The Tech Behind Apple’s Impossibly Thin New iMacs

Given that families are a big market for iMacs it seems to be common sense that you would make it as kid friendly as possible. Last thing you want is an errant toy to destroy your screen.

Screens don't need it, but that's not purely aesthetic. Having glass upfront means you can use whatever you want and clean that stuff, as the material is resilient and there's no leak around the seams. Also it's more robust against people poking their fingers into the screen, and more rigid overall. In D.Rams parlance, "good design has a purpose", and here it's a blend between form and function.

What follows is just an opinion:

The smaller you make the package, the harder it is to do active heat management with fans and big heat sinks. Apple spends a lot of R&D dollars on reducing the power usage of their computers - Macs are way more power efficient than their competitors.

Thinness is the authentic, unfakeable, consequence of all of that power management engineering. Competitors can't copy the look of an iMac without also investing heavily in design work to reduce power consumption.

In an ideal world, Apple could just publish power usage figures, but that doesn't really sell computers outside of the data center universe. Thin computers on the other handle are much more marketable, so Apple is using thinness as a marketing proxy for power efficiency.

I really don’t understand why some people are completely mystified how that could be an argument. So you don’t care about looks? Fine. Others do. And computers are a part of the furniture.

Some people buy those really nice looking but functionally identical faucets that cost three time as much, some don’t. That’s all.

There is nothing ridiculous about that, it’s just a difference in taste.

The older parts might also get more difficult to get from the supply chain as time goes by (a bit like the old processors that drop off the manufactory chains after a few years), and you don't get much in not using a recent/smaller version of the components.

iMacs are already a very good value proposition I think, and you wouldn't have your better computer without bumping the price point way over what an average consumer would buy I think.

I'm not trying to compare Apple products to DVDs (except that I am) but this whole obsession with thinness is another great example of Apple giving us something we didn't know we wanted.

And on another note, which I have zero evidence to support, I'm sure there's a psychological effect of thinner feeling "faster."

1. Mac Pro - gouging prices, several generation old tech. 2. iMac - a Macbook Air in a monitor, practically zero expansion options. 3. Mac Mini - poor expansion options, poor graphics, expensive once you start adding the ram you need etc.

Seem to me Apple is now almost entirely focused on iOS and iDevices, which is understandable as that's where the money is. I don't see them investing anything much into the desktop computer line at all going forward. Time to move on.

The only improvements you could get with a thicker computer are things that would also negatively affect the amount of power it requires. Thinness is just a pleasant consequence of power-concious design.

For me, I've had an iMac for 5 years and I upgraded both the RAM and the HDD (to an SSD) myself with no issues. And it shows no signs of slowing down and is better than the day I bought it, and is probably one of the best investments I've made. Hell, at the time, and this is still true, buying a monitor of comparable quality would've cost half what I paid for the entire computer.