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Core problem of the new Apple…
Sure the new tower looks cool and is more powerful than god… and I hope I can afford it. But I think its very design is its biggest flaw.
Not because of the lack of internal drives. My desk is covered with firewire drives already…
Not because it has 8GB RAM soldered in… they are not that stupid & the animation looks like that at least will be user upgradable.
Not because there will now be even more cable spaghetti to hook anything up… again I already have a full pasta bar on my desk…
Not because of the lack of CD/DVD… although I do have an awful lot of them around… guess I’ll need an external to add to the drives & spaghetti…
Not because it is not rack mountable… although I’m sure someone will figure out something…
My issue is that it is a round peg fitting into and onto a square hole. My desk is a rectangle. I like things that are 90º’s. A old tower fits nicely under it or on it. The large flat side makes a nice place for post-its. The other large flat side is a nice barrier which stops (round) things from rolling off. The top is a great mini-table for a drive or airport or pen & paper… which I still use… and comes in a rectangular notebook… as do all the external drives and just about all the other ‘things’ I’m looking at.
In short my desk is a mess and does not live up to Jony Ive’s expectations of a barren slab of slate or maybe a single plane of teak lumber as a desk with an austere black cylinder, a monitor and a wireless keyboard & mouse as the only things on it.
Thanks,
HarryForum Cowmunity Leader: Indie & Doc
Current Projet: Where They Raced
http://www.wheretheyraced.com
http://www.harrypallenberg.com -
34 Replies
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Look at it this way, you can practice Bernoulli’s principle.
Simply write your notes on ping pong balls and you’re good.
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Given that computer components are rectangular or square, a tube cannot be a good use of space. Big questions will be heat dissipation.
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I suspect given its core cooling, squaring out the sides would have been unused internal space.
I do think the cylinder design seems outwardly impractical but I suspect this is the most space efficient given the internal cooling. -
I really don’t think space efficiency is important nor is a cylinder ever going to be the most efficient shape for square components. This is clearly a style decision. We shall see if it can keep cool anyway.
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I don’t know. I could see how squaring the corners might mess up the airflow. Fans are round, not square. And just think of all the space this is going to free up on your desk. Just don’t be an idiot and stack things on it.
I never thought lack of post-it note space would be a deal breaker.
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[Michael Gissing] “I really don’t think space efficiency is important nor is a cylinder ever going to be the most efficient shape for square components. This is clearly a style decision. We shall see if it can keep cool anyway.”
I could see how it would look cool sitting on top of a desk. I don’t think it’s meant to sit on the floor like the old model.
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I know I live in a different world to most by having everything in a central machine room all nicely rack mounted. This design is clearly a waste of space and vents the heat out the top. I need boxes that are only as big as they need to be and vent heat out the front and back so that the ground level air con and ceiling vents create a laminar air flow to take the heat away from the other computers stacked in the rack.
Harry’s point that a round shape on a rectangular table is inefficient use of available space is also valid. It looks to me that heat will come out the vents at the top (if the see through prototype pictures are any indication). Not where I want it to be. Do I place it on its side with some wedges to stop it rolling and push the heat out the back? How to then mount all the bits that would otherwise be already in the box? It is style not practicality, otherwise computers would be in round boxes already.
https://thecontaminated.com/r2d2-computer-case/
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It is all about looking Cool Gary but I have a machine room so clients don’t get to drool
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[Michael Gissing] “I really don’t think space efficiency is important nor is a cylinder ever going to be the most efficient shape for square components. This is clearly a style decision. We shall see if it can keep cool anyway.”
Look at the photos Apple has posted of the internals. There are three main boards in there — a motherboard and two of what are effectively (very non-standard) graphics cards. They run vertically up the sides, arranged in a triangle relative to each other so they can share a cooling channel. This triangle clearly takes up less space than would a rectangular sold enclosing the motherboard and two GPU boards positioned at a 90 degree angle to it (i.e. sticking out the way standard PCIe cards do from the motherboard).
OK, so that explain why the case isn’t a rectangular solid. But why not have the case follow the prism shape created by the boards themselves? Well, if you follows that shape, that would provide the same clearance over the boards at all points. But some components are taller than others, which means you can have the machine take up less total volume by using a cylinder and placing components that require more clearance closer to the center of each board, and those that require less toward the edge.
In other words, though the cylindrical case looks like it was a purely stylistic choice when you first see it, this actually seems to very much be an example of form following function. It all flows from asking “We’ve got these three boards. How can we arrange them to achieve the most efficient cooling?”
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Sorry Chris but I really think this is function conforming to form which is style based.
If not then why has this form factor never been used by seriously players who make money out of power to space ratios and thermal efficiency?
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