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A comment on Apple revamps the iMac, Mac mini and Mac Pro with no fanfare. Parent comment

Re:Apple revamps the iMac, Mac mini and Mac Pro with no fanfare by rbanffy on Tuesday March 03, 2009 @12:26PM (#501649)
Don't all iMacs support a second display?

Can't you daisy-chain two (or more) external drives in the FW800 port? I do that with FW400 on a PPC iMac. Doesn't OSX support RAID? I am quite sure the server version does.

And, you know, that Dell box will have Windows pre-installed. OSX is so much nicer.

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Re:Apple revamps the iMac, Mac mini and Mac Pro with no fanfare by redrobot5050 on Tuesday March 03, 2009 @12:49PM (#501670)
Most iMacs support "Display Mirroring". Yup. Two monitors, in proximity (basically next to each other) showing the exact same thing. Very useful.

(Note: Apple tends to change this every hardware revision. So basically -- every OTHER revision of the iMac supports dual displays.)

I hadn't considered software FW RAID. I don't know if it would be better/worse than SATA RAID chipsets on modern PC motherboards these days. I have a feeling (being software RAID) that it would be slower than hardware RAID 1. And still, saying its capable to jury rig RAID (i mean, c'mon, for an additional fee, I could just buy a FW RAID array and just attach that.) is different from saying it supports it out of the box, like its price-competitive PC counterparts do.

Yes, OS X is nice. But the premiums on the hardware are looking a little dated considering everyone is slashing margins during a recession. OTOH, my Mac Book Pro is doing so well, I don't feel the need to upgrade, so I can afford to wait and buy used.

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Re:Apple revamps the iMac, Mac mini and Mac Pro with no fanfare by kylec on Tuesday March 03, 2009 @04:02PM (#501983)
AFAIK, the display mirroring limitation hasn't existed since the switch to Intel. MacTracker indicates that every Intel iMac so far has supported extending the display in addition to mirroring.
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Re:Apple revamps the iMac, Mac mini and Mac Pro with no fanfare by redrobot5050 on Wednesday March 04, 2009 @01:08PM (#503174)
That's good to know. Apple is always doing something stupid with one of its product lines. Its current MacBooks dropped firewire. So, a university I know (worked there) won't be ordering new MacBooks because they own so many Firewire only camcorders, and they let the students check out a camcorder and a macbook to make videos for class. Because people are complaining, it will probably come back next incarnation.

And then, after that, it'll probably be taken out.

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Re:Apple revamps the iMac, Mac mini and Mac Pro with no fanfare by kylec on Wednesday March 04, 2009 @04:25PM (#503432)
It's been known to happen. The 15" PowerBook G4 came with a FW800 port, but was removed when the 15" MacBook Pro came out. Bowing to public pressure, Apple restored the port to the 15" when they upgraded to Core 2 Duo.
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Re:Apple revamps the iMac, Mac mini and Mac Pro with no fanfare by rbanffy on Tuesday March 03, 2009 @01:42PM (#501753)
That mirroring thing is really weird. I remember having extended desktops on the G5 iMacs and I assume no meaningful features were droppped (perhaps HD playback on external monitors).

As for software RAID vs. hardware, current processors are usually so much faster than spinning disks that I suppose hardware RAID exists currently only on very high-end systems. As for the low-end systems, they make the processor do a lot of work, so, that more or less evens the playfield.

Macs also have a much longer useful life. I still use a G3 iMac that has been serving me flawlessly since it left the factory.

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