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Apple’s October 22nd event
Next Tuesday Apple will unveil a lot of goodies. It is widely expected that the Cupertino based company will unveil new iPads (probably with some new cover), updated MacBook Pros and a totally overhauled Mac Pro, as well as many software updates to both its consumer and professional software offerings. That should be more than enough to justify a lot of excitement among the Apple faithful.
That said, there are still many unanswered questions. Take me for example, I am looking to replace my first generation unibody iMac and would also want to buy a second monitor that I could use both as a second screen for the new computer and as the main screen for my Mac Book Pro when I need to do some work at home. The issue I have right now is that the 27” iMac does not align with the 27” Apple Thunderbolt Monitor. This is a big mistake that is preventing many iMac owners from buying a second monitor. Apple has to know about this issue, since there are complaints on its forums, and will most probably fix it at some point, hopefully on Tuesday.
Right now there is little chat about an update to the Apple Thunderbolt Display, but there are reasons to hope for an updated model. The first reason is that with the release a new Mac Pro with Thunderbolt 2, Apple needs to either update their Displays to support it or release some kind of Thunderbolt 2 dock. My money is on the first option. The second reason is that the current design of the Thunderbolt Display is reminiscent of the previous generation iMacs and that a slimmer design is long overdue. If Apple updates their monitors and they align nicely with the new iMacs, my problem is solved.
On the other hand, if Apple upgrades the Thunderbolt Display but does not fix the alignment issue, the solution is to buy two monitors and a Mac mini (or a Mac Pro, but that will likely fall out of my budget range). That is more slightly more expensive and I will get less bang for my bucks, unless the Mac mini is also updated on Tuesday (hopefully with Thunderbolt 2, a new Haswell processor and 802.11ac wireless networking, which would be nice. This is a possibility, but we don’t know for sure if this will happen, since no rumors point in that direction (although it would be logical to expect an update to the mini at this point).
Of course, there are other possibilities. Apple could choose to release new (expensive) 4K monitors for the Mac Pro and not update their current products. That would be great for pros, but would leave me wondering if I should invest my money in products that haven’t been updated in quite a while.
The fact is that even though we already know many details of what will be announced on Tuesday, for Mac users there still are many unanswered questions that will keep us excited. We may well be riding a truck in a car age, but what can I say, I still love my truck.
Update: It seems that i was overly optimistic. No new Mac mini and no new monitors. Who knows, there may be new monitors in store when Apple releases the Mac Pro in December. I will wait patiently…