iMac 24-inch
apple.com
apple.com
- Mac mini ($699)
- iPad Pro ($799)
- MacBook Air ($999)
- MacBook Pro ($1299)
- iMac ($1299)
The only difference is the form factor and does it come with a keyboard.
Said another way, these 5 products are all the exact same "computer".
It's the most amazing market segmentation I've ever seen.
This is a new approach though, for Apple. Firstly, there was a difference between the desktop and mobile class chips used for iMac and MacBook. Secondly, there was a difference between the intel and arm chips.
They have a large performance advantage over the competition, it makes sense to have unified internals.
The desktop I built in 2013 had 32GB RAM and that entire thing cost me $500 or $600.
More interesting to me is comparing the MBP with the iMac, same price but trading portability for a larger screen.
Just in the last ~24 hours, where I used the device for ~16 of those hours, the kernel task has written almost 800GB to disk.
I'm assuming that the storage isn't replaceable, so this raises questions of the longevity of the device due to SSD wear and tear.
The iMac looks beautifully thin though. I would def buy it as a desktop (as someone who has a 64GB Ryzen 9)
I got desperate as they couldn't do anything about it at work (nor could I). So, on the 22nd December, I went to look for an MBA as I'm now sensitive to even the slightest fan noise. At that time, there was a shortage of stock, so I didn't have much choice.
I don't actually know if there's a 16GB option, as all I'm finding in my country is the 8GB.
Nonetheless, even for the iMac, I think a max of 32GB would have been reasonable,
I'm sorry, but I just cant bring myself to believe this statement. There's no way a computer fan can get loud enough to cause hearing damage.
I've just tested with a sound meter app on my phone; granted this isn't the most accurate way of doing it.
Silent in my room: 30db
Fan on while running and GPU is activated: max 90db.
I wish a computer manufacturer could guarantee what you're saying, because I could get a letter from my ENT doctor, take precise measurement; and sue the manufacturers for damaging my hearing.
how close was it to your head? what kind of fan?
I would agree that the moniker of "pro" for 8GiB is misgiven, there's very little you can do these days with 8GiB of ram- I think they were banking on developers operating within the constraints of the system, we use exorbitant amounts of memory for basic tasks these days, let alone the genuine needs.
Regardless, if you didn't run docker and only ran chrome/zoom/word and -maybe- pycharm OR photoshop, it would probably be fine.
All my personal Apple notebooks have had 8gb of RAM and I have never ran into a performance issue that made me regret going with 16. I have yet to use Docker on my M1, but it runs fine on my 2017 13" Pro.
This is not acceptable for a $2000+ machine.
Apple really skimps on RAM and my new iPhone can’t take a photo without purging every single other app.
Also, I'm not mentioning any performance issue. I'm saying that the kernel can write over 500GB a day. There was a post a few months ago about this wearing down SSDs quickly.
As mentioned in my comment, I bought it out of desperation, and was even lucky to find the 8GB option in stock, after calling around and driving around.
To provide more context, I was about to go to a much warmer part of my country, and my work laptop's fan instantly goes to 100% fan once I start using it, because the GPU inside it turns the fan on when its internal temp reaches 50C. When I'm in the city, the GPU's idle temp is ~45C, so I really needed to get an alternative.
Edit: In fact, give me just the display in a 27" form factor and put all the display connections in a "connect box" like they did for Ethernet and I'd even be willing to pay an Apple tax for such a product. Oh, and give it a way to mount it on an arm rather than use a stand.
I think the reason they won't do it is that the "computer" is actually a minority of the cost here compared to all the other componentry. So they probably can't make their margins on such a device if they price it below ~$900 or so, and at that point paying $200 less for just a screen makes the screen seem expensive and the computer cheap at the same time, which is not what Apple wants.
I have resigned to just settling for good enough displays like the Dell U2720Q which does feature a 90W USB-C connection that charges my laptop.
So welcome to Dongle Hell Part II: Desktop Boogaloo?
A desktop monitor will always need a power cord, and all my monitors also have external power bricks already. In this hypothetical scenario I would just want them to take the ports that are normally on the monitor and move them to the other end of the power cord.
Some high-end TVs also have this feature so you don't need to run as many wires to your potentially wall-mounted TV.
There is a design consideration of not having yet another cable going up to the desk.
Maybe someone can figure out a way to offload Chrome into the M1 and allow on bother screens. though a big benefit of that is battery life which doesn't matter at a desk.
I personally see a good market fit for this. An example is my business partner, who doesn't do intense video rendering or compute, but has n joke 100s of tabs open and does other digital multi-tasking, streaming video & capture from web. Keeping open tens of FB power editor and other large sqlite and hunky react sites is a hit. M1 should be great for that some of that. Maybe some stuff in an ML accelerator might help with too but that sounds like mostly marketing?
Mostly it just looks really cool IMHO +M1 for chrome. Personally I love the style but seems like most comments so far don't.
The max 16 gigs ram limit is really bad though.
I really hope for an update for the large size MBPro I'd totally get a purple one, M1, with a TON of RAM and fast storage NVMe or whatever. I actually miss the 17 inch though my 16 is really nice literally 14 hours a day for a couple years workhorse. If they can get a skinny bump like the iMac that'd be amazing so long as lap heat isn't a problem seems the limit is the power plug.
The mac accessory community is really good at producing matching products, and I am sure someone is going to license an existing monitor design and put it in a new shell.
Oh, and the pricing. So confusing for the different models. The "base" model has less ports and gets an inferior keyboard out of the box, and it also has a worse-binned chip inside too. You pay an extra few hundred dollars, and you get to choose between more colors, have a non-gimped GPU, and you still don't even have 16 gigs of memory? This originally looked like a decent deal, but I'd really like to see Apple move forwards on this thing. 512 gigs needs to be standard, and Apple is the only manufacturer holding the industry back. The more I read into it, this kinda seems like a hatchet job by Apple standards. I suppose I'll hold my judgement until the reviews roll in, but... I'm not sure who this is for. Rich kids?
Startups that just got funded and already know wont be able to deliver. Fake it till you make it, and what better product to fake it than a room full of new iMacs.
I always miss Touch ID when using an external monitor/keyboard with my MacBook.
The watch can take over most of those cases, BTW.
Admittedly, I do like the health and fitness tracking features, and having Apple Pay on my wrist would be convenient. If they came out with a smaller Apple Watch with much longer battery life (a week?) then I'd probably be converted.
I bought an Apple Watch 0 shortly after they came out just to see what all the fuss was. My intent was to get a feeling for it, return it within the free return window, and then buy v3 or so when they "got it right" and I thought of something I'd like to write for it.
On day three or four I started driving to work without the watch -- wearing one wasn't muscle memory. When I realized it I turned around and went and got it. It was already that important. That's when I realized it would be a big deal.
In my case I was in a job where I had lots of meetings and calls; so I could use the silent reminders, check (filtered) messages in a meeting without pulling out my phone, and screen calls the same way. I was a single parent so couldn't just leave my phone at my desk when in a meeting.
In the pandemic I've been at home and have a different job where I don't have many appointments. For that case the watch would be less useful....except I'm a convert to the exercise features, and I often run out to the shops without phone, wallet or keys. But, as it sounds for you too, those later features only work because I was already a convert.
I've been using an iMac Pro at home for over a year now and my only grievance is that I can't use it as a monitor for my laptop and/or a Windows gaming rig.
If anything, I'd expect they're reducing complexity by having the seven colors -- I imagine they're adapting (reusing?) processes from the iPhone and iPad Air to this line of iMacs.
Pretty cases and monitors are nice but I'd rather buy an otherwise ugly computer that doesn't force me into dongle hell and a painting.
16GB ram limit 512GB storage limit un-upgradable
You are better off getting a Mac Mini, its the same performance.
- plus a 4.5k monitor
- plus a webcam
- plus a better mic & speakers
And this monitor and webcam setup is probably better than most 4k monitors and most webcams, at least at the entry-mid level ranges.
What do you do with this monitor when Apple stops supporting the first generation of ARM CPUs and you have to upgrade to a new Mac in 4 years ?
Big Sur still runs on iMacs from mid 2014. (And MacBook Airs from mid 2013.) [1]
And most apps will continue to run on older macOS for several more years anyways.
Plus, while a good monitor might technically last 15 years... that doesn't mean you want to keep using it. New technologies like Retina, P3, micro-LED, etc. mean that by the time you want to upgrade your computer, you often want to upgrade your monitor too.
Every single time Apple has changed the hardware architecture of their machines.
The last generation of PowerPC macs was only supported for two years. The first generation of Intel macs was only supported for 3 years. The second generation of Intel macs was supported for >8 years.
That's five and a half years. Not three.
And the last PowerPC iMac was late 2005, and supported until Snow Leopard in late 2009. That's four years, not two.
So I guess that is the one case of not supporting four year old hardware (barely), but that's not analogous to the M1 since it dropped support for the old architecture, not an older model of the new architecture.
The first generation Intel Macs used Intel Yonah cores "Core Duo". Those were the ones released in january 2006. These models were discontinued in September 2006, and replaced by Intel Penryn cores "Core 2 Duo".
The main difference being that Intel Yonah cores only support SSE3, while the Penryn cores support SSSE3 and up to SSE4.1 (there is some variation here).
Lion required "Core 2 Duo" hardware, Leopard is the actual last OS that supported the early "Core Duo" macs, and received its last update in 2009. Back then, this was kind of frustrating, because Leopard was released in 2007, so basically those with the very first Intel-based macs only got 1 major OS upgrade. That is, the first generation Intel-based macs reached EOL at the same time as the last generation of PowerPC macs.
I guess the technically-correct thing to say is that the very first generation of Intel macs only got 3 years of support. This is in strong contrast with the Core 2 Duo macs released 6 months later, which got much longer support (some up to Mountain Lion... which had its last update in 2015, 9 years later).
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For this reason, I'm not buying M1 macs. Makes more sense to wait 1 year or so if you can stretch it and get M2s or M3s, chances are any of those will last you a decade.
I completely agree with you that Apple will kill Intel support ASAP. IIRC they guarantee ~2 year of support or so, so probably 2 years after they discontinue their last Intel model all support for Intel will be gone. Makes absolutely no sense to buy an Intel mac right now unless you get them for peanuts and only want it for the next 2 years or so.
I still don't understand where you're getting three years from.
If you check the official Lion support page from Apple, you will see that it requires an Intel "Core 2 Duo", that's the model that came after the Intel "Core Duo" (without a 2 in between) that shipped with the early Intel macs.
Snow Leopard (the version before Lion) does support the "Core Duo" processors, but they can only run 32-bit apps there, because the very first Intel Macs from Jan 2006 used 32-bit Intel CPUs. The ones that replaced them in September 2006 had x86_64 CPUs.
Apple killed support for PowerPC and 32-bit x86 at the same time with Lion.
32- vs 64-bit support is an app support issue, not OS support.
Snow Leopard released in 2007 is the latest OS version to support these CPUs. Lion released in 2009 didn't support them.
For me that was a killer back then and I had to upgrade.
But the thinness doesn't even buy you anything. It take up about the same footprint on your desk thanks to the stand, it's not like you're going to stick it in your pocket or purse or even carryon bag. So many design compromises for effectively no gain. The worst part is it might even be counterproductive in desktop space saving, because some users are going to end up plugging in some USB dock/port multiplier that is going to have to sit on the desk or be glued to the back of the computer.
Also 8GB memory base is almost a crime in 2021. Even if you can get away with that with your current workload, in a couple of years you're gonna be swapping. If this were a more normal machine it wouldn't be so bad because you could always just buy more memory and slap it in. But I can guarantee that the memory on this Mac cannot be upgraded. If you need more you have to throw the whole machine in the trash and buy a new one. If you want to buy one of these definitely get the expensive 16GB option. If you have to choose between upgrading the small 256GB main storage and the small 8GB of RAM, do the RAM. You can always buy an external USB drive for more storage, but you can't buy USB RAM.
- Not a psychologist myself but would be interested to know more.
But if you work in fashion, a nice doctor's office, retail, or really any environment that is decor-focused, having color options is HUGE.
This is just taking "OMG I love the color you painted your kitchen, it's so tasteful yet energetic, what is it?" and applying as well to the computer that sits prominently in your home's shared area.
See https://everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac_266.html
- Anyone wanting a 27" or a better screen will have to wait.
- Only two TB3 ports.
- No improvement to the Magic Mouse, the worst peripheral in Apple history.
- If you're going to offer three keyboards, one of them had better be a 65% or a TKL. This is bizarrely out of step with the market.
- The colors are nice, but honestly, who cares?
I guess I was expecting more of a desktop computer instead of MacBook Pro with a dedicated screen. It's hard to imagine jumping to one of these until the graphics performance is figured out.
That's a limitation of the M1 silicon itself from my understanding. It doesn't have enough PCI express channels. It's been one of the few commonalities on all the M1 macs. This new iMac I think is the last computer we'll see using it until the release of a higher power chip for the Mac Pro, Macbook Pro (insert larger size here), and maybe some kind of "iMac Pro".
It seems like a half-baked release and a downgrade in some respects from an iMac 27". Maybe that is intentional though?
Looks more like a beautiful downgrade if you already bought an 27 inch iMac or iMac Pro in 2017. For that memory, screen size and price?
No thanks and no deal.
Not really worth it at this point.
The thing looks absolutely amazing really.
EDIT: my bad, the configurator wasn't obvious to me so I made a mistake.
8GB on the M1 machines feels much, much faster than 8GB on an Intel MacBook Pro. No doubt there is swapping going on, but it's so fast you just don't notice it.
(I would probably have got the 16GB upgrade if it were available, but 16GB can only be custom ordered directly from Apple)
The worst part is when you start swapping heavily it is going to eat into the write endurance on the built-in non-replaceable SSD.
Edit: Three simultaneous replies within one minute. Nice job HN readers.
What we really need is a good sensor that has these 2MP.