transistor chip or there about. Overclocked quad-core ARM "Swift" with Nvidia GTX 675MX makes no sense at all. Even at 3GHz it would be slower. Neither will it support more then 4GB of memory. ARMv8 is a few years of. Performance is a few years behind, but helped a lot by the companion hardware.
Camacho - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - link
Same power as some Mac Pro's. Not the 6-core on up. Ivy at 8 threads and 3.4GHz is fast but it still is not going to beat Westmere 24-threads at 3GHz. It'll score like 15000 on geekbench 64-bit. A W3680 Mac Pro scores 16300. 12-core's score 22000-26000. They will win most battles because most things are still heavily reliant on single threads and multi up to 4 core's. An Ivy iMac will not touch a Mac Pro in track count in Logic Pro or something. Depends on what you do but every year CPU's get better so still marginally impressed. They didn't do much. They removed much and asked you to thank them for it. Still not sure if I care that a desktop is .5" slimmer. They don't move around often. A desktop GPU would have been real nice for that 2560x1440 resolution.Penti - Sunday, October 28, 2012 - link
Actually you need the 6-core single or 2x4 dual cpu Nehalem/Westmere Mac Pros to match it most of the time. It is about as fast as a six-core or eight-core Westmere in many applications. It was so in the Sandy days. If you look at most other applications in benchmarks. An i7 mid-2011 SandyBridge iMac 27-inch beats six-core Westmere's Mac Pro in some pure synthetic benchmarks like speedmark some application benchmarks, though of course the six core Westmere does have more pure CPU performance which shows in benchmarks like Cinebench and geekbench. Which any ways means a 2.2k iMac matches a 3.3k screen-less mac pro fine. Of course it wouldn't match an all speced out workstation for 100k but nobody suggested that any way.Might not be desktop gpus, and never have been but they still hold their own against old HD5870 in Mac Pro. Might be low end workstation and mainstream gaming machines, but it's more than you get from most of the competition. It's not hard to imagine people sitting on a 27" iMac and MacBook Air to cover their computing needs and workflow. They won't miss out on anything from buying the lowest end Mac Pro. But of course now even the MacBook Pro's covers most workstation users.
name99 - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
How hot does the panel run?In the past I've been amazed (and saddened) at how hot the iMac panels run, when it doesn't seem to be necessary. My crappy no-name brand 46" TV gives off no discernible heat, while my iMac (and newer ones I've tried in stores) are obviously throwing a ton of heat out the top. I'd like to think that, FINALLY, with this model Apple makes the transition to low-power LEDs for the diffuser.
tipoo - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Look like there's a new vent hole in the back, plus holes on the bottom, I think this means more direct cooling for a small visual tradeoff. I think it will be no worse than the last ones at least, plus Kepler and Ivb help.