I fail to understand why someone would buy this over a Mac Mini and an external display: cheaper, more powerful, ability to change displays, only two more cables (power and data for the display).
Anyone care to enlighten me?
Compare that to an iMac. Go to the Apple store, drop $1k, take it home, plug in the power cable, and she's on Facebook in minutes.
That's the friction that iMac removes. If the customer has to leave the electronics store with multiple boxes from several different companies, and has the ability to buy the "wrong thing" (DVI instead of HDMI, etc.), it's probably a sign that the process can be simplified.
Very pleased, saved ~$200 off list. Still get a warranty.
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals
When a new model launches, that's the best time to buy refurbs on the older stuff. The older Macbook Airs are going for 35-40% off list right now.
The only downside is that Apple will charge sales tax, which can be substantial on a $1,000 or $2,000 item. Last time I bought a MBP it was actually cheaper to get a new one from Amazon because they were discounting it. (That was before Amazon started charging sales tax in my state, obviously - otherwise it would have been a wash)
I'm personally using a refurbed Early 2008 iMac that runs Mavericks just fine. It needed more RAM and hard drive space, but that was nothing that I couldn't have purchased when I bought the machine.
Apple knows some people treat PCs like furniture. That may make you grind your teeth, but at least you have the option.
Do you mend your own socks instead of throwing them out? Change your own oil in your car? Sweep your own chimney? Grow your own food? Roast and brew all of the coffee you drink? Come on.
> You have to be extremely rich to value your
> time in the thousands per hour.
- What monitor do I even buy?
- What's a good monitor brand?
- Do I have to buy an Apple-branded monitor? If not, do I have to look for "Mac compatible" or something on the box?
- I have to buy cables?
- What cables do I need? (The customer will probably need an adapter, at least, as most monitors do not include a Mini-DP connector/adapter)
- Can I just use my TV?
And so on and so forth. It's a lot more than just the physical act of plugging a monitor in.
Again, it's so easy for us, but you if you work in the tech industry you really need to think outside of your own head sometimes. Imagine if car manufacturers expected us to manually adjust the fuel/air mix in the engine because it's just a "five minute job."
Maybe you and I keep track of this stuff professionally or as a hobby, but most "grandmothers" don't. Quick: What's the best lock-in amplifier for rejecting mains interference. What? You don't know what dynamic reserve means? Jeez, you're such a dummy.
Think about how you would go about buying a piece of technical equipment outside your domain of expertise. That's what a "grandmother" is doing when he/she is buying a monitor.
Unless it's something I enjoy doing or my ironic sense of thrift kicks into high gear, I'll sacrifice the money when reasonable.
I strongly dislike when people use the "my grandma" argument. So what you're saying is either you're also as technically challenged or you're just an ass for not helping her and letting her go with the less optimal purchase because it's easier to set up.
Dropping $1k to browse Facebook does not make sense, and it never will, I'm sorry.
Disclaimer: I own a late 2013 rMBP.
It's once place where I'm generally disappointed in Apple's competitors (I loathe Apple but I freely admit they win because they're the best). Non-Apple all-in-one devices either ugly and anemic or fail to compete with Apple on price (if Apple beats you on price, you lose). The big thing I think competitors need to learn from Apple is to stop being such size-queens. Save some money on monitor size and focus on getting the other details right.
Same goes for laptops - the average Windows laptop the same size as the the largest Macbook. Apple is one of the only companies even building in the 11" form-factor.
I'd love it if my current monitor came with the iMac's speakers. I don't know if it was the speakers or the enclosure necessarily, but the iMac at my last office job sounded great.
On the functional side, thanks to the L shaped foot with the huge cable guiding hole, iMacs "hover" over the desk and thus have almost zero footprint. It's extremely practical to be able to push documents around or move your legs and not have dangling cables or boxes occupying above- or below-desk space.
The audience are the same people buying 8GB iPhones and 16GB iPad Minis -- they need the platform, but don't care much about the speeds and feeds.
Also, I think buying your own external display that is the same quality as the iMac one would be more expensive than people think... but then , most people don't need that good a display.
There's more to it than that of course, just as with $200 pants - they're often nicer to wear rather than good enough. So long as they fit. But they aren't usually cut for all body shapes. It's ok to say 'Not for me' and move on by which I mean that assuming this is an alternative to a Mini has already ruled out all those people who don't consider Mini's in the first place.
There is no real competition in this space (unfortunately), so people pay a premium. If you care about how your room feels, let me tell you: it feels a lot better with an iMac instead of some ugly 3rd party monitor. I didn't care about that as much, but now for me it is absolutely worth it.
Also, its a computer for people that don't like to invest huge amounts of time finding the "right" pc - I've started to appreciate that as well.
Agreed. You'll see a lot of iMacs at design-conscious shops like art galleries and boutiques, and in architects' homes. These applications/people have different objective functions than many HN readers.
2) self-contained. Only a power cable is required. Makes a neat desk.
3) it's completely silent (but then again so is a mac mini)
4) the higher-end models have an actual graphics card (mac mini has very bad graphics)
If Apple is moving from 16:10 to 16:9, then that would indeed be a very recent development. If this is the case, it would be kind of sad to me (I prefer a bit more vertical space), but understandable given the economics of the panel business.
I don't quite agree with what you're stating I'm stating. (I realize that this has gone on way longer than the original reply warranted, but...)
User teh_klev said that they were sad that 1080p "was becoming" the norm on medium sized panels, and that 1920x1200 wasn't becoming the norm, instead.
I replied that the transition to 1080p had already occurred, some time ago. I don't believe that either teh_klev or I implied that there was mass adoption of 1920x1200 (16:10), only that teh_klev would have preferred that there have been such a mass adoption, and I was suggesting that that preference (which I share, though I didn't mention it[1]) became moot last decade.
[1] though it turns out that if the screen is large enough and the resolution high enough, I no longer care about the precise aspect ratio...
However, for those of us doing "serious" work where we need those extra 120 lines, finding a decent >=21" panel (or even 17" one in a laptop) is getting expensive/more difficult to find.
Review: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/planar-pxl2790mw-review,...
The gap is the closest I've seen yet—the mini used to be very underpowered and this is the lowest clock speed I've seen on an iMac in a long time. But the iMac is still the better value, especially if you want a top-quality machine. That said, I don't see how many people would want the $1100 model instead of the $1300 model now that there's such a gap between the two.
Simply put, because it's designed by Apple. Evidently, that alone is enough to drive a much higher demand than similarly priced competing products.
In fact, I can get an all in one with much better specs for less. http://www.costco.com/.product.100115209.html?cm_sp=RichRele...
Other than the crap specs, it's really hard to buy into the idea that this is "entry level" when it's selling at a mid-level price.
This should be a $799 price point max.
Are we back to the Apple tax again?
Design, noise, materials, software (try getting that inspiron with apps like garageband, imove, pages and numbers for less than $1099), support (walk into the apple store and someone's there to help) and general ecosystem (time machine, app store, UNIX foundation (no real viruses)).
Yep...
> Geeks tend to forget that there is more to a
> computer than raw numbers.
It's like... come on, people. You make software for a living. Way to devalue your own craft!