Having had the iPhone 4S since launch we’ve found Siri pretty useful for a number of tasks, although it hasn’t been used to its full potential on our phone, and could be seen as a novelty by some of our readers. While Siri is far from perfect you cannot doubt the innovation, and we’ve seen a number of forums and comments requesting Siri on Mac desktops and laptops.

Would you like to control your Mac from an iPhone with Siri? You might want a dedicated app for Siri on Mac OS X and while this could be a plan Apple has down the road, it looks like their focus would be more geared towards control via an iPhone for now. It seems Apple want to keep the voice processing exclusive to smartphones, this could be for marketing reasons, although they are certainly looking at bringing Siri to other devices, which is seen via the patent application seen in the image below.

More details can be seen in this PDF file, which shows all the patent pages titled “Voice Control System“. If you get a broken page, this can happen when not cached, you’d need to search for the details of the patent. Just enter the patent number “20120078635” and this should give you extensive details of the U.S. patent publication (dated March 29, 2012). Have a look at the patent via the link above and the images below and let us know what you think – would you prefer a dedicated Siri solution for Mac OS X?

We’ve seen a lot of ideas thrown around since Apple released Siri and also some real solutions, which show how some people are innovating with Siri. You might want to read some details about Siri Proxy, via this page, and this shows how different handlers can be used to control different devices in your home with Siri. In one case we saw a thermostat controlled with Siri, and this let you change the temperature by saying, “set the thermostat” and then state a number in degrees.

What innovation would you like to see that takes advantage of Siri? This is just the start and we can see many other services being developed for Siri, which unleash its true potential. By looking at the patent images on this page you can clearly see that Apple has a plan to involve more than just new MacBook Pro’s and iMac’s, and could see many 3rd party electronics getting Siri integration.

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Our new iMac choices can follow with regrets – not every Apple computer user understands or cares for SSD, although when we first laid hands on a MacBook Air with SSD a few years ago it became a dramatic change to the computer experience. Boot up and shut down times changed overnight, and everything seemed lighting fast in comparison to a standard hard drive found on our past laptops.

Then came the standardization of SSD in MacBook Air products, which took away the option to choose and showed all MacBook Air buyers why SSD made such a difference. We added the new iMac to our office last year, although with this decision came a mistake when we had the option for a Solid State Drive, we didn’t get one on the iMac because we wanted it right away and hated the idea of waiting longer for shipping.

Apple is likely to follow in the footsteps of other products – you only need to look at the new iPad and LTE/4G inclusion, which is almost certainly heading to the new iPhone 5 this year thanks to this feature being included in the latest iPad. Apple standardized SSD on MacBook Air’s and we’d like to see this happen with the new iMac in 2012, which would show all iMac users how SSD makes such a big difference and with prices cheaper than a few years ago it’s time for Apple to make this change for an instant on desktop.

Some people feel that an optical drive could be left out on the new iMac, and while we understand why this would be it seems strange for Apple to make that jump just yet, especially on a desktop considering they’re pretty cheap and could save on needing an external in the future. Would you want an optical drive in your new iMac?

What changes should Apple make on the new iMac in 2012, and would you welcome SSD as standard? The display upgrades are always nice for the eye, and with the Retina display on the new iPad so would many users welcome this as standard on an iMac, although the price would need to be right.

The introduction to last years iMac and looking towards the new 2012 iMac – We saw the Apple Store go down on May 3 last year, and as normal the new iMac specs were compared to the old model. We also saw people play with the new Thunderbolt port and make the iMac into an external display, although this made a pretty expensive display, and software updates quickly arrived a month after launch to fix problems with startup and graphics.

Towards the end of last year we started to hear rumors about new features on the 2012 iMac, which included hints of a TV function before Apple’s iTV could see a release date, and more recently we gave readers a detailed look at our expectations for a new iMac last month.

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Before we start delving into specs we thought we would talk a little about software. Apple recently pushed out a developer preview of Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion which boasts over 100 new features (when compared to Snow Leopard) and blurs the lines which currently separate Apple’s desktop operating system from iOS. Mountain Lion is said to hit the Mac App Store sometime this summer, therefore we could well see the 2012 iMac arrive with this OS version pre-installed – software innovation is all well and good, but to convince people to part with their hard-earned cash Apple will have to offer some pretty impressive hardware specs.

So let’s have a look at what’s currently offered. Currently there are four base iMac models which fall into two main categories, 21.5-inch and 27-inch. We expect the same form-factors this time around, perhaps with slightly thinner dimensions, but beneath the hood there should be plenty of mouthwatering changes in specifications.

As you probably already know there’s plenty of upgrade options in regards to internal hardware, so we expect this next time around, but one thing that we can pretty much guarantee is that the Sandy Bridge Intel Core processor offerings will be replaced with Intel’s new Ivy Bridge microarchitecture. These chips boast plenty of improvements, mainly thanks to the innovative new 3-D Tri-Gate transistors which are utilized, and when you compare Sandy Bridge side-by-side with Ivy Bridge the latter should deliver unprecedented performance improvements and low power consumption – you can see more details in regards to the new Ivy Bridge platform over at Wikipedia. There are talks of Ivy Bridge delays, if this is the case we expect Apple to perhaps delay the iMac refresh as releasing new Sandy Bridge-based iMac models would be questionable to say the least.

Currently there are plenty of RAM configurations available (4, 8 or 16GB), but no-matter what you choose you’ll get 1333MHz DDR3 memory. This time around we know that the Ivy Bridge platform which the 2012 iMac should be based upon supports 1600Mhz DDR3 memory, therefore we expect Apple to utilize this faster memory – we doubt that Apple will improve on the 16GB memory cap currently offered, in fact we’re not even sure if OS X would truly benefit from more than this.

We’re not going to talk about storage options too much as quite frankly there’s nothing which will really blow your socks off. The issues in the far east have ensured that hard disk drive and solid-state drive prices haven’t fallen a great deal, in fact they might have even gone up, so we won’t be too surprised if Apple decides to stick with hard disk options ranging from 500GB to 2TB, a 256GB SSD option and some options where you get a SSD as your primary drive and a HDD as a storage drive. I don’t know about anyone else but I’d quite welcome a hybrid drive option as well, wouldn’t you?

Perhaps the hardest thing to speculate about is graphics and display changes. Firstly as previously mentioned we think that Apple will stick with the 21.5 and 27-inch options, but some people are also wishing for a new 30-inch variant. Perhaps this time round Apple will bump up the smaller display’s resolution from 1920 x 1080 to 2560 x 1440. As for the 27-inch model we don’t really see much of a need for a higher resolution, but if there is a jump we expect the new iMac to keep the 16:9 aspect ratio, perhaps 3840 x 2160 is a possibility, but we doubt it.

Your guess is as good as ours in regards to specific GPU options, but we think that last year’s Radeon HD 6750M, 6770M and 6970M will be replaced by HD 77xx, HD 78xx and HD 79xx options. You can see a list of new GPUs which Radeon plan to release soon here, as you can see some of these will utilize the PCIe 3.0 socket and offer more advanced power consumption whilst deliver richer-than-ever visuals.

That just about sums up what people really care about in regards to specifications, in terms of ports, technology support, functionality and design we don’t think there will be too many surprises, but with that said Apple certainly like to shock the world – for now we’d love to hear your opinions on the next iMac.

What are your spec expectations for the 2012 iMac? Is there a need for a 30-inch iMac? Are higher display resolutions necessary? Let us know below!

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The Z1 is not yet readily available, however it is expect to ship in April and the price tag depends heavily on specifications. We do know that prices will start at $1899 and this makes it more expensive than the cheapest 27-inch iMac ($1,699), but in terms of technical specifications you can’t really compare the Z1 to the iMac.

Before we dwell into the specs we will give you a glimpse at the way that users gain access to components, below we have embedded an image which shows just how intricate the design is, if you want a closer look scroll down a little and watch the video we’ve embedded.

As the Z1 falls into the professional workstation category there are some beefy components under the hood, if you have a tight budget you can opt for a dual-core Intel Core i3 chip paired with Intel HD graphics 20000, or if your budget stretches a little further could select the quad-core Intel Xeon E3-124 which combines with Intel HD Graphics P3000 – finally if money’s not a worry there’s the Intel Xeon E3-1280 processor, this boasts four 3.5 GHz cores and an 8MB cache, needless to say this will pack a punch. No-matter what you choose there will be a motherboard with the Intel C206 chipset.

As the Z1 is easily upgradeable you’ll probably contemplate adding some RAM at some point, well there’s four slots which accept 8GB each, meaning it supports up to 32GB of DDR3. People who will be interested in this workstation probably have photo editing, video editing or computer-aided-design in mind, therefore the choice of graphics card is very important, obviously the ease-of-access means you can swap-out add a different graphics card if you please, but here’s the options which HP currently offer: If you don’t want mediocre Intel HD graphics you can opt for the NVIDIA Q500M GPU, this is the cheapest option, alternatively there are two mid-end options (NVIDIA Q1000M and NVIDIA Q3000M), the top-end offering is for high-end 3D tasks, this the the NVIDIA Q4000M GPU.

You can see a full spec sheet here which goes into details in regards to dimensions, operating systems, storage, ports, optical drives, connectivity and much more by checking out this PDF file – one thing worth knowing is that the display outputs at a maximum resolution of 2560 x 1440. For more details in regards to features and design head over to HP.com.

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According to a report on AppleInsider the company will take its first steps towards launching a fully fledged TV set with an iMac that will have built in TV functionality. Analyst Brian Blair from Wedge Partners said to investors that Apple will be releasing their take on a TV set in the future.

But he feels the company will test the waters with having TV functionality inside its iMac desktop PC. He thinks Apple will release such a device during the first half of 2012 with the TV software and iCloud features built into the iMac.

He added “Apple could effectively start with what they already have on the manufacturing line and slowly push their offering from 27 inches and scale up from there to 32 inches and then move on to the 42, 50 and 55 inch market.”

This is the same analyst that correctly predicted that Apple would be releasing only one new iPhone, with a similar design to last year’s model. This came as many others were suggesting that Apple were going to release two new models of the iPhone.

We have already reported to you that some are claiming a new Apple HDTV could be launched in time for next Christmas, and that they will come in a variety of screen sizes. Would you like to see TV functionality added to the iMac?

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It wall started in late March when Kaufman’s MacBook was stolen from his apartment, luckily he had installed an app called Hidden, this starts at just $15 per year and locates the device and collects photos and screenshots which led to the thief getting caught.

Kaufman took his evidence to his local police department and then set up a tumblog which featured images of the suspected thief and the activities (see here), he tweeted to his thousands of followers on Twitter and soon his tumblog had received thousands of tweets and likes, this played a major part in Muthanna Aldebashi getting caught.

Without Hidden and Twitter it is fair to say that Aldebashi would never have been caught, if you are worried about your iMac or MacBook being stolen you should check out Hidden via this link, it is great for home and business users and we think that pricing is pretty fair. For one computer you pay $15 a year, for up to 5 computers in one home you pay $45 a year, for up to 20 business computers you pay $125 a year and for up to 100 business computers you pay $395 a year.

Has this story resulted in you using Hidden?

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Apple’s ultrafast Thunderbolt I/O is a must have for those that love speed, even if you won’t need it right away, it’s great to have. Now we have this tech on the desktop, we find a problem, where is the supported hardware?

Thunderbolt is so new that finding hard drives and other accessories to support it is a task in itself, they are coming and we’re sure Thunderbolt devices will be in abundance by the end of 2011, but for now you just get to look at the port with empty hands.

Our 4TB hard drive will be one of the first devices to be upgraded to support Thunderbolt, when it’s available. The thought of moving large movie files at 12 times the speed of FireWire 800 is exciting, in fact any moving of large files should be done like this in a world where waiting is not fun.

Now enter the rumors that iPhone 5 will get a Thunderbolt port, to an owner of a new iMac and who has bought the iPhone for every generation, this is a must. Apple are selling the Thunderbolt technology big time, so putting this on as many of their devices as possible (new 2011 MacBook Air included) should be an obvious plan.

Moving Apple movies from the iPhone 5 via “two 10-Gbps data channels per port”, well the thought makes the mouth water. Add some extra support from the iOS 5 release; we’re left saying WHEN?

Do you own the new iMac with Thunderbolt? Will you buy an iPhone 5 with a Thunderbolt port?

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Mark from AppleBitch is reporting that the next version of Apple’s iMac could be available around the end of April, or at the beginning of May. This follows a Tweet by Cnets Brian Tong in which he claims that reliable sources have revealed to him that new iMacs are “en route by ocean to U.S”. There are no major changes planned but it would include Sandy Bridge processors, and a Thunderbolt port.

The iMac last had an update about nine months ago so some changes are due at anytime. We have now seen the MacBook Pro range recently updated, so we now wait to see what happens with the iMac range. We recently asked our readers what they would like to have in the next iMacs, and we had some asking for more screen sizes and of course the Sandy Bridge processors.

There has also been talk of a bigger push for SSD storage in the iMac; while available as an option it is quite expensive. Stock levels of the current range of iMacs are also thought to be running low further fueling the idea a refresh is close.

Are you waiting for any update before buying a new iMac?

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This is basically a stand, but what makes this so different to the others on the market is how it can rotate and come with speakers already built on – improvement of sound for the Apple iPad is a must in my eyes. The price for this stand is $99, but it is a small price to pay rather than getting a basic one that Apple offers.

Engadget has spent a little hands-on time with the SMK-Link PadDock 10, and the first thing that they wanted to try is how it can rotate your iPad by 360 degrees, you can even tilt the tablet as well, although Nilay Patel did point out that it is a little stiff.

After reading the review it is clear that the stand is not going to be the perfect tool to spend hours on, but using it in the kitchen to follow recipes or to make some music with the numbers of apps available – it certainly is a great social tool.

We cannot tell you if it is worth the $99, as there are so many more choices on the market, but can you say that they look as attractive as this?

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