New iMac with M6
apple.com322 points by notfried 16 hours ago
322 points by notfried 16 hours ago
I've bought several iMacs (2008, 2012, 2014, 2020) Anyway, it is frustrating once they aren't supported anymore. I think they are overbuilt, they are built to last forever but designed to be obsolete in 7 years. ChromeFlex has saved a few from recycling at our house (A chromebook with a retina display seems like such a waste)
I suggest spending a bit more and getting a mac mini and a studio display instead (Equally well built but can be used almost forever). If you could only (easily) use them as monitors once they went out of support...
Agreed on the iMac, but disagree on the Studio Display.
I own two 2022 Studio Displays and as beautiful and overbuilt as they are, it just does not make sense to own such an expensive 60hz display today. You can get a 144hz 5k 27inch LG for $800 now. Yes, Apple makes a $3300 120hz version of the Studio Display.
Maybe it wouldn’t bother some but 60hz is pure agony at this point
I totally don't care about refresh rates above 60 Hz. I do not enjoy but can tolerate even 30 Hz.
What I care about is resolution, color fidelity, color gamut, viewing angles, (anti-)glare, even how quickly the monitor wakes up. I don't play competitive FPS games, I do coding, graphics, and video work on my monitors.
I dunno. Scrolling around at 120+hz on web pages can be hard to let go. I have a few monitors around my home running at 120 or better, and it's painful to go back to 60hz sometimes.
Interesting, I have used Samsung 5K displays for a year or two with my Mac Studio, and recently bought an Studio Display after one died. I am SO much happier with the studio display, it powers on so much faster, the black is much more "black", etc. The built-in camera is also really good.
I'm almost considering getting rid of the other two Samsung displays and replacing them with Studio Displays because it's just so much better.
I recently chose a Studio Display over the alternatives, because I wanted something with an integrated camera to use as the primary display. There are already too many devices on my desk, so anything that needs an extra cable or comes with a battery that must be charged feels like a poor choice.
And I don't really see much value in high refresh rates outside gaming. The difference between 60 Hz and 144 Hz is minimal in most uses. Given what displays were in the 90s and 2000s, I would have chosen a different career if I was too picky about display quality.
I work with 30hz and cannot tell the difference. Mind it's mostly iTerm work.
They also have fans in them, that's not necessarily good for longevity. Thermally, yes, until the fans clog up or start making noise.
Yes, but does your LG monitor have an Apple logo on it?
why doesn't 60 hz work for you?
60hz on old CRTs used to give me headaches as the flicker was subtly perceptible. On modern displays it's fine for me (though I mostly look at text so there's not a lot of movement happening).
The older imacs at least had target display mode. That was pretty amazing so you could say least use it at a screen after it's useful life as a computer. Unfortunately they dropped it years ago. It wasn't very efficient on power and you had to use a key combo, I don't think you could make it boot straight into it every time. But at least it was there.
agreed! I am just one of several people in my circle who would have loved to keep using our 27" Intel iMacs as target mode displays. Within the Apple ecosystem, once the old 27" iMacs were discontinued there was no simple (again within there Apple ecosystem) inexpensive way of having displays larger than 24".
Some of the old iMacs could just be displays natively.[1] it was just an odd ball feature no one used.
It's a real shame they got rid of target display mode. But then people would hold onto iMacs even longer.
Today, you can use software like Luna or Duet, or native screen sharing to control an iMac from another Mac (or vice versa). I have a 2019 iMac, bought for pennies and upgraded after to max out; way better value than buying the display on its own or a comparable monitor alone. The screen quality is just great.
I use it both as a daily driver and as a "thin client" for all my other machines with the software above.
opendisplay - https://github.com/peetzweg/opendisplay - can make a old iMac's screen useful again. In my case, a 2015 27" iMac can be used as a monitor for my modern Mac laptop, connected via ethernet cable.
Very cool, I like this a lot. Will be giving it a try!
I've had good success with https://juicycrumb.com/product/docklite/#imac-model
There is a g4 model too there if thats the version you have.
They are never as good as native input. There are a lot of compression going on that reduce image quality and increase latency.
Also they require software on both sides, so if you want to use your imac to display your computer BIOS, no.
I wonder if Apple dropped it because of some proprietary licensed IP, such as Intel WiDi, making the feature possible.
No, it was when the displays went to Retina. There was no way to drive them at 5K externally. Thunderbolt didn't have the bandwidth to do so.
They dropped it before the switch from Intel chips; my 2015 iMac could do it (I think) but my 2019 Intel iMac can't.
I think this disappeared with Retina displays.
I'm still using a 2019 iMac 27" and starting to think about Linux again.
I've got a 2014 Retina iMac and a 2017 Retina iMac. Both of them run flawlessly but are now past Apple's support window. And third party software developers are mostly already adopting a "LOL we don't care" attitude about them. The hardware works impeccably, but software developers refuse to lift a finger to make their software run on them anymore. The Apple ecosystem is infuriating. With great sadness, I retired both of them a few months ago and am now running a boring Linux box with a pretty standard DPI monitor. I miss the Macs but their window of usefulness is way too short.
Those retina Mac’s are intel, no?
You could just run any other OS if any of the free OS upgrades that Apple provides aren’t good enough.
My 2019 iMac is actually great with Linux on it. It had some issues (built-in WiFi not working, sleep resume bugs) but Claude fixed them for me.
The thing that makes older iMacs "disposable" is that the required cooling vents end up [mostly] blocked, within just a few years – then they thermally throttle, until death.
If you open them up and keep them clean, they can have uses forever:
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My 27" iMac (2009) still sits faithfully alongside my main 48" setup (because I own the copy of CS4 installed upon it – FU Adobe!). It mostly plays background shows (while I work on main computer, adjacent).
My 24" iMac (2006) still sits faithfully on my tax desk, for its annual usage/filing. It also still plays Warcraft 3: Frozen Throne (quite well!).
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>I suggest spending a bit more and getting a mac mini and a ... display, instead
This is fantastic advice; my past two Apple's have been Mini's. My three main machines all connect to the same massive 48" display (that is about to outlast its first retired Mini).
The only new iMac I would ever again consider purchasing would be something on-par with the iMac Pro (2017) – but in 2026+ any iMac would need a 32"+ display (minimum) to be "usable" IMHO.
Yeah and the old ones are actually pretty easy to open up. You just take a suction cup and clip the screen off.
I mean even the newer ones aren't bad but cutting the tape, cleaning up and putting new tape is kinda annoying. They should have stuck with the magnets.
Your point about them being overbuilt and built to last forever is spot on. Another way to repurpose these machines is to install Linux. I think people will find they are still snappy and supported.
I like Omarchy because it is so different from what I am used to but still useful. Opinions on its creator (DHH) vary, but from an O/S perspective, I enjoy it. I am sure other distros are great too.
Does “support” really matter? My 2020 iMac still performs great, although I use Sequoia on it instead of Tahoe. It also runs Windows or Linux very well and was easy to upgrade to 128GB RAM.
My 2015 iMac is 11 years old and still works fine - I use it to run Windows 10 for the occasional thing that needs that and to test builds of software in High Sierra. It also runs Linux great.
It does, because everyone and their dog started releasing software that only runs on the latest version of macos. So if you are not running the latest macos, you can't use the latest software version.
For example, I used Sketch on my ond mac once and was quite happy, but then they dropped support for the OS version that mac was stuck upon. And since newer libraries resources etc all target latest version of Sketch, the version of Sketch I could run quickly became useless.
The worst is when an application updates itself just so it can stop running and tell you to upgrade to the latest OS version.
Hyperbole. Almost no software on macOS requires the latest.
However, it's great that developers are not too concerned with backwards compatibility. It was really holding back a lot of software
The difference being that the M-series machines do not have good prospects in terms of running Linux well. As I would personally not want to run Windows for sure, this matters a lot.
It has better prospects of being able to run Linux than it does of being able to run Windows, to be fair
Why would that be? You're stuck on drivers either way and ARM Windows runs just fine virtualized.
Asahi Linux exists for ARM Linux and has Windows has no equivalent (since it’s closed source and Microsoft doesn’t want to support that). Linux also runs virtualized, that’s obviously irrelevant because daily driving a VM isn’t a great idea.
Trying using a Mac on which you cannot install latest Firefox and see how your statement holds.
That's one thing Windows is generally much better at.
It matters because AI is finding more security vulnerabilities than ever.
I was happy but all of a sudden my VPN refuses to release versions for Sonoma
My desktop is still a 2017 iMac Pro and I’m holding out for a workstation-class machine with similarly excellent speakers & display, pitched at the same target market but contemporary spec main board. The standard iMac is not up to this level, and hard pass on the M5 Ultra Studio + Studio Display combo, I like the integrated form factor too much. In the meantime I work mostly on MBP. Fortunately, I am patient.
I don't understand why someone would buy this. It's $1700 for the same computer as a $900 Mac mini. The antiquated 24" monitor, keyboard, and mouse are not worth the extra $800. You can buy a very nice 32" monitor and better input devices for less than that.
I kinda agree with you but this is for people who don't want to think about it. That 24" monitor is incredible compared to anything sub 500.
A 32" gaming monitor is garbage once you're used to 216 ppi for creative work.
Realistically there is like 1 display from BenQ that even comes close spec wise.
Their target user will pay 1700 and have an incredible machine that does literally everything they want and probably won't need to upgrade for what, 5-10 years in a single purchase. Compared to having to buy a mouse, keyboard, speakers, webcam, and monitor.
Also having good speakers and a webcam is underrated. I use my wife's Studio Display sometimes and it's a real, real nice piece of hardware. I have a 5k LG ultrafine at work that's spec for spec similar but it feels like a toy in comparison (it's also like half the price though so).
Recently bought a retina 32” screen (Japannext 6k 32”) for around $800. Pretty sure you can get a decent kb and mouse for under $100. But a “magic trackpad” alone is way more than that.
Looks like a cool monitor (900 euros here). I am happy to see that there are more and more of products in this category popping up. I wish they would chose better names though (Kuyon is pushing it, but Japannext is very Aliexpress coded).
Disagree. I like my S3425DW (and my oled laptop) much more than whatever my colleague's macs
> I don't understand why someone would buy this.
The old Studio Display still goes for $900 used for 27” so it’s definitely a component of the cost that’s valued by the folks who do end up buying these. The PC market very much wants to disregard the ‘high PPI, well-calibrated color by default, built-in webcam and virtual surround speakers’ aspect of the iMac display but that’s worth the entire cost of the device to someone who wants that out of the box (except at that price you get 27” for display only :) Gaming and very large monitor folks may have more nuanced preferences but I can plonk down this iMac for any generic Mac user and they will be satisfied enough to get work done, barring field-specific technical requirements (primarily in thermals or extreme ram/cpu) that exclude use of an iMac regardless of cost.
You’ll have to be more specific about the manner of your dislike to convey how it may have bearing here — is your monitor preference for Mac use? What’s uniquely great about it to you that Apple’s display lacks? etc.
Man, but these Macbook Pro screens are so sweet.
Everyone is entitled to their opinions I guess :P
I never cared about any of this until I had to help my wife with monitor shopping where colour accuracy & PPI is king, and spent some time testing these out. Hard to go back now.
I was using the 49" Samsung Ultrawide for years at work and now I feel like I can count the pixels.
100%. Once you get used to an Apple 5K display, the normal and even "high end" gaming monitors just look awful.
That was my experience. The quality of the hardware is also superior. It happened the first time I used a touchpad after using my MBP for a while, it was just bad.
I daily drive a similar monitor and I'd give my left nut for an equivalent with twice the pixel density
I think it's obvious why someone would buy this and why Apples continues to slowly update them.
It's got a bright and colorful design where a Mac mini and any third party monitor would just be silver/grey + black plastic. Everything works together, no decision making about compatibility, no extra purchases, it has a webcam, speakers, one power cable, only one customer support call if you need help with any of it, one warranty etc. It's quite far from the "same" computer as a Mac Mini.
Yes. Design sells.
"Why would anyone get Eames Lounge Chair? I can buy similar enough kit for a 20th of the price".
Since many of us are sort of keen on products this would be really, really good to remember :)
The Eames Lounge Chair is a terrible example; you can buy near-exact clones for about 1/7th the price of a real one. There's one in the room with me right now. It's fantastic, and will probably last me decades.
Yep, for someone with ~zero technical aptitude, I'd happily pay the premium for decreasing the number of things that can go wrong. Things getting unplugged accidentally account for a lot of tech support.
I am sure that you can have both taste for that design and technical aptitude.
Oh yeah, for sure, they're nice. Just mean that it's also just a real utilitarian benefit for those without technical aptitude.
This 100%.
A Mac Mini is what I buy when I need a CI runner to run build, signature, and UI testing for macOS / iOS apps. I also have (one of) mine hooked up to a projector for home theater.
An iMac is what I buy my aging parents so that they can have an Internet terminal in the breakfast nook.
Totally different markets.
This. Cables suck. Imagine if cars were like this and you had to haul the engine or battery around on trailer.
That 32" monitor will have a crappy pixel density. It's incredibly hard to find good external monitors that are not made by Apple, definitely not for $800. Apple will give you a display with a high pixel density and glass front.
There are some 32" 6144x3456 monitors nowadays and they occasionally dip to the $800 range when on sale [1]. But for a more direct comparison, the Kuycon P20 looks very Apple-like, matches the 4.5K resolution of the iMac, and is $799 for its regular price [2].
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales/comments/1v87f6i/moni...
Many people report poor colour and uniformity with the panels Kuycon use. Also just on the specs alone the brightness is dismal.
Never heard of this brand up until now. Design is indeed Apple-ish, are the panels any good?
I think they at least used to be literally the same panels (though potentially a downrated version with higher dead pixel tolerance etc)
Specifically the iMac has a 24" 4.5K panel (4480x2520), and supports P3 color. And if the glass front is a problem, nano-texture glass is available for an extra $200 (although only on the higher-end config).
A glass front is a negative. Reflections always get in the way, and they therefore don't comply with worker safety rules in some countries.
If you do creative work, including frontend development, you need to have a hidpi glass display because a fuzzy plastic display will not faithfully represent what your viewers/users will see on their devices.
Apple's solution to reflections is to overpower them. I use my MacBook in some bright public spaces and reflections have never been an issue. For an iMac which is more likely than a laptop to be used in an environment with controlled lighting, it's just a non-issue.
> you need to have a hidpi glass display because a fuzzy plastic display will not faithfully represent what your viewers/users will see on their devices.
That literally cannot be true, unless you're saying that your users are ALSO going to have a 218ppi desktop. If you're developing for phones, sorry, a 218ppi display is woefully inadequate for replicating what the phone looks like because phones (modern iPhones) have 450+ ppi, more than TWICE the ppi of the display you're using.
An apple display is nice. But it's absolutely NOT absolutely required for anything no matter the creative work you're doing, because there's nothing it matches except developing stuff for display on that exact display.
Nanotexture is an option now, to get a matte finish and cut down on reflections.
Fair point but do people really need high pixel density at 32"?
I have bought a 32" 4k monitor like five years ago and have really regretted it. Sure fonts are slightly crisper but I would rather have preferred to have a higher refresh rate. Newer games will barely run on 4k if you don't have top of the like hardware or will need frame generation trickery. Plus the odd app that still doesn't support hidpi displays properly.
I feel like 1440p is already the sweet spot.
I’ve got a 32” 4k monitor at work, and a 27” 5k at home (the rather problematic LG one; got it just as it was being taken off the market in Europe over emissions rules). The 27” is so much nicer.
A 6K 32 inch from LG like $1200. You can get a 5K for $800 now, although it might be Asus.
"You can get the same thing for less money" has never been an effective criticism vs Apple computers. People will pay the extra $800 so they don't have to also buy a 24" monitor, keyboard, and mouse... and they'll all be the same color.
My Mom had a 2008 20" iMac. When it got long in the tooth, we replaced it with an M1 in 2021 or 2022. She was disappointed she wasn't able to get a 20" screen again and had to get one with a huge 24" screen!
Not everyone wants a massive display. Not everyone wants cables everywhere. Not everyone cares about their keyswitches. Not everyone upgrades often enough for a few hundred more bucks to really make a difference.
And sometimes having something that looks nice and clean and colorful brings you joy. That’s who this is for.
Apple used this picture in 2007 (!): https://64.media.tumblr.com/ddfe45456996d1244d65373ff9b6fd73...
I still think it captures the ethos of why fairly well.
It is a design piece. No wires besides the single power chord. Yet webcam and speakers working.
Yeah this thing is built for desk reception
It's also built for people who need a reasonable desktop computer but don't want their living room to look like a 14 year old's bedroom, or a corporate office space.
I'm not one of them, but I think many of us have had to convince partners that the big clunky monstrosity of a setup is actually cool...
This has been confusing us computer nerds since the first iMac in 1998.
Regular people want their homes to look nice. It's really important to them. We may think it's weird and stupid, but that's who they are, and it decides what computers they buy.
This. I worked as a network/computer guy for the architecture department at our university. They all had iMacs, which for me was quite a win because replacing/carrying them was super easy: disconnect power chord, carry to my desk - done. Fix or install whatever needs fixing, and simple carry back.
It’s cord bro not chord. Only mentioned it cos you did it in a couple of comments.
My wife made me essentially give away my budget-friendly gaming PC and get an iMac when she moved in with me after grad school.
Did you make her replace all her shoes with your preferred brand (Crocs)? That would be a fair exchange then.
They even put the (optional, by default it's wireless only) 2.5G Ethernet socket in the external power brick. This pattern seems to have been introduced with the M1 iMac. The 2.5G upgrade is new.
I have been back and forth with my wife about replacing the old intel based iMac she still uses. Because she does use FaceTime on it every day, she has been rejecting the idea of getting Mac mini + a monitor because I couldn't find a monitor with a comparable built-in camera. And to be fair, I might be able to hide the Mac mini, so it's just the monitor on her desk, but a webcam tucked on top of it, with the extra cabling does break a clean desk look. I haven't checked monitors with built-in cameras lately, so any recommendations would be much appreciated!
Apple's displays are great if you want to have the flexibility of a Mac mini. They're expensive as hell, but overall a great display if you want to plug something into a Mac and not have to fuss around with cables, etc.
I've been happy with Samsung's 27" 5k which has a decent clip-on camera: https://www.samsung.com/us/monitors/flat/27-viewfinity-s9-5k...
I've got one. It can be a bit annoying because I have a Samsung TV in the same room, and turning the TV off with its remote sometimes also turns the monitor off.
Lenovo sells such a display. Built in mic, cam and speakers.
It’s also a usb c dock with a Ethernet port
DELL too, bought a 4k 24" conference monitor off a second hand site for £80. It's got a good quality pop-up webcam, too. Usb hub, hdmi/dp ports, Ethernet on the back. Connects and powers the laptop with a single thunderbolt usb-c cable.
Not sure about ppi and stuff, but works great for me.
any specific model you had in mind? when I'm looking at the Lenovo offering, the "built-in" webcams are protruding and if I pair it with 4k resolution I quickly end up at 1300 dollars (yoga pro)... for $1600 you get the 5k apple Studio Display.
> _antiquated 24" monitor_
What's antiquated about it? It's the perfect monitor for most tasks. Very bright, high DPI. If you're typing a paper, this is going to be much better than a 15" laptop monitor.
I love my 24, though a second monitor. Larger and you have to move your head around too much.
probably niche, but we have an m4 iMac mounted to a built in desk in our kitchen. my family of 4 all have MacBooks, but the iMac gets heavy usage by all of us. kids will sit and do homework there, wife adds things to her grocery list, keeps her personal mailbox clean, does basic household web tasks. I use it to do household tech chore work, pay bills, etc when everybody is hanging around the kitchen. We all use our computers too, but the convenience factor of it's already on, powered, connected and ready to go is a draw and leads us to magnetize to it when we need it. I love it the most as I think it keeps us present with each other vs going off to a private space to do those sorts of things. Yeah we could just as easily drag our laptops into the kitchen but then you end up finding a comfy spot on the couch or for the kids in their rooms.
> Yeah we could just as easily drag our laptops into the kitchen but then you end up finding a comfy spot on the couch or for the kids in their rooms.
I've been feeling that: much about keeping my sanity in this age is about noticing those patterns we keep falling in and arranging for "easier" ways to fall into healthier patterns. The annoying thing is that it doesn't seem that those "unhealthy" patterns were that easy to predict in order to avoid. Like some 15 years ago would it have been as obvious that we would get to such a consistently predictable pattern of "comfy spot on the couch or bed" and the unhealthy social and personal repercussions of that?
I just wish I start being able to predict those pitfalls earlier than the current few years per tech evolution.
People need (!) this type of devices in representative settings, eg the reception of a boutique hotel.
How is an all-in-one better than a mini attached to the back of a monitor, or better yet locked in a cabinet for security?
It looks nicer. What you’re suggesting has either a brick attached on the back and/or at least two cables (but probably more).
Aesthetics obviously.. engineers and tech nerds are not the target audience for this machine.
>a mini attached to the back of a monitor
It is ugly. Especially i places like a reception, where the back of the screen is facing the customer. Plain and simple.
A boutique hotel needs a 27” version. They arent gonna switch from a windows all in one to a smaller mac aio.
Good point, but do these settings need the latest M-series chip then, too?
No, but if you're on a 3-5 year refresh cycle and this is your year, it'd be lame to not have the latest chip!
It's simpler and better for both hardware makers and buyers to just keep refreshing instead of trying to get clever about who deserves the current series of chips in their form factor, assuming the refreshes are of similar cost, utility etc.
These places aren't going to care about saving $200 on a machine that will return an order of magnitude or more than that in sales per hour
That would be a 4K 32", and I don't understand who would buy such a low-res monitor. A "very nice" 5K or 6K monitor is way more than $800 alone.
Since this is exactly what I am searching for, maybe someone here can help:
Does anyone know of a good looking display, just a slab on a stand like imacs or Studio displays?
I want something good looking for the Linux PC in my living room but almost all monitors out there are just plain ugly and bulky. Ideally 27-32" but at this point i dont really care anymore...
Thanks!
What about Dell's UltraSharp series? I have a 1440p 27" one and the only complaint I have is that that particular model has a bit of inverse ghosting. Not egregiously so but compared to my ugly MSI gaming monitor right next to it it's a bit noticeable.
Edit: For posterity the model I have is a U2724D.
kuycon has a basically Apple display clone.
Huawei mateview is also quite eye-candy.
Have you tried Samsung? They have designs that mimic Apple, though probably plastic.
Have you ever tried dragging that monitor and all those cables and peripherals into a Starbucks and camping there for 7 hours? This is a freelancer’s dream machine.
Do... people drag a full iMac to a public workspace like that? I feel like this would be ridiculed since even most co-working spaces provide monitor hookups. But if I saw you order a single coffee at a tiny shop and are set-up with an all-in-one desktop then me and everyone else will be giving you a side-eye
Slightly less worse would be one of those fold-out multi-monitor attachments that I've never seen in the wild either
People still occasionally wear Vision Pros in public, so I don't think the normal social etiquette applies here.
That said, truly not caring what strangers at a coffee shop think about you is probably a great step toward a great life.
To a certain extent, yes. But you could apply that same logic to people who do indecent exposure. At some point, if you're setting up for 4+ hours in a tiny coffee shop with a laptop replacement and you're not buying more than just a cup of joe, you're doing a net-bad for your community by making that coffee shop and thus cheap community spaces less viable.
If you want to do it in a Panera or SBux go ahead but not in a local shop. Being conscientious is actually a good thing, believe it or not.
There are plenty of local shops that are large, have plenty of seating, and don't mind you staying for several hours. It's up to the shop to enforce rules if it doesn't want people camping or using laptops or if it wants to require purchase.
I feel comfortable asserting most freelance professionals have outgrown a fear of "side-eye".
Do... people drag a full iMac to a public workspace like that?
I saw a guy with a Commodore PET at a coffee shop in Toronto once.
And more than once, I've been that guy with a TRS-80 at a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf shop in Las Vegas.
A TV reporter who stopped in for coffee seemed interested in what I was doing, until he saw that I was just playing Monopoly.
That seems really great, though. If you showed up with an ancient retro PC, you're asking for other nerds to chat you up and ask you what you're tinkering with.
Nobody's going to want to talk to you if you show up with a full iMac setup.
> Have you ever tried dragging that monitor and all those cables and peripherals into a Starbucks and camping there for 7 hours? This is a freelancer’s dream machine
For sure and you get a nice workout hauling a full desktop computer around to coffee shops. A fun conversation starter too, I bet!
If you bring in a color printer and photo scanner, you can really get some work done. Just need to grab another table to fit it all. I am sure nobody would mind.
Nothing personal, but the increasing amount of people setting up their work desk in coffee shops or lunch diners makes me not want to go there anymore. If I want to be surrounded by people working I'll go and eat at the office. It disturbs the vibe of the place a bit for me personally.
Have you ever tried using an iMac at a Starbucks?
I mean, this seems like a dream but in a bad sense: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/imacs...
Don't forget a decent webcam and pretty good speakers. I roll these out at work and I don't like retiring them after seven years; however monitors don't last forever either.
There's something to be said about the aesthetic of having everything in one, not having speakers and Webcams strewn across the place.
Apple will happily sell you the Mac mini for that setup too. Or the Mac Studio if you want something beefier.
It’s all about segmentation of the market.
Apple has customers that want a small, well designed all in one computer that fits on a desk. If it has a pop of color, all the better. It is a customer segment that Apple knows well and has been serving since the first Macs.
There are many companies that want to address the market for a budget friendly small PC with an external monitor. There aren’t many that try to address this segment of the market.
Try to find a good monitor with a good integrated webcam, speaker, microphone and usb-hub. You simply won't find any except Apple Studio Displays which start at $1500.
A single object to hand your kid for their dorm that will move every 8 months is much nicer than a bunch of parts and wires.
bringing a stationary desktop to the dorms has never been the correct decision
A mini would add one extra part (the mini) and two extra cables (power + thunderbolt). The mini can be attached to the back of the monitor eliminating the extra part. How is that harder?
So you’ve roughly doubled the number of parts, with risk of separating and losing them. It can be attached, but after locating and using an after-market device of unknown quality that requires initiative to set up. And then you have a power button in some weird place, not to mention now having to mind two power buttons. Some people will be confused when they turn on the monitor and nothing happens.
Anyone commenting on this forum is not going to mind looking after those parts and buying a mounting solution. Apple sells enough iMacs to show that most people have priorities and inclinations that differ from the people who comment on this forum.
You just explained it. Extra cables, potential mounting hardware… when disassembled is also more to pack up, move, and set back up.
You might not think it’s much harder, but it’s harder.
I agree. In the case of the older 27" iMacs-- you couldn't really get a 5K screen of that quality for any reasonable cost. It made it actually useful.
> You can buy a very nice 32" monitor and better input devices for less than that.
But they aren't Apple.
Deployments to organizations like .edu that strongly appreciates there's less hassle per seat (and gets them for under wholesale a lot of the time).
Some here claim that the design, but I think the iMac looks ugly. The bezels are ginormous. It looks like a 15 year old product.
Well, I got M4 iMac because I wanted a screen on my workbench with minimum cables and must be VESA mounted. I also needed a mac to build iOS apps. iMac was perfect fit.
The price put upon "I don't have to go figure out what a good monitor is and what are good input devices".
For some people is pretty much priceless.
Also there's no cables to connect the monitor and the device making it all one thing you can pickup and move around, which people value as well. Also the difference between (900+$monitor+$mouse+$keyb) and $1700 is really not a lot of money for a lot of people, especially those people considering an Apple devices.
Anyone who cares about those things you listed is not the intended audience, and instead the intended audience will buy these.
Do you ever talk to non-technical people about the computers they use?
same reason people buy any new device, form factor. we have one in our kitchen and love it, it gets spun around like an ipad .
> You can buy a very nice 32" monitor and better input devices for less than that.
As with many things, you pay for the atheistics.
I'm not sure of anything that fits the bill. Are you?
I wish they would make big displays again. Like 32” big 6K.
24” or even 27” feels like such a downgrade.
Also please make the iMacs usable as external monitors agains. Would buy one as a “livingroom computer” instantly if it was also possible to occasionally use it as a docking station for an air..
I've been using a new program called RetinaRelay[0] to use my 5k iMac as a second display for my M1 Macbook using an ethernet (or Thunderbolt for even better performance). Works brilliantly. It's definitely higher latency than a normal monitor (my ethernet connection is 45ms vs 5ms for a monitor) but it's not noticeable for coding and miles better than remote desktop or similar.
Cool, I suppose it doesn’t work with windows? To use a 5k iMac as monitor to my windows desktop?
I'm pretty sure it relies on Mac APIs like Metal and ScreenCaptureKit but it's worth reaching out to the developer. He was very responsive when I requested features, and it may be a lot easier to build a windows application that adheres to the protocol using agentic development.
I think you will find that 4K is generally sufficient at 32". Text is sharp enough, and a high refresh rate is probably more important at that point. There is also the issue that not even a 5090 can push enough fps at resolutions higher than 4K in demanding games.
4k stretched to 32 is awful. screen door very visible. honestly it’s not even quite enough for 27.
Oh to be young again. I use a 43" Samsung TV at 4K. That works for me. The 32" 4K monitor next to it I run at 2560x1440, you know, so I can read it...
You need to increase UI scaling, not turn down the resolution. All modern desktops support this in some form. I would only lower the resolution if the GPU can't keep up in games after exhausting all other options such as AI upscaling.
Apple have never released a 32" version of the iMac; even the iMac Pro was only available as a 27" model.
To me, it doesn't make sense, I would go a Mac Studio with multiple screens instead a big 32, but some people love working with one monitor.
Thats my setup - Mac Studio with two 32” monitors.
Would just be nice if I could buy the monitors from apple too.
I’m still angry that they deprecated target display mode. For a company that talks so much about recycling it’s really messed up they don’t support it. Such an amazing way to give life to old but incredible monitors - you’d have to spend $1000+ to get anything remotely resembling the quality of that display. You can’t even use ones that previously supported it on current Mac’s.
You can't continue to support Target Display mode when the connectors and cables of the day don't yet support 5k displays.
If you have an older 5k iMac, there is an inexpensive third party hardware kit to convert it into a display with modern connectors.
There are countless non-5k iMacs. I never said it had to be that. I had a beautiful 27” 2.5k display from 2011 I could’ve put to work.
There is no excuse other than laziness IMO. They likely decided not enough people use it and that they didn’t need to keep an excellent feature (total speculation to be fair). I can use iMovie to directly control/run playback from a dvcam from 2002 via like 4 daisy chained cables - including FireWire 400 - but they can’t connect an iMac anymore over thunderbolt 4 after supporting that for over a decade? Nah. Maybe there is a legitimate reason but I am incredibly skeptical.
The iMacs before the 5k version did support Target Display mode.
They dropped it when the cable and connector standards of the day didn't support a display that big.
That's not laziness, it's a technical limitation.
Now that we have newer high bandwidth connection standards, you can once again use a newer iMac as an external display over a thunderbolt connection.
Yes the previous iMacs sent a signal. Their current computers don’t receive the signal. This is not about the 5K display, you’re missing the core problem. It stopped working when the silicon line came out. You can’t get any iMac to work in target display mode on silicon Macs.
That’s not a technical limitation, that’s laziness. Go read more about this. It simply doesn’t work anymore without 3rd party solutions.
There is literally nothing stopping you from using a modern iMac as an external display using a thunderbolt connection today.
If you're OK with video compression artifacts, you can even do it over a WiFi connection.
You cannot grab an iMac, plug it into a silicon Mac, and get a picture on the iMac (without 3rd party software). This is incorrect. Please go look this up. The feature stopped working when silicon Mac’s came out. It only works on Intel Macs. 5K iMac or not.
Target display mode, the feature that allowed this, is no longer supported.
> without 3rd party software
At least you can finally acknowledge reality.
Also, VLC over a wired connection and streaming from one Mac to another using WiFi (AirPlay) are built into the OS.
