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Desktops (Apple) OS X Operating Systems Apple

'Back To the Mac' Media Event On October 20th 349

Kildjean writes "Engadget reports that Apple has issued invitations for a special media event to be held next Wednesday, October 20th at 10:00 AM Pacific Time. The invitation for the event, which is to be held at the company's campus in Cupertino, California, carries the tagline 'Back to the Mac.' The invitation also contains an image of what appears to be a lion peeking out from behind the Apple logo, hinting at discussion of Mac OS X 10.7. 'Lion' has been one of the most commonly-suggested 'big cat' names for the next-generation operating system. Much of Apple's notebook line with the exception of the entry-level MacBook is due for a refresh, and Apple has refreshed at least a portion of its notebook line each October or November for the last several years. Apple's desktop offerings have all been updated relatively recently, suggesting that the company's media event may focus on notebooks if new hardware is included on the agenda."
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'Back To the Mac' Media Event On October 20th

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  • This is news? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by kellyb9 ( 954229 )
    I'll admit, I'm not a huge fan of Apple. But this is the biggest non-news story ever posted to Slashdot. Basically, Apple is holding an event where they *may* introduce a new release of their operating system and their laptop and desktop lineup is due for a refresh which may or may not happen on Oct 20th. There's absolutely no information in there thats news.
    • by Sponge Bath ( 413667 ) on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @02:04PM (#33885028)

      There's absolutely no information in there thats news.

      [Steve Jobs arches fingers and raises eyebrow] "Excellent"

      • I did a job interview with Apple recently, and one question I asked was, "is it true that at Apple you work really hard?" The interviewers both stiffened and said, "where did you hear that?" I was surprised that the question bothered them, so I said, "you know, everywhere.....my friends, slashdot........" They looked at me awkwardly and said, "we have a policy at Apple that we can't comment on rumors."

        Then they relaxed, smiled, and said, "but you can ask us directly if we work hard." So I did. And there w
        • Re:This is news? (Score:4, Informative)

          by pyite ( 140350 ) on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @02:56PM (#33885892)

          one question I asked was, "is it true that at Apple you work really hard?"

          Why in the world would you possibly ask this? All it does is make you sound scared of hard work. Of course they work hard! Anyone at the top of their field always does. It's how you get there.

        • So do they?
    • It's a matter of style. On slashdot, there are MS and Linux alpha releases, beta releases, pre-release candidate releases, candidate release, RTM releases, and final releases. Apple is fairly reticent about releases: Announcement, beta, then final. Since Apple does not announce every little thing it does, it's more newsworthy when they do.
      • Re:This is news? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by CannonballHead ( 842625 ) on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @02:18PM (#33885224)
        Not quite. Apple is: Pre-knowledge rumors, rumors, post-rumor rumors, faked Steve Jobs e-mail rumors, announcement, pre-beta rumors, beta, post-beta rumors, faked Steve Jobs e-mail rumors, final [, faked Steve Jobs e-mail rumors].
        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          None of which Apple does. It's all speculation by third parties because Apple only has few official announcements.
          • Granted, though it doesn't go out of its way to discount very many rumors, either.

            Also, this story isn't mostly about an official announcement. It's rumors about the official announcement...

            • Granted, though it doesn't go out of its way to discount very many rumors, either.

              Because maybe they get tired of telling people: Unless you hear it from us, it's a rumor. Heck even Verizon has said that any announcement about a Verizon iPhone will come from Apple. And this is an official announcement next week with hints about what will come. There will always be speculation regardless. I think 10.7 will be announced. It's about time if history is any judge.

    • Re:This is news (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kwerle ( 39371 )

      I recommend you change your /. settings so you don't see apple news.

      Easy enough.

    • It's the first OS X / Mac event in a while, with strong hints it's about an upcoming version.

      I wonder how the milky way is *maybe* more square-like is a better story here. :p

      Honestly, it was quite a while since Apple had an event like this.

    • the biggest non-news story ever posted to Slashdot

      You must be new here.

  • by Jethro ( 14165 )

    I hope they upgrade the MBP line (which they should, it's within their usual release cycle). My current Macbook (from before they had small MBPs) is getting old and slow and can't really handle having two people logged in and running Firefox at the same time anymore, and I didn't want to get a new one when they were this close to releasing new ones!

    • But didn't they just recently update the Macbook Pro in April? (6 months ago)
      • by Jethro ( 14165 )

        Not the 13.3" version.

      • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        How is the april macbook pro? I have the previous version from mid 2009 and it seems to choke under heavy disk io, which earlier models didn't seem to do so badly..

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )

      I hope so too. I have a 2006 model MBP. I was planning on upgrading it after three years, but the available replacements at the time were only slightly faster. The current ones are a bit better. The i5 / i7 are a step up from the Core 2, and the increase in battery life looks okay. I'd also like an SSD, but getting the 256GB SSD and the decent screen pushes the price up to well over double what I paid for this machine, so I'll probably hang on to it for a bit longer, until flash prices drop.

      Hopefull

      • by Jethro ( 14165 )

        I've been upgrading the harddrive in my MB over the years - there's a 250GB drive in it now. I'm just going to move that over to the new laptop whenever that happens. SDDs seem cool but they push the price up an insane amount.

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by ColdWetDog ( 752185 )

          SDDs seem cool but they push the price up an insane amount.

          They're pricey, but they make the machine fly. I have a 2007 17" (Version 3,1). Always seem to hang on program switching and heavy disk I/O. Changing out to a 7200 RPM drive made a bit of difference, but really didn't change my 'attitude' to the machine (basically I wanted a new one). Sticking in an SSD however, was a night and day experience. I think OS X really hits the hard drive for lots of little things that really could stay in RAM (the

    • Re:MBP (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DCstewieG ( 824956 ) on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @02:28PM (#33885386)

      Step 1: Ditch Firefox. It's become a cow. Unless you absolutely need some extensions you can't get elsewhere, try Chrome or Safari.

      • Re:MBP (Score:4, Informative)

        by RocketRabbit ( 830691 ) on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @04:39PM (#33887390)

        Aside from the *fact* that Firefox is a cow, it has some of the most awful, ugly font rendering in the world.

        Why would you buy a Macintosh, which includes perhaps the best font rendering engine on the planet, and $1000 worth of professional fonts, in order to render them so terribly?

        Safari has one of the fastest Javascript engines on the planet, its HTML5 capabilities blow FF out of the water, and it's just all around nicer.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Safari crashes and hangs on me a *lot* more than Firefox does. Usually it's from Flash, but not always. Past that, Firefox saves the tabs and sites I have open; that makes the crashes in Safari much worse than the few I've had in Firefox. I actually use both daily, though for a somewhat silly reason I won't go into.
  • by klubar ( 591384 ) on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @02:02PM (#33884990) Homepage
    If Apple sticks with the "big cats" theme, then 10.7 will the last of the dot releases of OS X. There are only 7 big cats, unless you count the various leopards separately (but somehow the distinction between the Neofelis nebulosa and the Neofelis diardi may be too fine).
    The big cats are:
    • Tiger, Panthera tigris (Asia)
    • Lion, Panthera leo (Africa, Gir Forest in India; extinct in former range of southeast Europe, Middle East, much of Asia, and North America)
    • Jaguar, Panthera onca (the Americas; from the Southern United States and Mexico to northern Argentina)
    • Cheetah, Acinonyx jubatus (Africa and Iran; extinct in former range of India)
    • Cougar, Puma concolor (North and South America)
    • Leopards
      • Snow Leopard, Uncia uncia (mountains of central and south Asia)
      • Leopard, Panthera pardus (Asia and Africa)
      • Bornean Clouded Leopard, Neofelis diardi (Borneo and Sumatra)
      • Clouded Leopard, Neofelis nebulosa (southeast and south Asia)
    • That would be the wayback machine to OS 9 (which may have been one of the finest OSs ever). I welcome our XI overlords as well.
      • by Y-Crate ( 540566 )

        I would argue Mac OS 8.6 was the best Classic OS release. It pushed the old architecture about as far as it could go, and got it about as stable as you could hope for given the technical limitations of cooperative multitasking and unprotected memory.

        It removed a ton of cruft, swapped out the kernel, added Carbon support and basically pulled a Weekend at Bernie's on what was an embarrassingly out of date codebase.

        I'm still not even sure why Mac OS 9 happened beyond the need for something between 8 and 10 on

    • by God'sDuck ( 837829 ) on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @02:07PM (#33885072)
      • Piano Cat
    • They can start on domestic cats. OS 11.0 "Tortie"
    • by at_slashdot ( 674436 ) on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @02:08PM (#33885096)

      Maybe they will have a Liger release :D

      • by Quiet_Desperation ( 858215 ) on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @03:23PM (#33886324)

        They could use that as a springboard into the "mythical creature" series for OS XI.

        OS 11.0 - Unicorn
        OS 11.1 - Bandersnatch
        OS 11.2 - Jabberwock
        OS 11.3 - Seraphim
        OS 11.4 - Canadian
        OS 11.5 - Basilisk

        "Today Macworld provides coverage as Apple.... RELEASES OS 11.6 - THE KRACKEN!"

        Geez, with mythical creatures they could go for decades.

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by oliverk ( 82803 )

          Missed one...

          OS 11.7 - Duke Nukem Forever

          Let's collectively pray that Kracken is stable over a long, long time :)

    • by samkass ( 174571 ) on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @02:09PM (#33885108) Homepage Journal

      Could include some now-extinct cats like sabre-toothed ones. But you're probably right... MacOS X is now about 10 years old and is probably due for a major rejiggering soon.

      • Could include some now-extinct cats like sabre-toothed ones. But you're probably right... MacOS X is now about 10 years old and is probably due for a major rejiggering soon.

        And Linux is about 19 years old and is probably due for a major rejiggering, too :)

    • by geekoid ( 135745 )

      Snow leopards, and Leopards are separate Genus. Something you should have noticed sine your said seven, but then only listed six categories.

      And big cat isn't an actual classification.

      So they could go with 'Saber tooth' or maybe 'LOL'

    • I think you forgot long cat.

      From everything I learned in school, long cat is long.

    • You forgot to mention LOL cat. Personally I would love to have OS X Ceiling Cat and OS X Basement Cat.
    • by Hylandr ( 813770 )
      In keeping with the status quo within apple I suggest naming the next OS "Robot Unicorn".

      - Dan.
    • Since they are using the names, and except for the Cheetah print and Snow Leopard, not actually showing pictures of the animals, they still have options. They used both Panther and Jaguar.

      10.0 Cheetah
      10.1 Puma
      10.2 Jaguar
      10.3 Panther
      10.4 Tiger
      10.5 Leopard
      10.6 Snow Leopard
      10.7 Lion?

      Other names still available, especially if they include medium-sized cats (which they already did depending on how you classify puma):
      bobcat, mountain lion, lynx, cougar, caracal, ocelot, and a whole slew of region-specific minor s

      • Although Apple could probably pull it off, I'd be wary if I was naming an operating system to call it Lynx, but I agree with your general idea that they aren't limited to the exact divisions a zoologist or geneticist might impose upon the list.

        There's no reason they couldn't change from cats to something else within 10, though. There's also no reason they couldn't bump the version numbers to 11 just to start a new list even if it's not a major rewrite of the system. Microsoft sure wouldn't be able to sue th

    • Actually, I heard they were considering using characters from Toy Story for OS XI.
    • Yeah but that doesn't mean Apple has to stick to big cat families.

      • Ocelot
      • Caracal
      • Serval
      • Bobcat

      Also they could use species like they did for Snow Leopard. After all Snow Leopard was a major change under the hood from Leopard but didn't add many user distinguishable changes. The main thing users may have noticed is that the system files and library sizes shrunk by half or so. There are also the hybrid species like Tiglon and Ligers.

    • I predict that about the time OSX runs out of big cat names, Microsoft will jump on the big cat bandwagon and release Windows Garfield. Millions of dollars will be spent marketing it, Odie will replace Clippy, and after selling hundreds of copies, Microsoft will declare it a success[1]

      [1] in relation to the Kin.

    • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      We've had snow leopard, so perhaps clouded leopard is the next one!

    • Didn't they already use Panther? That's not even on your list, so that means they're willing to use a broader ranged nomeclature than your suggestion.

  • Allow me... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @02:02PM (#33884992)

    Here's what is going happen:

    * Jobs will give the name of the new OS that won't be coming out for at least a year and encourage developers to get involved with it by offering some promotion/kool-aide.

    * There will be updates to the macbook pro and macbook air line. Maybe some small addition to the macbook. (The new macbook air is supposed to be epic. I'm gonna hope for -typical- with an i3 chipset. Just saying...)

    * He will not want to talk about iOS saying this is about Macs with the exception of the new iLife Package which will have some App Made Easy program in it.

    * See above...new version of iLife.

    * There will be some one more things nonsense, everyone will go nuts. Drink more kool-aide, spend all your money...hoozah.

    Yes, I own I mac and an iphone...but I hate the hype. Anyone that really cares read macrumors and daringfireball, right? (Yes, gruber is an asshole.)

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mr_mischief ( 456295 )

      I own a few Macs, but non with Intel CPUs in them. Mine all have 68xxx, G3, or G4 chips. I also own one iPod, but that was a gift from an employer. What I care about is the abilities of the system and the quality of the hardware and software. My older Macs serve the same purpose as my really old PCs: nostalgia.

      All that said, it'd be stupid once you've built a hype-following fan base as a core part of your customer base not to keep them coming back for more hype. The company (while under good leadership) kno

    • Re:Allow me... (Score:5, Informative)

      by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @03:28PM (#33886398)

      Jobs will give the name of the new OS that won't be coming out for at least a year and encourage developers to get involved with it by offering some promotion/kool-aide.

      I would think that you'd want to give developers some time between announcement and release so that developers could use/test the release.

      He will not want to talk about iOS saying this is about Macs with the exception of the new iLife Package which will have some App Made Easy program in it.

      Considering that when Jobs just talked about iOS and their new line of iPods just last month [apple.com], one of the main complaints is that he didn't discuss OS X or the Mac at all, Jobs focusing on OS X this month isn't unreasonable.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by indiechild ( 541156 )

      Just another pretender. "Yeah, look at me, I'm not like those other Apple sheeple, I'm so much cooler than them. I'll even chuck in a few Apple put-downs so that the haters think I'm an alright guy."

  • it is woefully overdue. Ramp it up to 4gb of memory at least, being stuck at 2gb really limits the device. Prices of SSD should allow it to be the only storage offering available.

    Apple still needs something to excite the lower end consumer, the Mac Mini doesn't cut it as it doesn't even come with keyboard and mouse which really does put off some people. I think they would be best served offering it up with keyboard, mouse, and a decent (read:no ips) stand alone display. Give people a complete solution a

    • by geekoid ( 135745 )

      If they did that wit the mine, it wuld cost as much as an iMac. Plus it would undermine the 'value' of all there other products. It would be a bad move for Apple. They are doing fine in the market they want. They don't want to compete with Dell.

    • Forget it. They'll sell you an iPad instead of a Macbook Air. They make so much more money from the apps. They wont let their Mac business eat into their iGizmo business margins.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Yvan256 ( 722131 )

      I'm on my third Mac mini (first one was a G4/1.42GHz, second one was a Core 2 Duo/1.83GHz with intel GMA950, third one is the new mid-2010 model, still Core 2 Duo but running at 2.4GHz and with the much better nVidia 320M).

      I'm still using ViewSonic VP171s that I bought when I was still using a PC, my wired, non-optical Logitech mouse that I bought nearly a decade ago and the same Apple aluminium flat keyboard that I bought at the same time as my second Mac mini.

      Why would Apple need to package a keyboard and

  • by StuartHankins ( 1020819 ) on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @02:21PM (#33885274)
    I recently (within the past few months) upgraded from Tiger to Snow Leopard and it went very well... I knew the next release would be out sometime before mid-2011 but I just couldn't wait any longer. The biggest issue for upgrading was not having updates for software running on Tiger anymore.

    Things I hope they change:
    • Make it easier to install binaries used on other *nix systems. Because the pain of using Fink or DarwinPorts is too much. Both install absolutely ridiculous sized frameworks and trying to compile something when you don't have a binary is a mixture of voodoo and tears, roughly where Linux was 15 years ago. Recently I wanted to install a2ps to use some documentation scripts I created which run on Fedora / RHEL. I gave up, it was too much bother.
    • Make it easier to setup passthru printers (required to print large documents successfully from Parallels). Yes I know CUPS, I maintain all printers company-wide for our RHEL servers. So it was only a little bit of an inconvenience to setup... but the thought of trying to explain how to do that to someone else isn't a happy thought. The raw printers don't even show up in the GUI, the only way you see them is in Terminal or the CUPS web interface.
    • Let me set my Terminal preferences for new windows, then actually use those preferences. Every day at work, I start up at least 2 rdesktop sessions using a separate script for each. Every day it adds another terminal preference to the list. Periodically I go back and delete these extra prefs. Just use my existing prefs like Tiger did, already!
    • This new "downloaded from the internet" warning causes some people problems, so provide a way to turn it off. Previous versions of AFP do not like files with more than 2 or 3 extended attributes (or whatever they're called) and trying to copy or move these files to a network AFP share fails. I setup my downloads folder as a watched folder, and created a folder action script to remove 2 or 3 of the most common extended attributes. Another thing I don't want to try to explain to someone.
    • Change the swapping settings to be less aggressive by default. I upgraded to 4GB to get around most of the swapping but I've found the easiest way to keep the system stable and happy is to just shut it down regularly.
    • Please don't add a lot of extra eye candy or things to slow us down. I'm using a 2007 MacBook Pro and while it's plenty fast for what I need, I don't want to have to upgrade either.
    • Above all, the system works very well so don't screw it up. This is really important.
    • You forgot "Please unbreak Spaces and Exposé", although I suppose that falls under "...don't screw it up" for Snow Leopard.

      Spaces has a nasty "Oops I disabled the keyboard" bug that requires restarting the dock to get the keyboard back. It also has as some UI issues, previously you could hit your "show all desktops" shortcut and then a number for the desktop to go directly to the desktop, that's no longer possible. You also used to be able to hit the spaces shortcut followed by moving your mouse pointe

      • I use Spaces daily / throughout the day, but I haven't run into this problem. Maybe because I invoke it using keyboard + mouse (Apple key + 3-finger click)? If it helps you, I'm using BetterTouchTool 0.626 to accomplish this.
        • Well, from what I've read about this issue it only seems to occur when invoking Spaces using <shortcut key> + <number> combinations, something I use a lot.

      • Spaces has a nasty "Oops I disabled the keyboard" bug that requires restarting the dock to get the keyboard back.

        Interesting, how do you trigger that? I don't think I've run into it.

        It also has as some UI issues, previously you could hit your "show all desktops" shortcut and then a number for the desktop to go directly to the desktop, that's no longer possible. You also used to be able to hit the spaces shortcut followed by moving your mouse pointer over a desktop and then hitting the shortcut again to go to that desktop, that's also been taken away in Snow Leopard for some reason...

        Interesting, I didn't know about any of those shortcuts. The numbers one sounds useful. You CAN however however and switch to a space by press Enter, or switch to a window a space by pressing the space bar.

        My main beef with spaces is:

        1) It doesn't work at all with Java programs
        2) It sucks on multi-monitor

        As for Exposé, the new layout seems, IMHO, to fly in the face of what we know about efficient user interface design, previously windows were placed relative to their position on the screen and sizes were also relative (large windows being large and small ones being small). Now we've got some weird layout where windows fly all over the place for no reason which makes it a lot harder to find windows quickly.

        Agree. I don't like the new exposé as much either. I also don't like how minimized windows show up at the bottom of exposé--ver

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      Make it easier to install binaries used on other *nix systems. Because the pain of using Fink or DarwinPorts is too much. Both install absolutely ridiculous sized frameworks and trying to compile something when you don't have a binary is a mixture of voodoo and tears, roughly where Linux was 15 years ago. Recently I wanted to install a2ps to use some documentation scripts I created which run on Fedora / RHEL. I gave up, it was too much bother.

      I always wanted a very nice package management system for OSX. Kind of like Synaptic on top of apt. I agree that Fink and DarwinPorts are woefully lacking and I'd like to see an all-encompasing package management system for OSX. I'm just afraid if Apple has anything to do with it then it will turn out like their iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch app store.

      • If they implement a decent package management tool, they're probably going to want to prevent the user from unknowingly doing something stupid and wrecking the system. Right now it's all too easy to use Fink or MacPorts or DarwinPorts and install one little thing that causes it not to boot.

        So to that end I think there may be a need to "approve" apps as compatible. You don't want someone replacing CUPS for instance with a newer version, because then some system printing apps / code no longer works correctly
        • by bkmoore ( 1910118 ) on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @03:35PM (#33886530)
          NeXTSTEP's Installer.app had a working package uninstaller. To uninstall a package, you just clicked on its receipt and selected uninstall. For some reason this was dropped in Mac OS X 1.0 and was never reinstated. I have used all versions of NeXT/OS X from NeXTSTEP 2.3 to OS X 10.6 over the past 20 years, and it seems Apple commonly removes random features from time to time only to possibly reinstate them at some future release. It's like the quote from Bud Tribble, "Well, just because he (Steve) tells you something is awful or great, it doesn't necessarily mean he'll feel that way tomorrow." Maybe Steve has a bad day and decides to throw out some feature he feels is bloated. Who knows... I think lately Steve has decided Color and Title Bars are a distraction, as evidenced by iTunes 10. It reminds me of NeXTSTEP 2.3's interface guidelines... but I digress. (ok I'm a fan boy and I admit it.) I agree both DarwinPorts and Fink suck, I refuse to use either one. For me, the app either has a .app bundle for it, or I run it under Linux.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      Your other points ring true, but the first one fails. Fink is astoundingly easy to use - it has basically the same interface as most any other Unix package management system. You pick the thing you want to install, it asks you if it can install the dependencies, and it's off and away.

      This is hardly hard work. Even if you don't have a binary in a repo, it simply takes a bit longer because of the compilation step.

      Fink and the Ports system both work great, and they coexist without problems (now). Look at t

  • by digitaldc ( 879047 ) * on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @02:25PM (#33885352)
    ...but everyone knows they're Lion.
  • Why, with the exception of removing direct internal MacRumors links, this "story" looks to be identical wording to the MacRumors [macrumors.com] story on this.

  • Dear Apple.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @02:37PM (#33885564) Homepage

    I' love to "get back to the mac" but I cant. You wont make a mac pro that is affordable in any way so I had to abandon the Mac platform and go back to the PC platform like many MANY businesses have.

    I would love to stick with Final Cut and the mac platform... but I am able to buy 2X the machine for 1/2 the money AND have enough left over to buy new video camera gear. for the price of ONE Mac Pro quad core that can do AVCHD editing smoothly.

    I loved editing on the mac platform, but they made the mac pro platform way too expensive.

  • New desktop? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LoudMusic ( 199347 ) on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @02:40PM (#33885620)

    The discussion seems to be very OS oriented, but I'd like to see some hardware changes. There have been plenty of "refreshes" but nothing that is a truly NEW Apple computer. How about a desktop computer between the mini and the pro? Something better than the absolute base model and the absolute top end, that I can use on my KVM switch. The current pricing is $700 and $2500. Bit of a price gap for headless desktops there.

    • Re:New desktop? (Score:4, Informative)

      by mikael_j ( 106439 ) on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @02:51PM (#33885794)

      How about a desktop computer between the mini and the pro?

      That would be the iMac. Yes, I know it's got a monitor attached to it but that's what they're offering, and you can use it as just a monitor if you end up buying a faster machine and want to reuse the iMac's monitor.

      Apple as a company seems to have little interest in a "pure" "hobbyist" machine, they sell systems...

      • Mac Mini - HTPC/SFF Desktop/Small server offering, plenty of punch of for its form factor, not much in terms of upgradeability.
      • iMac - Midrange to fairly powerful desktop, really only the RAM that can be easily upgraded (except for the usual external addons), hard drive can be replaced with a little effort (not that hard if you take a few minutes to read up on it beforehand).
      • Mac Pro - High end/upgradable system, this one is for those who need workstation performance/reliability and/or the ability to add and remove hardware.
      • XServe - The Mac server, that's about it. A pretty good offering if you're looking to buy servers for an almost all-Mac/*nix environment though.
      • The iMac isn't particularly more powerful than a Mac mini, if at all. It just has the display attached, which is fine, but doesn't make it better.

        And my wants are nothing of a "pure" "hobbyist". I would like a better Mac than a Mac mini to attach to my workstation KVM switch for work but I can't justify the $2500 entry fee for a Mac Pro. I want a Mac Semi-Pro.

        I get the distinct impression that Apple doesn't care about desktop users at all anymore. Their focus is almost entirely mobile computing in a variety

  • Only reason they are having this event is to announce and demo FaceTime for Mac.

    *ducks*

  • I'm voting for "ThunderCat".

    Or perhaps "Tabby".

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