The new iMac: updated models after 1.5 years | Hacker News Reader

The new iMac: updated models after 1.5 years

apple.com

6 pointsNiekvdMaas9 comments

I was hoping to get a full side-on view, but couldn't find one. The best I could find was on the spec page http://www.apple.com/imac/specs/

I would have been VERY impressed if they got the thinness they are showing in the photos for the entire device. However it looks like it is just a bevel (is that the correct term) to the edge.

It's a bit of a shame. I'd like to see them put some of the components into the base in order to get a true flat thin computer.

It is indeed just the edge, The Verge show some better pictures here: http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/23/3544372/apples-new-imac-h...

Wow, that looks more bulbous than I was thinking. I find that a very awkward and unattractive shape.

I saw it and thought the exact same thing. For all of the great design work that Apple does it is a real shame. But it occured to me that the shape is made so that the device just looks like a flat plane when viewed at an angle (and what we are looking at is the breakdown of this illusion). To me that they are trying to cheat by creating an illusion of extreme thinness instead of designing something to be really thin.

Its ugly and from a design standpoint the dishonesty of form is a really big turnoff.

In before:

This would never have happened if Steve Jobs were still with us.

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But yeah, I'll wait to see it but the videos made it look ugly. And they dropped optical drives and (probably) easy RAM upgrades to make it work. Now you'll need an external drive and also some big suction cups if you don't want to pay Apple's crazy RAM prices.

Suction cups were never required for third-party memory in the iMac. In fact, adding memory was so easy I've seen a secretary do it by following the basic instructions on Apple's site.

The new 27" is easily upgradeable, the 21" isn't.

How else can you put a desktop-sized hard-drive in something that looks millimeters thin?

The reason they don't put anything in the base is so you can take off the base and put it on a swing-arm.

If they put everything in the base you'd have a Mac Mini with a Thunderbolt display.

we may end up disagreeing here, but that is what is supposed to be impressive about an out of the box design.

I'm typing this on a macbook air, and if I spread all the components out behind a 21" display, I'm thinking it would lay pretty flat. There are 5mm 1tb drives, stick that in the base (it just happens to appear to be about hd size), and you'll probably only add 5mm to the height of the base. I doubt that would be noticeable if designed well.

That's just one idea, but I think somebody will do something cool to make the entire computer that thin.

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