The screen of an iMac (at least the 5K 27" one) is the part that still has value, so its annoying when you can't use it on new hardware.
Perhaps check out the Asus PA27JCV: 27" at 5120x2880.
They were announced 'all the way' back in June, and I've heard rumours of October 31 being the ship date, so perhaps check back next week.
In the US, B&H is taking pre-orders, so presumably it can't be that far off:
* https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1850479-REG/asus_pa27...
The speakers and mic in the Apple display are nice, but if you're just concerned about the display itself save yourself the bucks and stay with the 4k.
I've had a few of these iMacs and would like another. When I buy a new one (every ~5 years) I hand down the old one to a family member (the last one is ~10 years old now, and stuck at macOS 12(?)).
I like the form factor as it is convenient.
I'm typing this on 2019 Retina 5K and am hoping Apple will bring back that form factor (there have been rumours of a 32", but that's a bit too big IMHO).
As it stands, it looks like the Asus PA27JCV has similar specs, and so I may end up with that and an Mac mini.
At some point we need to stop putting these things into landfills or even recycling them. I've been using the same PC case for at least 10 years ship of Theseus style and the same monitors for 5.
I appreciate apples recycling stance but even better is a reuse stance. Even just stripping back all the aluminum, melting it all down, re casting it and then remachining it has a significant cost.
For the last 10-20 years apple has been pretty good about reusing case designs for a few generations before doing some kind of redesign. Seems silly that I can't swap out a motherboard for a m2 macbook for an m3 macbook. (maybe this would also stop them from fucking soldering the storage to the motherboard since an upgrade that wipes my whole machine is utter bullshit)
Not everything you see is designed to be useful for you specifically
What do you mean? This was just announced, no? Are there any sales/pre-order figures already?
Also, how would you even go about analyzing the counterfactual of whether the number of people who would buy this spec are "plenty" compared to the number who would have bought a spec with more RAM had it been available?
Someone who is looking to muck about with LLMs isn't looking to pay for a 4k screen that cannot be separated from a non-upgradeable PC.
If you're in the Apple ecosystem, you're going to want eithet a Mac Mini Pro or a Mac Studio, depending on where the RAM configurations on the Mac Mini Pro tops out. .
I have a ten year old iMac at the moment that would make an amazing second monitor... but it doesn't quite have the features I need to use it like that. An HDMI input would be great.
There is a reason that is difficult to do: the licensing terms for HDMI require manufacturers to put DRM in place to make it impossible (or at least not straightforward) to record from an HDMI source. It's nearly impossible to meet that requirement on a computer.
Edit: nevermind, I see you addressed this in another comment.
In the specific case of the iMac:
- USB-C video outputs are all either DisplayPort[0]. HDMI Forum was promoting an HDMI USB-C altmode but it was never implemented. USB-C HDMI adapters are all DisplayPort adapters that additionally tunnel DVI traffic (because HDMI 1.x is actually single-link DVI with a funny connector and extra bits).
- Apple used to support Target Display Mode for video input until the Retina iMac a decade ago. They dropped Target Display Mode because their 5K display panels were using eight lanes of DisplayPort, a configuration that doesn't exist[1] outside of Apple's custom display controllers. Every other 5K display (and even some 4K ones) were instead using multiple cables, with some extra (poorly-supported) metadata to tell the graphics card to treat both halves of the display as one.
Why Apple hasn't brought TDM back now that we have enough bandwidth for 4.5K over standard cables is beyond me.
[0] Or MyDP, aka "the funny Nintendo Switch altmode"
[1] Think of it like a "32-lane PCIe port". It's technically possible but no host or device silicon supports a link that wide.
https://www.makeuseof.com/hdcp-vs-hdmi-whats-the-difference/
Not tunnel, convert: these are active adapters that take in a DisplayPort signal from the computer and re-encode it as a DVI/HDMI output signal. The computer doesn't need to know or care that there's HDMI happening downstream, because it's still just outputting DisplayPort signal. It's not like Thunderbolt where DisplayPort traffic is tunneled inside a different signalling mode that the host machine supports.
This is why USB-C to HDMI adapters are unidirectional (at least, all the mainstream commodity ones). You'd need a different converter chip to do the conversion in the other direction.
I’m contemplating doing this myself at some point but my maxed out 2019 iMac upgraded to 128GB ram and extra SSD is still plenty fast for me, actually feels subjectively quicker than my M2 Pro MacBook Pro with significantly less ram feel. I was a bit surprised as I had read all the hype of the responsiveness of the Apple M-machines.
Instead, the 2018 iMac is incredibly slow, and can be thrown away.