Apple Says: Here’s your xMac!

This morning, nerds blew off work and school to sit around and mash the F5 or Command-R keys to refresh the Apple store and spent hours engaged in baseless speculation on what new products Apple could reveal once The Store comes back online. The new 27″ iMac stands out the most in my mind as something us nerds have been waiting for a while. Sort of.

One thing that computer nerds have been wanting for a long time now is whats known colloquially as an xMac. Its design is simple – a mini or mid-tower case, containing desktop-class components, a few HDD bays, along with the ability to replace the RAM, CPU and PCI-E graphics card. What this has now evolved into is the “hackintosh” community – that is people buying particular pieces of desktop-class computer hardware, specifically selected for its compatibility with OSX, and then tricking OSX to be installed on it through the use of various software tools (no, I’m not going to tell you how to do it, Google it yourself).

I’ll be upfront – the 27″ quad core iMac isn’t anywhere near what I just described. But I’m inclined to think it might be the closest we’ll get.

What Apple has offered is a compromise. Yes, you can’t replace your video card (but the CPU is socketed [1]). But there are a number of enhancements to the iMac that make it more suitable for the enthusiast. To me, these features scream “iMac Pro”.

• Four (4) SO-DIMM slots: While we’re currently limited to 2GB per slot since 4GB sticks are expensive, better DDR3 is going to be coming soon, and as long as the Mac is smart enough to recognize that the RAM wants to be run at a lower voltage (1.35V), we will likely be able to stick cheap 4GB SO-DIMMs into the mac for a total of 16GB of RAM. You can get 16GB (4x4GB) of RAM now, but its expensive.
• High Performance Graphics: The high end iMacs offer a choice between Radeon Mobility 4650 and 4850. To put that in comparison, the 4650 is roughly equivalent to a Nvidia GT240M, or a little bit less than a Nvidia 9500GT desktop card. The 4850 is more powerful by about 25%. While these cards wont be powering the 2560×1440 resolution for games, they should be enough to power games at 1280×720 (720p), the monitor’s native 25% resolution – it scales down half in each dimension for 25% of the pixel count without scaling problems (each pixel on the 1280×720 becomes exactly four pixels at 2560×1440).
• Desktop-class Quad Core CPU: The CPUs might run at 2.66 or 2.8Ghz, but when there is thermal headroom, they can run 133MHz faster with three or four cores active, 533MHz when two cores are active and up to 667Mhz faster with only one core active. This is a top speed of 3.46Ghz (single core) for the faster CPU.
• Video Input: While I don’t know of any small, DisplayPort out BR players, I’m willing to bet someone will make one as a companion to the 27″ iMac and the “Target Video Mode”; though I would still prefer that Apple just include Bluray already. The other useful feature is that I can keep my existing Windows PC, hook it up through DP, and then have the iMac on my desk. The only problem with this situation would be how to handle two sets of keyboards and mice (I don’t know how to do this with Bluetooth unless I always have one device off when the other is on).
• High quality 27″ S-IPS screen: The color reproduction at off angles of the screen is unmatched. TN panels are cheaper and rightfully so, they don’t reproduce color at the highest quality when not looking dead-on at the screen.

There are still a number of things it falls short on however. For $2199 I can get the 27″ iMac with the fast Core i7 processor. Or, for $2499, I can get a 4-core Mac Pro, with more HDD bays, replaceable graphics cards (to an extent that the card supports the Mac in the first place), a little bit less RAM and HD space and a comparable CPU. You can upgrade the RAM in a similar fashion, but even the Mac Pro has a difficult time to get the CPUs upgraded (and its not cheap!) and you cant go from a single CPU configuration to a dual-CPU configuration after purchase.

There are also a few other features that I as an enthusiast would like…

• E-Sata: Because there is only one internal HDD housing, I’d like to be able to hook up E-Sata drives so I can expand my storage at full speed – USB is too slow and while FW800 might be nice, E-Sata is by far the fastest, and with SSDs becoming cheaper a 100MB/s transfer speed will seem slow compared to the 200-250MB/s transfer speeds of E-Sata.
• BluRay: Seriously Apple, its the absolutely perfect movie watching computer. All thats missing is the subwoofer. Whether or not Apple implements “managed copy” is up to you, but I would at least like to be able to watch movies, even if I buy an external BluRay reader/writer.
• MXM Graphics Interface Upgrade Cards: This is a very long shot – practically impossible actually, and goes against Apple’s ethos. But the critical piece that is pushing computer performance forward is the graphics processor, especially mobile GPUs where heat dissipation and fabrication technology are critical. And GPUs are being updated fast and furiously. While I’ll probably be satisfied with a 2.8Ghz Core i7 in 18-24 months (I’m still happy with the Core 2 Quad 9450 I bought in April 2008 – 18 months ago), I wont be satisfied with a Radeon Mobility 4850 fabbed at 55nm. Consider that in 2011 we’ll be at 32 or 28nm in GPUs, and at least 3x the performance if not more. The 5xxx series fabbed at 40nm will be 1.5-2.0x as fast, and the generation after that will likely be fabbed at 32 or 28nm and be 1.5-2x as fast once agin. Being able to replace the GPU would be a huge win for future-proofing the iMac for the enthusiast. The alternate option is to hit up Craigslist and sell the iMac every 12 months for about 75% of the purchase price, and end up spending $400-500 to get a big upgrade for your GPU and a little upgrade for the CPU and rest of the system.

I believe its likely (to say the least) that Apple will never make a new desktop product, specifically the xMac. The market is shrinking – laptops, tablets and phones will rule the roost from here on out. Desktops will be a relic – relegated to business who have no desire to let users take their work home with them on a laptop, and for the hardest-core computer users who are either using the GPU a lot or CPU (games, 3D artwork, etc) and needs the most power they can get their hands on. Even now in the current economic crisis, the number of desktops being purchased by businesses is way down as capital budgets are slashed.

Yes, its more than you want to spend (duh, its a Mac!), but its a big step in the right direction for the enthusiast who was to run on the Mac platform. There is still more to explore (particularly target video mode) once they are released, and how they managed to stuff desktop processors in the housing.

[1] Update 10/22: Per iFixit, the 27″ iMac Core 2 Duo is socketed and the CPU is removable, however there is a VOID WARRANTY sticker on the CPU socket release lever. I would assume the Core i5/i7 CPUs will also be socketed. They also show the removable MXM card with the GPU on it.