Apple supercharges 24‑inch iMac with new M3 chip | Hacker News Reader

Apple supercharges 24‑inch iMac with new M3 chip

apple.com

69 pointsehPReth123 comments

Related ongoing threads:

Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38078063

Apple unveils the new MacBook Pro featuring the M3 family of chips - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38078065

In France it starts at 1.6k euros for a computer that has 8GBRAMM/256SSD. Ethernet port starts at 1.8K, still same base limitation. The device is thin but has an external power brick. Apple users used to joke about badly designed monitors/PC who could not integrate the PSU inside the chassis, leaving an ugly and annoying brick outside. Oh, the irony. This is cheapo entry level HP territory. And the headphone jack is still in the most impractical position. It is not even genuinely nice, just thin. For what exactly?

This is one of the most impractical computer design ever made, even for Apple. The only redeeming quality is the display, but considering how poorly equipped the thing is you are paying a pretty penny for it and the integration (not even complete because of power brick...).

If they wanted people to not buy them, I would be hard to better. I guess they can still add a random 500 euros to base price; at this point it is more frivolous luxury than technology so who cares...

My friend - a notorious luddite - bought a newer iMac recently. He was sold by the marketing and videos/reviews of it. I've yet to see him sit at his desk to use it once beyond the first time. It's a paperweight. Same goes for my parents; they went to Currys (UK electronics retailer) to get a cheap laptop to view photos on, and to my dismay walked out with an iMac for 3x the price of a similar spec device that they use once in a blue moon.

These SKUs are categorically not meant for the likes of you and me. They're meant to target technologically illiterate people who want a pretty looking PC that everyone raves about because Apple are expert marketeers. The fact it's got 8GB RAM and 256GB of memory means little to nothing for them. They want an Apple device, but want something cheap, so they buy the cheapest one. Any other consideration is irrelevant.

I completely agree with you, but this is also what saddens me. Previously I thought that Apple was a brand catering to technology enthusiasts, bringing on to market devices with incredible specs at a price that could seem reasonable. But I guess I was wrong, or this was just in the distant past.

In any case your stories match my experiences and the only thing making me laugh is that those incompetent fools very often need services around those expensive devices and if they can pay for the device, they should be able to pay a decent amount for the service. It is very rarely the case, and I have found that Apple users are poorly paying egoists but whatever, they have the money anyway...

These are so beautiful and I wish I had a reason to buy one, but even if I needed a new mac, it's hard to justify a desktop these days when laptops are so capable

Who's the target market, other than sleek reception desks?

A 24" 4k monitor is better than any laptop screen (Real estate and bigger UI elements). And I like to work in a single place, taking breaks instead of moving the workplace. I like the iMac, but I went with the mini + monitor for more flexibility.

> "A 24" 4k monitor is better than any laptop screen"

Of course it is. But just get a Thunderbolt or USB 4 external monitor, where a single cable charges your laptop and instantly connects however many wired accessories you want. Then you have portability when you need it and a big screen when you need it. Best of both worlds!

The iMac screen is actually not as good as the MacBook Pro screen; it's only 60hz and I think it's less HDR.

But the iMac screen is bigger and higher resolution - not sure about the latter but too lazy to check.

Those aren't the most important specs even if they sound like they are.

It’s important to those of us with aging eyes.

I (in my 40s) finally gave in and got some reading glasses. Good decision. Now everything on my screen looks crystal clear and sharp and I can make the fonts as small as I like without eye strain. They do make distance vision blurry, though, which is annoying.

Higher resolution would make that worse. You want the opposite if anything.

Or just go for AR glasses and make the view as big as you want.

Why would high resolution make it worse? Just increase the screen DPI.

Anyway, the iMacs I have seen at the Apple Store has decently sized text.

> Why would high resolution make it worse?

Because the person you are replying to hasn’t learned about the existence of the resolution scaling setting yet.

Taking a higher resolution screen and setting it to low resolution because you can't see it does not have many advantages over a lower resolution screen.

Now, a control to change text size, that's actually different.

> Taking a higher resolution screen and setting it to low resolution because you can't see it does not have many advantages over a lower resolution screen.

It does. Rendering at high DPI, especially for text, is amazing.

Otherwise, it would be like claiming that there was no advantage to macbooks switching to retina displays back in the first half of 2010s. The display size didn’t increase, and the rendering scale was increased to make things on screen appear the same size. You have no idea how thankful my eyes were for that DPI increase.

That's entirely relative to the person and task, bud

My biggest issue with the 4k iMac is that it's highest scaling option (smallest elements) is less than what you get on a regular 4k display.

The iMac I belive is capped at "looks like 2560x1600" while my 4k display "looks like 3008x1692".

I believe you can "option+click" to reveal all the resolution, which would expose the higher native one.

There is now also a button for “advanced resolution settings” in display settings menu, and behind it there is a toggle to permanently display all possible resolutions among the existing ones already there.

Thanks, I didn't know I could do that. I've been using a 3rd party utility...

I guess the price starts to make sense if you think of it as MacBook + bigger monitor (- portability option) instead of just MacBook - portability

4.5k monitor, 4480x2250. The extra area around a 4K viewport and the M3 could make these into decent editing machines.

It's funny because technically even M1 is good enough for most editing jobs,...

But according to Apple, you need a sound proof dedicated room with 2 couches, and 4 external 4K monitors with a M3 Max and 128GB of memory! :D

Honestly it's getting ridiculous. I'm a dev and I can work on a macbook air no problem. My time wasted reading bad documentation or groking bad code is far more loss than the compile time difference! :)

I'm wondering, who will be their target market with the M3 Ultra? A professional who trains LLMs while producing Hollywood movies, that likes to work from the local Starbucks?

Maybe with M3 max they could finally claim "this thing can start Microsoft Teams in 3 seconds!"

For dev work I’d think where more muscle starts to make a big difference is with gargantuan codebases, think Chrome or Firefox or something where a full compile takes an hour.

Typically people have build servers for large compile jobs, and I hope for their sake that they have some incremental compile (ninja!) facilities!

I remember though, compiling UE4 in 2016, from scratch, was a half-day job on my non-potato PC.

Yeah, but I'd prefer to have a dedicated build server if I ever need to do this (or renting something from the cloud).

> Honestly it's getting ridiculous. I'm a dev and I can work on a macbook air no problem.

That's not surprising. It may certainly depend on the kind of development work you do but in my experience web development has always been quite easy and lightweight on the hardware compared to audio or video production. Those tasks will absolutely make use of better hardware. Back when I was recording music big projects could easily struggle even on capable hardware.

Probably better thermals than a laptop.

The 27” iMac on my desk is better than dual displays: simply better display quality when you’re not on a laptop power budget but also losing the borders, alignment, etc. issues is hard to give up since there are a lot of development tools designed for one big display.

The drawback is that they lost target display mode years ago and there’s no way to upgrade. I’d love to swap a logic board to go to ARM but it feels wasteful to toss a perfectly usable system.

There’s been a number of people who’ve converted their old 27” iMacs into displays using AliExpress driver boards, if a tinkery solution is appealing. Probably wouldn’t be too difficult to fit an M1 Mac Mini board in the chassis alongside the driver board to produce a 27” M1 iMac if one were so inclined.

Yeah, we’ll see how it’s doing by the time the 2020 one stops getting security updates. I’ve seen a few of those guides and they don’t seem too terrible.

And if you compare to a single ultra wide display? I have a Thunderbolt one with USB ports that charges laptops and serves as a hub. All the portability benefits of a laptop that can be taken and used to work elsewhere, with the comfort of a big screen and fixed set up.

The combination has usually been a good bit more expensive but I think the next time around I’ll be doing that with a Mac mini. The last time I bought was in 2020 and at the time the 5+K display market was surprisingly expensive.

Then why not get a Mac Mini or a Mac Studio and 27 inch Apple monitor.

That’s probably what I’ll do next time but there’s something nice about having it be a single thing on the desk, and the last two times I bought one it was cheaper than buying separate parts (trading longevity).

My setup used to consist of a VESA mounted iMac Pro which was really nice since it doubled the amount of free desk space between having no separate computer and the whole unit floating thanks to the VESA arm. The arm also helped with keeping cables corralled in a way a monitor stand wouldn’t since it has channels for that.

VESA mount your monitor and mount your Mac Mini or Mac Studio under your desk.

4k displays are peanuts these days. A Mac mini + a 4k display would cost about the same as an iMac. But in a few years when the mac mini is useless you can keep the same display.

Or if you buy a nicer mini then you can get a nicer display later on. The iMac is still limited the base M3 CPU, while the current mini is available in either M2 or M2 pro. Hopefully they update the Mini with M3 pro because that's what I've been waiting for.

I wouldn’t drop down to a 4K but the 5+K display market has also come down considerably so I think that’s also why Apple isn’t in a hurry to refresh the 27” since the sweet spot isn’t there any more.

> Who's the target market, other than sleek reception desks?

The "business center" at my apartment complex has a 2015(?) iMac. It is connected to a small printer/copier/scanner. You can log in as guest, open your email or whatever you need to do, and log out from the guest account and the iMac will dutifully forget about you and be ready for the next person.

I know practically everyone has an app phone these days but it is useful if you need something quick.

I bet a new iMac today will similarly last the next ten years for basic kiosk tasks.

Sure, I guess I lumped this sort of kiosk under "reception desk". But there's no way that market is big enough on its own to justify the product

There’s a lot of reception desks in the world. I mean that’s not the only market for iMacs but Apple could probably build a pretty good multi-billion dollar business going after just the reception desk market if they were dedicated to the cause.

Almost exactly my sentiment, I love the colors which are a fun throwback to the original fruit flavored CRT iMacs (one of which I used to own).

That said I’d prefer if they had a 27/32” model (also in fun colors) that brought back Target Display Mode now that it’s feasible to push a 5k60/6k60 signal over a single cable. I’d trade in my 16” M1 MBP for one of those paired with a MacBook Air.

Desktops are larger, more powerful and have better speakers, more ports.

I’d pick an iMac over a MacBook Pro every time for work. A laptop is more convenient for a travel device for reading or watching videos but at this point iPads are better for that.

As a developer I prefer desktops over laptops. Only using laptops when e.g. travelling.

Me too, but what am I supposed to do for travel? Buy a second computer?

If I just use a laptop + dock I can have one machine for desktop and travel use.

I actually got multiple computers. Some are a bit old, but still usable. Got a MacBook Air for the rare times that I travel. Using an 27” iMac when I am working from home in village. Using a Intel NUC when I am working in the city.

I worry about the battery longevity of a MacBook though - about damage from keeping at high charge for long periods from it being plugged in/docked.

With an iMac that isn’t concern since it has no battery. It will last 5 years + no problem.

You can set it not to charge past 80%, which spares you of that idle degradation

Supposedly macOS learns about your use and applies charging rules appropriately. I haven't seen it actually work in practice though, unlike Windows 11 of all things that asked me "You seem to be using this laptop mostly while connected to power, do you want to limit charging to 60% or 80% to preserve battery life?" And reminds me every month that's the case and that it can be disabled.

How often do you travel? Optimize for the typical case.

Me too. If they made Mac Studio in a form of a 27" iMac I would buy it.

Then why not just buy the Mac Studio + Apple monitor?

The iMac was a much much better deal price-wise. (And I found it more elegant as well, but that's less important.)

I imagine most people who have laptops for work are using them with docks, which basically is the desktop experience. Or at least they should be per the ergonomics courses that I’ve had to take at every job.

Why?

Miss the days when the iMac let you use it as an external monitor.

You still can! Just, poorly, via wifi and only when it's the same iCloud account -- which means only other idevices/macs allowed. :(

> These are so beautiful and I wish I had a reason to buy one,

Beautiful ? What's the purpose big band at the bottom of the monitor ? And the colors are all pale.

Schools. Small studios. Shared workspaces.

55+ in particular tend to eschew notebooks.

Most schools issue every student a laptop these days (to my understanding)

I would wager that’s very few schools, because most schools in the US alone are underfunded. Also likely depends what education level too, but I find the claim unlikely.

This is Chromebook's main market, so although I doubt it's "most", it's definitely more popular and useful than iMacs. So much so that there were rumours of Apppe doing a Chromebook-imitation cheap Macbook for that market because if they're not on ramping kids into their ecosystem, years down the line those grownups will have few reasons to try to enter it.

I grew up in the second most rural state and every middle schooler and high schooler had macbooks through https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_Learning_Technology_In...

I don’t know if my high school participated in the program, as we had Lenovo Thinkpads instead, which I installed linux on and was very easy to modify by replacing the ram and changing the CD drive to an SSD slot

Same target audience for all in ones (people who don't know any better)

> so beautiful

It's a rectangle. They've made rectangles before.

Yep, it's just a box :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6Srzcm8EEg

They experimented also with rounded corners (original iMac) but they cut their fingers on the sharp edges in the process. /s

The lightning cable is still in the box for keyboard & mouse. lol.

[1]: https://www.apple.com/imac/specs/

call the EU

> call the EU

And tell them what? That a device that is neither a mobile phone, tablet, nor camera [1] is using a charging port that's not USB C? I suspect that whatever desk has to deal with these complaints is busy responding to all the phone calls about EVs, e-bikes, electric screwdrivers, and thousands of other product categories that they don't regulate connector type on.

[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20220930IP...

From your link:

"Regardless of their manufacturer, all new mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones and headsets, handheld videogame consoles and portable speakers, e-readers, keyboards, mice, portable navigation systems, earbuds and laptops that are rechargeable via a wired cable, operating with a power delivery of up to 100 Watts, will have to be equipped with a USB Type-C port."

They made really a technological achievement of they need a lighning cable for keyboard and mouse. Gone are the days when a serial connection will be enough. /s

I was hoping there would finally be an Apple Silicon 27" iMac.

The last 27" model was in 2020, Intel, not sold on Apple's front-page anymore (but you can get Certified Refurbished).

I think the larger iMac died, because Apple made different choices with displays than the rest of the market. Apple chose pixel density, while everyone else prioritized physical size and/or refresh rate. A 27" display used to be large, but then 32" displays and ultrawides became affordable. Now they can't get displays that simultaneously meet their requirements, are cheap enough for an iMac, and are competitive with what everyone else is offering.

5k 27" panels have only gotten cheaper since the first 5k 27" imac came out.

Doesn't look like they're going to put out a 27-inch iMac any time soon, John Ternus said in the presentation the 24-inch iMac is a replacement for both 21-inch and 27-inch iMac https://youtu.be/ctkW3V0Mh-k?t=1582.

They would say that if that's all they have in the range right now. I think you can take that with a pinch of salt.

I think the Mac Studio replaced it, which makes sense- its target market is more likely to want to bring their own display

> its target market is more likely

I dont know about this part. Whoever wanted to BYOD has been using MacBook Pros. Vast majority of 27" iMac users seems to want to get another large iMac.

And there aren't even great monitor choices. Studio display costs as much as a low end iMac used to cost. Samsung Ultrafine is horrible (if its even still produced). And other 3rd party monitors usually don't have 5k at 27".

> And there aren't even great monitor choices. Studio display costs as much as a low end iMac used to cost. Samsung Ultrafine is horrible (if its even still produced). And other 3rd party monitors usually don't have 5k at 27".

I recall when the first modern iMac came out with a...25" display, I think? The joke at the time was that it was a monitor, and the computer came for free, because no one else was making a monitor of that size and quality, and the price seemed about right for a standalone display.

Well that joke has held, I have a 2019 one and a 5k monitor that nice was probably worth close to the price of the machine.

I was sad that the target display mode went away, because I presumed that I would like to keep using the screen for longer than the computer.

RIP Target Display Mode.

The hilarious thing is that the Studio Display is basically just a stealth Target Display Mode device, considering how it's running a trimmed down OS on a phone chip.

For how predominant the 27" iMacs seemed to be around me, I wonder if they've fallen by the wayside in Apple's product-share, and are replaced by Minis/Studios with a Studio Display?

I am fairly sure they sold them by the palet but it was most likely one of the lowest margin products they had if not the absolute lowest. They could not raise the price for historical reasons, so uncle Scrooge asked to sell small iMacs or Studio Displays that cost more than the base iMac used to cost, for a fat 50% margin.

I really wish it had more than 24GB of RAM. The large screen is really compelling for a web developer like myself.

That's a sad commentary on the state of the web stack and browsers that 24 GB is insufficient for web dev of all things.

It's more than sufficient, but devops needs you to run the whole cluster on your computer.

That seems an even sadder commentary about the state of affairs if you need to run an entire cluster on a regular basis. The whole point of microservices was supposed to be that you didn’t need huge monoliths.

Does this really surprise anyone lol

I have 24GB, it doesn’t web dev work just fine, probably be ok with 16 too.

I have 8GB, it does web dev work just fine.

I have 32 gigs of ram just to browse the internet and maybe fiddle with some other things.

I'm using 26 at the moment with no virtual machines running.

Your computer is designed to use a good chunk of the RAM in the background, to accelerate tasks that frankly do not need acceleration (because why not). I would expect, if you closed all your apps, you'd still see Windows (I assume this is Windows – Windows does it the most) using 16gb. How could it do this? How is Windows usable on computers with 4gb of RAM? Well it doesn't need to use all this RAM, it just does it because it can.

And the same thing goes in reverse. I'm frequently actually using 16gb of RAM or so, but the 8gb handles it fine. How? RAM Compression and Swapping. The Calendar app I have not used in the past 8 hours does not need to be using RAM, so it gets sent to swap (storage). The only way to notice this is that refocusing the app takes ~0.1 (~0.3 worst case) longer.

(Also, in my experience macOS and to a lesser extent linux is much better at compression than windows)

Sad but also kinda hilarious

Why “of all things”? I think it’s a commentary on the general demand of professional computing, and there’s nothing inherent to web dev that would exempt it from that. I would expect to need—or at least benefit greatly from having—more than 24 GB RAM doing development for almost any target environment.

>Why “of all things”?

Pardon my French, but: Because it's a fucking website, not a nonlinear video editor or a large language model. It's supposed run on low-end android devices, my aunt's 3 year old iPad, and the old thinkpad I've got in the basement, not just on my M2 machine.

What on earth does a web developer need all that memory for, beside the comically bloated Chrome browser and all the stupid Electron apps people shit out these days?

You end up needing 32 GB or more because without it you can't run Chrome, Slack, and VS Code on the same machine, because Electron is hot garbage.

> Because it's a fucking website

You seem to be aware that web developers need to use, pardon my French in kind, fucking tools to develop a fucking website. The tools—in many cases the very same tools used by non-web developers—don’t magically become lighter weight just because the end product ought to be. Web developers don’t need those tools any less than non-web developers. Chrome (or equivalent) and Slack (or equivalent) and basically any IDE are just as prevalent in many non-web development workflows, and account for just as much demand for resources for those developers.

In what other profession would it be a “sad commentary” that the resources needed to do one’s job differ from the resources needed by the product of that job?

What I'm getting at is: unlike running LLMs, 3D modeling, rendering 8K video, or similar tasks, there's nothing inherent to working with html and javascript that demands such huge amounts of memory. Editing a few hundred (even a few thousand) lines of code is not a memory-intensive task.

The only reason we are in this current sorry state of affairs is because They(tm) have decided that the proper way to deploy apps is to ship it atop an entire Chrome instance, itself being a notorious resource hog.

The web sucks. Desktop apps are now just web apps, and they also suck.

It didn't have to be this way.

Nearly every part of a web page must run on the end user's hardware.

I would expect someone working on 3D animation or CAD software to require significantly more resources than a web developer.

I feel like this is a conscious product placement decision from Apple. The iMac only comes with M3 chips and the Macbook Pros that have the M3 also all cap out at 24GB of RAM. In the Macbook Pro lineup if you want more RAM, you have to get one with an M3 Pro or Max.

I’m in the market for an AIO at the minute and I wondered if I could trouble any of you guys for some advice? To be honest I’m pretty computer illiterate, but I need a machine this year to finish an MSc in Maths and possibly for a PhD starting next year. I’m using a computer algebra package called Maple this year, which doesn’t need much processing power at the minute. However, if I manage to start my PhD next year I’ll be dealing with much larger data sets, and possibly coding with python or C. I definitely want an AIO due to space constraints. I also need a large, decent screen due to poor eyesight. To be honest, I’ve been kind of taken in by the M3 IMac with 24 gb and 1 TB, but it’s expensive and for the same money, I’ve seen an HP with a larger 27” 4K screen, an Intel i9 12900, 32 gb and 2 TB. Also you can expand the memory on the HP. I’ve got an iPhone which I like and I guess that’s been influencing me in thinking about switching to Apple, but I need something that’s going to last me at least 5 years. If any of you guys have any thoughts I’d be grateful for some advice. £2000 is a lot of money to me, so I don’t want to waste it on a system that’s going to be no good in 4 years. Thanks in advance.

> I’m pretty computer illiterate, but I need a machine this year to finish an MSc in Maths and possibly for a PhD starting next year

Nice try. Anyway, with 1000£ you can get a decent computer and monitor.

Seriously I am.I’m a mature student and I completed my maths degree years ago. I only just picked up studying again, part time, over the last couple of years. I’ve been mainly studying number theory and Galois theory recently, in which all the problems were solved with pen and paper. When I say computer illiterate I can obviously use Microsoft office etc but when it comes to evaluating a machine that will last me possibly 5 years doing coding (which I’ve never done before) I haven’t got a clue. I don’t want a separate monitor and computer if I can help it. Being fairly clueless I’d rather get something I can just unbox and switch on, but powerful enough to cope later on. Do you think the Mac is a waste of money?

I wish Apple provided more objective technical details in product announcements rather than marketing spin. There’s very little technical specifications here that you can compare to previous generations or even other vendors.

There is some brutal +$200, +$200 again upsell here. The $1300 model only has two thunderbolt ports. Want more than two ports? Ca-ching. The $1300 model doesn't have gigabit ethernet. Once again, gotta shell out for the $1500 model. Want pretty colors? Ditto.

It's also, imo, pretty insulting to offer customers a base 256GB ssd these days. Quite fine PCIe 3.0 drives are 512GB/$25. It should be standard. But this is Tim Apple terrain: you need to spend $1700 to get that basic upgrade.

I don't care about ethernet (haven't plugged in a device to ethernet in many years). I agree that more than two ports would be good, although I get by with just two on my MBA. And most of the time, one of those is taken by video-out, so I really only have one. At least on an iMac, you're not likely using a port for video-out, so you can use the two ports for whatever else. Also, it's less of a big deal to use dongles with a desktop than laptop (I hated using one with my Intel MBP). Probably the speed and power are lessened with dongles/minidocks, but people getting the base model probably wouldn't care that much.

But maybe I'm wrong — what use cases are you envisioning? I think I'd just have a backup drive plugged in, and then perhaps and iPhone/iPad when I'm backing it up.

Mouse, keyboard, second monitor, USB dac/headphone amp, maybe a more appropriate/better webcam, a flash drive, an Xbox controller adapter, a cellphone for charging,...

I have a lot of other things plugged into my desktop too. Hdmi-in, a nice USB mic. A USB light.

It's hard for me to take a two port device seriously. The cost is just so very low to add more USB3 ports, at least via internal hubs, which would be fine for 90% of my use cases.

Fair enough! I guess people who buy the base model just use the included (wireless) keyboard/mice, and not more than two other peripherals.

Would have liked to see the M3 put in other desktop models and support more external displays with their "upgraded" gpus.

Earlier submission (about M3 chip):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38078063

(483 points/6 hours ago/590 comments)

Wow, that looks so much thinner than I imagined. The progression from ten years ago to today is amazing. It’s thinner than my monitor!

Where is the 27”?

Apple wants you to purchase the Studio Display if you want a 27” form factor.

Considering they used to offer a 5K iMac that could be upgraded with 32GB of RAM back in what? 2016?…

Still 8gb of RAM... it hurts my soul

Annoying base configuration for those of us here, but it’s probably fine for people who just browse social media and email and youtube as their whole experience. At least they can go higher, though probably at usurious prices (haven’t checked) and sadly not above 24 GB. Again, fine range (price aside) for their target audience.

Supercharges?

Compresses the intake gas, forcing more air in to produce more power.

Beats me. I guess the current one must be really slow since they needed to supercharge it.

Definitely looks interesting.

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