The Case For – and Against – Apple Shipping a Larger iMac | Hacker News Reader

The Case For – and Against – Apple Shipping a Larger iMac

512pixels.net

16 pointsingve10 comments

I would love for the 27" iMac to make a comeback or for it to replaced with a 6k 32" bigger brother, with one big caveat: it absolutely needs to be usable as a dumb monitor.

The reduced cable mess that comes with iMacs is amazing and over the years some of my favorite machines have been iMacs, but with how much screen panel quality has improved, it's non-optional for the display to be usable independent of the computer. Unfortunately this hasn't been possible ever since iMacs were upgraded from 2560x1440 panels to 5120x2880 panels, originally due to cable bandwidth limitations but that's no longer an issue.

The Studio Display is already very close to being an iMac already, complete with super overengineered flat PSU and cooling system… just swap out its A13 SoC with an M2 Pro and add a few ports and you've got a very nice VESA mountable desktop computer.

I think Apple's current strategy makes perfect sense, bundling the (mostly non-upgradeable) computer and the display is perfectly reasonable for most consumers but breaks down for professional use cases.

Consumers will likely keep these devices for many years and want to just upgrade the whole thing at once, and the fact that both the display and computer are on the cheaper side makes this feasible to make the usability tradeoff worth it. A pro use case would want to be able to upgrade the very expensive display and the very expensive computer at different rates. The upgrade cycles don't really line up.

I dread upgrading my 2020 iMac, because the screen is still gorgeous, but there's no way to use the screen as a secondary monitor (or is there?).

I find the Studio Display to be 2X what I'd be willing to pay for a monitor—for me the Thunderbolt Display was the best: reasonable price and great quality.

You should be able to use it as an external monitor by enabling Target Display Mode. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204592#:~:text=You%20can%2....

Edit: looks like this is no longer a thing.

yeah, that hasn't been a thing for 10 years now, unfortunately.

TFA talks about how that doesn't exist anymore.

From TFA

> Target display mode is a feature available with certain older Mac models.

There are some solutions, such as Duet Display:

https://www.duetdisplay.com/blog/how-to-use-your-imac-as-a-m...

Apparently you can use a TB cable to connect it up, so it might be reasonably performant as a productivity monitor!

I think you can also extend to some displays using AirPlay, but from memory performance wasn’t great when I tried.

I personally think the existence of the Mac Studio and Studio Display precludes a big iMac. Especially if it’s just the same specs as the Mac Mini.

Although a big iMac that could be specced from Mx Pro to Mx Ultra might be compelling.

Target display mode was probably killed off because they'd rather sell you another iMac than a Mini

Reply on news.ycombinator.com