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Comment by brundolf | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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.

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

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Probably better thermals than a laptop.

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.

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

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.

> "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 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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

> 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. 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.)

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.

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

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.

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.

Why?

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.

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

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