Apple announces new iMacs with great features for video editors

Videoguys by Gary Bettan: WOW! This is the iMac I've been waiting for! Ivy Bridge i7 processors, NVIDIA Kepler GPU, Fusion drive, Thunderbolt and more! Not sure if it has USB3 ports or not. The ability to upgrade to 32GB of RAM is sweet! This should become the go to desktop for Mac based video editors. The Kepler GPU will ignite the Mercury Playback Engine. . I'm sure the new FCPX will run great on it, and I'll bet Avid Medai Composwer 6.5 will as well. The Fusion drive will have your NLE programs popping open in seconds. With Thunderbolt you can add high speed storage or I/O. The only thing missing is a version with Retina display. For video editing I would love that evel of resolution for editing on a single screen. The bad news is that you'll have to wait until December for the new 27 inch iMacs.

Engadget: Apple unveils next-generation iMac with slimmer design and Ivy Bridge, starting at $1,299

Who said Apple's event was all about the little things? Apple just unveiled its first redesign to its iMac desktop in three years. The new all-in-one makes the widely expected leap to Intel's Ivy Bridge Core i5 and Core i7 processors, but also represents a much leaner and meaner replacement for the 2009-era template -- its edges are just 5mm thick, and it's constructed with "friction stir welding" as well as a gapless, less reflective display that's laminated together with the glass. Screen sizes remain the same and include both a 21.5-inch, 1080p model and a 27-inch, 2,560 x 1,400 model -- sorry, no Retina displays this year. They share 720p-capable front cameras with dual mics as well as NVIDIA's GeForce 600-era graphics, up to 32GB of RAM and a panoply of storage options that peak at 3TB of spinning storage, a 768GB SSD or what Apple calls a that mixes both 128GB of flash with 1TB or 3TB of conventional storage (a hybrid drive, for those of us who've seen it before). There's no optical drive unless you plug in a USB option. read more...

Techcrunch: Apple Re-Introduces The Hybrid Hard Drive: Here Comes The Fusion Drive

If you’ve been anywhere near a PC (not a Mac, mind you) in the past few years you’d have heard of hybrid drives. These drives had a bit of flash memory that held often-accessed files – boot files, OS files, and the like – as well as plenty of old, boring spinning hard drive plates for other files. Why? Well, the flash boot section offered faster boot times while the spinning disk could “cue up” in flash if necessary to read and write.

In many cases, this memory was separate from the spinning drive. However, with the release of Intel’s Smart Response Technology as well as other solutions, these flash sectors became “invisible,” making the move from flash to platters instantaneous and invisible. read more...

The Verge: Apple adds new 'fusion drive' to iMac and Mac mini, combines SSD and standard hard drive

As part of its radically-redesigned new iMac, Apple announced a new hybrid "fusion drive" for both the iMac and Mac mini. This drive combines a 128GB flash storage drive with a 1TB or 3TB HDD, and Apple claims that performance is nearly equal that of a standard hard drive. It manages everything in the background — by default, all of your Mac's apps are stored on the SSD, but as you use the computer it learns what you use the most and moves those apps to the SSD to increase performance. Phil Schiller said that an Aperture photo import using the fusion drive was nearly as fast as that when using a standard flash drive. For anyone frustrated with the speed of their standard hard drive, this will hopefully provide a speedy but spacious alternative. read more...

Apple iMac Performance: So much power. So few millimeters.

The new iMac is amazingly thin, yet it offers faster quad-core performance, up to 60 percent faster graphics, ultrafast Thunderbolt, and the all-new Fusion Drive option. So it’s powerful enough for a design studio, production house, or science lab. And beautiful enough for any room in your home.

The third-generation quad-core Intel Core i5 processor — built on the latest Ivy Bridge architecture — is standard on the new iMac. It’s available at a clock speed of up to 3.2GHz. Or configure iMac with a quad-core Intel Core i7 at up to 3.4GHz. Since OS X is designed to take advantage of each core, iMac captures every bit of performance from the processor. OS X also supports Hyper-Threading in the Core i7, allowing two threads to run simultaneously on each core — giving you eight virtual cores of processing power.

• Advanced NVIDIA GeForce graphics.

iMac uses NVIDIA’s new Kepler graphics architecture to deliver up to 60 percent faster graphics performance than the previous generation.¹ That translates into more frames per second, smoother animation, and better responsiveness when you’re using graphics-intensive apps like 3D games, high-resolution photo and video editors, and more. If you choose the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX on the 27-inch iMac, you get the best graphics performance available in an all-in-one computer.

• Thunderbolt I/O

With Thunderbolt, you get superfast data transfer speeds and huge expansion capabilities. It features two 10-Gbps data channels per port, each up to twice as fast as USB 3 and up to 12 times faster than FireWire 800. And don’t worry about a single drive or peripheral tying up a Thunderbolt port: You can daisy-chain as many as six devices and a display. All iMac models include two Thunderbolt ports for even more expansion possibilities.

• Fusion Drive. High capacity meets high performance.

Available as a configurable option at the Apple Online Store, Fusion Drive is a breakthrough concept that combines the high storage capacity of a traditional hard drive with the high performance of flash storage. With Fusion Drive in your iMac, disk-intensive tasks — from booting up to launching apps to importing photos — are faster and more efficient. That’s because frequently used items are kept at the ready on speedy flash storage, while infrequently accessed items go to the hard drive. The file transfers take place in the background, so you won’t even notice. As the system learns how you work, Fusion Drive makes your Mac experience even better. And you don’t have to do a thing.