Yawn

usual piss-ant rehash & price hike - thanks Skeletor!!!

Nice but....

Not at those prices. I have an i7 desktop of the same spec as the top end box, except I have 12GB memory and Win 7. Mine cost £1100 - iMac with 4GB is £1600. Add £500 for an extra 8GB.

They look nice, but that premium? No way, José!

gona get me one o' them rodents

Shiny new toys for mokalattechino drinking ponces but nice stuff all the same.

Got a mac keyboard nearly a year ago, one of the shiny aluminium ones (no mokalattechino here btw, gentoo and tea you could stand a spoon in) and it's the dogs bollocks, well worth 40 notes.

Will be getting one of the rodent's when they appear on the shelf (won't the linux drivers for that be great fun...), a touch interface sounds like more of the mutt's nad's.

If putting up with the ponces means more tasty kit and a respectable OS getting more of the market then I'm all for it.

not nice at all....

you have an i7 on socket 1366 for sure (with 6x2GB of memory, which runs in triple-channel mode) with a TDP of 140Watts (thus enabling a nice automated Turbo-overclock when running single- or dual threaded apps).

Apple blatantly charges $200 for the "upgrade" from i5 750 to i7 860, which is still s1156 thus runs with dual channel DDR3, while the actual price difference between the 2 cpu's is about $90 if bought by the 1000's.

If you REALLY know why you REALLY need a Mac and it's time for a new one, by all means, take the i5 iMac, it'll calculate everything you want faster than you can imagine.

In ALL other cases, please stay away from that machinery and buy yourselves a PC that fits your needs, for half the price or less.

Here we go! Moaning about the price already!

If you're happy with what you have, be it Windows or Linux, then great! I am very happy for you, you managed to find something you like, not easy in this world today. If I choose to waste bucket loads of Lord Job's offerings, it's my money! I have to get up at 4am, 3 hours of commute and every other week do 7 days of Oracle DBA callout for a 24/7 company! I deserve a little luxury with my home IT!

I don't waste money on expensive clothes, Matalan and occasional Marks'n'Sparks visit for work shirts! By way of contrast $3000 for a pair of fecking GUCCI jeans! WTF! £3500 for a fecking Saville Row suit!!! My last car cost less than that! See, easy to mock when you don't see the point in something!

Best thing I ever bought was my iMac, yes it is overpriced, yes I don't get anything extra for my money, apart from a little peace of mind. I spent years fighting with Linux and WIndows, building and maintaining my own kit. I do it for a living now and when I get home I'm too old and too fecking tired to do it anymore, plus with kids and wife who can all manage to feck up a machine just standing next to it, I need an idiot-proof O/S, even if it cost a little more than Windows, I know it will work when I get home. I know I will not have to spend 2 hours fixing the kid's machines! OSX is idiot-proof! Plain and simple! Suits me fine!

Some of us just want the easy life, even if it costs a little more, it's worth it. So please, leave us old, tired and busy people alone, while we work out how to give Steve some more money for his next set of toys!

@AC

Re "usual piss-ant rehash & price hike - thanks Skeletor!!!"

Er, improvements all round, and very nice ones too. The new mouse will be copied just as soon as the usual suspects work out how to rip it off; the new iMacs look rather fab with those specs - and remember, Mr "Nice but", that the iMac has a rather lovely screen attached to it. OK, not everybody wants an integral screen, but what the hey! It works for me. Better still, it doesn't have the Warner Bros cartoon features of Windows attached to it. But Windows 7 will surely blow the Mac OS out of the water? Yeah, right.

Returning to the first comment by brave Mr AC, taking the piss out of a guy because he's had a liver transplant - even if it is Mr J - is about as low and stupid as one could get. You're what: 12? Maybe 13? Pray you don't get ill, sonny!

I've used MS since it still had a DOS prompt, and left it before ME or XP or whatever it became; through no fault of my own I now have a Vista Pro heap in the house, where it operates as a door-stop in the spare bedroom. It's fast, and made of clicky plastic. It cost two thirds the price of an equivalent Mac, which is worth three times as much as the PC that tried so hard to out-perform it.

Like it or not, Apple sets the benchmarks for every beige, or blue-lit, PC box out there. Your crappy little PC is made out of ticky-tacky to emulate some teensy little aspect of the newest Mac. Sure, you can add all kinds of generic kit to your PC to make it faster, flashier and fartier. But it ain't a Mac. You will never understand this, and you will flame and fume and froth. And all to no avail.

The thing about owning a Windows PC is, you probably deserve it.

There! I dun ranting.

@Anonymous Coward in post 2

Does that £1100 include a 27" IPS screen?

Bitch

Bitch, bitch, bitch.

Always bitching about the price of Apple items.

Don't bitch about the price of a Ferrari, if you can't afford one, accept it and move on.

Apple don't pretend to be cheap or chase the bottom, so why always the bitch, is it you would like a roller at a nissan price?

Observing the huge jump in profits at Apple it seems many will pay a premium, and why not it's called choice.

Make a product people want and you don't have to stack 'em high and ell 'em cheap.

Meanwhile I must consider true cost of ownership and simplicity in getting things done.......... or is that a bit too complex for the moaning about price.

Paris - out of my price range he said bitchily

Intuitive mouse

Wow and here I thought that the pushing of buttons and turning of knobs were actions that are fundamentally intuitive.

I would be a little less skeptical if Apple had a better track record with easy to use mice.

Whinge whinge whinge

Cue 1 million dumb comments about how it's all boring and too expensive and you can build a Linux machine for 10p and Apple is evil blah blah blah.

This is a company that's just posted record profits - in a recession.

People want their stuff, they'll buy it. This is clear.

Apple knows exactly what it's doing and will continue to sell bucketloads of this stuff to very happy punters.

It's almost like they are really good at what they do and you complaining whingers are just bitter armchair warriors who resent their success? No, surely that couldn't be it, could it?

Grow up and get a life you sad prats.

@Nice Butt

Does your PC also have a 27" IPS panel display that can do 2560x1440? That alone would add at least $1000 to the price of any computer (not sure how much monitors like that cost in the UK). I just used NewEgg to "build" a PC with as close to the same specs as the 27" iMac as I could get. The iMac is $1999. The PC is $1943, without an operating system (though the PC has more expansion options). It might be that there is a bigger gap in Mac-PC pricing in the UK, but people in the US complain about a "Mac premium" as well, and it just doesn't exist.

Apple should give people a heads up!!

I bought a brand new Mac Mini at an iStore 2 days ago. Today they released a faster better machine for less than I paid!! Thanks Apple!

@suburbia boy

No, but I like a 24" HD panel (desk space). So I'll add £500 for the difference in panel and you add £500 for the extra memory. I'd say you'd need to upgrade the graphics card to a board with 1GB ram to drive that no doubt great screen (fabulous resolution), but I don't think you can.

Do the math. My £1600 to your over £2100. Sorry, still no deal.

Believe it or not, I like the kit, I just think it's over priced for the components offered.

Blu-fail

Damnit.. I want my blu-ray drive.

But oooo nice, appart from that.

Multi-touch mouse-sized cat

I like the idea of the multi-touch mouse but I wonder how useful it would be for playing shoot-em-up games. My current Mighty-mouse causes problems with some games.

However, the idea of gestures with a multi-touch mouse-sized cat opens new possibilities. One could stroke the mouse-sized cat whilst mulling over a world-domination strategy game and be rewarded by a purring sound. Stroking cats (or dogs) has been proven to lower a person's blood pressure and might be useful to those who have Stressful Jobs as their CEO.

Nice

Why is it that Apple stuff is so damn gorgeous? Super design. Wonderful ergonomics, smooth lines, no unnecessary design detailing. Minimalism is beautiful.

People who whinge -- you know who you are... If you can't appreciate good design, you shouldn't be looking. You're sure to find some lovely plastic bling from Sony and Dell which'll be much more to your taste and budget. Or some super-cheap tat from PC World. And Windows to for such panache.

We don't need you to criticise Apple.

Or maybe you should, as it just confirms all Apple user's innate feelings of superiority as they look down on you grubby band of oiks; why don't you go back to your trailer and watch some more X-Factor?

Erm....

locked in, overpriced, no user control, lack of community development, castrated BSD, mass marketing, snazzy design, the manufacture of exclusivity, the manufacture appeal through deliberately misleading adverts, an army of movie and music industry zealots living on the money fleeced out of small children and parents willing to wax lyrical about how great final cut, photoshop etc is blah blah blah.

FAIL

enough said.

"... just 4.7 pounds"?

"...just"?

I know it's not quite Altair territory but neither seems it quite light, either.

Hm, am sounding a bit like amanfrommars today. Where is the fellow these days, anyway?

If you can't afford one...

...build one! I just finished building a Core i7-based hackintosh with (coincidentally) a 21.5" LCD. The entire kit cost around £450 by carefully selecting components and looking for sales.

Given, it was a pain in the arse to get set up, but it runs VERY fast (nearly as fast as a Mac Pro!) and was quite an interesting challenge, since few people have i7 hackintoshes yet.

@Andrew Johnson 1

Apple are pretty good for this - I belive they have a 30 day satisfaction guarantee. If you take it back, they will probably upgrade you for free.

Moaning and groaning about price

From the dawn of the P.C., the price of any system (assuming that it will do the job you want to do) has to include hardware, software and your investment of time to initially learn and then, maintain it. Many place no value on their own time and for them, hardware and software price is everything. For others who do, then it's a whole different kettle of fish with the price of the hardware and software falling to near zero in relative terms - even if our time were valued at minimum wage. --- I wish I knew how many of the surging Mac sales were due to MS PC users having thrown up their hands in disgust.

Modern interfaces?

As someone who spent the last 24 hours moving 200 gig of data over firewire drives, I would like to know when the will add eSATA to their systems. The chipsets already support the interface so its mostly about adding a connector.

Nice to see

Nvidia has a place to dump the obsolete chipset , goes nicely wit those jmicron SSDs and other junk nobody else wants.

No Blu ray

I watch my movies on my computer. It has a bigger screen than my tv. But no blu-ray drive? I don't do enough number crunching to justify a faster computer, but I would like something to watch Blu-ray movies on. Epic Fail

Apple Mice

Has Apple been investing in battery manufacturers? I am growing suspicious.

Bastards!

I just bought an iMac 4 weeks ago for AUD3,000 and now they release newer, faster, bigger screened versions for $400 less!

My goat has been gotten :(

Look at all the Mac snobs

Stop defending the hideous and extortionate premiums Apple charge. You are being milked for all your idiot cash and Apple are loving it. How else can they post record profits at a time of recession? By putting shiny toys under the noses of rich numpties who don't understand the bits and pieces inside that sleak looking case.

Where does this idea come from that PC owners can't afford Macs? Of course they can afford them, they're just not stupid enough to pay for a bad deal when they see it. Mac owners talk about OSX as if its some sort of second coming. Fact is, the differences between OSX and Windows are very small to the average user who will only be surfing the net or using Microsoft Office. Macs are average PCs in shiny cases with hugely successful marketing.

Re: Whinge whinge whinge

"Cue 1 million dumb comments about how it's all boring and too expensive and you can build a Linux machine for 10p and Apple is evil blah blah blah."

Oi! No one from camp Linux has said that on this thread. Go wag your finger at the Winhoes crowd.

Having said that I love Linux. My Linux laptop cost me £ 3.67 to build it's made from burlap and Hessian, has a non reflective bitumen display and an egg carton motherboard with chips on it from Aunt Bessie. It's powered by two electrodes stuck in a potato.

I also have a CentOS server made from Lego and a hollowed out aubergine, it's was so cheap that I traded it for a stale cheese sandwich. None the less it's still good enough to control my entire Uranium enrichment plant and play Frozen Bubble on as well.

Do I hate Apple? No. I love the look and spec of the new iMacs. There's room enough in my pad for one alongside my Ubuntu machine thank you very much. I don't see the cost as an issue when you are getting something as well conceived and functional. Apple know how to make these things work and be desirable at the same time.

Now if we could just get some Linux drivers to work with that new Magic Mouse, that looks like a very nifty bit of kit.

Apple feels your pain

Andrew Johnson complains: "I bought a brand new Mac Mini at an iStore 2 days ago. Today they released a faster better machine for less than I paid!! Thanks Apple!"

Apple Stores have a 14 day return policy (at least in the USA) and in the past they've been happy to refund your purchase price if you want the new machine OR they've given people a small sum as compensation to folks who complain if they'd rather keep the first machine.

Remarkably decent, really.

Apple should give people a heads up?

Well if you hanged out at the Apple forums, checked Amazon or just about any technology related site they already been talking about rumors of new mac models for weeks now so even thought Apple didn't give a heads up just about everyone else did.

Although the macmini refresh was more iffy since they just released the 2009 mini model I own earlier this year.

Doesn't look like much difference from mine though, other than the cpu speed bump, the option of getting Macos x server and of course they now include Snow Leopard instead of Leopard that came with mine.

Lol

To you sorry jealous PC dumbasse whining on about price.

YOU CAN RUN MAC OS X AND WINDOWS 100% NATIVE AND LEGAL!!!

People are VERY happy to pay a premium for this.

And don't give me this shit that OS X can run on PCs. A tiny minority of wanabe welfare hackers do this, it is not viable mass Market.

Go get a JOB so you can buy a Mac rather than showing your jealous.

@ac

"People want their stuff, they'll buy it. This is clear."

Same could be said for crack dealers!

To the imac loving peeps.

C'mon some macs are nice. But imacs? Seriously... they are shit.

Big screen no doubt.

But seriously...

All the disadvantages of a laptop and desktop combined, price not withstanding.

And the ergonomics?

I know this is inflammatory. But imacs are serious shit. I would not EVER buy one second hand unless it was offered to me at a 'fallen off the back of a hiace' price.

Whining about price? Let's compare other made to measure all in ones.....

Top spec i7 27" iMac for £1759, find an All-in-one Desktop PC with the same spec? er... no.

Closest contender on price a 24" Dell XPS for £1400 with integrated graphics, a smaller screen, only 2 gb of RAM, oh.... and a habit of freezing at start up, reaching 90ºc on it's top surface and running the fans at a deafening speed. But wait.... hey! It's got a Blu-ray player.

Next....Sony Vile® All-in-one, 25.5" screen, Core2 quad 2.26 Ghz, 4 gb Ram, 9600 GT graphics

Good comparative spec but fugly and £2109. Hmm those iMacs are just sooo expensive...

Why Paris? Cos sometimes things that look good can be cheap too... if you look closely :)