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Because that's how design works. The end goal of the iPhone, (to take a very good example) was designed to fit in your hand. Everything else had to be crammed i

Because that's how design works. The end goal of the iPhone, (to take a very good example) was designed to fit in your hand. Everything else had to be crammed in to accomplish this. to give a non technical example, the london underground map sacrifices geographic accuracy for simplicity. A very large, and successful compromise. Also, where could they fit another CPU? Each one kicks out almost 180 watts of heat, and must have RAM and power to make it work. It also complicates GPU<=>CPU and GPU<=>GPU communications. You either have to shove all the GPUs on one CPU and waste lots of QPI cycles on moving RAM back and forth, or have one GPU on each CPU and build some very clever glue to allow the two GPUs to share memory. Ergo, compromise.

l33tbro 13y ago
You talk specs I know little about. But I got to say I'm just surprised they actually even released the damn thing. Many seem convinced (me included) that Apple would go the way of Sony, producing pithy consumer electronics and diluting their brand values of being 'forward-thinking'. I thought VFX world was mostly PC/Hackintosh based?
- KaiserPro 13y ago
  Naa, hackintoshes are far to hard to maintain. Its either real Macs, Dell optiplexes (although I've seen a few of those hackitoshed) and HP z series(win/linux) Most of london is HP. Macs are still needed because of quicktime, and final cut (plus a few other niche products) People use the Laptops a lot, because they are actually quite good. Certainly longer lasting than anything from Sony or Toshiba.
  - l33tbro 13y ago
    Hmmm ... Final Cut? I would have thought NLE's in VFX would be mostly Avid now .. after the whole FCPX bungle last year.
    - Samuel_Michon 13y ago
      Many production houses still use Final Cut Pro 7 and will continue to do so for quite some time to come. Most smaller teams and freelancers I know are switching to Final Cut X, now that it has support for FCP7 compatibility and multi-cam editing. Features like audio syncing are a lot better in Final Cut X, and once you get used to the new interface, the workflow is a lot more convenient.
Luc 13y ago
Ergo, you just made it up.
- KaiserPro 13y ago
  http://www.apple.com/uk/imac/design/ http://www.apple.com/uk/imac/design/ I'll cite apple's own website in this: One of the biggest challenges our engineers faced with this new design was how to join the front to the back. The enclosure is so thin, it’s not possible to weld the pieces using traditional methods. Formfactor first, everything else second. Hence why apple makes the products they do. I am of course willing to be convinced otherwise, perhaps you have some sources to backup your claim? edit, syntax error
  - Luc 13y ago
    > Formfactor first, everything else second. Hence why apple makes the products they do. I am sorry, but I just don't know where to start. That's not how industrial designers work, it's a caricature.
  - georgespencer 13y ago
    I think this belief that form factor comes first or somehow dictates component use is a common misconception (doesn't make it a dumb one). Apple believes that design is essentially three things: form factor + hardware inside form factor + software. The three have to play together seamlessly for the overall design to be good. We can debate on how effective they are at this, but that is what Apple believes. Steve Jobs talked about the interplay of hardware and software many times. Steve Jobs also frequently discussed compromises. He believed that consumers paid Apple to make decisions about what was useful and what wasn't. So including Flash in iOS would have meant that users could watch all web video (only 25% at launch!), but they looked at the stability and the battery life and made the decision that, no, Flash was not worth it. So Apple believes in tradeoffs. Sometimes these tradeoffs are at the cost of the aesthetic. For example the black plastic on the back of the original iPhone, or the black plastic used on the entire iPhone 3G when they wanted to increase margins and go for market share. This is design. This is a company making tradeoffs. Sometimes the tradeoffs do come to preserve the form factor. I struggle to type on my iPhone, but I was so quick on my BlackBerry that the software lagged behind me. But Apple made the tradeoff. The antennae on the iPhone 4 is a great example of Apple design. It's accomplishing so much. It means there's no need for black plastic on the device, so the aesthetic is improved. It also provides the structural rigidity for the device, which means they can make it feel super sturdy (love Samsung's aesthetic, but if you hold an iPhone 5 and a Galaxy, there's a real difference to the feel). That sort of outcome isn't the product of a guy in a turtle neck with Auto CAD putting lens flares on everything. That's serious design. Jony Ive talked a lot about the process for making the MacBook Air. They wanted to build a fast, ultraportable computer without making it one of those shitty 9" Taiwanese pieces of crap. So they had to work with Intel to build a 60% smaller Merom. Because they didn't want to compromise the internal hardware by shipping a slow processor. They had to develop Unibody so they could strip out internal fixtures that would add weight and reduce the structural integrity of the product. Commitment to the aesthetic. You've cited (it's cited, btw, not sighted) the iMac. Apple wanted to make it thinner and lighter. At the same time they wanted to ship better components inside it. So they had to keep the space inside the same size or make it bigger, or they weren't going to be able to ship the product. So they spent time developing ways to make it thinner and more aesthetically appealing without compromising the hardware components. In this instance I'd argue that deference to the hardware components came first. Much like the MacBook Air, where so much of the work went into developing a tiny logic board so the device could be full powered. tl;dr Apple makes tradeoffs on behalf of consumers. > Hence why apple makes the products they do A quickie on this: hence why is never correct. Just use hence.

l33tbro 13y ago

You talk specs I know little about. But I got to say I'm just surprised they actually even released the damn thing. Many seem convinced (me included) that Apple would go the way of Sony, producing pithy consumer electronics and diluting their brand values of being 'forward-thinking'. I thought VFX world was mostly PC/Hackintosh based?

KaiserPro 13y ago
Naa, hackintoshes are far to hard to maintain. Its either real Macs, Dell optiplexes (although I've seen a few of those hackitoshed) and HP z series(win/linux) Most of london is HP. Macs are still needed because of quicktime, and final cut (plus a few other niche products) People use the Laptops a lot, because they are actually quite good. Certainly longer lasting than anything from Sony or Toshiba.
- l33tbro 13y ago
  Hmmm ... Final Cut? I would have thought NLE's in VFX would be mostly Avid now .. after the whole FCPX bungle last year.
  - Samuel_Michon 13y ago
    Many production houses still use Final Cut Pro 7 and will continue to do so for quite some time to come. Most smaller teams and freelancers I know are switching to Final Cut X, now that it has support for FCP7 compatibility and multi-cam editing. Features like audio syncing are a lot better in Final Cut X, and once you get used to the new interface, the workflow is a lot more convenient.

Luc 13y ago

Ergo, you just made it up.

KaiserPro 13y ago
http://www.apple.com/uk/imac/design/ http://www.apple.com/uk/imac/design/ I'll cite apple's own website in this: One of the biggest challenges our engineers faced with this new design was how to join the front to the back. The enclosure is so thin, it’s not possible to weld the pieces using traditional methods. Formfactor first, everything else second. Hence why apple makes the products they do. I am of course willing to be convinced otherwise, perhaps you have some sources to backup your claim? edit, syntax error
- Luc 13y ago
  > Formfactor first, everything else second. Hence why apple makes the products they do. I am sorry, but I just don't know where to start. That's not how industrial designers work, it's a caricature.
- georgespencer 13y ago
  I think this belief that form factor comes first or somehow dictates component use is a common misconception (doesn't make it a dumb one). Apple believes that design is essentially three things: form factor + hardware inside form factor + software. The three have to play together seamlessly for the overall design to be good. We can debate on how effective they are at this, but that is what Apple believes. Steve Jobs talked about the interplay of hardware and software many times. Steve Jobs also frequently discussed compromises. He believed that consumers paid Apple to make decisions about what was useful and what wasn't. So including Flash in iOS would have meant that users could watch all web video (only 25% at launch!), but they looked at the stability and the battery life and made the decision that, no, Flash was not worth it. So Apple believes in tradeoffs. Sometimes these tradeoffs are at the cost of the aesthetic. For example the black plastic on the back of the original iPhone, or the black plastic used on the entire iPhone 3G when they wanted to increase margins and go for market share. This is design. This is a company making tradeoffs. Sometimes the tradeoffs do come to preserve the form factor. I struggle to type on my iPhone, but I was so quick on my BlackBerry that the software lagged behind me. But Apple made the tradeoff. The antennae on the iPhone 4 is a great example of Apple design. It's accomplishing so much. It means there's no need for black plastic on the device, so the aesthetic is improved. It also provides the structural rigidity for the device, which means they can make it feel super sturdy (love Samsung's aesthetic, but if you hold an iPhone 5 and a Galaxy, there's a real difference to the feel). That sort of outcome isn't the product of a guy in a turtle neck with Auto CAD putting lens flares on everything. That's serious design. Jony Ive talked a lot about the process for making the MacBook Air. They wanted to build a fast, ultraportable computer without making it one of those shitty 9" Taiwanese pieces of crap. So they had to work with Intel to build a 60% smaller Merom. Because they didn't want to compromise the internal hardware by shipping a slow processor. They had to develop Unibody so they could strip out internal fixtures that would add weight and reduce the structural integrity of the product. Commitment to the aesthetic. You've cited (it's cited, btw, not sighted) the iMac. Apple wanted to make it thinner and lighter. At the same time they wanted to ship better components inside it. So they had to keep the space inside the same size or make it bigger, or they weren't going to be able to ship the product. So they spent time developing ways to make it thinner and more aesthetically appealing without compromising the hardware components. In this instance I'd argue that deference to the hardware components came first. Much like the MacBook Air, where so much of the work went into developing a tiny logic board so the device could be full powered. tl;dr Apple makes tradeoffs on behalf of consumers. > Hence why apple makes the products they do A quickie on this: hence why is never correct. Just use hence.