The new iMac has Firewire 800!!
By S Simmons. Filed in Editing |
Wow, just when you write that Firewire might be dying a slow death, Apple surprises by releasing an iMac with built-in Firewire 800! Today Apple released a slew of updated consumer Macs. Of particular interest is the new 24 inch iMac. It includes a 24-inch widescreen display, 2.16 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo chip, up to 3 GB of ram support, a 250 GB internal hard drive (Serial ATA @ 7200 rpm), and an 8x Dual Layer SuperDrive. To those specs add the fact that in addition to the one Firewire 400 port you get one Firewire 800 port and a graphics card that meets the minimum requirements for Final Cut Studio, then you have a very nice entry level Final Cut Pro edit system. At $1,999, that’s not a bad price.
There are a few upgrade options that can make the machine even better… upgrade to a 2.33 Ghz chip, 3 GB RAM, a 500 GB hard drive and the NVIDIA GeForce 7600 graphics card and the price hits around $3,300. That’s configured in the Apple store though. With the Mac Pro beginning at $2,499 then that would be the way I would go if configuring a high-end iMac but then I would have a monitor and sufficient external hardware to make a great edit system. But I would have to say that if I was wanting a new low cost system or just a station in which to load and log footage and surf the net … then this new 24 inch iMac might very well be the one. I’ll keep an eye to the user forums to see the reports on how they work for editing.
technorati tags:editing, iMac, Final, Cut, Studio, hardware
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Monday, April 16th 2007 at 1:59 am
Do you think that the 24″ imac could be used as an entry level Motion 3 station? If configured with the 256 Mb graphics card and 3 Gb of RAM and perhaps an AJA I/O LA, perhaps it could be used for some professional level motion graphics work as well?
I’ve been considering to put together this kind of set-up. The iMac is practically silent and the SATA hard drive should be fast enough for several streams of non-compressed SD video. What worries me is the lower bus speed and the general lack of expansion options in the future. The new Santa Rosa based iMacs should arrive by October though. There have also been rumours about a quad-core iMac.
Monday, April 16th 2007 at 7:37 pm
My bet would be to get a Mac Pro. Sure they are more expensive and you have to buy a display but if you are doing any real professional work you need a professional machine. If you are just a hobbiest then the 24 inch iMac might be fine… but I’d wait for some reports on it before counting on it to run FCS 2 properly.
Wednesday, April 18th 2007 at 9:24 am
You’re probably right, but it’s worth noting that an iMac 24 is actually a lot more powerful than any MacBookPro. Clearly the macbook pros are pro machines as well and one of their target customer segments is mobile video professionals.
Having a slower machine just means that you have to wait a little longer, but whether that is a problem or not depends on many factors. Time is not of primary importance in all professional projects. I’ve worked on a few projects that span several years in production time. I started out my career with a Cubicomp Picturemaker system in late 80′s.
The suitability of iMac 24 for professional motion graphics design isn’t probably ideal, but it’s certainly faster and better than many systems that were the absolute high-end just a couple of years ago (which are still in active use in many cases, by the way)
Thanks for the reply and cheers