[Biest]

1. Conroe in the iMac would close the gap to the MP. It owuld follow the line of puttng a G5 into a iMac, which for a laptop was "the mother of all thermal challenges"
2. About the GPU in MBP. The machine is 1" thick, a more powerful GPU = more heat. Remember that most laptops with the X1800 and 7800Go are thicker than the MBP
3. If not Conroe in iMac - Apple has to introduce a gap filler, else they lose a possible profitbale market.

[glorfindeal]

I don't expect the conroe in the iMac, at least not yet. The current iMac can take a merom with no modification to the design of the motherboard. It would be a very fast transition to core 2 duo for Apple. To do the conroe, they would have to mofify the iMac for the new processor, the faster bus speed of the conroe and probably redo the thermal design of the iMac to take into account the higher wattage of the conroe.

I'm hoping that with the drop in the prices of the lcds that apple decides to do a 23" iMac. Drop the 17", except for education and just do a 20" and 23".
A 23" iMac might even beable to handle the extra heat of the conroe.

Glor

[Autumn]

Originally Posted by Biest

1. Conroe in the iMac would close the gap to the MP. It owuld follow the line of puttng a G5 into a iMac, which for a laptop was "the mother of all thermal challenges"
2. About the GPU in MBP. The machine is 1" thick, a more powerful GPU = more heat. Remember that most laptops with the X1800 and 7800Go are thicker than the MBP
3. If not Conroe in iMac - Apple has to introduce a gap filler, else they lose a possible profitbale market.

What I meant was the GPU in MBP is fine. For that design, X1600 works well. But iMac has more space and would be great to have more options for GPU.

A 2.4 GHz Conroe 23 or 24 inch HD iMac with more BTO options would be an ideal to close the gap to the MP.

[P]

I definately think that Apple can fit a Conroe into the iMac. Conroe downclocks automatically, so when idle the iMac would be very silent. When working hard, it can be a blowdryer for all I care - add a software switch to cap the maximum speed for the sound sensitive. That's the way my iMac G5, which has the notoriously power-hungery GF 5200U, works, and it's OK - noisy when gaming, silent when browsing. Considering the prices of Merom and Conroe, I think this is the way Apple will go.

You're right that this will require a bigger motherboard redesign than Merom. OTOH, this is the mobo redesign that Apple should have been working on since the announcement last year. A redesign is also easier now that Intel supplies standard chipsets, so Apple's part in the design is smaller.

I have a 17" iMac. I still consider that a very large display - the one at work is just a 14" on a portable, and it's definately workable. 23" is nice as a luxury model (and it's coming, don't worry about that), but don't remove the 17". I'd rather see Apple adding a 15" low-end iMac.

[Autumn]

From MacRumors

Apple Event September 12th? Movie Store? [Updated]


With few details available, the validity of this remains uncertain, but Electronista claims that Apple may be holding a special press event on September 12th, 2006 based on an "official" email sent to Your Mac Life.

The date corresponds to the start of Apple Expo Paris which runs from September 12th to 16th. It has already been announced, however, that there will be no Keynote event for the Apple Expo.

Meanwhile, Businessweek also places an announcement from Apple in the same time frame. According to their sources, Apple plans to start offering Movie downloads through iTunes in mid-September.

Finally, many users are expecting Apple to release Core 2 Duo based laptops in September, but no further hints of this have been revealed.

Update: Mac4Ever is also reporting that Apple will be hosting a September 12th Event which will take place in San Francisco and be streamed to London.

Update 2: MacBidouille confirms that there will be a Keynote in San Francisco that will be relayed to London.
- It was originally reported that Steve jobs will not deliver a Keynote at Apple Expo. He will indeed not be in Paris; but a Keynote will be organized in cupertino and relayed in London at Apple Europe HeadQuarter, where journalists have already been invited. There will are not relay organized at AppleExpo


Maybe Conroe iMac??

[P]

New iMac? Almost certainly. Conroe or Merom? Well, that's what we've spent three pages debating, isn't it?

[kamina]

I understood that the lower end models of Conroe don't downclock as much as the higher end ones (or actually the same, but the effect is smaller due to the lower original clockspeed). Ofcourse there it still settles at around 25w idle, but the big question is how soon it goes up. Will light websurfing allready raise it above 40w, or would that require some heavy operations.

[Autumn]

Well, from the lastest rumors that Merom is going to find its way into the new iMac. Personally I wished for a Conroe iMac but oh well, I just hope Apple would make the new iMac more upgradable....unlikely but I'm hoping.

[Cadaver]

Originally Posted by Autumn

I just hope Apple would make the new iMac more upgradable.... unlikely but I'm hoping.

Isn't the processor in the iMac socketed? I think so, making a Merom upgrade a nearly do-it-yourself endevour. Its already been done several times to the Mac mini using engineering samples of the Merom processor.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Cadaver

Isn't the processor in the iMac socketed? I think so, making a Merom upgrade a nearly do-it-yourself endevour. Its already been done several times to the Mac mini using engineering samples of the Merom processor.

It is socketed. And there have already been reports of people putting Merom into the iMac.

[Simon]

So, it looks like Apple did not want to do the thermal challenge thing all over again and we will be getting Merom iMacs.

AppleInsider | Intel's Merom to power Apple's next-gen iMacs

On a brighter note, rumors are talking about the introduction of the 23" iMac. And since Apple has entirely neglected Conroe up to now, there seems considerable room for a headless expandable Mac.

[kamina]

I'm SOOOOOO happy if this is true. Would have probably gone with a current generation imac and popped a merom in if Apple decided to go with Conroe.

[mabaker]

I think Merom for the iMAc is a pretty good deal and I don't know why everyone is insisting on quoting the Anandtech results where other reviewers have found that the performance is indeed 40% better, from macnn:

Merom benchmarks show up to 40% gains
The first benchmarks of Intel's new Core 2 Duo chips, code-named Merom, show gains of up to 40 percent. ExtremeTech has several interesting numbers in their test between a Yonah-based Core Duo and a Merom-based Core 2 Duo. The test CPUs were the 2.16GHz (T2600) Yonah and the 2.33GHz (T7600) Merom -- a clock speed difference of approximately 9 percent. Some tests revealed gains of up to 40 percent; more notable tests include Lightwave rendering (gains of 25%), 3ds Max (gains of 15%), After Effects (gains of 15%), Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 (gains of 20% [same GPU]), and PC Mark Memory performance tests showing gains of 42 percent despite Yonah and Merom using the same speed memory. The 64-bit enabled Merom began shipping yesterday, although systems with thew chip are not expected until later; industry watchers believe that Apple will ship systems with new chips within the next month. The tests also showed Merom Core 2 Duo chips using roughly the same power per clock GHz, despite earlier reports suggesting the chips would consume "much" less power. [Example chart included]