What would need to happen to the consumer tech market in order for Apple to stop selling desktop computers? What would happen in your life if Apple, one day, announced that they'd be phasing out MacOS, iMac, Mac Pro, and MacBooks of all sorts? We were reminded today in Apple's quarterly earnings call that the company is at a point of great change.
Apple's new iMac (2019) isn't the only all-in-one Mac getting an update today, with the iMac Pro adding some ultra-expensive performance upgrades too. The professional desktop wasn't about to let its mainstream iMac sibling get all the changes, with a hefty 256GB RAM update the pinnacle of the madness.
It's been a busy couple of days for Apple. Yesterday, the company introduced a new iPad Air and a new iPad mini, opting to forgo the reveal event it typically hosts for product announcements and revealing them instead through a press release. Today, it's doing the same thing once again, but this time around, it's the iMac that's getting a refresh.
Satechi today announced a new accessory made only for iMacs. Known officially as the Type-C Aluminum Monitor Stand Hub for iMac (which is quite the mouthful), this new product is exactly as described on the tin. With it, you'll be able to lift your iMac up off your desk while gaining easier access to a variety of different ports.
It would appear that the Mac mini from late 2018 is quite a bit more versatile, hardware-wise, than most other Apple products. Today the folks at iFixit revealed they'd been working on a set of RAM stick replacements for those delivered with the most recent Mac mini release. They suggested that they'd seen such opportunity when their community-made RAM replacement guide saw tens of thousands of hits in a very short amount of time.
The folks over at iFixit recently celebrated a small victory for third-party repair industry when exceptions to the DMCA allowed self-repairs for certain classes of devices. That victory, however, might have been short-lived at least as far as Apple’s latest Mac products are concerned. Because while some part of the new Macs and MacBooks can be replaced with no problem or issue, some parts, like the logic board and Touch ID fingerprint sensor, would now require official re-authentication using a diagnostic tool that only Apple provides to its authorized service providers.
Apple’s not so unexpected event on October 30th has sent some Android OEM scrambling to adjust their dates or even cancel. But while that event is believed to center largely around new iPad Pro tablets, it will hardly be the only one. In fact, that event might be a dumping ground for all that fans were expecting last month that never materialized, including new MacBooks and even an upgraded Mac Mini.
This week the analyst Ming-Chi Kuo shared a list of products Apple was likely to launch at the event set for October 30th, 2018. Kuo generally gets this sort of stuff nearly perfect, so we're having a peek. This event might well play host to a two-or-more-tiered approach for the iPad. Much like we saw with the most recent iPad release - a new device made with old parts - this event might bring the iPad mini back into the limelight.
It’s really no secret by now that Apple has some of the most restrictive repair policies in the consumer electronics market. It even sometimes runs afoul of government regulations regarding warranties and third-party repairs. It has some pretty secretive procedures and proprietary tools for the job, which has left many in the third-party repair service industry coming up with their own solutions. That might have just become easier now that someone has leaked Apple’s internal videos showing its own official procedures for opening up iPhones and even MacBooks.
With the iMac Pro potent enough to embarrass the Mac Pro - and Apple's "trash can" computer not likely to see an update until next year - one company has taken the obvious next step and harnessed multiple all-in-ones into a server farm. MacStadium made headlines back in 2013 with its unusual rack-mounted Mac Pro arrays, demonstrating that just because Apple's form-factor is atypical, that doesn't mean it couldn't be chained together for some seriously heavy workloads.
It's hard to imagine sometimes that, two decades ago when Steve Jobs stood on stage as Apple's "interim CEO" and unveiled the original iMac, the Cupertino firm wasn't the behemoth it is today. The candy-colored, translucent all-in-one computer made its debut on May 6, 1998, and proved to be the tipping point for Apple's reinvention.
The Magic Trackpad 2, the Magic Mouse 2, and the Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad now come in Space Gray. That's big news to Apple-loving accessory-buyers and those that cannot possibly use accessories made by anyone else. Especially those that have a Space Gray Apple product they want to match up with. That's a rare breed, but they're out there man, they're out there.