The 2021 iMac is a great family computer | Hacker News Reader

The 2021 iMac is a great family computer

wired.co.uk

27 pointsretskrad53 comments

I would probably venture to say that the 2021 iMac is also an outstanding and very capable developer workstation for 95% of developers out there.

Now, I know this will illicit dismayed responses from the other 5% who want 256GB of RAM, or a RAID-45.1375 18TB array, or some other edge cases, but I suspect we'll see this iMac show up in a lot of startup offices over the next year.

I don't particularly care for 256, but 32 would be useful. I don't know if that puts me in the mythical "5%" or not.

I second this. Once I got 64 gigs in a desktop, life just became easier.

I dunno, I think most people will still err on the side of x86. Most developers aren't deploying to ARM, so it's a pretty difficult value proposition to sell someone a computer where they can't even natively debug their program. Maybe my workflow constitutes that "five percent" you're talking about, but part of me also knows that most developers will probably be pretty disappointed with just 8 gigs of ram and 256 gigs of storage. Especially if you install XCode, one of the most asinine and largest programs I've ever seen.

I'm not the most "organized" or "sophisticated" developer (I mainly code for fun or basic research related experiments), and I mainly do everything from my m1 MacBook Air. If I need to test something that will need more hardware, I fire up my desktop.

Edit: Also, the M1 has a lot of surprising performance. I can run two 4k 30fps cameras off of it, display to a 4k monitor, and stream the video to another computer. My 2017 MBP struggled with this much.

Have you gotten two displays to connect to it yet? That's my biggest bottleneck right now.

Yeah, I used a $40 DisplayLink adapter.

What the other commenter said, displaylink works, but it’s not ideal and adds additional overhead like using up precious usb bandwidth for my work. I have learned to live with only two displays, plus an iPad for airplay. I’d wait for the next generation if multi display is necessary.

It is remarkable how much space xcode + Android studio eat of 256gb. Especially given that a 1TB SSD costs what, $100 at consumer prices?

Apple Prices > Consumer Prices

256GB is a poor user experience. Apple needs to sell bigger SSDs.

Apple does sell bigger SSDs, they're just marked up higher than any other manufacturer in the industry.

I’d be curious what proportion of developers build to a specific ISA at all, versus simply caring that their tools are available for the one they’re developing for.

Most popular modern languages aren't low level enough for developers to care about architectural differences unless they are trying to squeeze every last ounce of performance. However, the x86 chip in your laptop and the x86 chip running on your deployment target, probably aren't similar enough to help you reach that goal.

Also worth noting that ARM is becoming increasingly popular in the cloud services space, so that x86 advantage will deplete significantly with time.

I have a M1 Macbook Pro with 8GB ram and 256 GB storage. I bought it mainly to play with, but I've found it surprisingly capable and I've used it for some moderate development workloads and even some gaming (Metro Exodus)!

I've found it pretty fantastic for the most part, but I have to constantly make difficult decisions about exactly what I want to have running and stored on the device. For instance, running Docker rapidly consumes both memory and storage resources.

I'd definitely recommend buying the Mac SKUs with 16GB memory and more storage, if you want to make it your primary workstation. I think 16GB is probably enough for most development workloads though, that's generally what I'm given for a work laptop an it's worked out okay.

>However, the x86 chip in your laptop and the x86 chip running on your deployment target, probably aren't similar enough to help you reach that goal.

Cross-compiling is still very buggy, code built for ARM on x86 can still just _not work_ correctly when deployed on ARM. In such cases, it really does help that my laptop is running x86. I hope running arm stuff will be similar.

There is no theoretical limitation on the ability to cross-compile between architectures. There may be bugs in individual compilers or mistakes made in configuring them, but those sorts of problems are solvable.

However, how often do you locally compile the binary you deploy? Every company for which I've worked has delegated that activity to a build server.

> how often do you locally compile the binary you deploy?

Do people not debug software locally anymore? I feel like "95% of developers" are going to end up compiling and using a binary of some sort (especially if you're a developer on MacOS).

For me it's the screen. Been using an ultrawide for several years and I could never go back.

Also, I hear that you don't need as much RAM with an M1, but I don't have personal experience. I do know that I regularly push the limits of my 32GB Hackintosh and, using it only for web browsing, our 8GB Surface quickly becomes close to useless. I know the sort of edge case people you're talking about. I'm most definitely not one.

To be honest the line of not needing as much RAM because M1 is total nonsense.

Rather, it's just that people in general don't need as much RAM as they think they do, but ultimately if you need a lot of RAM for docker, development, whatever, then M1 isn't going to change that.

I’m running an 8Gb MacBook Air. This replaced my 32Gb i5 Mac mini. And it’s fine. I don’t hit any memory pressure.

To do this I accept two compromises: no virtual machines, light weight editor (vim). The VMs I spin up when I need them in the cloud.

Turns out this works out better than it did before anyway. No fan grinding away and I’ve got a laptop again finally which doesn’t singe my genitals.

I was running vscode with no problems as well but found some annoying bugs so went back to vim which has served me well for 20 years now.

I don’t know, I feel that people have to recalibrate their RAM expectations and experience just as they have their speed and battery life expectations with M1. When all of your experience is grounded in the x86 era whose time is up, it’s an apples and oranges comparison.

Laptops are very common at tech companies, especially in WFH times. It's really nice being able to just carry your workstation to a meeting room or a coffee shop or your house.

Now with that said, I was a little disappointed last week when I was issued a 16" Pro for my new job rather than an M1...

The size of the screen and the limited IO make the 2021 iMac not really a great professional development device.

> Now, I know this will illicit dismayed responses from the other 5% who want 256GB of RAM, or a RAID-45.1375 18TB array, or some other edge cases, but I suspect we'll see this iMac show up in a lot of startup offices over the next year.

I don't really like how you characterize people wanting a bit more RAM and disk space. Sure, maybe it's not essential and mostly confort, but as a developer it's nice to not be limited too much by your machine. 16GB of RAM and 512GB of disk space is perfectly reasonable to ask for, especially since the Docker experience is quite a bit worse than on Linux.

Edit: As mentionned below, you can have 16GB of RAM and up to 2TB of disk space, so ignore this comment.

>16GB of RAM and 512GB of disk space is perfectly reasonable to ask for

Perfectly reasonable to ask for, and perfectly reasonable to receive, since that is a config available on the current M1 machines.

>Jony Ive worked on the 2021 iMac before leaving Apple in 2019

The article specifically states that it is unclear when he worked on it.

>Jony Ive was involved in the design of this new iMac, despite having left Apple back in 2019. Hardware design is a long process, so perhaps it’s not surprising that Ive’s fingerprints are all over this new desktop. But, interestingly, Apple would not confirm or deny if he worked on the 2021 iMac after he left the company – just that he had worked on it.

Sounds like some national worshipping of Jony Ive by .uk

afaict, the departure of Ive was good. We're finally getting back functionality over esthetics, while keeping simplicity. The word "design" should be banned.

USB ports still in the rear.

Jony's ghost lingers....

At least they're finally starting to segment again.

The iMac is a non-pro device. In the living room, or in the office for general purpose computing. The ethernet in the powerbrick is super smart.

The iMac/Mac/MacBook Pro will probably have better port configurations. Although I doubt there will be an option to "sideload" usb haha

> The word "design" should be banned.

You can only say that because Apple's design approach already won. Do you remember what computers were like pre-iMac? Technology was ugly, obtuse, and vexing to anyone who wasn't a self-described "nerd". Apple's leadership on usibility-centered design for technology is a major part of the reason we have a wide array of beautiful, pleasant to use technology products today.

Yes there were some excesses due to undue focus on aesthetics over functionality, but you don't want to go back to a world where hardware and software interfaces are primarily driven by engineering concerns.

For me personally it was not. I've always found things unnecessary complex. Part of my windows configuration was removing all excess and slimming down toolbars etc.

Unfortunately the functionality of recent iterations of macOS and apps is actually pretty bad. Shortcuts missing, bulk operations missing, keyboard navigation missing, proxy icon support missing.

What I think is funny, is to see how other people try to mimic Apple, but they forget that it only works if you really focus on functionality first. You see the with "webdesign" too.. People see pretty sites, and think it's just filling in the blanks.

I'm going out on a limb, and I'm gonna say Ive designed it. If he only left 2 years ago, it makes perfect sense that he would have designed the chassis and general LAF of the device before passing it down to the engineers. In any case, it's equally as disappointing as the rest of Ive's "innovations".

What, specifically, are you disappointed by about it?

"Who’s it for

Well, idiots who don’t want to think about how to set up a PC, for one."

wtf?

that's... wow. IMHO Wired has been on a downward spiral for a while, but even tongue in cheek that's a ridiculous thing to say.

Isn't it precisely one of the (supposed) strength of Apple, not having to set up anything, it just works? They're just parroting what people will say against the price of this computer:

> Yes the new Mac mini has M1, too, but you’re going to need all the peripherals including a display. So for a few hundred quid more you get an all-in-one home computer that is as easy to get started as an iPad.

It's a way to predict the comments like "You must be stupid to buy an iMac. I personally bought a mac mini for $X, and $X is way lower than the price of that iMac, setting it up is not that hard." or something along those lines.

Just don't call people idiots.

I know way more than enough about the tech world and work within it professionally. My biggest attraction to these iMacs is I think they might just be lightweight enough to move between multiple places depending on use.

I agree, I think it's just a failed attempt at some humor:

> The new iMacs are unashamedly aimed at people already in the Apple ecosystem. Yes, they are more expensive than other one-box PCs out there, but the iMac buyer won’t care. They’ll want it to, sigh, “just work”.

In all fairness, they never called you an idiot. You just happen to choose the same computers that idiots do, which is more of a coincidence than an insult.

Just don't call people idiots.

Yes, call them spades instead.

It’s Wired.co.uk. British humor is less reverent than what’s practiced in the US.

also this:

> they come in lots of colours. I’ve called mine Donald. Why? Because its yellow hue is not really yellow, it's full-on bling gold. It’s like working in front of Trump Tower.

I work in a Principal role at a company whose products or services many people use every day. All of my work is done on on a Mac, which you’d have to pry from my dead cold hands before I’d be willing to go back to a PC (especially Windows).

I didn’t read the rest of the review after finding that sentence. Shockingly, the author is listed as an Executive Editor.

I’m going on a tangent here, but these companies like Wired produce trashy content, lose readership, and then go on to blame anyone and everyone but themselves.

I didn't understand this comment at first. Then went on and read the article, then reached that part ... wow.

The context for that is in the previous sentence:

> [...] you get an out-of-the-box, slick and capable computer that an idiot could set up and get running in minutes.

He's praising the simplicity of the setup. I smiled. That language is normal discourse in the UK.

I think the Jony Ive departure was the best thing that happened to Apple in recent years. They finally stopped making beautiful thin furniture and started to make functional devices again.

The new iMac is arguably thinner (I believe it's thinner than the max depth of the "bulb" in the old model), and is regularly described as "ultra-thin" in articles in the press. It's basically a bigger (incredibly thin) iPad Pro with a stand and macOS. I don't see it as a design departure at all, rather a strong continuation. I have no complaint with that either.

The new iMac substitutes a very old desktop computer. Maybe you forgot the bending IPhone and the most aweful keyboard ever to make the thinnest laptops possible. The new MacBook Pros are thicker than previous ones, new iPhones and iPads too.

I just think it's ironic to point out they "stopped" making thin stuff in the comments of a post about a new and notably thin desktop. To avoid comparisons with a very old desktop then, I can't think of a thinner desktop on the market.

It isn't an infinity style edge display and has a chin. It just looks odd.

Was this article written by a 15 year-old?

It looks nice but I don't understand who would pick an iMac over a MacBook Pro...

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