2012 iMac
 

Was looking forward to getting the latest iMac, now having to forgo the purchase, there's no Optical Drive.
How on earth can software be loaded for the a printer say, or to watch a movie without a DVD drive.
What's happening with Apple after the ios 6 appalling maps debacle.

p1fel,

The assumption is that all people are now online. This isn't always the case, of course. Printer drivers are often more up-to-date download from the manufacturer, than the disk in the box. Movies can be downloaded or streamed. Again, this isn't always the case.

If you need a DVD rewriter, you can pick them up for peanuts. I've got one for one of my MacMinis and it cost £25 from Tesco. Works a treat.

Bah... stop your whinging... :E

As AppleMacster says, you should not be installing drivers (printers or otherwise) using stuff that comes in the box. Boxes sit on various warehouse shelves along the distribution channel for months on end..... you are always better off downloading the latest driver from the manufacturer website.

And anyway, you'll find OS X has many printer drivers built in, and Apple can also provide automatic download options for many of the printer drivers that are not built in.

If you like watching DVDs on your computer then just buy a cheap external DVD drive. Its no big deal.

To be honest, all my present computers have DVD/CD drives, and I hardly use them. I do my backups to external hard drives connected via Firewire or USB because DVDs don't have enough capacity, and I download the latest drivers and software updates from the internet.

When I want to watch a DVD, I much prefer watching it on a TV attached to a DVD player.... sitting on the sofa is much more comfortable....

The internet (and local LAN and WLAN networks) are rendering traditional technologies such as DVD/CD redundant. And if you can't manage to transfer a file to someone over the internet, LAN or WLAN, there's always the ubiquitous USB stick which are cheap as chips these days.

You can't compare the maps debacle (which they are working hard to fix) with the evolution of computing.....

Apple were the first company to drop the floppy drive.... many people were making mountains out of molehills back then .... tell me, do you honestly miss your floppy drive now ? :E

Same goes for ADB, serial ports, SCSI, built-in modems and all the other technologies Apple dropped at various points in time.

Now go buy that iMac you wanted in the first place and grab a DVD drive off Amazon.

Thank you AppleMacster, I appreciate your more measured and informative reply. Rather disgusted by mixture's response. Clearly not a friendly Apple Mac user. I've never owned an iMac and would like to, but I'll think I'll use another forum to get advice in future. I thought I posted in Jet Blast by accident :(

You may not like it, but mixture is totally correct about this.
Except for renting DVD videos, the optical drive is well on the way to obselescence.
Installing device drivers from a CD/DVD is pointless. My experience is more with Windows than Macs, but with Vista / Win7 / Win8 virtually all drivers for common hardware are available online through plug n pray and windows update. The device manufacturers often have more advanced drivers available for download, but these will always be newer than those "out of the box"
I haven't used a hardware setup disk in years - except on the odd occasion where the customer doesn't have broadband, or on the really rare occasion when I was reinstalling a piece of geriatric kit.
Virtually all software is available for download, while for backup optical drives aren't big enough (as as we all know, no-one does backups anyway)

Hello MiloMindberbinder, thank you I understand all. I don't doubt he's is correct, but attitude!! when I'm seeking advice?
I've always run a PC with Windows and I'm getting sick to the teeth of problems and security issue's with MS products and it appears like most enlightened computer users, the Apple Mac seems to be a superior product, but at a price in the UK.
My concern is that I also have large CD collecton where I transfer only the tracks I like to my desktop PC and play them with iTunes. Apple Macs are very tidy looking machines and seems that with the new 2012 iMac, I will require an external optical drive to transfer my music and thanks to yours and Apple Macster's reply, I see it may not be an issue. The 2011 iMac does have a neat optical drive to the side of the display though and I was wondering if I should buy the outgoing version over the latest version, that's all.

I think your question ignores the reality of the fact that Apple and Foxconn have really screwed up on production and distribution and left the sales channels very short of stock. There has been disruption by the staff in some of the factories, while there are unconfirmed reports of production issues with the new machines. Production of the old machines was stopped some time ago to allow the stocks to shift before the new ones arrived
Except the new ones haven't shipped from China yet...................Apples stores are screaming for stock in the runup to Christmas - and they're expecting nowt to arrive
If you really want to buy a Mac before Xmas, it will be a case of whatever you can find, will be it. So prices will be high.......if you can hold on till later, then do so.

Only if you get a very good discount - external optical drives are dirt cheap so shouldn't have any bearing on your decision. The new version has much better performance and you will using this performance all the time, a built in optical drive is used very rarely.

Oh you are much mistaken my friend.

Ask anyone round these' parts about my stance on Apple and they'll tell you, I'm a bit of an Apple supporter (for all the right reasons, not just a fanboi). My first wholly owned Mac was the SE/30 and I've always used Macs at home ever since (my current work desktop is also a Mac, as is my work laptop). They are great pieces of kit, well worth the investment.

I guess my post above could look a little harsh and too the point, but the fact is I've been heavily involved in the IT industry for many years now, and I can spot the difference between a manufacturer that's "lost it" or spouting bull .... and a manufacturer with a healthy future that is making reliable, high-quality equipment.

I also found it somewhat depressing that you would forgo your purchase of an excellent piece of equipment that is an Apple iMac just because it had no internal DVD drive.

As far as I'm concerned there's nothing "happening with Apple" as you put it. Yes the IOS Maps issue was an embarrassing hiccup ..... but other than that, I remain confident in their future and their decision about DVD drives in iMacs. :E

Thanks to all and mixture too, all comments appreciated.

I guess like so many Windows users, there comes a time when one sees the light and considers going Apple Mac.

Ever since I first flew with capt pprune in the late 90's he advocated going the Apple Mac route. I baulked due to their high pricing and remained PC since Windows 3.1 until Windows7 (thankfully skipping that dreadful Vista)

My kids bought me an iPad2 and I was very very impressed with it, until I updated to ios6. Ever since the 'Slide To Unlock' has taken up to 8 seconds to become functional when with ios5 it worked almost immediately. Also when I needed the maps most driving in Germany the iPad was a big let down.

So my desire to go iMac was tempered somewhat with niggles and doubts just when I'm about to invest in an iMac. I do use my optical drive admitedly not often, so when I find out the 2012 iMac didn't have an optical drive, I was some what concerned.

Thanks for all in trying to reassure me.

Thanks, regards p1fel

p1fel,

Back in those days it used to be a tougher decision because Apple were using the IBM PowerPC processors.

However now they are using Intel processors, it means Windows virtualisation can be done more than adequately using VMWare or Parallels in conjunction with a Windows license.

This means that unless you are doing heavy gaming, graphics rendering or other significant work that would require you to use a hardware PC, you can always have a copy of Windows readily available at hand to maintain computability with applications that don't run on OS X (or the odd Internet Exploder only website).


N.B. I said above access to a hardware PC, but you can also use Apple Bootcamp to the same effect.... a quick reboot turns your mac into the same thing as a hardware PC, absolutely no difference. However for most people, the virtualisation route is a better one as it means you can run both systems at the same time (and drag files back and forth).

now you just have to find one..........try the Trafford Centre or John Lewis, that the most likely places for you to find one in Manchester

Personally, I've never liked Macs, but after the recent trialling of Win8, given the two I think the MacOS is the least unlikeable. Microsoft are really going to suffer from Win8 - IF Apple can get their distribution channel sorted

One other thing I would say is that RAM is cheap as chips....when buying a new computer (Mac or PC) you should always max out the RAM to the most that's affordable to you.

Although having said that, I see the new iMacs seem to come with 8GB, which is probably adequate for most average users.... however if you're thinking about implementing my virtualisation note above and therefore installing a copy of VMware with Windows, getting more RAM won't hurt as it means you can allocate a realistic chunk of RAM to the Windows virtual machine.

But you can always add RAM easily at a later date, so can always be done later if you see your utilisation could do with more RAM.

I suppose if you have a library full of blu-ray discs then the best thing is to buy an blu-ray external drive for a Mac. But what software would you need to convert to 1080 mp4?

Google is your friend
I assume you have a Mac not a PC?

if yiu just want to play back Blu-ray on a Mac without messing about

note it needs an internet connection during playback
there must be other players that work OK though. How about the Mac version of VLC?

Is something wrong with the iphone app?
just wont let me log in!!

Visited Apple at the Trafford centre.... uhm, spoken down and patronised somewhat by an agent. However something that did come out was, all I've backed up on an external hard drive from my Windows PC will not be recognised by an iMac machine. Flowery dismissive work arounds suggested, but over all, another issue of concern moving form PC to Mac.

Sorry to hear that, but I wouldn't let you put that off. Hopefully an isolated incident (although I don't have any experience of the Trafford Centre outlet, I've seen the shopping centre itself on telly and it looks ghastly.....).

How did you create that backup on your PC ?

Nonsense. Macs can read files created on PCs.... I do it the whole time at work. My work desktop is a Mac, my work laptop is a Mac... except for one, my colleagues, suppliers and customers use PCs. If you've got some files created by proprietary Windows software then you can use VMWare/Parallels on the Mac for that. But otherwise, most stuff can just be read natively on the Mac.

But in the end, its your personal decision... nobody here wants to force you to own a mac. But then Windows 8 has probably brought quite a few changes that will take some getting used to if you've come from a world of Windows XP. So you'll be in a bit of a Catch 22. Personally, I reckon' in the long term you'll buy a mac and look back in ten years time and wonder what all the fuss you were making was about. :E

Hi mixture, re your last paragraph, I'm begining to feel a little more confident with a prospective plunge into the unknown and I'm sure you are quite correct in what you say.

The agent made a comment, saying ".... blame Windows, but an iMac will not see your Hard Disk Drive" leaving me a little dismayed. He said I would have to get a USB memory stick and transfer files a MAC will recognise, such as .jpg, .doc, .pdf, .mp3 individually. I have video's in mpg4, avi, wmv and I'm hoping that an iMac will play them. I have pdf files in a folder and I'm uncertain if iMac will see the folder.

I've either dragged a file and/or folder from the C Drive to, (what my PC shows as) 'New Volume H:' the USB connected Hard drive. or..
I've clicked on 'Send To' - 'New Volume H:' I haven't used any imaging back up software to back up my C drive onto the H drive, if that makes sense?

As for the work arounds you mentioned in earlier post's, to have Windows work on a Mac, I think that's probably too complicated a task for me.

ios6 makes ipad a pile of dung
 

p1fel

I agree about the ipad2 with ios6.
SWMBO has one, and downloaded ios6. Since then, it turns itself on and off with no command from us, and when we do ask it to get out of bed, it behaves like a teenager.

Your 8 seconds is lightning quick compared to ours.

SWMBO thought it was great until ios6. She now thinks it's a pile of ****.
Shame that such a potentially great product has been ruined with ios6.

On the apple support communities, it is made very clear that apple will not and do not support "down" - it is more like up - grading from ios6 to 5.

Ancient Observer, I agree.
I've got an appointment with Genius Bar, hoping they will sort out my iPad2. At least if others are commenting about the effect a so called upgrading from ios5to ios6 has caused, they cannot deny they don't have an issue as they clearly do.

Please let us know if you get anywhere.

The apple community boards suggest that no-one in apple is admitting to a problem.

SWMBO's turns on, the apple in the centre is bright, as though it wants to do something, then the apple goes dull and it won't start. I've waited an hour and it won't start. I then have to press home and start buttons together for 10 secs, and it turns off. Then, turn it on again, and if I'm lucky, it starts. As you say, the actual starting is much, much slower. The slide, once it eventually appears, can take ages to actually want to slide.

As I said before, it turns itself on and off with no commands from us.

I've given up with the apple community boards, as no-one seems to be getting any satisfaction.

SWMBO really liked this ipad in the early days. Now it is as bad as early windoze products.
No wonder apple are firing so many senior bods. This software is much worse than Vista. Our family has 2 Vista laptops. At least they both work. (Having said that, Mrs Gates' XP updates recently killed off one of our machines - at least the ipad is only half dead)

iPad2 replaced with a new one.
Had ios5 on it and it worked superbly just like my original when new.
As it had ios5 it wouldn't sync with my icloud back up.
To get my saved data back, I had to download ios6.........

appears to be back to normal and working now.

You'll have to buy a new ipad4 with the A6 processor! Opening up is instant. Having said that no doubt there will be a new model sometime next year. This surely begs the question of how often and how much do you spend on all this. If you upgrade twice a year you'll be looking at around £1000 a year. No wonder Apple is doing well.

The down side to these upgrades is that any sound boxes or connectors won't work because Apple have decided to introduce a new smaller version.

Seriously ? Couldn't you be bothered to do the slightest bit of research ?

A few milliseconds with Google, or on the Apple website would have yielded the iOS What's New page on the Apple website "www.apple.com/ios/whats-new/"

It quite clearly shows there that iOS 6 is compatible with iPhone variants 3GS, 4, 4S and 5, and both the original iPad and the new iPad 2. It also quite clearly shows the small number of limitations if you run it on older devices (this varies model by model).

These limitations are not set by Apple because they want you to buy a new iPhone, its because the performance of older devices don't enable the newer more demanding applications to run.

Oh right... and your favourite goody-two-shoes phone manufacturer, Nokia, Samsung or whatever wouldn't do that ? Believe me, I've been involved in the IT industry a long time.... if there's a potential technical or commercial advantage to be had, then the associated action will be taken without much regard for the customer base, no matter what the name is on the door.

Remind me, who's the primary developer of Android following the acquisiton of Android Inc ? Oh yeah, that's right, Google. Great track record they have on keeping features on their product portfolio don't they ? :E

Personally, I prefer the new connector to the old in many ways. For a start, physically its more robust, technically its faster and bidirectional.

I've no time for ignorant Apple bashers.

mixture Thank you for your thoughts and ill conceived comment. Far from being an Apple basher I'm very happy with my new ipad and Macbook pro. I was merely commenting on the consistent changes there are in the Apple world. What was the point of changing the connector in the first place? The older one was fine. Perhaps as you have been in the IT industry a long time you could answer the question?

Shopping around Curry's yesterday I couldn't fine a single sound box that is compatible with the new Apple connector.

The old 30-pin connector is a fixed design, with all the pin designations set since the beginning, it therefore has a plethora of pins that are no longer going to be used like Firewire or see declining use like analogue audio out. It would be difficult to reassign them for more modern uses, because of the fallout from damaging some older kit with a 30-pin dock.

Apple clearly wants a connector that allows them to change the pin functions as new things come along. All of the pins on the new connector can be reassigned, with the chip in the plug telling the iDevice what the pins do. So the included USB cable has a chip in it that tells the iDevice which pins have power and which pins are the USB2 connection.

There are already 8-pin adapters for HDMI, VGA, audio. I can see the connector being used for USB3, when the flash memory storage is fast enough to warrant it.

Thanks MacBoero. That's what I call a helpful and useful explanation. Perhaps I and others can understand the logic behind the changes:ok:

crewmeal

Ok, looks like I might have mis-interpreted your post a little, although I reckon your wording did provide a little scope for such an incident to occur.

Nonetheless, I will hold up my hand and apologise.... I've had a couple of long days plus timezone changes.... so might be quicker off the trigger than usual !

I think MacBoero has largely hit it on the head. The reason for Apple's change was, as far as I can tell (because Apple don't pay my wages), purely technical, not commercial or design based.

Many people complain that Apple should have stuck a micro-USB connector on the iPhone instead of the Lightning connector they have. But this would limit technical flexibility, and you would loose some of the physical benefits of the Lighting connector (doesn't matter which way in you stick the Lighting connector, but the micro-USB can only go one way..... I sometimes find myself on a non hands-free phone call, trying to plug the phone into the charger because its running out of battery .... that task is easier to achieve with the Lightining conector than a micro-USB one).

But MacBoero also missed something .....

Micro-USB has a wattage limitation. The Lighting connector can carry a minimum of 12 watts (judging by the 12W AC adapter Apple sell).

This means apple can have consistency across the iPod, iPad, iTouch range, as well as future products with larger power consumption requirements due to bigger screens or whatever. Higher wattage also means faster recharging times.

So when you look at it that way.... all those moaning bloggers, journalists (and PPRuNers, crewmeal and a handful of others excepted) are just closet ignorant Apple bashers who really should have done their homework before posting about "yet more proprietary Apple stuff".

crewmeal.... I offer you a virtual handshake and an offer of peace and harmony ! This is, afterall, PPRuNe and not the Gaza Strip !

Sorry Mixture,

ios6 is not compatible with the original iPad.

ok, the original iPad but only the one with retina Display..... as per the Apple website link posted above.

The us of the word "compatible" in the IT world is interesting.
As I said earlier in this debate and in other threads, SWMBO loved her ipad2.
However, time on the apple community boards and elsewhere on google shows that the ipad 2 is not "compatible" with ios 6. All the foul ups reported are not just cos the Ancient household is technologically backward.

Apple limits software updates. We've an older Touch that no longer "benefits" from software updates. That's fine by me. It does what we bought it for.

I wish they'd done that with ipad2 and ios6.

This is all a bit confusing. I and colleagues have iPad 2's which are upgrade to ios6 with no problems whatsoever. Been using ios6 for at least 4-6 weeks.:confused:

A bit hasty of me to say my iPad with ios6 was ok again, well it appears not. It takes a full 8 seconds for the 'Slide to Unlock' button to work. This never happened with ios5, the slider worked almost immediately then every time, now it doesn't. Regrettably this apparent misfunction takes the shine off a great product.

I'd be interested, has no one else noticed from switching on and after the Apple logo disappears, the 'Slide To Unlock' will not operate for a further 8 seconds?

SWMBO was about to chuck this £500 piece of Apple junk.
Now just 13 months old.
It randomly turns itself on and off, and will only start less than half the time. Currently doing a full restore. Takes blooming ages.
Catch 22 in the Restore is that the ipad is asked by the pc to turn itself off and on a few times. As it will only turn itself on at about 40% of the time, am having to sit here with the little (think of v rude american swearword).

iPad heating
 

I venture in here having read only the first and last pages of the thread. Will read those in between over the next few days but, if any alert Ppruner gives me a heads-up, I'd be appreciative.

The battery life of my iPad 3 (the one without a number) seems very low compared to the first version. Within 20 minutes from 100% it's down to registering low 80s battery left.

And, when charging up from that 80% level the heat emanating from it is enough to fry eggs. Back at 100% charged, it's cool all over.

Ambient temperature when at the low 80s point and plugged in to recharge was 33C. I was sweating but half expected the iPad to explode.

As said above, I'll trawl the thread for answers but if any kind soul can point me to the answer (i.e. why the hell does it heat up so much), much appreciated.

at face value that sounds like a faulty battery

is it still under warranty?

Thanks Milo,

Yes, it's under warranty. Before I take it back I intend to do some timing to see how long the battery really lasts, how long it takes to recharge, and the temperatures it reaches.

be careful

I once had a phone battery short out while the phone was in my trouser pocket, and to say the result was warming would be an understatement.

I managed to get the battery out of the phone before it burst into flames, but if I'd left it any longer I think I would have been faced with a very challenging situation
(I was actually in WH Smiths at the time, in a queue waiting to pay and had to run for the door, arms full of unpaid shopping with store security chasing me as I tried to get the phone apart before it burst into flames....)