Some say Apple has lost its magic and the ability to surprise and innovate, but at today’s event they didn’t only please, they had the crowd eating out of the palm of the hands. The crowd ooh’ed and ahh’ed as Apple went about showing off the rumored (and leaked) 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, but it wasn’t until Apple unveiled the latest in the iMac line that they had the crowd on the edge of their seats.
Completely redesigned in a way that required a new way of making the chassis of this new beast, something Apple said is called, friction-stir welding. With this new way of welding, they were able to get a full desktop PC into a monitor/stand that is only 5mm thin at the edge, that’s 2mm thinner than the new iPhone 5. It also reduced 40% of the volume compared to the previous model.
The new iMac promises 75% less reflective glare, is made of aluminum and while being more powerful than its predecessors, it uses 50% less power. But less power consumption, doesn’t mean it’s any less power”ful.” The new iMac will start off with a 2.7GHz Core i5 processor and go all the way up to a 3.2GHz, tack on 8GB of RAM and 1TB of storage in every model, as well as an NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR5 memory and you have yourself quite a beast for only $1299.
Perhaps one of the coolest features in the new iMac is something Apple calls “Fusion Drive.” This new technology allows users to have both a SSD and a typical HDD in one machine, running as one drive. Basically how it works is that new software that Apple has designed controls how the HDD’s are used. Core applications will be stored and run off the SSD for faster response and loading, while files and such remained stored on the HDD. The software running Fusion Drive is so smart that if it sees you running a specific application more often, it will automatically switch it to the SSD for faster performance. That is what I call “innovation.”
The new iMac will come with either 21.5-inch or 27-inch variations, which will ship in November and December respectively.