New 24 Inch Imac With Core 2 Duo.

The Minis have the C2D in them now too.

And I like how the Educational iMac is now a base configuration.

I believe the minis just have Core Duo, not Core 2 Duo, I saw a pic with the Core 2 Duo on it on some site somewhere, but the specs on apple's site still say Core Duo at the moment, thankfully in both machines instead of just the upper price range one.

Seablade

Yeah, very nice machines. The 24" must be massive. I dunno though, my 23" Apple is nice. But, I think the Mac Minis still have core duo's inside them. When all the machines move over to the new CD2 they are going to be super sweet. 64bit chip with 64bit processor....w00t!!!

On another note, I wonder what else they may release since the Paris Expo is coming up shortly. I would think that they would announce the new iMac's there, but I guess not. So...is there "one more thing..."??? iPods

You can buy a Merom and install it in a Mac Mini if you want. It works just fine

:drool: me want 24" iMac.....

Oh, my bad, I misread the article I saw. The Minis were upgraded in speed slightly and they only offer Core Duo on them now; no more Core Solo option.

call me stupid but the 24"er has the 7300 gt, isnt the x1600 a better gpu?

You can upgrade to the 7600.

7600 i would think wouldnt really cut it either. these are all just "mediocre" cards

The 7300 and 7600 GPUs in the 24" are the desktop GPU versions where the X1600 in the smaller iMacs and MBPs are the mobile versions of that GPU line. Both nVidia GPU options (the 7300 and 7600) should noticeably outperform the X1600 in the other systems.

However, I agree, these GPU options are somewhat pathetic. Apple touts their systems as being the ultimate tool for creative design. Well, if anyone wants to work in 3D on these systems, they're going to be rather disappointed when comparing performance to PC systems with a 7800 or 7900 series GPU.

Apple has done this with the new Mac Pro as well. Their best video option is the nVidia FX4500, but they have it overpriced at a $1600 upgrade. Fair market value for an FX4500 these days is about $1400. The next best choice is the lackluster ATI X1800 for a $350 upgrade and a 3~4 week wait. All other options are GeForce 7300 variants which have no business being installed in a system like the Mac Pro. Why Apple doesn't offer a 7900GT in the 24" iMac and the 7900GTXO 512MB in the Mac Pro is a complete mystery and I think it's costing them some sales. Why no ATI X19xx??? I know if such a card were available for the Mac Pro I would have already ordered one. For now I'll wait until better options present themselves from Apple or from a third-party. I really wish nVidia would start providing unified driver support for OSX so we could just go buy our desired card and download the latest drivers and go our merry way. But I think Apple still has a stranglehold on video driver integration with OSX.

3D has not been Apple's strong suit thus far. Typically that one has gone to PCs and sometimes other *nix based OSes(Dreamworks with Maya on Linux for example) but primarily PCs for 3D. If someone were going to do serious 3D work they would most likely be looking for a workstation card anyways, not one of the standard video cards. That being said I do work in Blender on my powerbook, but I hardly consider myself very serious about it, and for anything intensive I have my workstation running Linux that I run blender in that is much better suited. Seablade

Yeah, it's true that Apple hasn't really pushed very hard in the 3D market... Rather surprising really. But I suppose that's why they do offer the Quadro FX4500 as an option on the Power Mac and now on the Mac Pro... In the PC world that's pretty much the best there is anyay. There's the 3DLabs cards, which can drive a few more polygons, but lack the overall performance of the Quadro cards, not to mention they absolutely suck for texel processing and shaders. ATI has their FireGL series, which have been very lacking the last couple years, especially as far as driver support goes.

Anyway, 3D animation is a good deal of my business and I run a mixed shop of PC and Mac hardware - predominantly PC systems. We were using Lightwave mostly, but have transitioned over to Modo and XSI this past year and only use Lightwave for smaller projects. XSI is Windows/Linux only, but rumors of an OSX version keep flying about. I love Modo on the Mac but it's really just a modelling application, for now... We've been using Macs so much more this past year having switched over to Final Cut Studio for all our editing and DVD authoring needs along with Shake for compositing tasks. It would be nice if there was a stronger 3D software presence on the Mac. I was a PC/Windows guy for years (well actually I originally was an SGI nut), but I like the Mac platform now that OSX Tiger has really matured and Leopard looks to be really nice. We occasionally dabble with Linux, but actually find ourselves avoiding it... I admire Linux for what it is, but the reality of it is there's not enough commercial support and software to fit our needs. OTOH, if I ran a much bigger operation, Linux would become appealing again. Just like Dreamworks does with their modeling and animation systems - Linux and Maya. A powerful combination to be sure and when you have 100 or so systems that do nothing but run Maya 10 to 12 hours each day, it's a perfect solution. But when we're running less than 10 workstations and each needs to handle 3D animation tasks, editing, compositing, photoshop, audio, etc.. all in the same day, it's a whole different deal.

Just my opinion, but I think Apple is missing out on a couple huge markets where they could really excel. And that would be 3D design and gaming. I could see a single-CPU (still dual-core) version of the Mac Pro selling extremely well if targeted at gamers. They could offer it in a variety of anodized aluminum colors and while it would lack the second CPU, it could offer more gaming-oriented graphics cards and perhaps even multi-card solutions. I know that Apple could do well here - Dell's gaming rigs are selling like hotcakes and companies like Alienware (before being acquired by Dell) built a huge business on gaming systems coupled with some of the worst customer service known to mankind.

Does anyone know if the 24" imacs come with the geforce go version of 7600/7300 or the regular version as previous imacs did come with mobility radeon x1600 instead of the desktop version. If that is the case then mobility radeon x1600 and the geforce go 7600 are on par according to 3dmark bechmarks in the pc world.

I was told it is the desktop GPU version by an authorized dealer, but I'm still not 100% sure. I think if it were the mobile version, they whould have to label it the GeForce GO 7xx0. The "GO" in the name designates their mobile GPU lines and I think they have to keep that label there if the mobile chipsets are being used.

Applied you ever tried out Blender for your 3D needs? I have gotten so used to using it I love it, there are definitly still some things I would like to see coming from a more CAD background, snaps, non generic measurement units, etc. But overall I have been fairly impressed with many of the results I have been able to get from it.

No joking about Macs for video editing though, a while back I compared Premiere and FCP, FCP won hands down for me. I havent tried Avid myself, havent had a need to yet as FCP does most of what I need.

But my main area is audio, where Macs do pretty well in. DP, Peak, Logic, ProTools, but in my case Ardour is what I use, with VST support due to being on the Mac OS and not having to emulate an environment for GUIs, and already having the SDK headers installed for compilation it makes a good combination for my straight audio jobs. Audio for video I am kinda in flux, I have ProTools for it, but honestly I believe ProTools to be overrated. So I kinda wander a bit in what I use at time moment. But yea Macs I am surprised dont make a stronger effort in 3D to be honest.

Seablade

Yeah, I'm very familiar with Blender... I haven't used it much in the past year, but I've used it off and on ever since it first came into existence - like 10 years ago, I think? It's a nice little app, but falls short of most of the bigger commercial offerings for overall features, compatibility, etc... For our internal projects, it's all Lightwave, Modo and XSI. Productions for clients often require us to work in Maya or 3DMAX in order to maintain compatibility and deliver the proper data types back to the customer. Anyway, I would recommend Blender to anyone who's interested in 3D and doesn't want to spend the money on a major commercial application or doesn't want/need all the animation tools.


Avid is a strange beast. Very nice, very powerful. And also very crippled on their lower range products so they can keep their top teir offerings at a premium price. Avid solutions are great if you have the budget and the need for their better systems like Adrenaline. If you're trying to stay in the $2K or less category, don't bother. As for video work on the Mac though, it can't be beat. The only reason to not use the Mac with FCS is if you absolutely need an obscure feature of one of the more expensive Avid (or similar) solutions or if you you have a client or producer who wants you to use something different and they're floating the bill. DVD Studio Pro is the true gem in the Final Cut Studio suite. There is *NOTHING* on Windows or Linux that even compares, not even close. Except for apps like Scenarist, which are more expensive than the cost of a new Mac Pro with and a ton of upgrades plus the FCS software. This was the primary reason we switched to the Mac for editing and DVD authoring. We were using Vegas+DVD, Encore and DVD-Lab intermixed on projects before and using Fusion for compositing. Everything is so much more capable and integrated switching over to FCS and Shake. The only application suite on the PC that's as unified as FCS is Adobe's production tools. But I hate Premiere with a passion, that and it's just not anywhere near as powerful or as intuitive as FCP. Encore is probably the best <$5K DVD app on Windows, but it's a klunky dog compared to DVDSP.


We don't do too much with audio... But we use Logic Express and Soundtrack Pro. We formerly used Acid on Windows and in many ways I still prefer Acid compared to Soundtrack Pro, but I don't mind the change since it's not a regular task of ours.

Describes Protools very well as well, since Avid owns Digi, it certainly fits at any rate. The real catch though is that for the money you spend on the higher end Protools stuff, you can get equivalent performance going with a competitor and other gear for the same price, but having it all interact nicely does help it in the higher end. No arguing with that. Its the same reason Protools is still more popular than it should be, those that know what they are doing choose to use it more often for compatibility reasons than actual performance. Those that dont know what they are doing see it mentioned everywhere due to the above reason and assume it is the best. I am curious to see a nice side by side comparison of the software in the 3D realm these days. I definitly dont think Blender is up in as far as features as some of the upper software, but I also dont think it is far off either, and the interface is what I fell in love with(Well and the price. At any rate lately it has gotten quite a few really good features, and I know some of the basic things for CAD work I mentioned I believe are in the pipline, so it should be very interesting to see what becomes of it, and how long it is actually considered a subpar software. Seablade

I have to say, the best interface of all the 3D apps I've ever used has to be Lightwave's.

Clean, simple, straight to the point text buttons. I hate hate HATE Max and Maya and the others and their hundreds of little iconed buttons. Seriously, how can you make an icon for some of the more abstract modelling and layout tools that really makes sense? Sure, you can hover over the icons and see what they are, but it's a lot quicker to actually read what it does and click and go.

I absolutely adore Lightwave. Just a shame it doesn't work well on my PowerBook. I used to use it all the time on my PC but lost interest in 3d after a while; I haven't even touched it in more than 3-4 years, and the last time I did was on the PB and it just wasn't very good

also, the 7300 and 7600 are almost entry level for trying to do any kind of gaming w/ so many pixels. only way it would swing is if u could game on a 1:1 pixel basis, meaning u'd be using a smaller visual area and have the black box effect going on. :/