Apple Says There Won't Be a 27-Inch iMac with Apple Silicon | Hacker News Reader

Apple Says There Won't Be a 27-Inch iMac with Apple Silicon

macrumors.com

Good? Ever since they got rid of target-mode, bonding a beautiful and expensive screen that will last more than a decade with a computer that will be EOLd in 5 years is just sad and wasteful.

This was justifiable when there was no practical way to run 5K over standard connectors. But that time is over, and so is the age of the 27" iMac.

The main problem with that is that there are no decent 5K monitors. The Apple Studio Display is literally the same price as the iMac (so a Studio Display + Mac Mini/Studio is ridiculously expensive). The 5K 27" LG UltraFine is not that much cheaper, and people are saying it has pretty terrible build quality (at least compared to an iMac). And those are pretty much the only 5K monitors.

Samsung now makes one: https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/monitors/5k/27-viewfini...

Thanks, I didn't know that.

It seems to be even closer to the iMac in price, which I'm guessing it makes up for in build quality but that means separately buying the computer and monitor is still very expensive compared to what a hypothetical 27" iMac would cost, and the name "smart monitor" makes my skin crawl... but it seems like a decent somewhat cheaper alternative to the Studio Display.

Hopefully these 5K 27" monitors will get more widespread and cheaper over time.

They have to. I remember my family paying $2000 CAD for a 15" LCD monitor in the 90s. That monitor was crap, looking back at it, but it was state of the art. Electronics always go down in price over time, the question is how long is the wait.

I'm partial to the $800 Huawei MateView 28". It's only 9.8 million pixels compared to the 14.7 million pixels of the $1,300 5K UltraFine 27" and $1,300 5K Samsung ViewFinity 27" (Standard 4K is 8.8 million pixels), but the MateView has a 3:2 aspect ratio! So you get 20% more vertical real estate than a standard 4K aspect ratio.

There's also the new Samsung 27" ViewFinity S9 5K. The list price is $1600 but Amazon has it for $1300 in the U.S. I've heard mixed reviews, particularly about how smoothly it works with Macs.

I'm not old, but things like this make me go "back in my day we had a CRT with one input, VGA, and it just worked". Obviously we don't have to worry too much about a monitor's supported modes anymore (though that wasn't a problem at the tail end of the CRT), but we're in a period where plugging in a monitor doesn't guarantee that it'll work.

Signal integrity and all that sure, but really it's just a freaking monitor.

The VGA days were the times where a computer user could kill a CRT screen because the analog data stream wasn't what the monitor supported or expected. I don't miss those days!

Plugging a monitor nowadays will always work. Of course, buying a new monitor only to have it fall back to a lower-quality compatible mode is unacceptable, but that's what happens in today's world. Monitors are more varied than ever. A 1080p60 monitor will work everywhere, and all monitors will accept such a signal. But we all love fancy toys.

True, although to be fair I did spent an inordinate amount of time circa 2006 trying to get multiple monitor setups working reliably in Linux, across several years, PCs, and Linux distros.

I have both the "Apple" LG 4K and the LG 27" 5K and both just worked for the most part. The 5K is my daily driver plugged into an M1 MacMini.

Apple should release a Mac mini that can "dock" to a 5k monitor with usb-c display and power. This will avoid power cable clutter and enable a much nicer setup.

I'm in the same boat. I'm looking at a 2019 27" iMac on my desk right now, and it's been a great machine. But without target display mode, I can't use it with the 13" MBP that work gave me. So, what, stick another 27" display on my desk just for the laptop? And when the CPU or MB fries, I'll be stuck with a nice display I can't use.

Next time it'll be a Mac Studio and a Studio Display, cost be damned.

You're stuck with the lag of remote-desktop. Which isn't a disaster over decent ethernet if you are just programming.

There should be a way to reuse the screen opening the case and plugging in anything else. What a waste otherwise

There used to be, before they went to 5K.

Or just an input on the back...

Honestly, why should I even worry about how they build the machine? My 27in Intel iMac is 7-8 years old and I will probably get 2-3 more years out of it. That's a whole decade I'm getting out of the machine. Probably more than I would get from a non-bonded monitor.

You stopped getting os updates, and will stop receiving even high-priority security updates this year. I feel much safer running a 10-year-old monitor than my 10-year-old laptop.

This is the issue pushing me to update, and I have to say I'm disappointed in Apple... when I bought this iMac, it was an absolute beast and even today it's very, very good kit. But Apple has decided it's too old to update.

Indeed, because you could buy that one with base specs (2GB ram) and slap 64 in it with zero screws or soldering.

My issue was that my 2019 iMac got updates that made the whole thing practically unusable. The storage became so slow that it would take like 10ish minutes to become usable after boot. I did have the version with a hdd instead of ssd, but it was fine right when I purchased it. I ran whatever storage tests that would show the drive wasn't dead/dying, so I was never sure what the issue was.

My options were essentially to either trade it back to Apple for $300, try to sell it myself for maybe $400 and pay a ton to ship it, or try to take it apart myself to swap out the hard drive for an ssd and risk breaking part of it and it being worth $0. I caved and traded it in to Apple just so I could stop looking at the box.

If you look at the internals of the Studio Display it’s pretty obvious to me that was the Apple Silicon 27 inch iMac. It has a Mac Mini sized motherboard in it.

Realistically the screens are so information dense as it is, when I have the 24 inch one I still end up shrinking windows and not using the entire thing most of the time.

It's not about information density, it's about size. I upgraded from a 27" screen to a 32" screen, and the 32" screen feels much nicer to work with. Granted, a large part of that is about going from a ~108 PPI TN panel to a ~137 PPI IPS panel, but I also find that the physical size means I can comfortably have physically larger text without anything feeling cramped.

That might be the sole reason why they're not releasing a 27" iMac. Maybe they just discontinue the line and switch to 32" iMacs.

agreed, as a person getting a bit older...I'm now having to (somewhat painfully) admit that physical screen size is more important to me than pixel density...

...don't get me started with text using tiny fonts on low contrast backgrounds

Ha, yes, I've just gone through this myself. I've had a 27" Ultrafine 5K for several years but it was just starting to feel 'wrong' somehow. Gone for a 32" 4K monitor and it's proving much better, despite clearly not being anywhere near as good in terms of fidelity. Would I prefer a 30" 5K? Yes. But no-one makes them.

Well I am using 4k 32 inch now, at 75 cm distance and I like it. Less eystrain than when keeping 27 at 60 cm.

This will unavoidably sound like one-upmanship, but I've been using a 43" 4K screen in my home office for probably five or six years now. I'm on my second panel. The first one was a Hisense TV and the new one is an Aorus monitor.

It is absolutely fantastic. My eyes are around four feet from the screen and I don't get that blurred vision you get from extended near-work anymore. I could never go back.

I also have a 43” 4K, which I still refer to as “comically large”. I very nearly decided it was a mistake, until I set it as low as I could on my desk. Even so, as a computer display I get more out of the vertical space than horizontal (and tend to ignore at least a third of the screen while at my desk). If it didn’t also serve as my TV, I’d probably be just as happy with a smaller screen in vertical orientation.

Yea, I thought about it too, but my table is not as deep.

I do have a pretty deep table at around 33 inches, but my secret is that I use a lapdesk for my keyboard & mouse. I set the whole thing on an ottoman I have under the table for my feet when I'm done.

It's super comfortable and as long as I'm careful about the enormous screen I can still use the table for projects when not on the computer.

I don't understand why 5K @ 27" is so sought after. My partner uses a 4K 32" display currently and if I'm at a normal sitting distance, I couldn't tell the difference between it and a 5K Studio Display. The 32" is 137ppi which sounds low, but with your eyes at 25" away it's still "retina".

As I sit at my desk now looking at my 27" 1440p (108ppi) display at a distance of 23" I really cannot fathom having double the pixel density. Could it be better? Sure! I chose 144Hz over density, but double the amount of pixels? No way in hell

4k on 32” is usable but is very clearly much less sharp than 4k on 27”. If you can’t tell the difference, you might need to update your glasses or contacts.

4k 32" is 77% less pixels than 5k 27". That many pixels make night and day difference in text sharpness

macOS fractional scaling never looked good for me on a 4K 32" screen. At 5K you can get a clean 2560x1440 integer scale.

4k on 32” doesn’t look good on windows either.

That's what I'm running now with 125% scale and it looks perfect to me.

I run it in KDE at 168% scaling. Yeah I like everything big and very smmoth.

Which model of monitor do you use?

Cheap VA (Samsung S32A700), I use mostly as a TV though. I always would get tired quickly previously from 32 inchers, but recently I started liking them more than 27 inch; do not get tired anymore.

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