Apple Unveils Totally Redesigned 27″ And 21.5″ iMac: Thinner, SSD/HD Fusion Drive, Starting At $1299

Romain Dillet

Romain Dillet is a writer at TechCrunch. Originally from France, Romain attended EMLYON Business School, a leading French business school specialized in entrepreneurship. He covers many things from mobile apps with great designs to complex tech achievements. He is a pop culture devotee. He now lives in Lyon and likes to cover New York startups as he used to live there. → Learn More

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012
iMac

Today at Apple’s press event, Apple unveiled updated iMacs much thinner than previous versions. It uses friction stir welding for aluminum. The display is now laminated directly to the glass. The optical drive is gone. The 27-inch display resolution is 2560×1440, and 1920×1080 for the 21.5-inch. Internal components were updated as well, with the introduction of the Fusion Drive.

“The molecules of the aluminum are merged together to make one piece,” Phil Schiller said. But the biggest new feature is the Fusion Drive. A traditional hard drive and a SSD are fused together to form a single volume. Everything is faster thanks to to the SSD.

As an example, Aperture photo transfers are now much quicker.

There is 75 percent less reflection thanks to the laminated display. Displays are individually calibrated to appeal to photo enthusiasts. As in laptops, the iMac now has dual microphone and stereo speakers.

Four USB 3.0 ports and a Thunderbolt port come with the traditional other ports. The default 21.5-inch configuration comes with a 2.7 GHz quad-core i5, 8 GB of RAM, a GeForce GT 640M and a 1 TB hard drive for $1299. The 27-inch model comes with a 2.9 GHz quad-core i5, a GeForce GTX 660M and the same 8 GB of RAM and 1 TB hard drive for $1799.

Order today and it will ship in December.

Here is iMac’s history:


Company: Apple
Website: apple.com
Launch Date: April 1, 1976
IPO: NASDAQ:AAPL

Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. in January 2007. Among the key offerings from Apple’s product line are: Pro line laptops (MacBook Pro) and desktops (Mac Pro), consumer line laptops (MacBook Air) and desktops (iMac), servers (Xserve), Apple TV, the Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server operating systems, the iPod, the...

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