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Uncategorized Tuesday, October 23rd 2012 at 4:57 pm

Apple Unveils Impossibly Thin iMac, Somehow Manages to Fit an Impressive Computer Inside

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The majority of Apple‘s design focus as of late, barring the iPad Mini, seems to have been making everything they can thinner, wider, and with more screen space than ever. None of Apple’s newest announced products represent this maxim more than the newest iteration of the iMac. Coming in either 21.5 or 27 inches, this version tapers down to an almost impossibly thin 5mm edge. To put things in perspective, that’s about the width of five paperclips. That’s not all that it has going for it, either.

How did Apple manage to get it that thin, though? Well, they laminated the glass and display together, eliminating around 2mm of air between the two. They also had their engineers use something called “friction stir welding” to merge aluminum molecules together in order to create a seamless piece. Even being this ridiculously thin, both sizes offer 178 degree viewing angles.

The display also utilizes a new technology called plasma deposition to include an anti-reflective coating that’s just a nanometer thick, but it provides a 75% improvement over previous models. That’s just the icing on the display, though. The best part’s inside.

Apple is including what they’re calling a Fusion Drive within the newest iMac’s innards. Basically, each model will come with a 128GB SSD and a 1TB or 3TB hard drive that work together to provide the best experience possible. At today’s event, Phil Schiller said that applications and the operating system will be stored on the SSD while the more traditional hard drive will handle documents and the like. Flash storage isn’t a new technology, but this is definitely a novel way of utilizing it together with a typical hard drive. The iMac supposedly knows inherently where to handle different operations as they come up.

The 21.5-inch iMac will be on sale in November and starts at the somewhat reasonable price of $1,299. Those waiting for the 27-inch version will have to wait until December and part with at least $1,799.

(via Wired, The Verge, image via John Bradley/Wired)

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  • http://www.facebook.com/paul.pardee Paul Pardee

    What I really like about this computer is that when something breaks, I can just run down to the computer store, pick up a replacement part, pop the system open and drop the part in and I’m good!

    Oh… wait…

  • http://www.facebook.com/paul.pardee Paul Pardee

    I also like how the stuff you really care about (documents and pictures) are stored on a drive that’s more prone to failure while the OS is on the reliable disk. So you can boot up your system and make it to the desktop (or whatever the ‘hip’ version of a desktop is in OS X) and clearly see that you’ve lost everything important to you. But at least you can browse the internet to find a data recovery service!

    Of course, who knows if they’ll be able to access the hard drive…

  • http://www.facebook.com/stellarj Jeremiah Smith

    i diots

  • Harry

    Really boring. Nothing new at all.

  • scott

    a lot of hate… and just to add to it, they cleverly showed the side at an angle and not a 90d profile which would show that it thickens out a lot more as it get to the middle making it almost as wide as the previous generation.

  • Snertly

    Odd no one’s pointed out that at the same time Apple came out with the iPad Mini, they also have a iPad Maxi. Better for those with heavier data flows.

  • XxM1G_420_N0sc0p3Xx

    All of these mislead haters. SSD’s load and boot up way faster than traditional hard drives and they’re the future. Paul you’re exaggerating and spouting BS. I’m don’t even like Apple, I always hated Mac because it was overpriced and I just don’t like the GUI of it, and because they’ve stolen tons of tech and now they’re suing other companies against copyright that don’t deserve it, they’re assholes, but this new Mac actually looks like the first decent Mac since it actually has good hardware and doesn’t come with a 2500 pricetag and you won’t find any super thing windows with this kind of hardware.

  • Idlethoughts

    Sometimes you have to choose between quality and ease of repair, which you choose depend on what you want out of your device and what your using it for.

  • http://www.facebook.com/paul.pardee Paul Pardee

    Yes, SSDs are faster and more reliable than traditional HDDs. Since you clearly value your 100% replaceable OS install more than your documents and images, it makes sense to put it on the more reliable drive instead of the one with moving parts that is guaranteed to fail at some point.

  • http://twitter.com/citizenbfk citizenbfk

    Sounds great! (and good value for the money)…reference some of the other posts I often wonder if people get paid to be hostile idiots…or they don’t have a life?

  • ZagnutZ

    LuLz! iPad Maxi! Precious!

    Maxi iPad? “So user-friendly, a girl could use it…”

  • Anonymous

    You’re right there; my Maxtor M5 Pro equipped gaming rig boots Win 8 faster than a greased weasel down a slip and slide :)

  • schlief101

    The fusion drive is an option and if you use an application like iPhoto that contains your pictures than iphoto will stay on the ssd and say you dont really use iMovie than imovie will be put on the hdd.

  • Sebastian

    Sorry, but no. The way they’ve done it is clearly superior: Putting the OS on the faster drive increases boot speed and stability, while putting personal data on the bigger drive means that you have far more space than you would with an SSD alone. Doing it your way would be an enormous waste of storage and performance.