Apple may be planning a surprise October iMac announcement | Hacker News Reader

Apple may be planning a surprise October iMac announcement

theverge.com

14 pointsent10121 comments

Would this be the first appearance of the M3 chip? I have to believe they’d want to upgrade the Mac Studio at the same time since it’s sold as their performance machine.

It feels strange to launch a new chip as a quiet, surprise event.

Well, my next Mac will be a Studio, and I won't get one, until they have the M3Max going (I don't need an Ultra).

My guess, the release cycle Apple would like is:

  * SEPTEMBER (iPhone)
    - iPhone Pro get new/latest chip every year
    - iPhone non-Pro, get last year Pro chip (netting 2-year cycles for their mobile chips)

  * MARCH (Mac)
      "Pro"
    - MacBook Pro, every 2-years
    - MacStudio, every 4-years (always on the same MacBook Pro year)

      "Consumer"
    - MacBook Air, every 2-years (one year behind the Pro year)
    - iMacs, every 4-years (always on the same MacBook Air year)

Too slow. Every 2 years would be better - tax accountant included.

Based on their prior history, iMac do appear to be updated every 2-years.

https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#iMac

i don't think they can upgrade the studio every four years as they have to replace the chips in the desktop performance machine at the same time as the laptop performance machine (14 & 16 macbook pro)

I waited for an October event and gave up and just ordered an MBP 14” pro. Now I am regretting for not waiting another week. Unfortunately it is ordered by my work it can’t be returned.

I waited for years to replace my 2015 MacBook. In late 2020, I finally ordered a new MacBook by my work. A week later, Apple announced the M1 chip.

But that was not really a surprise. The Apple Silicon Mac DTK was introduced at WWDC June 2020 and Apple announced that the first Apple Silicon Macs would be released at the end of 2020.

I waited for years for Nintendo to enable Bluetooth for headphones in the Switch.

Then I finally pulled the trigger and ordered a Genki Audio.

Literally the same day it arrived, Nintendo released the patch that allowed 1st party bluetooth headphones... :D

I waited for years till they drop the butterfly keyboards, they announced the first 16" MBP with new style keyboard and physical ESC key and I jumped on it, knowing full well about all the Apple Silicon rumours. In the end I don't regret it and plan to have this machine for a few more years - the plan was 5, but now I have an M2 Mac Mini which fills the performance gap nicely and MBP can be light work and consumption machine with the added benefit of natively running Windows.

I really hope they announce new desktop displays soon

I am very much invested in the Apple ecosystem, but I don't really find their standalone displays to be that compelling, and have always used third-party ones (I have been using an LG 49" ultrawide, for the last few years).

The compelling part is perfect 2x scaling at "retina" PPI, I've gone through 34", 49" ultrawides and then M28U (4K 144Hz with built-in KVM) to finally conclude there's no alternative if you want really really nice text and a monitor that "just works".

Literally set up Studio Display yesterday, if they do announce an update with ProMotion I think I'll return it, as nice as it is...

More e-waste for their portfolio! Repairable devices with long term use planned on inanimate and dumb components or gtfo apple. The companies ethics towards waste and repairability/reuseability is non-existent.

Can we not count “as news for nerds”…rumors?

I hope they fix the trickle up nature of the m3. It’s really dumb how the cheapest models get the new processor and the expensive ones get the processor when it’s halfway out the door.

That's because they get the lower performance stuff working first, I assume. The higher-spec stuff probably takes a lot of work and testing.

This is a standard practice in semi-conductors.

E.g. Intel Xeon (enterprise) chips, lag to the consumer chips. AMD Epyc chips, lag to the consumer chips. Etc.

It's easier to build the foundation "up" (more cores), than to scale it down (start big and go small).

might be a standard practice business vs consumer, but I'm not a business buying without emotions to satisfy a goal and don't feel great about owning a $5,000 device with higher nanometer chips than the person who paid $1,000

just something for the folks at apple to think about.

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