> iMac features a color-matched keyboard and mouse or trackpad... These accessories now come with USB-C ports, so users can charge all of their favorite devices with just a single cable
Since this thread seems to be about niche asks for pro users, despite the product being targeted towards casual users who want an easy out of the box experience, I'll add my own to the mix.
I'd love a bigger/better screen on these, specifically an ultrawide variety. An iMac Pro with an 8k ultrawide would be a near-instant purchase for me. I find the ultrawide form factor so good for productivity. I love the apple "it just works" approach to their hardware, so if something was fully integrated I'd jump on it immediately.
Today I use a 49" CRG9, but the input and connection setup is somewhat finicky. Not a huge blocker, but it would be lovely to be able to simplify.
I also use and love the exact same 49" CRG9, but if you do the 2x retina math, to deliver the pixel pitch Apple customers expect on desktop in the 32:9 display form, that would realistically have to be a 10240x2880 display at a minimum of 60fps. Not sure if there are bandwidth considerations over displayport or similar as this is essentially two 5k Studio Displays (5120x2880) side by side at that point.
I love my CRG9 with MacOS, but there's no escaping the text rendering is significantly poorer than on Apple's own 2x retina stuff.
Unfortunately the iMac Pro was a stopgap measure similar to the 16 inch iMac that had the escape key. Even the last MacBook Air with Intel is really a testbed for the design of the first M1 MacBook Air (the mainboard is the only thing that changed). Apple has taken the steps to make the Mac Studio and other display devices made by them but, curved displays don't seem to be a strategy that Apple would take because right now they might move to tandem OLED on all devices which means even considering something curved isn't on the drawing board.
Given that the lightning version picks up a nine hour charge in the time it takes to take a bathroom break or go get a cup of coffee, this is more of an excuse to make fun of the design than it is a real world show stopper.
> The Apple Mouse 2 also comes with a Quick Charge feature that provides nine hours of use with a two-minute charge.
The people who like the magic mouse (not me) don't care, and the people who even otherwise would never use a magic mouse get to keep making fun of it. Why would they bother?
Don't be foolish. We may one day cross the Atlantic in an aeroplane or conceive of a motorised carriage capable of traveling 50 miles per hour but some dreams are simply impossible!
Putting the plug on the bottom is an intentional choice by Apple. It's because they don't want you to plug it in to charge, then never remember to unplug it. Mandatory wirelessness.
I believe (unfounded) originally it was made for asthetic reasons, as to not interrupt the sushi shape, and that not being able to use it while charging was not considered to be that much of a downside. And then since then Apple just hasn't bothered spending engineering effort on 'fixing' that design decision ever since.
Logitech makes mice that worked plugged in and not, and they are durable too because they use a custom plastic piece around the USB connector to ensure a snug fit:
Logitech mice don't use the top surface of the mouse as a multi-touch trackpad, so it doesn't matter to Logitech if the top surface of the mouse is uninterrupted by a charging port or not.
The mouse port thing is like a canary in the coal mine, betraying the people who just like taking shots at Apple, but generally are very ill informed. I think Apple should keep the port on the bottom purely so we can get the shortcut to discarding people's opinions when they hoist it up to concern troll.
For actual Apple Mouse users, charging is just the least concerning thing imaginable. The battery lasts an absolute eternity. I'm using one right now that I've had for at least five or so years and I charge it once in forever, it charges super quickly, and it's just not a factor in my life at all.
Makes sense, especially because it's more impressive/magic (especially when it was introduced) when your friend/family/coworker sees you using it. If the cable was plugged in, it might just look to them like a mundane, not Magic, mouse.
Just pay logitech $5/piece to license the patent and then sell them for $200, there is plenty of meat on the bone for everyone involved.
Or bypass the idea of the patent altogether by making their mouse charge wirelessly and then releasing a giant wireless charger that happens to work pretty well as a mouse pad later.
There are so many legitimate reasons to hate the magic mouse.
Ergonimics, the polling rate, the way the glass gets greasy, the scratchy hard plastic on the bottom.
Truly, inferior to the Logitech MX Master in all ways except looks. (which is subjective).
But it takes literally a few seconds to get a days worth of charge out of the mouse, Apple clearly don't want you to leave it plugged in to use as a wired mouse: why? idk, because they hate choice, or perhaps its because they know it would overcharge the battery and bulge, or perhaps even still, people would get weird expectations about "wired being better for latency" despite the mouse not using the data connections on the wire.
We'll never know. But the charging on the bottom is such a non-issue in reality that it makes me wonder if anyone actually owned that mouse, or they just think it looks funny. Personally, I'd rather they fix the other issues with the mouse, the charging was legitimately never an issue.
Sure, but it was still an inconvenience to interrupt a presentation once, and another time a prod debugging session where everybody was anxiously breathing on my neck and staring at my screen another one.
To me the plug placement was an inconvenience, regardless of how invisible it is to you.
On top of that, it never charged in few seconds after years of use, mine would take longer just to connect to the iMac again.
I was glad to buy magic trackpad I could leave connected 24/7 and never think about it (also I liked it much more than the MM in general).
It’s all about tension on the lightning connector imo - the connector isn’t designed for that level of flexibility, so it would break and it’s not like they’re going to use a different connector just for the mouse
The only reason they don't let you charge it is because it's a recycled design of the MM1 which used disposable batteries. The Magic Keyboard and Trackpad which came out the exact same day both let you use it plugged in and charging, even wired! The Magic Mouse shell was just not designed with a cord in mind at all.
I have personally been in meeting where my boss forgot to charge her magic mouse and we had to wait two minutes for her to open the stuff we needed to discuss. It happens.
Those are both moving parts that must be treated as movng the same as a mouse, because they are not bolted to anything. Any mechanical designer will absolutely treat everything about the ports on those the same as for a phone.
ive had a magic mouse and only had to plug it in and charge it and walk away for 10 minutes... maybe... 5 times in the past three years? like it's annoying when it happens, but you also only have to charge it once every couple months, and i mostly have this annoyance because i have notifications 100% turned off and i don't see the low battery notification.
however i will say three years in, either a software update or hardware issue is now killing the battery and i have to charge it every week or two and that sucks
salty that i now have airpod pros, an iphone 13, and the magic keyboard and mouse all with their dumb lightning bolt or whatever it's called. going to have to rebuy all this to forever rid myself of non-usb-c cables but at least in 2024 it's finally happened as an option
Each of those times you walked away, did you ever try plugging it in, counting to ten and then continuing to use it afterwards? That's what I used to do.
The ergonomics were absolutely terrible. I now find using any mouse painful, to the point where I've replaced all of my computer pointing devices with trackpads. I blame the pain on a long history of Magic Mouse usage.
it annoys everyone, it's a dumb design, you get a message from your Mac telling you that the mouse has no charge and suddenly you can't work anymore for a few minutes, it's idiotic, plain and simple
Yeah, I've been using these on multiple Macs for a decade now and it's just not an issue.
If I get the warning the mouse is getting low on charge I just plug it in, go grab a drink or use the bathroom, and by the time I get back it's good for the rest of the day.
Then all I have to do is remember to plug it in overnight and it'll be good for months. YMMV.
There are so many lulu ideas in this comment that don't hold up to the simplest examination.
Plugging in for a few seconds to get a days worth of charge is a stupid thing to actually require or consider normal.
I also want to use my mouse tomorrow, and even the next day, and do so without having to plan ahead "today I will leave my mouse plugged in overnight because I can tell by clairvoyance that it is about to run out" or "I have been tracking the calender like a menstrual cycle and it's time, tonight is the night!" or "I have set up a sheduled alarm on my wonderful Apple Watch to remind me to go look at the settings somewhere to check the mouse battery level and see if it's time to charge tonight"...
And if you don't plan, then you have a few choices, charge for a minute and have to do it again without warning in 2 days, a constant stream of unplanned forced trips to the coffee maker, or just charge for 30 seconds every single day as a part of your routine, or stop and wait for a full charge on the spot for however long that is, or the worst of both worlds, get on with your day by charging for a minute now, and then don't fail to remember to plug it back in before leaving several hours of busy-ness later, which you absolutely will of course.
There is no version of any of that that is remotely convenient or sensible, and certainly not an upgrade from every other mouse in the world. There is no version of this that isn't patently ridiculous. You can work around it and tolerate it because it's not as bad as having to dig ditches for a living. If there was something about mice that the tech just didn't exist for it to work any other way, then sure it's possible to live with, because humans are adaptable. But it's not good, and it's not better than the already norm for $2 mice sice 20 years ago.
The mouse gives you like 3 days heads up that you might want to think about charging it though.
If you disable all notifications and it really runs out, waiting 10 seconds for it to charge is... fine...
I doubt you're using a wired mouse, and most wired mice are actually worse at charging than the magic mouse- the only difference is that you can use them while plugged in, so it's not as annoying that they charge so slow and use more power.
Ultimately it comes down to effective utility, people harping on about the placement of the charging cable without respect to the actual usability of the device holistically have quite literally missed the forest for the trees.
Like I said, theres plenty of reasons to dislike the mouse, but this ranks among the lowest and honestly the weird hate-boner for that decision just makes people look like they don't know what they're talking about to me.
I get what they were going for: force the user to use it as intended because the battery really lasted long enough for most people. Otherwise people would just have left it plugged always, and the cable+port would have needed different mechanical strength. But that really annoys anyone who would have left it charging if not most of the time. I think it would have been a better experience by leveraging software instead: detect that it is close to the end of the day and battery is low, and notify the user thwt they need to charge it when they stop using it, if leaving the underside port, or use notifications to annoy people into disconnecting the mouse when fully charged, if the port was moved to the obvious place. You're still annoying people, but you're less likely to end up with an unusable belly up mouse midway through your day.
Apple is not nefariously gimping mice, they just don't see a world where people use non-Apple mice which have a touch surface for smooth scrolling. AFAIK this isn't an issue that can be solved with drivers. Logi's software has a persistent daemon that can convert your scrolling to smooth scrolling, but that requires leaving it open in the background. You can also use one of the dozens of open source apps that do the same thing.
I don't think it's nefarious, I think it's negligent. As I understand it, they changed something internal to how mouse motion is handled. The Magic Mouse speaks to the OS in a way that matches this change, and that was all they ever cared to ensure worked. They also don't support more than 3 buttons on a mouse well, because Apple doesn't make mice with more than 3 buttons. They did the same sort of thing with standard-DPI monitors; they didn't make them look bad on purpose, they just optimized for high-DPI monitors and didn't care about the others.
It does - it two different ways! The scroll wheel ratchet can be disabled (which is how I use it) or MX Options can override Smooth Scrolling. Or both.
Out of the box, with no custom software installed, non-Apple mice (and even older Apple mice) will have extremely janky scrolling on modern versions of macOS.
Apparently, something internal to how the OS handles mouse scrolling was changed, and only the Magic Mouse gets a proper scrolling experience using built-in drivers. It is possible to fix this, but only with custom software (either drivers for specific mice or general tools for all mice).
I have never experienced this. I have a Logitech G203 mouse I use with my M1 Mac and of course I use the touch pad when I'm not at my desktop. I've never noticed a difference. Both seem butter smooth. I have no special software install. Am I missing something?
is it janky, or is it tied very closely to the scroll input, so it's exactly as janky as your finger moves the scroll wheel on the mouse? because that's what it seems like to me.
for it to be any smoother, there would need to be some artificial smoothing of the scroll wheel input. and i'd rather not have that.
It's not so much "raw input" as "extremely erratic".
For example, when using the wired Mighty Mouse, the same motion of my finger will sometimes scroll a couple lines and sometimes scroll the entire page or not scroll at all. The same mouse plugged into Windows does not exhibit this problem.
> For example, when using the wired Mighty Mouse, the same motion of my finger will sometimes scroll a couple lines and sometimes scroll the entire page or not scroll at all. The same mouse plugged into Windows does not exhibit this problem.
This is not normal and you're possibly facing a bug. I have a Master 3S and mine scrolls exactly the same distance with every click of the wheel.
> They also did move the Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse to USB-C.
Only for the bundled peripherals, it seems. The Apple Store now only lists the full-size Lightning keyboard without Touch ID in white, which is even worse than before when you could get various permutations of tenkeyless, Touch ID, and black.
Why does the Magic Mouse still exist, though? If you have an iMac with the Magic Mouse, you own the only Apple device without the complete suite of multitouch gestures. It's weird that they still make the Magic Touchpad a paid option when it seems like a core part of the offering.
These days 8 GB is absurdly low for a ~$1300 PC. Hopefully they might have finally realized that selling crippled products (just to force its users to pay the predatory price for memory upgrades) is hurting UX and their reputation.
I mean they claim:
> Compared to the most popular 24-inch all-in-one PC with the latest Intel Core 7 processor, the new iMac is up to 4.5x faster.1
But is that really true if your "ultrafast" Mac grinds to a halt when you have a couple of Electron apps and a browser open at the same time? Naturally users who bought the base model because they didn't really understood the implications would just conclude that macOS is slow and unstable compared to Windows?
No, it's not. It's a $1300 high end tablet, which (among other things) will not run arbitrary programs of the user's choosing, and which has aggressive memory management and background process restrictions. All of these factors contribute to 8 GiB being a reasonable amount of memory for such a device.
Isn’t Apple’s RAM inside CPU package? I think it might not be possible to put together a system (at least with consumer parts) that matches their memory bandwidth.
On the other hand, they are limited in capacity. It is a trade off, it is silly to pretend they are just limiting memory capacity out of the vileness of their hearts or something.
No, but their marketing department would like you to think so.
> It is silly to pretend they are just limiting memory capacity out of the vileness of their hearts or something.
They are limiting memory capacity and charging you 8x-10x reasonable retail price for upgrades, so that their profit margins stay high. Whether or not that's vile is something I leave to you to decide.
> No, but their marketing department would like you to think so.
Can you link to a teardown that finds RAM somewhere other than the CPU package?
Or were you in too much of a hurry to notice that the comment you replied to didn't make the common mistake of claiming the RAM is on-die not just on-package?
I get your point, and Apple doesn't price RAM cheap, but it's worth noting that any RAM doesn't equal any other RAM.
There's a ton of ram types with varying performance levels, and in apple's case it's RAM with direct and performant access from the graphics card (unified memory).
I’d much rather have had serviceable ram modules than sightly faster ram to the gpu I will never fully flex with macos software anyhow. Speaking as someone saddled with one of these computers.
Every M-series Mac has shipped with completely standard LPDDR4 or LPDDR5(X) memory chips. While these can be a bit more expensive than socketed non-LP DDR DIMMS, we're talking maybe 10% more expensive, not 1000% more expensive (which is what Apple charges for upgrades vs standard retail price for DIMMs).
Apple's marketing department would be happy for you to think otherwise, but the "secret sauce" of their high memory bandwidth is completely due to having more memory channels built into the SoC than a standard x86 CPU.
I love in Apple product announcements when they show people doing tasks that not only don't require recent hardware, but in fact could have been done without much trouble 20 or 30 years ago. Specifically talking about the ice cream spreadsheet that I suppose was there to show off how small businesses can use the new iMac.
I'm sure it's a fine machine, but it does to me highlight the upgrade treadmill.
> iMac with M4 features the world’s fastest CPU core, making multitasking across apps like Safari and Excel lightning fast.
This stuck out for me too, plus the examples of using Siri on the desktop. I reckon that invoking Siri to say, "Send Gema a text" and then having to proofread and approve the message is more effort than just sending Gema a text. Same for typing out "turn on do not disturb".
You could imagine the argument being that there are a lot of deep settings or hidden controls that people would like to find, but then wouldn't a vector search that shows relevant settings be just about the same outcome?
I'm surprised they are still shipping these with 256GB of storage base. I had a Macbook with a ~500GB SSD in 2012 (I installed it), and a 500GB spinning disk in like 2008 (also user installed).
A 500GB SSD can be had for <$50 these days, and a 1TB for <$100. Still plenty of profit for Apple, even if they bump up the base storage to 512GB and make 1TB a $200 upgrade...
This is a desktop so I think the assumption is that the savvy can attach a USB3/4 device with appropriate storage (e.g. for your massive photo library - it's easy to change the location).
Except that storing your iCloud Photo Library on an external drive is a PITA, as multiple daemons (photoanalysysd being one of them) will randomly activate themselves to do their shit, making it difficult to predict when the drive will not be able to be gracefully ejected. It needs to be a permanent external disk.
It depends what the person meant by ordinary, but if ordinary just generally refers to "off-the-shelf" or commodity SSDs, then we've been able to get equivalent or better performing NVMe SSDs for a long time, for a small fraction of the price. Within what you can get retail, I think you'd still want the higher end of it for comparable speeds and yields, but would still save A LOT doing so.
I commented elsewhere, but my uncle is on his third iMac in 30 years. He keeps them a decade at a time. My father is still using an Intel iMac. Normal people do not upgrade their computers after purchase. Displays are generally not something that fail. These machines are capable of providing a decade or more of service to normal people.
I'd love to see a regulator mandate that computers like the iMac that have built in screens must have HDMI ports that allow them to be used as monitors.
This would be great for the consumer and prevent a lot of ewaste as people can use obsolete computers as monitors well past their useful lifespan as a monitor.
HDMI might be a bit more complex, but displayport should be doable since most devices use embedded displayport (eDP) anyway for their built in displays. I'm guessing the main cost would be adding a switching chip for switching between external and internal source.
Are you expected to replace your screen often? I don't think I upgrade and replace either one much faster than the other. Usually get a new monitor and a new PC every 4 or so years.
> Usually get a new monitor and a new PC every 4 or so years.
Maybe you're not quite the average consumer that OP has in mind? Maybe you are, I don't know. Either way it's unsustainable and ridiculous that the _average consumer_ would need to replace something after 4 years when it COULD be built to last.
My first LCD monitor is still actively used in our house, about 18 years old now. My mother has gone through several computers, kept the same screen for 15 years. Apple Consumers are not "Average Consumers". Starting at $1300, it's a luxury desktop.
That’s a mid-range desktop at most in a world where people pay more than that for individual components at the high-end, especially when you look at pricing for equivalent quality displays.
The correct criticism of iMacs is that it links two parts with different lifespans. There should be a legal requirement that all-in-one computers have an external connector so that if some other component fails or simply becomes obsolete you can use the perfectly functional display with another system.
Most people I know who don't use laptop exclusively don't replace their monitors that often. My work docking station is still rocking 2017 4k monitors and my wife home setup is similar.
My last iMac lasted 10-years. I replaced it with the M3 iMac for my daughter. I will be happy if it takes her through High School graduation in 2030. If the M3 iMac is still running, I expect to use it for some intro to computer stuff for one of the younger kids.
Yes I cannot mine the iMac for parts at EOL, but realistically, I haven't really done that on any tower-based PC either.
yeah I have an older model that had the well documented faulty / fragile screen connector for the LED back lights. Very expensive replacement screen was the recommended fix! all for the sake of a tiny six pin connector.
One of these days I'll split it down and see if my hands are still steady enough to solder on a new connector.
Anyway it was enough to swear me off any all-in-one devices ever again. I thought by now we'd be fully modular with desktop computer hardware.
I’ve been using an M1 iMac as my main home computer (with 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD) and have zero reason to upgrade. I’ve loved it. Exactly what I need, though I offload a lot of home server type tasks to a big tower PC, including messing with local AI stuff.
BUT a new hockey puck Mac mini that shared a screen with my gaming PC would be a nice space-saver. If only the studio display could switch inputs—using macOS on a curved gaming monitor seems weird.
There are Thunderbolt 4 KVMs now (can't speak to any myself, but they exist!). DSC will give you quite a bit of spare bandwidth with the Studio Display.
I've been using the Sabrent one for a year or so. It's worked quite reliably once I got the cables sorted. I was unintentionally using one TB3 cable in the mix, and that made it pretty flakey. It has been pretty solid since swapping that for a TB4 cable.
Now that my 27" iMac from 2020 is starting to get old and Apple will likely deprecate support for all Intel Macs soon, I really wish there was an easy way to use it as an external monitor for a MacBook. Every implementation of streaming to an iMac is hacky at best.
I looked into this briefly when they announced that the iMac Pro is the oldest device that still gets the newest software.
It's logically two displays crammed together, which apparently makes Linux support difficult. Someone posted on HN a link to a Chinese company whose sole purpose seems to be making boards that let you drive an iMac Pro display with a traditional display cable. It's left as an exercise to the reader how mad your company would be if you tried that on your corp device.
There's not a super easy way to do it but if you're willing to take it apart there's driver boards available on Aliexpress that convert 5k imacs into HDMI/DP monitors.
I've got one of the LG Ultrafine 5K monitors paired with a modern M1 Max macbook and it's a nice combination.
Expensive, but I adore the pixel density considering I spend all day staring at text :)
I'd be seriously tempted by an iMac if it had M4 Pro + a 27" 5K display. I just don't feel it's likely as they'll probably see it as cannibalising Mac Studio + Studio Display sales.
On one hand, companies willing to spend more than $250 on monitors will rather give you a 32" ultra-wide, because that's more useful to the typical office monkey worker.
On the other, the PC enthusiast customer base is almost synonymous to gamers, who'd rather want high refresh rates than a silly 5K resolution they cannot use.
For what its worth, I am extremely satisfied with my Studio Display. The 5K resolution makes 2x pixel perfect scaling look great, built in webcam which fantatic for meetings, good speakers, and charges the MacBook Pro with the same cable, and acts as an USB-C hub.
It has a few upsides that don't get written about often, compared to other monitors:
- Apple is extremely picky about panel QC, making things like dead pixels and patchy backlights much less common
- Its design practically eliminates the backlight bleed that's common with other monitors due to variances in bezel/panel fastener tightness
- No coil whine (surprisingly common even in other high end monitors)
- Some of the best glossy antiglare treatment I've seen, without the "gritty" coating that can cause a "sparkle" effect that's common on Dell monitors
- It wakes up and displays a picture almost instantly
It's not perfect and I'd prefer better specs for the money, but it's not a bad monitor. I've tested models that are more expensive than the Studio Display that fail to check some of these boxes.
I have both; I got the LG when they first came out and the Studio display last year during a good sale on Amazon.
The panels seem the same but everything on the Apple one is better, as you would expect.
But lately my LG is starting to have issues with ghosting and color shifts around the edges. It's still ok to use (I'm typing this on it) but I guess it's nearing the end of it's useful life.
What delineates it as an idiot product? There aren't exactly a ton of alternative 5k displays on the market. Dell and LG have some 5120x1440 options, but only Apple has a 5120x2880 option as far as I can find.
There’s a Samsung one, though it doesn’t seem to generally be much cheaper than the Apple one, and the LG Ultrafine 5K seems to be… maybe still available?
If a 27" iMac did exist, it makes the comparison to the Studio Display now a bit odd - because they'd both cost roughly the same price but one has a computer and one doesn't.
I tend to agree but more because the market has settled on it. One thing about screen size is that it's easier to achieve an effective screen size with a smaller screen (by moving it slightly forward) than it is to do the reverse. So a 24" screen will work in more environments, e.g., smaller desks, than a 27" will. A dual screen setup with two 24's will require less neck movement.
Of course, the market has also decided that decent aspect ratios aren't worth doing either. If there were 3:2, 4:3, or 5:4 options—more versatile for productivity—we'd probably settle on something between 21" and 24".
If only it had higher pixel density. If there was a 43" 6K or even 8K screen I'd buy it in a heartbeat. But with only 4K I have to use all sorts of weird tricks with raster fonts to make the text in my terminals sharp.
Also, too bad all the TV makers stopped making 8K screens in 55" and below.
It really is, 4K 27" monitors that can do >=120Hz are perfect for me personally.
I just wish that the base macbook pro models supported 3 external screens without resorting to a software-based video-over-usb DisplaySync (not DisplayPort) connection.
So far the screens I've tested are more tiring to my eyes (I work both on a M1 13" with external screens, and on a legacy 27" iMac). What are the best 27" screens for coding comfort that work well with Macs these days?
Apart from the Samsung Viewfinity that another commenter mentioned, there's also the LG Ultrafine 5K and the Huawei Mateview. The MateView is nicer than other 4K monitors because it has a taller aspect ratio of 3840 x 2560 so the extra 400 pixels of vertical space is nice for productivity work, although of course this is still fewer total pixels than a 5K display.
I haven’t tried it myself but if you really want that 5K 27 inch form factor samsung’s viewfinity s9 is exactly that. Or apple’s studio display ofcourse.
Right now, the Apple computer lineup is totally out of alignment for me. The iMac is too small and the laptops are too big. I'd like a minimum 27" display for the iMac, maybe 31". For a laptop, give me something more portable, like the old 2 pound, 12" MacBook.
I love the idea and form of an ultraportable laptop, but I’ve had to face the reality that even a 13” monitor is just too small for me to be productive on complex development tasks. My eyesight isn’t good enough to handle tiny fonts, which could be part of the disconnect. What kind of work are you able to get done on a 12” screen?
I could never justify getting an iMac. All the downsides of a laptop & desktop in one; not upgradeable and not portable. Leaves me wondering how many of these Apple actually sell. A Mac Mini with a separate screen feels like it makes far more sense.
The iMacs very much aren't their main seller. A couple of key demographics use it though:
* Families with a shared computer in a common room. Super simple to setup, no fiddling, low price. In the video Apple showcased this use case. My parents have an M3 imac and it works great. They had their last iMac for ten years.
* Businesses buy these for reception areas and customers see the Apple logo on the back. Easy solution for a business with no IT department, great marketing for Apple.
Apple will probably always sell an iMac option as long as businesses buy and display them.
That's fine, but personal anecdotes are also a hugely misleading source of information too. In the time since the iMac redesign was released, I've seen 10x more of the old models than I have seen of the new ones. My local barber even uses an Intel iMac in Target Display mode to run their Windows small-form-factor PC.
HN is disillusioned, but so are a lot of the west coast product designers that expect businesses to buy these on day 1. The majority of businesses are going to buy whatever is cheap and effective - their realistic choice is between a Chromebox and a Mac Mini.
+1 for the business front desk. This is by far where I see them the most. They're very easy to deploy, and most of the software you're going to need it to be running works in a browser. A windows all-in-one PC is another option... but the chance of something going wrong/being annoying in the interim between "plunk it on the desk" and "open salesforce in chrome" is definitely higher.
My parents have had an iMac in their living room sitting quietly doing stuff (web apps, mainly) for 9 years now. Still works fine for all their use cases and the 5k screen remains a delight to behold.
i know a few people who have an iMac in their living room like that, with the same logic as the people who still have landlines - the laptops and cell phones get put away when you get home (or stay in the home office), so you can be present with your family. but sometimes you still need a computer for stuff, like controlling the music or quickly looking something up on google. but if it's not your computer, and it's not signed in to all your stuff, you're going to quickly do the thing you need doing and then get off it again.
iMac is perfect for that. it looks pretty, it's small enough that it can be put in a corner, and it's powerful enough that you can buy it, leave it there, and not think about having to upgrade it for a decade.
It's surreal for me how something so expensive can be thought as "perfect" for this usecase.
I'd say in cases like this having a cheap laptop or even a cheap all in one desktop computer is good enough. Why spend $2000 to browse the internet?
The long support length lowers the effective cost. We only upgraded my parents' computer after ten years due to software support. It was so old it was soon going to lose even Google Chrome updates. But it ran like new.
The total carrying cost over ten years is quite low. And my parents have needed much less tech help with a mac. The day to day ease matters and is worth money.
Being honest, I would bet the archetypical family that can prioritize "putting the phone away and being present" definitely skews more affluent than you may expect.
Eh, they start at $1300 (I suspect pretty much all non-commercial purchases are the base-line one) and last roughly forever (like, a decade is not an exaggeration; you see old ones around a fair bit). There’s a market, there.
Not sure what it’s like these days, but last time I checked cheap PC laptops were basically disposable; in an old job we had plastic Dell laptops for non-eng roles, and I’d be surprised if the median lifespan was much more than a year. They just broke _all the time_. Possibly things have come on, I suppose; this was a while back.
Sorry for the 2000 price mark, seems like the base version costs 1300$.
In my personal experience, my parents (not super tech savvy) always had a windows laptop and never had a specific windows issue due to updates and whatever. If they did, it's more app specific, not necessarily os specific.
In general, I (personally) disagree with the statement that macs require less maintenance than windows or Linux, I use a mac for work, and I have a fair share of app related issues just like I would on a Windows or Linux machine. It's just my opinion.
I love the iMac as the main driver for my family of 5
* We want a dedicated space in the house for a family computer, so portability is no concern
* It has a very small footprint
* It looks the most like "furniture" out of all the options I've seen; pretty color & form factor, and no mess of cables. If you're male, think "wife approval factor".
* It does everything the family needs from it; runs Steam, documents, spreadsheet, browser, school, photos/videos, etc
* High interoperability with our family iPhones/iPads
Yeah a family friend PC that can end up on a desk or in the kitchen, or on a milk crate as a media player in an apartment, as a family computer they get years of use over time by different people in a family. From work to life to play.
Low number of cables has also been one of the points of appeal for the iMac, to the point that it was a focal point of marketing for the original model. For the average person's setup the current model only needs a power cable.
Of course, but those cables (or more likely, just one cable) can be stashed away in a drawer 99% of the time. The bundled keyboard and mouse/trackpad can go months between recharges, especially with lighter less frequent use that something like a living room or kitchen machine might see.
Note the data isn't actually public - Apple does not break Mac revenue or sales figures down to per device. These are all just 'market intelligence' estimates.
Note that those are revenue figures, not unit sales. That is why the Mac Pro comes out so high. the unit cost is so much higher that even with low volumes, the revenue is noticeable.
For a long time the best Apple display you could get was in the iMacs. An iMac with nothing used with it besides a wireless keyboard and mouse, where you can even hide the ethernet port in the power brick, makes for a nice clean desk.
I bought an iMac a while back. I left it connected to a bunch of music studio equipment. It does its job as the center of a home recording studio—gigabit ethernet and plenty of USB ports. I am not considering replacing it yet, even though it stopped receiving updates from Apple. It can’t run Logic 11 (it’s stuck on 10).
They are perfect for suuuuuper casual people. Perfect for your grandparents for example. Most people I know who own these are elderly. Yes, an iPad would also work or a MacBook too but elderly people aren't travelling nor are they gonna buy a MacMini and get a monitor. They just need their simple to set up, all-in-one desktop computer.
My uncle is on his third iMac. He owns them for a decade at a time. When he sends emails, the subject is always "From <his name>" because he shared an email account with my aunt years ago and even though he no longer does, he still puts his name in the subject.
I've provided my father (82 years, living 500km away from me) with hand-me-downs Mac laptops since 2009: from the initial Macbook Core Duo up to a the most recent M2 Air. He does web browsing and frequent FaceTime calls with me just for checking out how they are. Those little laptops last him until the battery dies.
He could very well be using Windows with a cheaper laptop, but I consider the amount of support hours that I've saved to more than compensate for that.
You’re completely right and yet the sight of one fills me with desire.
Possibly because it has a direct line right back to the original Macintosh. Such that when I showed my 11yo cousin my Macintosh SE, he called it an ‘iMac’.
Most Mac users seldom upgrade. I read here and myself often use a MacBook for 7+ years. Given screen tech changes alone, I think it makes a lot of sense.
I’ve owned an iMac before very happily. I just don’t own one now because they stopped making 27” versions.
What is preventing them from launching a 27" version?
I've been waiting to upgrade our 2017 model in the living room, was hoping the 27" was finally going to come now. Guess Mac Mini is the only route to go...
> What is preventing them from launching a 27" version?
most likely they (apple) think that would eat into some other market segment. for a 27" station they probably want you to get a mac mini with a studio display. apple is known for "gently (but firmly) nudging" you towards the more expensive options.
27" iMac has been my daily driver for over 10 years, and I only replaced my last one because the screen cracked when I tried to repair it. I've got 64GB of RAM and a 27" thunderbolt display on both sides, making excellent for both software development and video editing. I don't know what I'd replace it with if it died.
Since none of the options there are tangibly more upgradeable than the other, you can reduce your point to "The iMac is not portable."
I bet that iMac M4 sales meet their target, which is probably on par with the iMac M1 sales. And those were apparently good enough that they finally released an updated model.
schools are a big one. If they are going to buy macs, being all in one the school IT doesn't have to worry about a separate monitor to troubleshoot problems with.
I'd be interested in numbers on some of this. From my view, the upgradability is a bit of a red herring for most users. Computers are fast enough for most uses that it just doesn't matter.
And frankly, the “upgradeability” of most desktops is a myth in my experience.
By the time I’ve ever wanted to upgrade a Windows or Linux PC, a new CPU probably isn’t going to fit into the same socket as the one I had so now I need a new motherboard too. I probably want a new GPU if it was a gaming PC and if it wasn’t I would be using an integrated GPU anyway.
I think the only thing I’ve ever kept from an “upgrade” was my case and some memory sticks. But I probably would have been better off—both in time and money—just selling the damn thing as a whole and buying an entirely new set of components.
TL;DR, year-over-year bumps just aren’t worth the price of upgrades, but by the time it is worth doing you probably want to upgrade so many parts there’s little left to keep. YMMV.
A person in college on a tight budget might choose a budget-conscious PC, with an average amount of RAM and a modest hard drive. A few years later, component prices will have fallen and the PC will be showing its age thanks to its modest components. Adding a larger hard drive and more RAM will get a few more years out of it.
On the other hand, a mid-career professional programmer has plenty of disposable income, so if they're buying a PC today they can chuck in 128GB of RAM and not need to upgrade for the next 10 years.
If they bought a “budget conscious” PC, what are the odds that they’ll have hit the limits of their RAM but not any other component? If they bought a cheap laptop, for example, what are the odds that the hardware isn’t starting to fail? If it’s a desktop, what are the odds that by the time they need a new CPU a worthwhile upgrade will still be socket-compatible? Usually the budget options are already well into the service lifecycle for things like that and at least anecdotally the budget buyers I know buy a new one 1-2 times per decade rather than upgrading anything.
If you want a new CPU after a decade it's absolutely as you describe: you need a new mainboard and probably new memory (DDR5 just came out), and end up keeping only the case, drive, case fans and PSU, if that.
For other components it mostly works. You can smoothly upgrade from 8GB RAM all the way to 128GB, get a new GPU, whatever the current WiFi standard is, more silent cooling, more, bigger or faster drives, etc. If you replace something every 2-3 years you can ship-of-theseus the same computer for a surprisingly long time at pretty low cost
I have been building and upgrading PCs for like thirty years, from 10 to 40 and through varying degrees of expendable income. I genuinely cannot ever remember there being a time where it made sense to upgrade a single component.
I’m not going to say it doesn’t make sense to do so for anyone, but it certainly wasn’t in my experience.
You can hit a RAM limit on some lower-end motherboards quite quickly depending on the memory controller and you might only get so far with GPUs as well depending on the type of PCIe slots.
I'm not sure what decade you have in mind, but for all the recent ones, the memory controller has both been on the CPU, and not been part of the differentiation between low-end and high-end CPUs for a given socket. So the only significant RAM limitation coming from the motherboard is if it's a small form factor board with only two slots instead of four.
I agree with you entirely except for if we skip the year over year part.5-
Time of purchase upgrade ability, if we’re talking about getting to 128 or 256 GB of RAM. Time of purchase to upgrade to multiple high res screens that match. Dedicated GPUs… I bet there is a top of the line home hobbiest LLM oriented GPU from Nvidia or AMD in the next 3 years that will cleanly connect to recent chip architectures. I doubt it will run optimally tied to a Mac. It’ll be something that you could also rack in a server.
I think iMacs end up where someone wants a computer to look nice (either personally or professionally). You could have these in a none tech environment and they will look good.
Meet my relatives who recently retired an x86 iMac, upgraded to an Arm-based one, and will probably upgrade to something like this, but only after another 7-10 years, when the current iMac is far out of support and getting so slow that it becomes unbearable. They use it as a shared family computer, almost exclusively for downloading photos from a (also very old) digital camera and watching Youtube videos.
Judging by the sibling comments I'm not the only one with relatives like this!
Most computers are part of a 3D space where you can occupy more than just the frontal view. You will notice the screen thinness from other angles. it's not the most important aspect but it a nice enhancement. This are often used in environments where they are seen from other angles like homes, front desks, schools.
At the very least, they use them at the front desk of every Apple building for the admin who signs people in. :)
I had one during the pandemic. I got it at a steep discount but it was really nice when I didn't need to go anywhere. I'm giving it to my son to put in his room.
Seems like they're useful for families and kids, and corp environments that use Macs for the folks who work in office and don't move around (admins, lab workers, etc)
I don't see the point in them anymore, too. 24" screen size is not interesting and I can't get more displays that do look like the first one. Will always look strangely mixed in environments.
edit: ok, others pointed out possible use cases. was thinking about the reception one, too.
The “separate screens” you can buy all suck. They aren’t 5k resolution, and they always have some weird edge case issue you find out about 2 weeks after you buy it.
It only shows two USB-C ports while further down the marketing material talks about "all four USB-C ports". EDIT: the low-end 8-core model for $1300 only has two ports.
It also has what looks like a rear-facing camera in the stand cutout. What is that for? EDIT: It's the magnetic power connector. I did not expect that to be round.
Supposedly there's a gigabit Ethernet port somewhere too. Not shown in any of the pictures on the site that I can find.
I love the innovation Apple has brought with their investment in ARM. That said, I can't imagine buying a computer in the 21st century that can't be opened and upgraded, especially with a price premium attached. I just don't get it.
I am in no way trying to be combative, but I'd love to hear a counterpoint that makes sense for these machines.
I bought an M2 iMac for my parents. It’ll last at least five years for them - likely closer to 10. At that point, I’m happy to recycle or donate it and get them a new iMac - likely with some major updates (form factor? Display? Etc?) that wouldn’t get with a RAM / CPU upgrade.
Spending ~$150-$300/year for them to have an easy to use & fast computer feels very worth it for me.
All that said - I would love for the machine to be upgradeable as well! Just explaining why it’s not a dealbreaker.
Same, I had to panic buy a 13" m1, i was remote working extra remotely and my laptop got destroyed. The 13" m1 was not an ideal machine, it had limited usb ports, limited ram.. but it was pretty quick and I wasn't going to buy intel.
A few years later the m2pro/max's came out (i think technically in 14"). I picked one up and just handed my m1 down to family. Huge upgrade over their old intel air that had already lasted them like 10 years.
My main bitch is the soldered in storage. It's a shitty optimization that has to punish apple as much as it punishes users. To have a machine that I can't just go buy a harddrive and slot in when i want more storage or when the drive fails is a total fucking nightmare.
For professional use, the idea of "opening up and upgrading a machine" feels wild. You're either given one by your employer or buying one yourself, and either way, it's on a 5 year deprecation schedule. It's a negative ROI for me as a solo or for my employer to ever do anything with a device that isn't "oh it's broken? too slow? new one being UPSed this afternoon".
Most people don’t want to open up their computer. Ever.
And for most people who dont want to open their computer, they’ll probably use these iMacs until their ancient, and replacing the whole thing makes more sense anyway
I replace my computers before I ever feel a need to upgrade them. Computers are fast and performant for a long time now (4+ years, especially for non-professional use).
And as someone who works with computers all day long, I never ever want to open one up unless I build one from scratch and want a personal project.
Once upon a time I'd use the same monitor for several generations of desktop. But lately monitors feel like they're advancing more quickly and computers more slowly such that I end up replacing them after about ten years.
I personally appreciate not having to do both at the same time, but at least for me it has eliminated that criticism against all-in-ones.
My guess is the only reason to open and upgrade a computer is if one needs (or wants) to be on the bleeding edge of what local compute is capable of on a day to day basis. With the advent of cloud compute the number of use cases that meet that criteria shrinks every day. With the iMac there is a price premium but what the users is paying for is a computer that just gets out of their way. For them the computer is simply a means, not an end.
Most of my buddies w/ PCs for gaming generally only open up their machine to upgrade their video card, once their motherboard no longer supports the latest and greatest they just dumpster the whole damn thing (maybe sell the card on ebay), or turn it into a plex server or something and start over.
One of the reasons I don’t buy into Apple’s marketing gimmicks especially when it comes to the “carbon neutral” initiative.
> especially with a price premium attached. I just don't get it.
Apple is a public company. Investors expect them to churn out profit so stonk goes up. As long as users are trapped in their Apple ecosystem/wall, then they will keep buying. If the devices were open and upgradable then the company will not be able to charge a stupid high markup for RAM or storage.
If products were easily upgradable, consumers would buy the base model configurable SKUs then take their business to repair shop and get ram and storage upgraded at a fraction of the cost Apple would provide out the door.
> but I'd love to hear a counterpoint that makes sense for these machines.
There is no counterpoint. Most people (ie, not fanboys) would agree with you. There is absolutely zero reason for devices to not be upgradable or easily serviceable. You don’t become a trillion dollar company by playing nice with your users.
The chin gives you a good touch-point for adjusting the angle of the display and the rotation angle of the entire base, without having to worry about touching the screen/screen bezel and getting finger prints on it.
> The iMac is basically the same as the M4 iPad Pro, and the iPad Pro doesn't have a chin.
Cooling seems like it might be a factor here. The iMac's display is probably going to be run at a brighter (and thus hotter) setting AND it's more likely to be used to do things that require high load for extended periods of time, so putting it in its own space probably helps.
iMac has active cooling, more ports and more power available to it to drive those ports (though the PSU is external, it’s still gotta have the internal circuitry to deliver that).
For something that's literally designed to sit on a desk, yes... it's ridiculous to make it thinner in a dimension you never see vs one that you see all the time.
From the ifixit teardown of the previous M1 model [1], it seems that all the compute is going in the chin.
They can't put the compute in the back of the display itself, while maintaining the same thickness like an iPad (which has the same CPU), because the room behind the displays is dominated by the speaker system, allowing the iMac to have surprisingly good audio quality despite being so thin.
Someone got into their mind that it was important that everything is as thin as possible - hence the chin.
I miss the times when they used the form factor to actually make new shapes - both the sunflower and the cube looks more futuristic than the 2024 iMac.
I'm waiting to replace my 2015 MBP with an M4 MBP.
I bought the m2 Studio Max and love it. But I need a mobile computer. Working only at my desk sucks sometimes.
It's almost becoming a bother of how accurate the rumors are becoming now a days. With this release they were spot on with the 16gb min ram and no change in screen size.
I am not building LLMs on my computer (I wish :)) but I do use my iMac for both work and photography. Lightroom slugs big time on my 2019 iMac. My dream spec for the next iMac would be:
- bring back the 27" form factor
- dumb down use as monitor. My work computer has disabled file & screen sharing so current methods dont work. I just want to plug my work macbook using a cable or wireless and use the imac as a display.
I recommend these to friends who want a simple computer setup. Many people have dramatically different needs and wants than I do as a software professional.
Apple knows this, and so it markets it to them rather than to us.
I could do my work on one, but yeah, the screen size would be annoying long term. The sad part is that it's the exact form factor my dad wants. It's absolutely perfect for his needs, except it's wildly overpowered and overpriced.
The 4K monitor is going to push up the price, and I'm all for giving everyone a high quality monitor, but I'd argue that the iMac is 30-40% over budget for those who'd like that type of computer. I think you could get away with having it be a $1000 computer, but not $1600, for the lowest spec'ed model.
With an M4 and 16gb+ ram it is more computer than anything I’ve ever owned. I write text files for a living. Might be able to limp along on a souped up 486, definitely a Pentium 90.
I have a more than a decade-old iMac with a 27” display that I’m stil using as a monitor (though it’s seen better days), so that worked out well, but a Mac mini and an external monitor seems better in every way.
Which monitor to get, though? Maybe Apple should sell a Mac mini bundled with a nice external monitor instead of iMacs.
As someone who mucks around with running LLMs and other large models on my computer the 32GB maximum RAM is a show-stopper for me. I'm on a M2 with 64GB at the moment and I'm already regretting not going for 96 or even 128.
I want to be able to run a large model AND other apps at the same time.
> As someone who mucks around with running LLMs and other large models on my computer the 32GB maximum RAM is a show-stopper for me.
To be fair, I don't think people mucking around with large LLMs is the primary target market for the iMacs.
The sort of people who muck around with LLMs almost certainly already have a monitor, keyboard and mouse. And so are more likely to pick up a Mac Studio which will no doubt be coming soon with M4 Ultra.
> And so are more likely to pick up a Mac Studio which
Although price-conscious LLM muckers are most likely to pick any Apple-hardware. You can easily build rigs that are twice as powerful for half the price, assuming we compare desktops.
Moving the weights between the CPU and the GPU significantly limits performance. It's not comparable to having the entire model resident within video/unified memory.
Sure, but to be honest, I don’t think you should be shipping a high-spec computer with a built-in screen. Anything high-spec should be broken into at least a separate screen and computer. The screen is such a major point of failure. I’ve seen so many iMacs and MacBooks with broken screens where the end solution is to replace the entire device, which is a waste. It’s that much more of a waste if you are getting a high-spec version.
I was surprised to find out that along older VGA/HD LCD controllers now there are also 3rd party boards to drive 5K Apple screens. Look for "5k screen controller" on Aliexpress. Price range from ~130€ to 300+€, no idea about the quality.
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.
Yes, that is annoying. There’s also such a massive price difference between 4K and 5K monitors. I’ve decided just to accept 4K everywhere because it’s so much cheaper. But I would consider getting a 5K iMac.
The unfortunate part is that these aren't for sale yet and we don't know how they actually compare to the existing LG 5k or Apple Studio display. It is nice to see more options coming to market.
I have a MacBook Air on my desk plugged into a Apple 27-inch 5k Studio Display next to my work MacBook Pro plugged into a cheap AOC 27-inch 4k display via HDMI and frankly there's not much difference.
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 know that some of the older imacs could still work as a monitor using 'target display mode'. Would be nice, however, if apple could design an imac where the actual computer is a module you can snap into an older one to upgrade it.
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)
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?
Well by virtue of the fact that they've sold these un-repairable/ un-openable macs for 3 years now, and they're refreshing it instead of killing the product - all these things indicate consumers like the current approach
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. .
Yeah, that's my biggest complaint with iMacs: I want to be 100% certain I can repurpose them as monitors later in their lives.
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.
It's not impossible, but it has to be a completely separate signal chain that bypasses the PC. (Well, OK, it's theoretically possible to do it other ways, but it would be really hard.)
I don't know, but probably not. It's a legal requirement for HDMI, not a technical one. It's actually not hard to build an HDMI recorder, you just can't legally sell one. But bootleg recorders are easy to find.
They could design it in such a way that the hdmi input port bypasses the whole 'computer' and goes straight into the display board. If it's plugged in the 'computer' could either not boot or just run headless, i'd prefer the former (just to save on energy costs).
Couldn't you "just" wire the HDMI port to the panel control logic? That is, the HDMI-in doesn't connect to the computer part of the iMac, just to the display circuitry.
Edit: nevermind, I see you addressed this in another comment.
You probably know this but it’s possible to buy a controller card for the panel on Ali Express and retro-fit into the case and use as a monitor if you are ready to retire the computer itself.
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.
RAM aside, it would be silly for you to ever buy this model for your use case anyway. This is the base M4 that's also in ipads with no active cooling. If your running large LLMs locally, you aren't the target market for this product.
This computer appeals to families that use their computers to browse social media. For grandparents that browse YouTube with reckless abandon. The emphasis on multiple color options is a strong indicator. Even has some “cutesy” appeal for college students to decorate their dorm.
The “Apple Intelligence” branding is nothing more than a selling point. Sure it might run some very small LLM workloads , but don’t expect much especially in the locked down hell known as Apple ecosystem.
This is the chief reason I’m closely watching this week’s releases from Apple. I’ll hopefully be switching from UnRAID to a Mac Mini or Mac Studio and a multi-drive enclosure, but the Mac needs to support enough RAM for my various services (Plex and Immich primarily) as well as enough to test some large LLM models as a replacement to constant Claude/OpenAI API utilization.
For many use cases you are correct. That said, I bought a 32G M2 Mac mini in January, and mostly using Ollama, I use local LLMs for many useful local apps and many experiments. I augment running local models with Colab Pro, Grok APIs, OpenAI APIs, etc.
I'm pretty sure the iMac with no upgradeable RAM nor external GPU support is really targeting the hobbyist big-compute crowd anyway. So you don't have to worry, they are not trying to make you buy one.
Similar case here. I'm on a 32GB Mac Studio and constantly wishing I had 128. I didn't expect that when I chose 32... I'd been getting by fine with 16 for a decade. I was "future proofing", haha.
The M-series is a little more complicated. The M1 was max 16GB, with the Pro and Max going up to ... 64, I think? The latest models can go higher, but we're still a long ways off from the old Mac Pro's 1.5TB max.
I think the OP's point is that Apple is forcing people to pay a lot more for something that doesn't cost Apple that much (extra RAM) and is part of artificial product lines. One could claim the product lines are important for ultimate profitability, but Apple makes so much money it's hardly critical if they wanted to be a truly incredible consumer focused company. Apple has gotten far away from the idea of a home computer someone can hack with, where hacking includes local AI these days. In this period we know more memory is important for many applications of local AI, which they claim is a goal to provide for people, so it's hard not to say Apple's approach is optimized for shareholders, not end users.
Now in the “I wish” category (zero percent chance):
- Thursday would be MacStudio with HBM memory for Max and Ultra
- Friday would be macPro with 1 to 4 Ultra in NUMA configuration.
Now I don’t believe those last two.
But I do want to see the X-ray of the max chip to see if it has the UltraFusion part that allowed for combining two chips. It was missing from the M3 Max (and maybe all future odd numbered max chips). If it returns, then we know an Ultra is on the way for sure.
why would you want an imac of all things for that? I suspect we are going to see m4 studios, which, given their current options, will support your rediculous ram requirements.
iMacs are, generally speaking, targeted for home users, normies.
That is a poor example of the thing you’re trying to mock. That exchange is an example of what one should do, it does not deserve derision. dang explained it well:
I agree with the premise but this isn't a great nomination, I think saying "this device won't appeal to the niche LLM gadgetry crowd" is valid in this case since yeah, it won't.
Agree. LLMs are really next generation requirements. Previously people would run a dozen docker containers in Kubernetes cluster on Mac or further before a dozen linux VMs etc and predictably but sadly macs never worked well for these requirements.
It's also not like the comment was claiming the iMac isn't going to sell well. (And to be fair, it probably won't sell spectacularly well compared to than prior iMacs anyway, given how the MacBooks, Mac Minis, the Mac Studio, etc. have eaten that desktop's lunch.)
I really wish that "elite" LLM folks like yourself or many others in the field would just abandon apple/mac.
Yes, they make better laptops from a hardware perspective. No, M series chips are not actually competitive with Nvidia hardware on anything except cheap (and relatively slow) inference of big models.
The fact that windows laptops are considered DOA despite the insane amount of inertia behind Nvidia GPUs is just sad. I want a world where Dell/Lenovo can actually convince folks like you or other "elites" to use their shit. The XPS should be a better laptop than the macbook pro. Yet, I have to watch as the technical elites fawn over a company which continues to sell a starting level un-upgradable laptop with 8gb of ram and a gimped "SSD" in 2024 (this was criminal to do back in 2018) all because other companies can't make a good keyboard or touchpad.
I have a similar old-man yelling at cloud tier rant about the slow death of X86...
> The XPS should be a better laptop than the macbook pro.
Except its.. not. I'm a longtime windows/linux user who recently switched to mac, and my mac somehow manages to get better performance out of the same specs while lasting 2x longer on battery. In my price range, there is no competition on price:performance:battery.
I don't do LLM so I can't comment there. But in general, devs/pros would use windows/linux laptops if they could. All we get is crappy build quality or bad battery endurance or bad performance (CPU or super basic stuff like the touchpad etc) or bad software.
XPS are horrible though. Native linux support is almost literally the only redeeming quality.
> all because other companies can't make a good keyboard or touchpad.
The whole point of a laptop is to have integrated input and display. Why wouldn't you expect the laptops with the best displays and input devices to be the most popular?
Most of the world is x86/Windows machines, developers included. I would bet that for every MacBook issued there's at least a hundred Precision/Latitude/ThinkPad/Optiplex machines that went into someone's hands. The Apple hard-on is from a specific region and culture where the technical "elites" have made a bajillion dollars working on shitty phone apps and other such light work where it's possible for your trackpad/keyboard to be the biggest issue. It sounds a bit mean-spirited, but I think it's pretty telling that as the gravity of the work increases, you see less and less Apple products being used to do it.
No, it isn't mean-spirited at all. A lot of lucrative software development has been based around fairly trivial software, all things considered. The barrier to entry was dramatically reduced, the resources required for development were too, and the option to choose your favourite hardware became an option. I think some people might be offended by that, but the variation of required hardware goes in all kinds of directions. Look at working on firmware vs the web, for example. You'll probably encounter a ton of friction on a mac if you get into robotics.
> It sounds a bit mean-spirited, but I think it's pretty telling that as the gravity of the work increases, you see less and less Apple products being used to do it.
it does sound like envy. I hate macos post 10.8ish myself, but the hardware is pretty solid. my 12 year old Mac book air would be enough for my work although I have to use a windows laptop issued by work. I don't want to dox myself, but I'd say my work is of international interest even though it's quite niche.
macbook pros are by far the best device you can get for running local llms. first of all nvidia gpu's have extremely limited vram relative to the 100+gb afforded to macbook pros. second you cant take an llm server on the subway with you.
until you can show me small nvidia laptop with 128gb of vram and 20 hours of battery life, i'll keep using my macbook.
Nvidia's laptop range isn't all that impressive, really the magic is in the 3090/4090 desktop cards where they're hitting a magic trifecta of power+memory+value.
As absurd as it is I just built a PC with a 3090 at both home and work for training and inference then carry around a MBP for everything else.
You pretty casually dismiss the value of being able to run big models, when it's literally impossible on a mobile Geforce in a lot of cases since they max out at 16GB!
There are a lot of "power users" that refuse to realize that they simply will never be in Apple's target market. They love Apple so much for cosmetic reasons, for wanting to be in the "in-crowd" reasons, or for whatever the fanboy reason, that they can't see the writing on the wall. Apple is not making hardware for their use cases, and likely never will again.
I own a MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2021) Apple M1 Max 64 GB. I'm just adding to this that at the time of purchase, this was Apple's top-of-the-line MacBook Pro model, and it's just not that great, in my opinion.
Apple's new hardware pales in comparison to the relative abilities of what features existed on a 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K Display 10 years ago.
All of the power of modern computers come primarily from their GPUs, and Apple's aren't very good, and have been chronically underpowered compared to the competition for years now.
I'm considering relegating Apple devices to being good for just design work.
Edit: I agree with Der_Einzige's sentiments. It's beyond time for us to move past Apple hardware.
Unless Op has a very special use case that requires an Nvidia card or something then he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The M2 Max fully specced 14” is insane. Being able to take the laptop anywhere and not need to plug it in and still get all the same power I normally get if it’s plugged in without the worry of the battery dying in 30m is incredible.
2.1x faster than M1, but they tested an M4 with 32 Gb vs. an M1 with 16Gb. Sad to see this kind of comparison. I guess in "performance-per-"dollar it still stands since they just doubled the baseline RAM levels.
Do they sell matching monitors to go with these all in one style iMac's?
I'm not really an Apple person, but I can't imagine having a single monitor in this day and age and any other color would look silly next to a weird pastel pink device.
> A lot of people in this thread commenting without making an attempt to understand who this is for.
Why do you seem defensive? I asked a reasonable question of a group of people I thought might have product knowledge I lacked. I am not a Very Pink Apple Product SME, and stated as much in my question.
This isn't directed at you. I just happened to read a bunch of comments before yours. Stu2b50's response seemed like a good enough place to point out the dynamic.
I agree... on the proviso that I can never afford 3 monitors, and I've never quite found 2-monitor setups comfortable because even with the very small bezels today I'm constantly shifting and turning away from the centre.
No. It's mostly on device, and the not on-device stuff uses incredibly clever computer science to run code in an auditable, non trackable way on cloud hardware. It's called "Private Cloud Compute" https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/
That’s overstating what happened there and what was sent. OCSP validation happened only for signed executables and the only bit of information is the hash of the developer certificate being verified, which was not logged in conjunction with your IP.
Apple knows that a Mac user checked the revocation status of the TOR Project’s signing key. They don’t log your IP, your Mac caches the result so it’s not even every time you launch the browser, and if knowing when your browser was launched is a successful timing attack it means the TOR protocol is too broken to be used – which I rather doubt is true regardless of what random commenters may confidently assert.
Curious who uses iMac over a MBP with an external monitor? Is it mainly for front desk, businesses, and perhaps people with large homes and need stationary mac?
I'm a typical software engineer nerd who uses a MacBook Pro for work.
My last two home computers have been 27" iMacs. Each one has lasted me about 8 years and I've been happy with both of them. Nice big display, good specs, not a lot of clutter. Really good bang for the buck.
At home, I use them for making music (Ableton Live), video production (DaVinci Resolve), photo processing (Photoshop and Lightroom), and programming (various IDEs and editors). I much prefer one good display over a pair of them.
Long-term, maybe it would be more cost effective to get a Mac Mini so that I don't end up paying to replace the display when I replace the machine. But display technology seems to advance about as fast as other hardware specs do, so I suspect I'd want a new monitor at about that rate anyway.
Going forward, though, I probably won't buy another iMac. That's largely because now that I make music with Ableton Live, I want a laptop that I can (aspirationally!) take to shows to play live on.
But for well over a decade, I've been a happy iMac user. I don't care about upgradeability. I buy a machine that has the specs I want when I buy it.
It might also be a good choice for those who always work at one desk, have established a work/life balance such that they don't need a portable computer, and would prefer not to pay extra to have portability that they just don't require.
An M4 iMac with 10 CPU cores, 10 GPU cores, 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD costs $1700.
A 14" MBP with 8 CPU cores, 10 GPU cores, 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD costs $2000. Before you add a 27" monitor and desktop keyboard/pointing device.
Why pay that premium if you don't actually need to carry your desktop PC around?
I guess it is just me, but I cannot stand working on small screens on the desktop. I will accept a small screen on a laptop because it is inconvenient carrying around something larger, but on a desktop, there is no reason to compromise.
I tried couple of monitor sizes and anything above 27-28 inches came across as downright inconvenient for work at least for me. Also, 4K was not great at all. 2K was.
I love the screen real-estate resolution for coding, it really is a lower cognitive load.
I can have the terminal window open with lots of output, the ChatGPT window for AI, the source code with a ton of lines on the screen. And then on the other side have the browser window open with the console/debugger below. No need to swap in-and-out windows at all, just shift my gaze.
Yeah, 27” was about the sweet spot for me. We now have 32” monitors at work, and I find them a _little_ uncomfortable to use. Depends on your field of view, I suppose.
It is 4K. I wish it was higher. But practically, I cannot find an affordable 6K OLED monitor. And 8K is both unaffordable as well as not supported by my MacBook Air:
So you value just the physical size of things, not being able to display more 'stuff'? For example, a 27" 5k (5120 x 2880) display will give you more space/resolution for stuff than a 4k 48" display.
I can't imagine how pleasent that would be, the display being so physically large with pixels the side of boulders. As long as it works for you, I guess! I'm with you in spirit though - I ditched dual monitors for an ultrawide and its now the only way I can work.
I do wish it was higher resolution for sure, but that isn't feasible this year. I would have to squint at a 27" 5K monitor to read the fonts if I put this much on screen at once.
DELL has a 32" 8K monitor if you’re interested. Personally I’ve gotten bitten by both the pixel density and the high refresh rate bugs. So now I want a 27" 5K 120hz monitor, or none at all :P
And if MacBook's supported 8K monitors (they max out at 6K 60Hz, where as 4K does 144Hz.) That would be my next upgrade once they are affordable. But I think they won't be affordable until 8K TVs are common as that will drive the volume.
If 32GB is the max, why not just make that the one and only model and get rid of this weird segmentation. That's a ridiculously low minimum and only just barely adequate. 8GB was practically criminal.
Or -- and I know this is crazy -- slottable RAM on a device that is designed for things other than portability. Wild, I know.
Presumably, their career economists found that this "weird" pricing scheme is actually optimal—that selling tiny RAM upgrades for $200 or $400 is empirically, measurably an effective way to sort their consumers by purchasing power, and optimally drain their wallets.
It goes by many names, the "microeconomic pricing strategy where identical or largely similar goods or services are sold at different prices by the same provider to different buyers based on which market segment they are perceived to be part of",
I mean, that's basically it. The difference between part costs of 8GB/16GB/32GB RAM chips is nearly a rounding error, and they're probably eating a bunch more costs stocking and adding assembly for different RAM SKUs.
That explains it then. The extra cost of supporting extra RAM SKUs has to be recouped somehow. What better way than by stocking extra RAM SKUs and charging a premium? :)
Arbitrary markup based on whatever they can maximally extract from their consumers is the name of the game. Product segmentation is just one of a variety of tools used to that purpose.
> Product segmentation is just one of a variety of tools used to that purpose.
I think people here forget that Apple is targeting a certain profit margin. Currently, their gross profit margin is about 45%.
If you're rolling this out on the Mac line, it's okay to have a profit margin closer to 35% on the base model; but maybe with 55%-65% margins on the higher-tier professional equipment, to "balance" it out. It also turns out, professionals have money, and will pay despite the grumbling. The RAM prices are basically a progressive tax.
I’ve never felt memory limited on my 16gb macbook pro, on which I code, run rust-analyzer (major memory hog), video edit, etc. Most people definitely don’t need 32GB
Says the first owner of the machine. Macbooks, and Apple devices in general, have a strong reputation for high resale value. That high resale value is based on having them last quite a while. This falls apart in a few years as hardware requirements continue to balloon.
That was fine when Intel was sitting on their ass, raking in the cash, and nearly everything else (storage, especially external drives, RAM, and even batteries weren't too bad) is upgradeable. This is less great when you can no longer upgrade the component most likely to be the first bottleneck.
Apple pays people to be smarter than me about this, but I still think it's a stupid long-term play to damage one of your biggest selling points
I’ve definitely been memory limited on a 32GB MacBook Pro. Though it’s probably due to Docker, Slack, multiple IDEs, and dozens and dozens of browser tabs all open at the same time. Consider me part of the exception.
If you use your PC to only run a single application at any time then yes, 8GB might be usable. If you need to have an Electron app opened, a few browser tabs and XCode (let alone some less efficient IDE)? Your compute will grind to a halt...
The problem is the insane markups, but my anecdata is the opposite of yours.
I'm also doing Rust dev, but I can't work with less than ~24GB.
On my headless rackmount dev box that I use for my remote development environment, the box sits around 17GB of memory in use + 8GB of cache. I've got an M3 with 36GB running a few Visual Studios Code (plus browser/Docker/Dropbox) with about 30GB used (8GB of that is cache).
16GB would not have been enough for me for my work at Deno. My current job involves both Rust and Python work and I'd quickly hit the limits of 16GB if I'm running my code while developing it, let alone running a browser or keeping my email client open.
Definitely constrained by my 16gb, it's only 2 years old. Rubymine takes 4gb on it's own, Chrome eats a lot... I'm usually hovering around 10gb of swap.
The OS will use more RAM if you give it more RAM. The fact that you are currently using 46GB on an (I assume) 64GB model doesn't necessarily mean that your workload would run badly on a 32GB or 16GB model.
I might get away with 48GB (don't know, I have 64 now on my work machine) but I had a lot of swap usage when I was running on 32GB. Some of us do need a lot of ram.
Have you considered that your way of using the machine is based around the limitations, hence you don't recognize them?
Whenever switching company I went from a 64 gb ram computer to a 16 gb ram. Yes, it worked, but only because I had to adapt to it. But one might not see it if one's never tried.
Then again, the rest of the industry has figured out a way to make slottable RAM almost as fast and compact as soldered RAM with the new CAMM2/LPCAMM2 standards. The M4 has LPDDR5X-7500 120GB/sec memory and there are already LPCAMM2-7500 120GB/sec modules, with even faster ones on the way: https://www.anandtech.com/show/21390/micron-ships-crucialbra...
Two of those modules working in parallel would hit "M Pro" speeds as well. I doubt Apple will be adopting them though, for the same reason they don't offer standard M.2 SSD slots even on systems that could obviously support them with minimal design compromises.
Very unlikely. Apple can argue that less than 1% of computers users ever upgrade their memory (which is true), and after all, did the EU intervene when GPUs dropped their slotted memory?
> did the EU intervene when GPUs dropped their slotted memory?
The difference there is that slotted GPU memory is demonstrably impactical, but the memory on the M4 isn't demonstrably better than the LPCAMM2 module above. It's literally the exact same spec. Not that I expect the EU to do anything either when they didn't act on Apples soldered-in SSDs, which definitely aren't any better than standardized M.2 drives.
Actually, incorrect. On some scenarios, you’d need up to 4 CAMM2 slots to do what Apple does. This is due to CAMM2 maxing out at 128 bit busses; but M3 Max chips are currently at 512. Needless to say, battery life most affected.
Yes, the higher end Max and Ultra chips would still need soldered memory for sure. Two CAMM modules flanking opposite sides of the SOC is probably doable though, so I think the M Pros could practically have socketed memory.
These are still well below what Apple offers at the high end and you can not buy systems like that right now. If you want high memory bandwidth on the CPU today, you will be charged a big markup on Epyc/Xeon/ThreadripperPro CPUs and motherboards, rather than the DRAM.
For SSD speeds, that was already dismistified with iBoff new adapter which makes an M1 Macbook Air upgradable and faster. I wouldn't be surprised if the same was true for RAM using the CAMM standard positioned near the CPU. Or maybe even better, slotted memory chips like in the old days, with a memory controller ready to accept multiple chip sizes.
Would the people who were buying the baseline 8GB model (presumably just for general computing/office work) care about the GPU being slightly slower, though?
I bet that the extreme lag when you run out of memory because you have an Electron app or two, several browser tabs and something like Excel is way more noticeable.
Hardly anyone is using Macs for gaming these days and almost anybody who does something GPU intense would need more than 16GB anyway.
> The SoC has access to 16GB of unified memory. This uses 4266 MT/s LPDDR4X SDRAM (synchronous DRAM) and is mounted with the SoC using a system-in-package (SiP) design. A SoC is built from a single semiconductor die whereas a SiP connects two or more semiconductor dies.
Source for what? Parallel RAM interfaces have strict timing and electrical requirements. Classic DDR sockets are modular at the cost of peak bandwidth and bus width. The wider your bus, the more traces you have to run in parallel from the socket to the compute complex, which becomes harder and harder. You don't see sockets for HBM or GDDR for a good reason. The proof is there.
LPCAMM solutions mentioned upthread resolve some of this by making the problem more "three dimensional" from what I can tell. They reduce the length of the traces by making the pinout more "square" (as opposed to thin and rectangular) and stacking them closer to the actual dies they connect to. This allows you to cram swappable memory into the same form factor, while retaining the same clock speeds/size/bus width, and without as many design complexities that come from complex socket traces.
In Apple's case they connect their GPU to the same pool of memory that their CPU uses. This is a key piece of the puzzle for their design, because even if the CPU doesn't need 200GB/s of bandwidth, GPUs are a very different story. If you want them to do work, you have to feed them with something, so you need lots of memory bandwidth to do that. Note that Samsung's LPCAMM solutions are only 128-bits wide and reported around 120GB/s. Apple's gone as high as 1024-bit busses with hundreds of GB/s of bandwidth; the M1 Max was released years ago and does 400GB/s. LPCAMM is still useful and a good improvement over the status quo, of course, but I don't think you're even going to see 256-bit or 512-bit versions just so soon.
And if your problem can be parallelized, then the higher your bus width, the lower your clock speeds can go, so you can get lower power while retaining the same level of performance. This same dynamic is how an A100 (1024-bit bus) can smoke a 3090 (384-bit) despite a far lower clock speed and power usage.
There is no magical secret or magical trick. You will always get better performance, less noise, at lower power by directly integrating these components together. It's a matter of if it makes sense given the rest of your design decisions -- like whether your GPU shares the memory pool or not.
There are alternative memory solutions like IBM using serial interfaces for disaggregating RAM and driving the clock speeds higher in the Power10 series, allowing you to kind of "socket-ify" GDDR. But these are mostly unobtainium and nobody is doing them in consumer stuff.
32 GB seems plenty for me for the target audience. The iMac is aimed at a rather casual computer user, especially now that they nixed the larger screen size one.
I agree, I run 32gb on a dev Macbook pro and it's enough, even our largest app is around 20k files and the language server uses 5gb of ram. I often sit around 22-24gb of usage with Docker running.
For most people 32gb is not going to hold them back.
Yeah I'm a huge fan of Apple hardware and even I can't handle this. The different in price between 8GB and 16GB for the M3 Air was like $500 at Costco. My air from 2016 came with 8GB.
On the one hand, sure, Apple loves to get that extra margin for more RAM and SSD, no doubt.
On the other hand, the MacBook Air ships with 8GiB RAM standard, and it's robustly popular. One could suppose that all those customers are suffering from the lack of RAM, or one could suppose that for many use cases, it's an adequate amount.
The latter is more likely. macOS manages memory well, and a fast SSD means that swapping is fast enough that it often results in no visible delays to the user.
I'm not sure how can we tell. The Mac revenue has peaked back in 2022 and has been declining since. But assure, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people use their Macs as they would an iPad (i.e. at most a single app and/or browser and 8GB might be enough for that).
That they sell a lot of stock MacBook Airs? They do. I don't find the topic interesting enough to find a link, but I'm pretty confident on this one.
> a lot of people use their Macs as they would an iPad
A lot of people have pretty undemanding requirements in a laptop, yes. 8GiB is more than enough for some web browsing and light document editing, a bit of photo retouching, that kind of thing. There are many Chromebooks on the market right now with 4 GiB and they sell in numbers.
The HN tilt trends toward systematically overestimating system requirements because development is fairly demanding of them.
I just doubt there is actual meaningful data available (at least that's publicly accessible). We'd need to measure the proportion of base config MBA users who regularly get OOM warnings?
> many Chromebooks
Yes. People just have different use cases. I mean almost nobody who does anything that might require > 16-32 GB of memory would likely buy this iMac (even if Apple sold such configs).
It's an entirely different product than the 27 inch "Pro" iMacs with Xeons from back in the day.
Hardly anybody "needs" a desktop PC these days (outside of gaming and some niche applications). So this is just basically a generic office / front desk PC for people who don't need laptops.
> That's a ridiculously low minimum and only just barely adequate.
What are you doing? I'm still doing web development with Chrome, JetBrains, and Docker on a 16GB M1 Pro and it isn't a problem. For the average Chrome-using citizen, 16GB should be fine.
> the new iMac is up to 1.7x faster than iMac with M1
This seems like a much lower than expected speed bump for M1 to M4? Would’ve been nice to see something more for something designed to be non-upgradeable.
I see lots of people in this thread mentioning this, but am confused. I've never seen a lighting port on an Apple computer- only on iphones and ipads, and the cables that come with those are USB-C on the other end. Haven't all Apple computer accessories been USB-C for almost a decade now?
> Recharge the built-in battery in your Apple keyboard, mouse, or trackpad [...] To charge your device's battery, connect a Lightning to USB cable to its Lightning port,
> Every iMac comes with a color-matched Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse or optional Magic Trackpad, all of which now feature a USB-C port, so users can charge their favorite devices with a single cable.
Thanks! That seems like a minor issue because in both cases you still use usb-c on the computer end. However it will certainly be nice to not need to have 3 different kinds of cables, and have everything just take usb-c at some point. Although I'll bet they'll have a new usb connector right about the time the usb-a and lightning devices finally start to disappear.
Looks like they don't have the color-matched options for individual purchase, but the b/w trackpad, keyboard, and at least 1 keyboard variant are available.
I believe it’s a limitation of the memory controller on the M4 chip. It can only address 32 gb of ram. Addressing more ram would require more die space
Form factor isn't updated afaik, but man, I am just so so impressed with the form factor. It looks like a giant tablet. Makes me want to hold it and draw on it.
First off, "up to" is the most bullshit metric. I am also up to 10x more productive when I get coffee, but that's when comparing to days where I just play Satisfactory all day long.
Secondly, "compared to a random HP AIO PC with a 5 year old CPU" (since there are approximately zero chances that the most popular PC in a market that is heavily Apple dominated would be a 2023 Raptor Lake) is just, once again, Apple's piss poor comparisons.
_No-one_ buying this is upgrading from an M3. Honestly, most people buying this would be upgrading from some sort of elderly Intel thing; these tend to have long operating lifetimes.
It sucks that the TB4 ports still point out the back of the machine like that. It has never made sense! Every Thunderbolt cable has a bulky active electronic assembly that is at least a few centimeters long, followed by a cable strain relief. I hate having my cables hanging out like that. It seems like it would be possible to build a little port hutch on the back, with the ports pointing straight down.
I use one for 8+ hours a day. I keep reading about the design being uncomfortable, but definitely hasn't been the case for me.
I guess if I actually kept my hand directly in line with the mouse it'd be pretty painful. I just about always keep my hand in a slant, more similar to how you'd use a trackpad, or as if you were holding a sort of slanted mouse.
I've stuck with it because of the well implemented 2d scrolling. Using a physical scrolling wheel feels off at this point.
Yup, for years. It feels exactly the same as a MacBook track pad and lets you use all the same gestures. I like it better than a mouse for my work machine.
I guess it's what you're used to and how large your hands are. For me, I've use it since it came out and prefer it to any other mouse, once you get used to the touch top surface using mechanical button/wheel seems archaic. It's also a lot easier to keep clean without a scroll wheel.
That said, the change to the rechargeable version was a huge unforced error apart from the deserved mocking for the charge port location because the mouse also reports low batt condition about 10 minutes before it actually dies, I don't know what the thinking there was.
Been using it for 10 years. It's my favorite mouse to use. Scrolling and tap gesture is the main reason I prefer it. I also like touching glass/aluminum over plastic.
I have one and I don't much care for it. But one thing it does better than other mice is scrolling left and right. It scrolls left and right as easily as it scrolls up and down. I edit audio files and work in DAWs a lot and it's really great for that. If I'm not performing those tasks, I generally don't use it.
My work bought one for me so I gave a try. Maybe they updated the sensor but the one I got a few years ago was a bad optical mouse compared to what I’m used to (Logitech MX and Razer).
An arbitrary limit of 32G of memory? Laughable. Glad I exited the Apple ecosystem long ago. Only have 2-3 year old machines now. Current phone is “free” from carrier due to trade ins.
I think Apple should shift away from personal computing (iMac, MBP/A, iPhone) and focus on selling their SoC. Get these into data centers.
Powering a data center with their chips would likely result in significant decrease in power consumption. I am running an “old” M1 as a small remote k8s cluster for personal dev work and home automation. Works wonderfully.
Power consumption during peak load (20 W?) is very low compared to my Intel based computer (120-150W?) I use for occasional gaming.
Apple has very little understanding of Enterprise and Datacenter markets. They proved that with the Xserve, despite having some success - they should have "owned" the market by driving down the costs of running, managing and maintaining hardware over the long term - but didn't, or got bored about it, and missed the opportunity.
> I think Apple should shift away from personal computing (iMac, MBP/A, iPhone)
This is going to be the most insane thing I read all day.
> Get [their SoC] into data centers.
This is a great idea. Apple discontinued servers a long time ago, and it's too bad, now that they've got the new silicon they could be crushing it in the sector.
> You can build PCs there are more powerful than that Mac, cheaper. And you can easily repair them
Why would anyone buy a Porsche? You can buy an F-150 with a >1 ton payload capacity, fit 6 people in it and if you get the EV version it might be even faster than the base config Porsche.
The PC will take up a lot of space, use a lot more power, be loud and be look ugly. Some people might care about these things even if you don't.
To be honest it's the Mac that feels clunky, at least compared to Linux. Why does every app have its own updater? Why are the animations so painfully slow?
> You can build PCs there are more powerful than that Mac, cheaper. And you can easily repair them.
Nobody’s buying a Mac to game. The gaming is a bonus for a segment of their market, is why they mention it at all. Zero Mac sales are motivated primarily by gaming. “Does this do enough gaming, well enough, that I can avoid buying a Steamdeck, or that I can get rid of this bulky PC that I use only for gaming?” are things their prospective buyers might wonder, not “should I buy this if I want a gaming computer?” (No, obviously)
> iMac features a color-matched keyboard and mouse or trackpad... These accessories now come with USB-C ports, so users can charge all of their favorite devices with just a single cable
WOW!
Since this thread seems to be about niche asks for pro users, despite the product being targeted towards casual users who want an easy out of the box experience, I'll add my own to the mix.
I'd love a bigger/better screen on these, specifically an ultrawide variety. An iMac Pro with an 8k ultrawide would be a near-instant purchase for me. I find the ultrawide form factor so good for productivity. I love the apple "it just works" approach to their hardware, so if something was fully integrated I'd jump on it immediately.
Today I use a 49" CRG9, but the input and connection setup is somewhat finicky. Not a huge blocker, but it would be lovely to be able to simplify.
I also use and love the exact same 49" CRG9, but if you do the 2x retina math, to deliver the pixel pitch Apple customers expect on desktop in the 32:9 display form, that would realistically have to be a 10240x2880 display at a minimum of 60fps. Not sure if there are bandwidth considerations over displayport or similar as this is essentially two 5k Studio Displays (5120x2880) side by side at that point.
I love my CRG9 with MacOS, but there's no escaping the text rendering is significantly poorer than on Apple's own 2x retina stuff.
Using a large 8K display for productivity is underrated. I wrote a blog post about my experience: https://daniel.lawrence.lu/blog/y2023m12d15/
Why not the 55" 8K? Also the checkerboard is because you're not using variable refresh rate.
I can't find any. The newer QN800D or whatever aren't available in 55". And they don't make the QN700B anymore.
I have the QN700B. It seems almost small to me at this point. Can you get VRR to work on linux?
Incidentally, it was observed that the new iMac can support an external 8K 120Hz display: https://x.com/vadimyuryev/status/1850929080281321899
Unfortunately the iMac Pro was a stopgap measure similar to the 16 inch iMac that had the escape key. Even the last MacBook Air with Intel is really a testbed for the design of the first M1 MacBook Air (the mainboard is the only thing that changed). Apple has taken the steps to make the Mac Studio and other display devices made by them but, curved displays don't seem to be a strategy that Apple would take because right now they might move to tandem OLED on all devices which means even considering something curved isn't on the drawing board.
People also don’t get the idea of an appliance.
16GB base RAM, they finally did it.
They also did move the Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse to USB-C.
Now if only they could figure out how to allow charging the Magic Mouse while it’s being used. I guess that technology is still years away.
Given that the lightning version picks up a nine hour charge in the time it takes to take a bathroom break or go get a cup of coffee, this is more of an excuse to make fun of the design than it is a real world show stopper.
> The Apple Mouse 2 also comes with a Quick Charge feature that provides nine hours of use with a two-minute charge.
https://www.jackery.com/blogs/knowledge/how-to-charge-apple-...
The people who like the magic mouse (not me) don't care, and the people who even otherwise would never use a magic mouse get to keep making fun of it. Why would they bother?
Don't be foolish. We may one day cross the Atlantic in an aeroplane or conceive of a motorised carriage capable of traveling 50 miles per hour but some dreams are simply impossible!
Putting the plug on the bottom is an intentional choice by Apple. It's because they don't want you to plug it in to charge, then never remember to unplug it. Mandatory wirelessness.
I don't believe this.
I believe (unfounded) originally it was made for asthetic reasons, as to not interrupt the sushi shape, and that not being able to use it while charging was not considered to be that much of a downside. And then since then Apple just hasn't bothered spending engineering effort on 'fixing' that design decision ever since.
Logitech makes mice that worked plugged in and not, and they are durable too because they use a custom plastic piece around the USB connector to ensure a snug fit:
https://www.logitechg.com/en-ca/products/gaming-mice/pro-x-s...
Logitech mice don't use the top surface of the mouse as a multi-touch trackpad, so it doesn't matter to Logitech if the top surface of the mouse is uninterrupted by a charging port or not.
I'd sooner believe it's because they want you to buy 2 of them, so you can charge one while using the other.
Zero people on the planet do this.
The mouse port thing is like a canary in the coal mine, betraying the people who just like taking shots at Apple, but generally are very ill informed. I think Apple should keep the port on the bottom purely so we can get the shortcut to discarding people's opinions when they hoist it up to concern troll.
For actual Apple Mouse users, charging is just the least concerning thing imaginable. The battery lasts an absolute eternity. I'm using one right now that I've had for at least five or so years and I charge it once in forever, it charges super quickly, and it's just not a factor in my life at all.
You'd buy a second to avoid taking a 2 minute break?
I wouldn't buy any Apple hardware to begin with. We had to sue them in a class action because of their awful faulty hardware. We're never going back.
I don't know, still better than all the other hardware vendors with their devices that are bad by specification.
Makes sense, especially because it's more impressive/magic (especially when it was introduced) when your friend/family/coworker sees you using it. If the cable was plugged in, it might just look to them like a mundane, not Magic, mouse.
I'm surprised Apple didn't co-opt charging mousepad tech, like what Logitech uses:
https://www.logitechg.com/en-us/innovation/powerplay.html
Apple engineers probably still have PTSD from trying to get the AirPower mat to work, I doubt they'll touch non-magnetic wireless charging again.
I'm pretty sure it's patented in some way considering Logitech is still the only option for that .
The product is already several years old after all (release date 2017)
Just pay logitech $5/piece to license the patent and then sell them for $200, there is plenty of meat on the bone for everyone involved.
Or bypass the idea of the patent altogether by making their mouse charge wirelessly and then releasing a giant wireless charger that happens to work pretty well as a mouse pad later.
Option 1 only works if Logitech plays ball. They might consider the exclusivity very valuable and be unwilling to license it for anything reasonable.
Option 2 is a great way to land in court. It's one thing to steal IP from a tiny company or individual but Logitech can afford lawyers.
You just reminded me of how stupid the plug beneath the MM was...You never needed to charge it, till you needed it and couldn't use the mouse.
There are so many legitimate reasons to hate the magic mouse.
Ergonimics, the polling rate, the way the glass gets greasy, the scratchy hard plastic on the bottom.
Truly, inferior to the Logitech MX Master in all ways except looks. (which is subjective).
But it takes literally a few seconds to get a days worth of charge out of the mouse, Apple clearly don't want you to leave it plugged in to use as a wired mouse: why? idk, because they hate choice, or perhaps its because they know it would overcharge the battery and bulge, or perhaps even still, people would get weird expectations about "wired being better for latency" despite the mouse not using the data connections on the wire.
We'll never know. But the charging on the bottom is such a non-issue in reality that it makes me wonder if anyone actually owned that mouse, or they just think it looks funny. Personally, I'd rather they fix the other issues with the mouse, the charging was legitimately never an issue.
> But the charging on the bottom is such a non-issue in reality
As I said, you rarely needed to remember to charge it. Till you would in the midst of something.
Anyway, I never liked the MM so when I had my iMac I bought a magic trackpad (which you could charge while using, small bonus).
Then you pop it on the charger for like 10 seconds, use it for the rest of the day, then leave it charging overnight when you go home.
Sure, but it was still an inconvenience to interrupt a presentation once, and another time a prod debugging session where everybody was anxiously breathing on my neck and staring at my screen another one.
To me the plug placement was an inconvenience, regardless of how invisible it is to you.
On top of that, it never charged in few seconds after years of use, mine would take longer just to connect to the iMac again.
I was glad to buy magic trackpad I could leave connected 24/7 and never think about it (also I liked it much more than the MM in general).
Totally fair, why did you ignore the low battery warning for 3 days though?
It’s all about tension on the lightning connector imo - the connector isn’t designed for that level of flexibility, so it would break and it’s not like they’re going to use a different connector just for the mouse
The only reason they don't let you charge it is because it's a recycled design of the MM1 which used disposable batteries. The Magic Keyboard and Trackpad which came out the exact same day both let you use it plugged in and charging, even wired! The Magic Mouse shell was just not designed with a cord in mind at all.
I have personally been in meeting where my boss forgot to charge her magic mouse and we had to wait two minutes for her to open the stuff we needed to discuss. It happens.
The track pad and keyboard don't need to move, which would introduce mechanical stress on the port and cable.
Those are both moving parts that must be treated as movng the same as a mouse, because they are not bolted to anything. Any mechanical designer will absolutely treat everything about the ports on those the same as for a phone.
>The only reason they don't let you charge it is because it's a recycled design of the MM1 which used disposable batteries.
But they've done incremental updates to the design since, they could have easily fixed that by now.
They haven't made any major changes to the design. It's the shape of the thing preventing it.
Yeah this is something I thought was amazingly dumb until I used one, but it’s not actually a problem. Even a little.
ive had a magic mouse and only had to plug it in and charge it and walk away for 10 minutes... maybe... 5 times in the past three years? like it's annoying when it happens, but you also only have to charge it once every couple months, and i mostly have this annoyance because i have notifications 100% turned off and i don't see the low battery notification.
however i will say three years in, either a software update or hardware issue is now killing the battery and i have to charge it every week or two and that sucks
salty that i now have airpod pros, an iphone 13, and the magic keyboard and mouse all with their dumb lightning bolt or whatever it's called. going to have to rebuy all this to forever rid myself of non-usb-c cables but at least in 2024 it's finally happened as an option
The battery may have degraded to be fair.
Each of those times you walked away, did you ever try plugging it in, counting to ten and then continuing to use it afterwards? That's what I used to do.
I use a trackpad now though.
The ergonomics were absolutely terrible. I now find using any mouse painful, to the point where I've replaced all of my computer pointing devices with trackpads. I blame the pain on a long history of Magic Mouse usage.
let's stop justifying this choice from Apple
it annoys everyone, it's a dumb design, you get a message from your Mac telling you that the mouse has no charge and suddenly you can't work anymore for a few minutes, it's idiotic, plain and simple
Wireless charging is also idiotic, to someone.
You don't like the mouse, that's fine, I also don't like the mouse.
But unless you've actually used the mouse for an extended period: I don't think you understood the point that you:
A) don't need it plugged in constantly
and
B) if you charge it for a handful of seconds it lasts the rest of the day, meaning you don't actually have to stop working.
Yeah, I've been using these on multiple Macs for a decade now and it's just not an issue.
If I get the warning the mouse is getting low on charge I just plug it in, go grab a drink or use the bathroom, and by the time I get back it's good for the rest of the day.
Then all I have to do is remember to plug it in overnight and it'll be good for months. YMMV.
There are so many lulu ideas in this comment that don't hold up to the simplest examination.
Plugging in for a few seconds to get a days worth of charge is a stupid thing to actually require or consider normal.
I also want to use my mouse tomorrow, and even the next day, and do so without having to plan ahead "today I will leave my mouse plugged in overnight because I can tell by clairvoyance that it is about to run out" or "I have been tracking the calender like a menstrual cycle and it's time, tonight is the night!" or "I have set up a sheduled alarm on my wonderful Apple Watch to remind me to go look at the settings somewhere to check the mouse battery level and see if it's time to charge tonight"...
And if you don't plan, then you have a few choices, charge for a minute and have to do it again without warning in 2 days, a constant stream of unplanned forced trips to the coffee maker, or just charge for 30 seconds every single day as a part of your routine, or stop and wait for a full charge on the spot for however long that is, or the worst of both worlds, get on with your day by charging for a minute now, and then don't fail to remember to plug it back in before leaving several hours of busy-ness later, which you absolutely will of course.
There is no version of any of that that is remotely convenient or sensible, and certainly not an upgrade from every other mouse in the world. There is no version of this that isn't patently ridiculous. You can work around it and tolerate it because it's not as bad as having to dig ditches for a living. If there was something about mice that the tech just didn't exist for it to work any other way, then sure it's possible to live with, because humans are adaptable. But it's not good, and it's not better than the already norm for $2 mice sice 20 years ago.
It's baffling weird to even try.
The mouse gives you like 3 days heads up that you might want to think about charging it though.
If you disable all notifications and it really runs out, waiting 10 seconds for it to charge is... fine...
I doubt you're using a wired mouse, and most wired mice are actually worse at charging than the magic mouse- the only difference is that you can use them while plugged in, so it's not as annoying that they charge so slow and use more power.
Ultimately it comes down to effective utility, people harping on about the placement of the charging cable without respect to the actual usability of the device holistically have quite literally missed the forest for the trees.
Like I said, theres plenty of reasons to dislike the mouse, but this ranks among the lowest and honestly the weird hate-boner for that decision just makes people look like they don't know what they're talking about to me.
Can’t remember where I saw the interview but that was a conscious choice given the long battery life and fast charging.
I get what they were going for: force the user to use it as intended because the battery really lasted long enough for most people. Otherwise people would just have left it plugged always, and the cable+port would have needed different mechanical strength. But that really annoys anyone who would have left it charging if not most of the time. I think it would have been a better experience by leveraging software instead: detect that it is close to the end of the day and battery is low, and notify the user thwt they need to charge it when they stop using it, if leaving the underside port, or use notifications to annoy people into disconnecting the mouse when fully charged, if the port was moved to the obvious place. You're still annoying people, but you're less likely to end up with an unusable belly up mouse midway through your day.
This is form-over-function, classic Apple. They don't want to give even the slightest impression that they are selling a wired mouse.
Very easy. You sell it on eBay and buy a Logitech MX Master.
Does the Logitech MX Master come with a driver that overcomes Apple's "unintentional" hobbling of non-Magic mice?
Apple is not nefariously gimping mice, they just don't see a world where people use non-Apple mice which have a touch surface for smooth scrolling. AFAIK this isn't an issue that can be solved with drivers. Logi's software has a persistent daemon that can convert your scrolling to smooth scrolling, but that requires leaving it open in the background. You can also use one of the dozens of open source apps that do the same thing.
I don't think it's nefarious, I think it's negligent. As I understand it, they changed something internal to how mouse motion is handled. The Magic Mouse speaks to the OS in a way that matches this change, and that was all they ever cared to ensure worked. They also don't support more than 3 buttons on a mouse well, because Apple doesn't make mice with more than 3 buttons. They did the same sort of thing with standard-DPI monitors; they didn't make them look bad on purpose, they just optimized for high-DPI monitors and didn't care about the others.
And yes, fixing this requires custom software.
Seems not: https://github.com/pqrs-org/Karabiner-Elements/issues/2968
What does that link have to do with anything GGP said? Apple isn't involved in that bug; it's Logitech's own software intercepting events.
It does - it two different ways! The scroll wheel ratchet can be disabled (which is how I use it) or MX Options can override Smooth Scrolling. Or both.
i use an MX master on my mac and it works great? in what way is it supposedly hobbled?
Out of the box, with no custom software installed, non-Apple mice (and even older Apple mice) will have extremely janky scrolling on modern versions of macOS.
Apparently, something internal to how the OS handles mouse scrolling was changed, and only the Magic Mouse gets a proper scrolling experience using built-in drivers. It is possible to fix this, but only with custom software (either drivers for specific mice or general tools for all mice).
I have never experienced this. I have a Logitech G203 mouse I use with my M1 Mac and of course I use the touch pad when I'm not at my desktop. I've never noticed a difference. Both seem butter smooth. I have no special software install. Am I missing something?
is it janky, or is it tied very closely to the scroll input, so it's exactly as janky as your finger moves the scroll wheel on the mouse? because that's what it seems like to me.
for it to be any smoother, there would need to be some artificial smoothing of the scroll wheel input. and i'd rather not have that.
It's not so much "raw input" as "extremely erratic".
For example, when using the wired Mighty Mouse, the same motion of my finger will sometimes scroll a couple lines and sometimes scroll the entire page or not scroll at all. The same mouse plugged into Windows does not exhibit this problem.
> For example, when using the wired Mighty Mouse, the same motion of my finger will sometimes scroll a couple lines and sometimes scroll the entire page or not scroll at all. The same mouse plugged into Windows does not exhibit this problem.
This is not normal and you're possibly facing a bug. I have a Master 3S and mine scrolls exactly the same distance with every click of the wheel.
It does. Although I don’t use it and use this instead: https://github.com/linearmouse/linearmouse
Considering most people put the Magic Mouse in the shelf and never use it, I don't think fixing the charge port is high on anyone's list.
Seems strange that iMacs remain ~20% more expensive than MacBooks.
Brought to you by AI and the EU.
The DRAM makers must love AI, low end iPhones increase RAM 33% (6GB -> 8GB), low end iMacs go from 8GB to 16GB.
> They also did move the Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse to USB-C.
Only for the bundled peripherals, it seems. The Apple Store now only lists the full-size Lightning keyboard without Touch ID in white, which is even worse than before when you could get various permutations of tenkeyless, Touch ID, and black.
I guess it was still getting updated. All peripherals are available in USB-C versions for me now.
Hopefully 8Gb isn't reserved for Apple Intelligence?
It is not
And yet .. they couldn't help themselves and include a 32GB option on their top of the line iMac.
Why does the Magic Mouse still exist, though? If you have an iMac with the Magic Mouse, you own the only Apple device without the complete suite of multitouch gestures. It's weird that they still make the Magic Touchpad a paid option when it seems like a core part of the offering.
Surprised that they didn't offer it with 8 GB, since they do have a 8 GB version of the M4 in the (cheaper) iPad Pro.
These days 8 GB is absurdly low for a ~$1300 PC. Hopefully they might have finally realized that selling crippled products (just to force its users to pay the predatory price for memory upgrades) is hurting UX and their reputation.
I mean they claim:
> Compared to the most popular 24-inch all-in-one PC with the latest Intel Core 7 processor, the new iMac is up to 4.5x faster.1
But is that really true if your "ultrafast" Mac grinds to a halt when you have a couple of Electron apps and a browser open at the same time? Naturally users who bought the base model because they didn't really understood the implications would just conclude that macOS is slow and unstable compared to Windows?
> your "ultrafast" Mac grinds to a halt when you have a couple of Electron apps and a browser open at the same time?
The 8GB models could easily handle this kind of load.
can confirm
The 13-inch iPad Pro is a ~$1300 PC that Apple will gladly sell with 8 GB of RAM.
No, it's not. It's a $1300 high end tablet, which (among other things) will not run arbitrary programs of the user's choosing, and which has aggressive memory management and background process restrictions. All of these factors contribute to 8 GiB being a reasonable amount of memory for such a device.
> 16GB base RAM, they finally did it.
I've paid €200 for 128GB RAM in my PC. How much does Apple charge for 128GB of memory?
Isn’t Apple’s RAM inside CPU package? I think it might not be possible to put together a system (at least with consumer parts) that matches their memory bandwidth.
On the other hand, they are limited in capacity. It is a trade off, it is silly to pretend they are just limiting memory capacity out of the vileness of their hearts or something.
> Isn’t Apple’s RAM inside CPU package?
No, but their marketing department would like you to think so.
> It is silly to pretend they are just limiting memory capacity out of the vileness of their hearts or something.
They are limiting memory capacity and charging you 8x-10x reasonable retail price for upgrades, so that their profit margins stay high. Whether or not that's vile is something I leave to you to decide.
> No, but their marketing department would like you to think so.
Can you link to a teardown that finds RAM somewhere other than the CPU package?
Or were you in too much of a hurry to notice that the comment you replied to didn't make the common mistake of claiming the RAM is on-die not just on-package?
If you're trying to get into a semantic argument about the meaning of "CPU package," I'm not interested, thanks!
You already made a pretty specific claim on that point. You were just wrong.
FWIW I wasn’t trying to start a semantic argument about the meaning of the term “CPU package,” I just thought it was a clear and specific term.
I get your point, and Apple doesn't price RAM cheap, but it's worth noting that any RAM doesn't equal any other RAM.
There's a ton of ram types with varying performance levels, and in apple's case it's RAM with direct and performant access from the graphics card (unified memory).
I’d much rather have had serviceable ram modules than sightly faster ram to the gpu I will never fully flex with macos software anyhow. Speaking as someone saddled with one of these computers.
Every M-series Mac has shipped with completely standard LPDDR4 or LPDDR5(X) memory chips. While these can be a bit more expensive than socketed non-LP DDR DIMMS, we're talking maybe 10% more expensive, not 1000% more expensive (which is what Apple charges for upgrades vs standard retail price for DIMMs).
Apple's marketing department would be happy for you to think otherwise, but the "secret sauce" of their high memory bandwidth is completely due to having more memory channels built into the SoC than a standard x86 CPU.
€200 for 128GB as an aftermarket upgrade, or €200 upcharge for 128GB from a system OEM?
How much does it cost you to buy a GPU with 128GB of RAM on it?
I love in Apple product announcements when they show people doing tasks that not only don't require recent hardware, but in fact could have been done without much trouble 20 or 30 years ago. Specifically talking about the ice cream spreadsheet that I suppose was there to show off how small businesses can use the new iMac.
I'm sure it's a fine machine, but it does to me highlight the upgrade treadmill.
> iMac with M4 features the world’s fastest CPU core, making multitasking across apps like Safari and Excel lightning fast.
This stuck out for me too, plus the examples of using Siri on the desktop. I reckon that invoking Siri to say, "Send Gema a text" and then having to proofread and approve the message is more effort than just sending Gema a text. Same for typing out "turn on do not disturb".
You could imagine the argument being that there are a lot of deep settings or hidden controls that people would like to find, but then wouldn't a vector search that shows relevant settings be just about the same outcome?
No way, we need local LLMS to help us populate the spreadsheet!
I'm surprised they are still shipping these with 256GB of storage base. I had a Macbook with a ~500GB SSD in 2012 (I installed it), and a 500GB spinning disk in like 2008 (also user installed).
A 500GB SSD can be had for <$50 these days, and a 1TB for <$100. Still plenty of profit for Apple, even if they bump up the base storage to 512GB and make 1TB a $200 upgrade...
Hello from The Land Of Perverse Incentives :( https://support.apple.com/en-us/108047#nasalac
This is a desktop so I think the assumption is that the savvy can attach a USB3/4 device with appropriate storage (e.g. for your massive photo library - it's easy to change the location).
Except that storing your iCloud Photo Library on an external drive is a PITA, as multiple daemons (photoanalysysd being one of them) will randomly activate themselves to do their shit, making it difficult to predict when the drive will not be able to be gracefully ejected. It needs to be a permanent external disk.
These are not ordinary SSDs, which (via SATA) are dirt slow in comparison.
Ordinary SSDs have been NVMe for years and have similar performance to Apple NVMe SSDs.
It depends what the person meant by ordinary, but if ordinary just generally refers to "off-the-shelf" or commodity SSDs, then we've been able to get equivalent or better performing NVMe SSDs for a long time, for a small fraction of the price. Within what you can get retail, I think you'd still want the higher end of it for comparable speeds and yields, but would still save A LOT doing so.
It's frustrating how disposable these are designed to be
edit: e.g. screen replacements cost nearly as much as the entire computer
I commented elsewhere, but my uncle is on his third iMac in 30 years. He keeps them a decade at a time. My father is still using an Intel iMac. Normal people do not upgrade their computers after purchase. Displays are generally not something that fail. These machines are capable of providing a decade or more of service to normal people.
I bet iMacs are some of the longest-average-lifetime computers out there.
But I’m sad that the 27” models are obsolete computers and still-wonderful screens, and Apple removed the use-as-screen mode.
Especially egregious when you consider older iMacs could be used as external displays - https://support.apple.com/en-gb/105126
I'd love to see a regulator mandate that computers like the iMac that have built in screens must have HDMI ports that allow them to be used as monitors.
This would be great for the consumer and prevent a lot of ewaste as people can use obsolete computers as monitors well past their useful lifespan as a monitor.
HDMI might be a bit more complex, but displayport should be doable since most devices use embedded displayport (eDP) anyway for their built in displays. I'm guessing the main cost would be adding a switching chip for switching between external and internal source.
Are you expected to replace your screen often? I don't think I upgrade and replace either one much faster than the other. Usually get a new monitor and a new PC every 4 or so years.
I made the mistake of getting a 27" iMac in 2014. The 5k display is still great by today's standards but the internals are obsolete.
> Usually get a new monitor and a new PC every 4 or so years.
Maybe you're not quite the average consumer that OP has in mind? Maybe you are, I don't know. Either way it's unsustainable and ridiculous that the _average consumer_ would need to replace something after 4 years when it COULD be built to last.
My first LCD monitor is still actively used in our house, about 18 years old now. My mother has gone through several computers, kept the same screen for 15 years. Apple Consumers are not "Average Consumers". Starting at $1300, it's a luxury desktop.
That’s a mid-range desktop at most in a world where people pay more than that for individual components at the high-end, especially when you look at pricing for equivalent quality displays.
The correct criticism of iMacs is that it links two parts with different lifespans. There should be a legal requirement that all-in-one computers have an external connector so that if some other component fails or simply becomes obsolete you can use the perfectly functional display with another system.
Most people I know who don't use laptop exclusively don't replace their monitors that often. My work docking station is still rocking 2017 4k monitors and my wife home setup is similar.
Well.. no. But if it breaks or is damaged you basically have to throw away (the otherwise) fully functional PC.
My last iMac lasted 10-years. I replaced it with the M3 iMac for my daughter. I will be happy if it takes her through High School graduation in 2030. If the M3 iMac is still running, I expect to use it for some intro to computer stuff for one of the younger kids.
Yes I cannot mine the iMac for parts at EOL, but realistically, I haven't really done that on any tower-based PC either.
yeah I have an older model that had the well documented faulty / fragile screen connector for the LED back lights. Very expensive replacement screen was the recommended fix! all for the sake of a tiny six pin connector.
One of these days I'll split it down and see if my hands are still steady enough to solder on a new connector.
Anyway it was enough to swear me off any all-in-one devices ever again. I thought by now we'd be fully modular with desktop computer hardware.
I’ve been using an M1 iMac as my main home computer (with 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD) and have zero reason to upgrade. I’ve loved it. Exactly what I need, though I offload a lot of home server type tasks to a big tower PC, including messing with local AI stuff.
BUT a new hockey puck Mac mini that shared a screen with my gaming PC would be a nice space-saver. If only the studio display could switch inputs—using macOS on a curved gaming monitor seems weird.
There are Thunderbolt 4 KVMs now (can't speak to any myself, but they exist!). DSC will give you quite a bit of spare bandwidth with the Studio Display.
I've been using the Sabrent one for a year or so. It's worked quite reliably once I got the cables sorted. I was unintentionally using one TB3 cable in the mix, and that made it pretty flakey. It has been pretty solid since swapping that for a TB4 cable.
I still miss the 27" iMacs. They were such a great form factor.
Now that my 27" iMac from 2020 is starting to get old and Apple will likely deprecate support for all Intel Macs soon, I really wish there was an easy way to use it as an external monitor for a MacBook. Every implementation of streaming to an iMac is hacky at best.
I looked into this briefly when they announced that the iMac Pro is the oldest device that still gets the newest software.
It's logically two displays crammed together, which apparently makes Linux support difficult. Someone posted on HN a link to a Chinese company whose sole purpose seems to be making boards that let you drive an iMac Pro display with a traditional display cable. It's left as an exercise to the reader how mad your company would be if you tried that on your corp device.
There's not a super easy way to do it but if you're willing to take it apart there's driver boards available on Aliexpress that convert 5k imacs into HDMI/DP monitors.
Yeah those 5K panels are fantastic.
When I switched to a MBP M2 I got an Asus ProArt 32'' 4K and really like it. Comes precalibrated out of the box.
I've got one of the LG Ultrafine 5K monitors paired with a modern M1 Max macbook and it's a nice combination.
Expensive, but I adore the pixel density considering I spend all day staring at text :)
I'd be seriously tempted by an iMac if it had M4 Pro + a 27" 5K display. I just don't feel it's likely as they'll probably see it as cannibalising Mac Studio + Studio Display sales.
The Studio Display is priced as if it's an iMac.
It's insane that we've had retina displays for over a decade, and Apple still seems to be more-or-less the only game in town for a 5k 27" display.
At one point there were about six manufacturers (though I think it was all various grades of the same panel). They just didn’t sell.
It's clearly a niche segment...
On one hand, companies willing to spend more than $250 on monitors will rather give you a 32" ultra-wide, because that's more useful to the typical office monkey worker.
On the other, the PC enthusiast customer base is almost synonymous to gamers, who'd rather want high refresh rates than a silly 5K resolution they cannot use.
I will never purchase the Studio Display on principle. It's an idiot product.
If you wanted a similarly spec'd display for a Mac, what would you get instead? (what is the non-idiot alternative?)
For what its worth, I am extremely satisfied with my Studio Display. The 5K resolution makes 2x pixel perfect scaling look great, built in webcam which fantatic for meetings, good speakers, and charges the MacBook Pro with the same cable, and acts as an USB-C hub.
I'm happy with mine too.
It has a few upsides that don't get written about often, compared to other monitors:
- Apple is extremely picky about panel QC, making things like dead pixels and patchy backlights much less common
- Its design practically eliminates the backlight bleed that's common with other monitors due to variances in bezel/panel fastener tightness
- No coil whine (surprisingly common even in other high end monitors)
- Some of the best glossy antiglare treatment I've seen, without the "gritty" coating that can cause a "sparkle" effect that's common on Dell monitors
- It wakes up and displays a picture almost instantly
It's not perfect and I'd prefer better specs for the money, but it's not a bad monitor. I've tested models that are more expensive than the Studio Display that fail to check some of these boxes.
It's a similar niche to the LG Ultrafine before it. That also had a webcam, tolerable speakers, 85W PD over the thunderbolt 3 port, and 4 USB-C ports.
If I didn't already have the LG Ultrafine, I would have bought one of the studio displays.
I have both; I got the LG when they first came out and the Studio display last year during a good sale on Amazon.
The panels seem the same but everything on the Apple one is better, as you would expect.
But lately my LG is starting to have issues with ghosting and color shifts around the edges. It's still ok to use (I'm typing this on it) but I guess it's nearing the end of it's useful life.
What delineates it as an idiot product? There aren't exactly a ton of alternative 5k displays on the market. Dell and LG have some 5120x1440 options, but only Apple has a 5120x2880 option as far as I can find.
There’s a Samsung one, though it doesn’t seem to generally be much cheaper than the Apple one, and the LG Ultrafine 5K seems to be… maybe still available?
The Samsung model has a well-known issue with severe coil whine. Not a dealbreaker for everybody but worth taking into account.
It’s really nice! Expensive, but it looks great and the 5K panel is beautiful. Speakers are good for a display, webcam is meh.
It’s much better looking than the LG ultrafine 5K, slightly more functional, and costs more.
What’s the idiot part? Price?
There's an entire computer in the monitor that you can't use.
According to the article below, the A13 computer hosts at least the fancy webcam and audio features. That's how you use it.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/9/22968960/apple-studio-disp...
Similarly my car has a computer in it that I "can't use", except it does car stuff.
That's a mobile processor with desktop-class performance. That you can't use. We're not talking about ESP32s here.
I guess you like buying $1,600+ computers that you can't use, so you're exactly their audience.
Apple would rather you buy a Studio Display.
If a 27" iMac did exist, it makes the comparison to the Studio Display now a bit odd - because they'd both cost roughly the same price but one has a computer and one doesn't.
27" is really the best screen size for productivity. Easily can find 1440p or 4k 27" monitors to pair, and they have come down a lot in price.
I tend to agree but more because the market has settled on it. One thing about screen size is that it's easier to achieve an effective screen size with a smaller screen (by moving it slightly forward) than it is to do the reverse. So a 24" screen will work in more environments, e.g., smaller desks, than a 27" will. A dual screen setup with two 24's will require less neck movement.
Of course, the market has also decided that decent aspect ratios aren't worth doing either. If there were 3:2, 4:3, or 5:4 options—more versatile for productivity—we'd probably settle on something between 21" and 24".
The 5K screen was the killer feature of the 27” iMac.
I think this 43" screen is amazing for coding. Lots of vertical and horizontal space!
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-ultrasharp-43-4k-usb-c-...
If only it had higher pixel density. If there was a 43" 6K or even 8K screen I'd buy it in a heartbeat. But with only 4K I have to use all sorts of weird tricks with raster fonts to make the text in my terminals sharp.
Also, too bad all the TV makers stopped making 8K screens in 55" and below.
It really is, 4K 27" monitors that can do >=120Hz are perfect for me personally.
I just wish that the base macbook pro models supported 3 external screens without resorting to a software-based video-over-usb DisplaySync (not DisplayPort) connection.
So far the screens I've tested are more tiring to my eyes (I work both on a M1 13" with external screens, and on a legacy 27" iMac). What are the best 27" screens for coding comfort that work well with Macs these days?
Apart from the Samsung Viewfinity that another commenter mentioned, there's also the LG Ultrafine 5K and the Huawei Mateview. The MateView is nicer than other 4K monitors because it has a taller aspect ratio of 3840 x 2560 so the extra 400 pixels of vertical space is nice for productivity work, although of course this is still fewer total pixels than a 5K display.
LG Ultrafine 5K Has burn-in issues. :/
I haven’t tried it myself but if you really want that 5K 27 inch form factor samsung’s viewfinity s9 is exactly that. Or apple’s studio display ofcourse.
Typing this from a 27" iMac. I do love my 13" M1, but I would love to upgrade the 27" too...
Right now, the Apple computer lineup is totally out of alignment for me. The iMac is too small and the laptops are too big. I'd like a minimum 27" display for the iMac, maybe 31". For a laptop, give me something more portable, like the old 2 pound, 12" MacBook.
It would be fantastic if Apple brought back that 27-inch or larger iMac for desktop users who don’t need a separate display
AFAICT the 11" Mac Air failed in the market. It did not last long in the lineup.
I love the idea and form of an ultraportable laptop, but I’ve had to face the reality that even a 13” monitor is just too small for me to be productive on complex development tasks. My eyesight isn’t good enough to handle tiny fonts, which could be part of the disconnect. What kind of work are you able to get done on a 12” screen?
I could never justify getting an iMac. All the downsides of a laptop & desktop in one; not upgradeable and not portable. Leaves me wondering how many of these Apple actually sell. A Mac Mini with a separate screen feels like it makes far more sense.
The iMacs very much aren't their main seller. A couple of key demographics use it though:
* Families with a shared computer in a common room. Super simple to setup, no fiddling, low price. In the video Apple showcased this use case. My parents have an M3 imac and it works great. They had their last iMac for ten years.
* Businesses buy these for reception areas and customers see the Apple logo on the back. Easy solution for a business with no IT department, great marketing for Apple.
Apple will probably always sell an iMac option as long as businesses buy and display them.
My daughter's orthodontist has one of these behind every chair. Our dentist has them too.
HN honestly is a terrible source of information for
1) What sells
2) What might sell
That's fine, but personal anecdotes are also a hugely misleading source of information too. In the time since the iMac redesign was released, I've seen 10x more of the old models than I have seen of the new ones. My local barber even uses an Intel iMac in Target Display mode to run their Windows small-form-factor PC.
HN is disillusioned, but so are a lot of the west coast product designers that expect businesses to buy these on day 1. The majority of businesses are going to buy whatever is cheap and effective - their realistic choice is between a Chromebox and a Mac Mini.
I have been to a on orthodontist office which didn't have any iMac.
I wouldn't apply this observation to judge if the product makes sense
+1 for the business front desk. This is by far where I see them the most. They're very easy to deploy, and most of the software you're going to need it to be running works in a browser. A windows all-in-one PC is another option... but the chance of something going wrong/being annoying in the interim between "plunk it on the desk" and "open salesforce in chrome" is definitely higher.
My parents have had an iMac in their living room sitting quietly doing stuff (web apps, mainly) for 9 years now. Still works fine for all their use cases and the 5k screen remains a delight to behold.
i know a few people who have an iMac in their living room like that, with the same logic as the people who still have landlines - the laptops and cell phones get put away when you get home (or stay in the home office), so you can be present with your family. but sometimes you still need a computer for stuff, like controlling the music or quickly looking something up on google. but if it's not your computer, and it's not signed in to all your stuff, you're going to quickly do the thing you need doing and then get off it again.
iMac is perfect for that. it looks pretty, it's small enough that it can be put in a corner, and it's powerful enough that you can buy it, leave it there, and not think about having to upgrade it for a decade.
It's surreal for me how something so expensive can be thought as "perfect" for this usecase. I'd say in cases like this having a cheap laptop or even a cheap all in one desktop computer is good enough. Why spend $2000 to browse the internet?
The long support length lowers the effective cost. We only upgraded my parents' computer after ten years due to software support. It was so old it was soon going to lose even Google Chrome updates. But it ran like new.
The total carrying cost over ten years is quite low. And my parents have needed much less tech help with a mac. The day to day ease matters and is worth money.
Being honest, I would bet the archetypical family that can prioritize "putting the phone away and being present" definitely skews more affluent than you may expect.
Eh, they start at $1300 (I suspect pretty much all non-commercial purchases are the base-line one) and last roughly forever (like, a decade is not an exaggeration; you see old ones around a fair bit). There’s a market, there.
Not sure what it’s like these days, but last time I checked cheap PC laptops were basically disposable; in an old job we had plastic Dell laptops for non-eng roles, and I’d be surprised if the median lifespan was much more than a year. They just broke _all the time_. Possibly things have come on, I suppose; this was a while back.
> Why spend $2000 to browse the internet?
Not having to manage windows and its bullshit, most likely.
Macs usually require way less maintenance than windows machines. Just install all the upgrades and you're 99% fine.
Sorry for the 2000 price mark, seems like the base version costs 1300$.
In my personal experience, my parents (not super tech savvy) always had a windows laptop and never had a specific windows issue due to updates and whatever. If they did, it's more app specific, not necessarily os specific.
In general, I (personally) disagree with the statement that macs require less maintenance than windows or Linux, I use a mac for work, and I have a fair share of app related issues just like I would on a Windows or Linux machine. It's just my opinion.
I love the iMac as the main driver for my family of 5
* We want a dedicated space in the house for a family computer, so portability is no concern
* It has a very small footprint
* It looks the most like "furniture" out of all the options I've seen; pretty color & form factor, and no mess of cables. If you're male, think "wife approval factor".
* It does everything the family needs from it; runs Steam, documents, spreadsheet, browser, school, photos/videos, etc
* High interoperability with our family iPhones/iPads
Same here. I provide tech support to my father, on the condition that I pick the hardware, always an iMac
Yeah a family friend PC that can end up on a desk or in the kitchen, or on a milk crate as a media player in an apartment, as a family computer they get years of use over time by different people in a family. From work to life to play.
OK, I want to partly take back my comment. The business use case is brilliant.
Education as well. Main reason why that headphone jack has stuck around I suspect.
Low number of cables has also been one of the points of appeal for the iMac, to the point that it was a focal point of marketing for the original model. For the average person's setup the current model only needs a power cable.
It's an optional extra (of course), but you can plug an ethernet cable in to the power adapter and deliver power + network over the same cable.
> For the average person's setup the current model only needs a power cable.
Even if you use wireless input devices you'll need to charge them occasionally
Of course, but those cables (or more likely, just one cable) can be stashed away in a drawer 99% of the time. The bundled keyboard and mouse/trackpad can go months between recharges, especially with lighter less frequent use that something like a living room or kitchen machine might see.
> Leaves me wondering how many of these Apple actually sell
I think we can check since they're public. Looks like 5-8 million per quarter [0]. Approx 10% of their computer sales [1].
[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/263444/sales-of-apple-ma...
[1]: https://www.cultofmac.com/news/macbooks-make-up-a-whopping-7...
Note the data isn't actually public - Apple does not break Mac revenue or sales figures down to per device. These are all just 'market intelligence' estimates.
Right. They used to, they stopped many years ago. So now it’s all guesses, estimates, based on whatever.
Compared to 43% MacBook Pro, 34% MacBook Air, 9% Mac Pro, 3% Mac mini, 1% Mac Studio, as per the second link.
So these are their most popular desktop, but by a slim margin and far behind the laptop sales
Note that those are revenue figures, not unit sales. That is why the Mac Pro comes out so high. the unit cost is so much higher that even with low volumes, the revenue is noticeable.
For a long time the best Apple display you could get was in the iMacs. An iMac with nothing used with it besides a wireless keyboard and mouse, where you can even hide the ethernet port in the power brick, makes for a nice clean desk.
Absolutely, the iMac’s display quality has been a big draw for years, especially when Apple's external display options were limited.
I bought an iMac a while back. I left it connected to a bunch of music studio equipment. It does its job as the center of a home recording studio—gigabit ethernet and plenty of USB ports. I am not considering replacing it yet, even though it stopped receiving updates from Apple. It can’t run Logic 11 (it’s stuck on 10).
They are perfect for suuuuuper casual people. Perfect for your grandparents for example. Most people I know who own these are elderly. Yes, an iPad would also work or a MacBook too but elderly people aren't travelling nor are they gonna buy a MacMini and get a monitor. They just need their simple to set up, all-in-one desktop computer.
My uncle is on his third iMac. He owns them for a decade at a time. When he sends emails, the subject is always "From <his name>" because he shared an email account with my aunt years ago and even though he no longer does, he still puts his name in the subject.
That's the target buyer.
glorified e-mail client for $1200. Nice.
For a decade. That works out to $10 a month. Not a bad deal.
It's still a bad deal.
I've provided my father (82 years, living 500km away from me) with hand-me-downs Mac laptops since 2009: from the initial Macbook Core Duo up to a the most recent M2 Air. He does web browsing and frequent FaceTime calls with me just for checking out how they are. Those little laptops last him until the battery dies.
He could very well be using Windows with a cheaper laptop, but I consider the amount of support hours that I've saved to more than compensate for that.
You’re completely right and yet the sight of one fills me with desire.
Possibly because it has a direct line right back to the original Macintosh. Such that when I showed my 11yo cousin my Macintosh SE, he called it an ‘iMac’.
Most Mac users seldom upgrade. I read here and myself often use a MacBook for 7+ years. Given screen tech changes alone, I think it makes a lot of sense.
I’ve owned an iMac before very happily. I just don’t own one now because they stopped making 27” versions.
What is preventing them from launching a 27" version?
I've been waiting to upgrade our 2017 model in the living room, was hoping the 27" was finally going to come now. Guess Mac Mini is the only route to go...
> What is preventing them from launching a 27" version?
most likely they (apple) think that would eat into some other market segment. for a 27" station they probably want you to get a mac mini with a studio display. apple is known for "gently (but firmly) nudging" you towards the more expensive options.
It does seem that way, doesn't it? Shame, it was the perfect form factor for family room, office front desk.
27" iMac has been my daily driver for over 10 years, and I only replaced my last one because the screen cracked when I tried to repair it. I've got 64GB of RAM and a 27" thunderbolt display on both sides, making excellent for both software development and video editing. I don't know what I'd replace it with if it died.
Since none of the options there are tangibly more upgradeable than the other, you can reduce your point to "The iMac is not portable."
I bet that iMac M4 sales meet their target, which is probably on par with the iMac M1 sales. And those were apparently good enough that they finally released an updated model.
schools are a big one. If they are going to buy macs, being all in one the school IT doesn't have to worry about a separate monitor to troubleshoot problems with.
I'd be interested in numbers on some of this. From my view, the upgradability is a bit of a red herring for most users. Computers are fast enough for most uses that it just doesn't matter.
And frankly, the “upgradeability” of most desktops is a myth in my experience.
By the time I’ve ever wanted to upgrade a Windows or Linux PC, a new CPU probably isn’t going to fit into the same socket as the one I had so now I need a new motherboard too. I probably want a new GPU if it was a gaming PC and if it wasn’t I would be using an integrated GPU anyway.
I think the only thing I’ve ever kept from an “upgrade” was my case and some memory sticks. But I probably would have been better off—both in time and money—just selling the damn thing as a whole and buying an entirely new set of components.
TL;DR, year-over-year bumps just aren’t worth the price of upgrades, but by the time it is worth doing you probably want to upgrade so many parts there’s little left to keep. YMMV.
Depends where you are in your life, I suspect.
A person in college on a tight budget might choose a budget-conscious PC, with an average amount of RAM and a modest hard drive. A few years later, component prices will have fallen and the PC will be showing its age thanks to its modest components. Adding a larger hard drive and more RAM will get a few more years out of it.
On the other hand, a mid-career professional programmer has plenty of disposable income, so if they're buying a PC today they can chuck in 128GB of RAM and not need to upgrade for the next 10 years.
If they bought a “budget conscious” PC, what are the odds that they’ll have hit the limits of their RAM but not any other component? If they bought a cheap laptop, for example, what are the odds that the hardware isn’t starting to fail? If it’s a desktop, what are the odds that by the time they need a new CPU a worthwhile upgrade will still be socket-compatible? Usually the budget options are already well into the service lifecycle for things like that and at least anecdotally the budget buyers I know buy a new one 1-2 times per decade rather than upgrading anything.
If you want a new CPU after a decade it's absolutely as you describe: you need a new mainboard and probably new memory (DDR5 just came out), and end up keeping only the case, drive, case fans and PSU, if that.
For other components it mostly works. You can smoothly upgrade from 8GB RAM all the way to 128GB, get a new GPU, whatever the current WiFi standard is, more silent cooling, more, bigger or faster drives, etc. If you replace something every 2-3 years you can ship-of-theseus the same computer for a surprisingly long time at pretty low cost
I have been building and upgrading PCs for like thirty years, from 10 to 40 and through varying degrees of expendable income. I genuinely cannot ever remember there being a time where it made sense to upgrade a single component.
I’m not going to say it doesn’t make sense to do so for anyone, but it certainly wasn’t in my experience.
You can hit a RAM limit on some lower-end motherboards quite quickly depending on the memory controller and you might only get so far with GPUs as well depending on the type of PCIe slots.
I'm not sure what decade you have in mind, but for all the recent ones, the memory controller has both been on the CPU, and not been part of the differentiation between low-end and high-end CPUs for a given socket. So the only significant RAM limitation coming from the motherboard is if it's a small form factor board with only two slots instead of four.
I agree with you entirely except for if we skip the year over year part.5-
Time of purchase upgrade ability, if we’re talking about getting to 128 or 256 GB of RAM. Time of purchase to upgrade to multiple high res screens that match. Dedicated GPUs… I bet there is a top of the line home hobbiest LLM oriented GPU from Nvidia or AMD in the next 3 years that will cleanly connect to recent chip architectures. I doubt it will run optimally tied to a Mac. It’ll be something that you could also rack in a server.
It suits users who prioritize a clean setup, minimal cable clutter, and don’t need the flexibility to upgrade components down the line.
I think iMacs end up where someone wants a computer to look nice (either personally or professionally). You could have these in a none tech environment and they will look good.
iMacs have always been as much about aesthetics as performance, and they do fit beautifully in environments where style is key, like design studios
Meet my relatives who recently retired an x86 iMac, upgraded to an Arm-based one, and will probably upgrade to something like this, but only after another 7-10 years, when the current iMac is far out of support and getting so slow that it becomes unbearable. They use it as a shared family computer, almost exclusively for downloading photos from a (also very old) digital camera and watching Youtube videos.
Judging by the sibling comments I'm not the only one with relatives like this!
But just think of the satisfaction you'll have at your computer being tiny in the dimension you can't actually perceive when using it!
Most computers are part of a 3D space where you can occupy more than just the frontal view. You will notice the screen thinness from other angles. it's not the most important aspect but it a nice enhancement. This are often used in environments where they are seen from other angles like homes, front desks, schools.
It's the computer equivalent of a fleet car.
At the very least, they use them at the front desk of every Apple building for the admin who signs people in. :)
I had one during the pandemic. I got it at a steep discount but it was really nice when I didn't need to go anywhere. I'm giving it to my son to put in his room.
Seems like they're useful for families and kids, and corp environments that use Macs for the folks who work in office and don't move around (admins, lab workers, etc)
I don't see the point in them anymore, too. 24" screen size is not interesting and I can't get more displays that do look like the first one. Will always look strangely mixed in environments.
edit: ok, others pointed out possible use cases. was thinking about the reception one, too.
> not upgradeable and not portable
your average user (aka not HN-er) doesn't upgrade their computer
an all-in-one solution is very attractive for families or situations where you don't need to tote around a laptop and you want a large screen
I was considering an iMac but decided against it because I couldn't use it as a secondary display for my work laptop.
The “separate screens” you can buy all suck. They aren’t 5k resolution, and they always have some weird edge case issue you find out about 2 weeks after you buy it.
Yeah ... I wish they kept the iMac Pro line. An M4 pro in that body heck even with a larger 32inch screen would be awesome!
Very low desk clutter though. Power cable, maybe a mouse. Nothing else.
What's with the green iMac picture? https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/2024/10/apple-introduc...
It only shows two USB-C ports while further down the marketing material talks about "all four USB-C ports". EDIT: the low-end 8-core model for $1300 only has two ports.
It also has what looks like a rear-facing camera in the stand cutout. What is that for? EDIT: It's the magnetic power connector. I did not expect that to be round.
Supposedly there's a gigabit Ethernet port somewhere too. Not shown in any of the pictures on the site that I can find.
The gigabit ethernet port is in the power brick.
That’s a cool idea. The desktop has only one cable even on wired network. Neat.
> What's with the green iMac picture?
The picture is of the base model.
The upper model is featured on their main website[1], which shows this image [2]
[1] https://www.apple.com/imac/ [2] https://www.apple.com/v/imac/q/images/overview/closer-look/c...
The base model iMac only has two Thunderbolt ports.
> The base model iMac only has two Thunderbolt ports.
Indeed, per specs [1]
[1] https://www.apple.com/imac/specs/
I love the innovation Apple has brought with their investment in ARM. That said, I can't imagine buying a computer in the 21st century that can't be opened and upgraded, especially with a price premium attached. I just don't get it.
I am in no way trying to be combative, but I'd love to hear a counterpoint that makes sense for these machines.
I bought an M2 iMac for my parents. It’ll last at least five years for them - likely closer to 10. At that point, I’m happy to recycle or donate it and get them a new iMac - likely with some major updates (form factor? Display? Etc?) that wouldn’t get with a RAM / CPU upgrade.
Spending ~$150-$300/year for them to have an easy to use & fast computer feels very worth it for me.
All that said - I would love for the machine to be upgradeable as well! Just explaining why it’s not a dealbreaker.
Same, I had to panic buy a 13" m1, i was remote working extra remotely and my laptop got destroyed. The 13" m1 was not an ideal machine, it had limited usb ports, limited ram.. but it was pretty quick and I wasn't going to buy intel.
A few years later the m2pro/max's came out (i think technically in 14"). I picked one up and just handed my m1 down to family. Huge upgrade over their old intel air that had already lasted them like 10 years.
My main bitch is the soldered in storage. It's a shitty optimization that has to punish apple as much as it punishes users. To have a machine that I can't just go buy a harddrive and slot in when i want more storage or when the drive fails is a total fucking nightmare.
For professional use, the idea of "opening up and upgrading a machine" feels wild. You're either given one by your employer or buying one yourself, and either way, it's on a 5 year deprecation schedule. It's a negative ROI for me as a solo or for my employer to ever do anything with a device that isn't "oh it's broken? too slow? new one being UPSed this afternoon".
I used to work on my car engine too. These days, I open the hood (it's a hybrid), scratch my chin, and then close it again and bring it to the dealer.
Most people don’t want to open up their computer. Ever.
And for most people who dont want to open their computer, they’ll probably use these iMacs until their ancient, and replacing the whole thing makes more sense anyway
> I can't imagine buying a computer in the 21st century that can't be opened and upgraded
Because opening and upgrading computers is a 21st century thing and not a 20th century thing? I'd say it's the other way around!
I replace my computers before I ever feel a need to upgrade them. Computers are fast and performant for a long time now (4+ years, especially for non-professional use).
And as someone who works with computers all day long, I never ever want to open one up unless I build one from scratch and want a personal project.
What about the screen?
Once upon a time I'd use the same monitor for several generations of desktop. But lately monitors feel like they're advancing more quickly and computers more slowly such that I end up replacing them after about ten years.
I personally appreciate not having to do both at the same time, but at least for me it has eliminated that criticism against all-in-ones.
What about the screen? Although I do have an external display, I haven't found a compelling replacement in the 10 years it's been going.
That said, the 24" iMac screen is not in the slightest bit compelling to me
My guess is the only reason to open and upgrade a computer is if one needs (or wants) to be on the bleeding edge of what local compute is capable of on a day to day basis. With the advent of cloud compute the number of use cases that meet that criteria shrinks every day. With the iMac there is a price premium but what the users is paying for is a computer that just gets out of their way. For them the computer is simply a means, not an end.
Most of my buddies w/ PCs for gaming generally only open up their machine to upgrade their video card, once their motherboard no longer supports the latest and greatest they just dumpster the whole damn thing (maybe sell the card on ebay), or turn it into a plex server or something and start over.
> that can't be opened and upgraded
One of the reasons I don’t buy into Apple’s marketing gimmicks especially when it comes to the “carbon neutral” initiative.
> especially with a price premium attached. I just don't get it.
Apple is a public company. Investors expect them to churn out profit so stonk goes up. As long as users are trapped in their Apple ecosystem/wall, then they will keep buying. If the devices were open and upgradable then the company will not be able to charge a stupid high markup for RAM or storage.
If products were easily upgradable, consumers would buy the base model configurable SKUs then take their business to repair shop and get ram and storage upgraded at a fraction of the cost Apple would provide out the door.
> but I'd love to hear a counterpoint that makes sense for these machines.
There is no counterpoint. Most people (ie, not fanboys) would agree with you. There is absolutely zero reason for devices to not be upgradable or easily serviceable. You don’t become a trillion dollar company by playing nice with your users.
Why does this still have the ridiculous iMac chin? Surely they can fit everything behind the screen at this point.
The chin gives you a good touch-point for adjusting the angle of the display and the rotation angle of the entire base, without having to worry about touching the screen/screen bezel and getting finger prints on it.
It's also a great place to tack post-it notes.
Sticking notes...Not everyone understands how necessary this is for some people
No chin can be adjusted fine on basically any other display on the market today.
You can do that with a regular monitor too
I think they keep the chin because it's the only thing that visually indicates that this is an iMac and not a monitor, and thus worth more than $500.
It makes a lot more sense if you look at the iFixit teardown. https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac+M1+24-Inch+Teardown/142...
Does it though?
The iMac is basically the same as the M4 iPad Pro, and the iPad Pro doesn't have a chin.
> The iMac is basically the same as the M4 iPad Pro, and the iPad Pro doesn't have a chin.
Cooling seems like it might be a factor here. The iMac's display is probably going to be run at a brighter (and thus hotter) setting AND it's more likely to be used to do things that require high load for extended periods of time, so putting it in its own space probably helps.
iMac has active cooling, more ports and more power available to it to drive those ports (though the PSU is external, it’s still gotta have the internal circuitry to deliver that).
Those all do have to go somewhere.
Surely we are beyond concern with bezels, chins, and other frivolous mobile phone aesthetics at this point.
They literally can't. They moved the headphone jack from the back to the side because it was too long.
Now you could argue if it needs to be that thin but for the current configuration, there's nothing you can cram behind the screen.
For something that's literally designed to sit on a desk, yes... it's ridiculous to make it thinner in a dimension you never see vs one that you see all the time.
Aesthetics is also for the environment of the object rather than the primary user. That’s the reason the logo is on the back
One more vote for aesthetics here. I put a lot of effort into making my home beautiful. iMacs respect/complement that effort for me.
Many of these are customer service desks which are visible from the side.
iMac has always been a device to be seen with, if not for the user then for the manufacturer.
From the ifixit teardown of the previous M1 model [1], it seems that all the compute is going in the chin.
They can't put the compute in the back of the display itself, while maintaining the same thickness like an iPad (which has the same CPU), because the room behind the displays is dominated by the speaker system, allowing the iMac to have surprisingly good audio quality despite being so thin.
[1] https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac+M1+24-Inch+Teardown/142...
These look hideous tbh. I'm waiting for the iMac to flip vertically and ask me to tip.
where do you put ur sticky notes?
Someone got into their mind that it was important that everything is as thin as possible - hence the chin.
I miss the times when they used the form factor to actually make new shapes - both the sunflower and the cube looks more futuristic than the 2024 iMac.
I'm waiting to replace my 2015 MBP with an M4 MBP. I bought the m2 Studio Max and love it. But I need a mobile computer. Working only at my desk sucks sometimes.
Why wait? The M3 MBP is basically perfect.
It's almost becoming a bother of how accurate the rumors are becoming now a days. With this release they were spot on with the 16gb min ram and no change in screen size.
I am not building LLMs on my computer (I wish :)) but I do use my iMac for both work and photography. Lightroom slugs big time on my 2019 iMac. My dream spec for the next iMac would be:
- bring back the 27" form factor
- dumb down use as monitor. My work computer has disabled file & screen sharing so current methods dont work. I just want to plug my work macbook using a cable or wireless and use the imac as a display.
Note: The 24” iMac is never going to be the platform of choice for HackerNews readers.
I recommend these to friends who want a simple computer setup. Many people have dramatically different needs and wants than I do as a software professional.
Apple knows this, and so it markets it to them rather than to us.
I could do my work on one, but yeah, the screen size would be annoying long term. The sad part is that it's the exact form factor my dad wants. It's absolutely perfect for his needs, except it's wildly overpowered and overpriced.
The 4K monitor is going to push up the price, and I'm all for giving everyone a high quality monitor, but I'd argue that the iMac is 30-40% over budget for those who'd like that type of computer. I think you could get away with having it be a $1000 computer, but not $1600, for the lowest spec'ed model.
With an M4 and 16gb+ ram it is more computer than anything I’ve ever owned. I write text files for a living. Might be able to limp along on a souped up 486, definitely a Pentium 90.
Do you think there is a chance that they will remove the huge bottom bezel one day?
It may be part of the iMac design identity at this point, but I don’t like it since its appearance on the iMac G5.
I'm glad to see Nano-Texture coming to their budget line.
That was definitely unexpected.
Hopefully they'll add an option for the M4 MacBook Pro too.
I've been waiting 15 years for Apple to reintroduce a matte display to the MacBook Pro.
I have a more than a decade-old iMac with a 27” display that I’m stil using as a monitor (though it’s seen better days), so that worked out well, but a Mac mini and an external monitor seems better in every way.
Which monitor to get, though? Maybe Apple should sell a Mac mini bundled with a nice external monitor instead of iMacs.
It looks beautiful, but it's such a waste to bind the monitor to the computer this way. Monitors outlast many computers.
As someone who mucks around with running LLMs and other large models on my computer the 32GB maximum RAM is a show-stopper for me. I'm on a M2 with 64GB at the moment and I'm already regretting not going for 96 or even 128.
I want to be able to run a large model AND other apps at the same time.
> As someone who mucks around with running LLMs and other large models on my computer the 32GB maximum RAM is a show-stopper for me.
To be fair, I don't think people mucking around with large LLMs is the primary target market for the iMacs.
The sort of people who muck around with LLMs almost certainly already have a monitor, keyboard and mouse. And so are more likely to pick up a Mac Studio which will no doubt be coming soon with M4 Ultra.
> And so are more likely to pick up a Mac Studio which
Although price-conscious LLM muckers are most likely to pick any Apple-hardware. You can easily build rigs that are twice as powerful for half the price, assuming we compare desktops.
True. eBay dual-socket Epyc systems ala https://rentry.org/miqumaxx are a great case in point.
Or separate concerns and shell out on a Studio display with the-mac-you-like on usb-c
Or buy a real computer, plug in an Nvidia GPU, and save your DRAM for compute while using your VRAM for inference.
16 GB or 24 GB for inference doesn’t cut it for large models…
Mac hardware offers up to 128 GB shared RAM.
So now you just limited to 24gb unless you are running dual 3090s or leave the consumer market for a gpu.
I mean, model layering has been around for several years now: https://huggingface.co/blog/lyogavin/airllm
Moving the weights between the CPU and the GPU significantly limits performance. It's not comparable to having the entire model resident within video/unified memory.
Sure, but to be honest, I don’t think you should be shipping a high-spec computer with a built-in screen. Anything high-spec should be broken into at least a separate screen and computer. The screen is such a major point of failure. I’ve seen so many iMacs and MacBooks with broken screens where the end solution is to replace the entire device, which is a waste. It’s that much more of a waste if you are getting a high-spec version.
> The screen is such a major point of failure.
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.
I was surprised to find out that along older VGA/HD LCD controllers now there are also 3rd party boards to drive 5K Apple screens. Look for "5k screen controller" on Aliexpress. Price range from ~130€ to 300+€, no idea about the quality.
> The screen of an iMac (at least the 5K 27" one)
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.
Yes, that is annoying. There’s also such a massive price difference between 4K and 5K monitors. I’ve decided just to accept 4K everywhere because it’s so much cheaper. But I would consider getting a 5K iMac.
> Yes, that is annoying. There’s also such a massive price difference between 4K and 5K monitors.
Perhaps check out the Asus PA27JCV: 27" at 5120x2880.
The unfortunate part is that these aren't for sale yet and we don't know how they actually compare to the existing LG 5k or Apple Studio display. It is nice to see more options coming to market.
I have a MacBook Air on my desk plugged into a Apple 27-inch 5k Studio Display next to my work MacBook Pro plugged into a cheap AOC 27-inch 4k display via HDMI and frankly there's not much difference.
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.
It's really a shame that Apple discontinued target display mode.
I know that some of the older imacs could still work as a monitor using 'target display mode'. Would be nice, however, if apple could design an imac where the actual computer is a module you can snap into an older one to upgrade it.
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)
Great. But plenty of consumers disagree with you, which is why this product exists.
Not everything you see is designed to be useful for you specifically
> plenty of consumers disagree with you
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?
Well by virtue of the fact that they've sold these un-repairable/ un-openable macs for 3 years now, and they're refreshing it instead of killing the product - all these things indicate consumers like the current approach
Exactly.
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. .
Yeah, that's my biggest complaint with iMacs: I want to be 100% certain I can repurpose them as monitors later in their lives.
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.
> 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.
HP does HDMI-in in somo of its AIOs: https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-eliteone-840-g9-all-in-...
It's not impossible, but it has to be a completely separate signal chain that bypasses the PC. (Well, OK, it's theoretically possible to do it other ways, but it would be really hard.)
DisplayPort doesn't have that same restriction, right?
I don't know, but probably not. It's a legal requirement for HDMI, not a technical one. It's actually not hard to build an HDMI recorder, you just can't legally sell one. But bootleg recorders are easy to find.
They could design it in such a way that the hdmi input port bypasses the whole 'computer' and goes straight into the display board. If it's plugged in the 'computer' could either not boot or just run headless, i'd prefer the former (just to save on energy costs).
Couldn't you "just" wire the HDMI port to the panel control logic? That is, the HDMI-in doesn't connect to the computer part of the iMac, just to the display circuitry.
Edit: nevermind, I see you addressed this in another comment.
You probably know this but it’s possible to buy a controller card for the panel on Ali Express and retro-fit into the case and use as a monitor if you are ready to retire the computer itself.
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.
If they could be used as monitors, then my iMac 2018 would still be worth 1700€ (the price of the Apple monitor)!
Instead, the 2018 iMac is incredibly slow, and can be thrown away.
RAM aside, it would be silly for you to ever buy this model for your use case anyway. This is the base M4 that's also in ipads with no active cooling. If your running large LLMs locally, you aren't the target market for this product.
This computer appeals to families that use their computers to browse social media. For grandparents that browse YouTube with reckless abandon. The emphasis on multiple color options is a strong indicator. Even has some “cutesy” appeal for college students to decorate their dorm.
The “Apple Intelligence” branding is nothing more than a selling point. Sure it might run some very small LLM workloads , but don’t expect much especially in the locked down hell known as Apple ecosystem.
This is not meant for heavy workloads.
> I'm on a M2 with 64GB at the moment and I'm already regretting not going for 96 or even 128.
You're using a M2 Max, not a M2. Two (big) steps up the chip product stack from what's used in the iMac.
I have a M2 with 64GB and find that it’s fine.
Larger models that don’t fit are only moderately better, while much slower. I’d want higher memory bandwidth over more memory.
The next five years will push for better models that are smaller. Smaller is faster and more useful.
I feel like we are in the brute force phase of model development and that it will pass.
Running 405B param model in 16bit on my laptop would be neat, but I’d stop after the novelty wore off.
When shopping for a new car to take to the race track on the weekends did you stop and point out that the Honda Odyssey's suspension is too soft?
You have a higher tier M2. This is the base M4.
The comparison is apples to oranges.
It's literally Apple to Apple
Ryzen 3000G vs Instinct 300A — both literally comparing AMD to AMD.
Sheesh
Which models are you running? I'm on a M2pro w/ 32gb and I can run meta llama 8B on lmstudio pretty decently while coding.
Yeah 8B is fine but I really want to run 70B (or even 405B but that's way outside my system at the moment).
I can run 70B at the moment... but not if I also want Firefox and VS Code at the same time.
I missed the "also great for mucking around with LLMs!" in the press release
This is the chief reason I’m closely watching this week’s releases from Apple. I’ll hopefully be switching from UnRAID to a Mac Mini or Mac Studio and a multi-drive enclosure, but the Mac needs to support enough RAM for my various services (Plex and Immich primarily) as well as enough to test some large LLM models as a replacement to constant Claude/OpenAI API utilization.
Same here, I wish I went for 128. That said, I don't think this use case applies to 99.9999% of iMac buyers.
For many use cases you are correct. That said, I bought a 32G M2 Mac mini in January, and mostly using Ollama, I use local LLMs for many useful local apps and many experiments. I augment running local models with Colab Pro, Grok APIs, OpenAI APIs, etc.
I'm pretty sure the iMac with no upgradeable RAM nor external GPU support is really targeting the hobbyist big-compute crowd anyway. So you don't have to worry, they are not trying to make you buy one.
Similar case here. I'm on a 32GB Mac Studio and constantly wishing I had 128. I didn't expect that when I chose 32... I'd been getting by fine with 16 for a decade. I was "future proofing", haha.
M3 MAX here with 128GB ... and even that's not going to be enough one day.
I bet the M4 Max goes to 256. Oh the envy I will have.
I'm so jazzed to comfortably run Llama 3 405b on my Mac with less quantization.
It's an iMac, the target market is not running local LLMs or doing machine learning research
Huh, is that a step backwards for them? iMacs from over 6 years ago were upgradeable to 64
The M-series is a little more complicated. The M1 was max 16GB, with the Pro and Max going up to ... 64, I think? The latest models can go higher, but we're still a long ways off from the old Mac Pro's 1.5TB max.
When I first scanned your sentence I assumed you were gonna write that 32 GB is now the minimum, not the maximum.
But that means the next Air will be upgrade worthy for those who want an Air and a memory uplift from 24 max to 32 max!
And here I am with 1GB and 512MB as ZRAM on an Atom Netbook. With SBCL.
I'll be curious to see if the Mini has an M4 Pro option, and if so, what the RAM ceiling will be!
I guess we find out tomorrow.
> As someone who mucks around with running LLMs and other large models on my computer the 32GB maximum RAM is a show-stopper for me.
your specific use-case is probably irrelevant to apple.
> I want to be able to run a large model AND other apps at the same time.
you answered yourself... go for a machine with 96 or 128gb ram.
btw for the money you'd be spending (6-7 k$) you might as well rent or buy a dedicated box with 128, 256gb or more ram and all the gpus you need.
It sounds like you should buy products in the "pro" line.
I think the OP's point is that Apple is forcing people to pay a lot more for something that doesn't cost Apple that much (extra RAM) and is part of artificial product lines. One could claim the product lines are important for ultimate profitability, but Apple makes so much money it's hardly critical if they wanted to be a truly incredible consumer focused company. Apple has gotten far away from the idea of a home computer someone can hack with, where hacking includes local AI these days. In this period we know more memory is important for many applications of local AI, which they claim is a goal to provide for people, so it's hard not to say Apple's approach is optimized for shareholders, not end users.
Came here to post this. Although I'm looking for an M4 Macbook Pro with 128GB RAM for the same reason. This going to be announced?
#OneOfUs #OneOfUs
My guess is Wednesday.
- iMac today, USB accessories
- Mac Mini on Tuesday, likely debut M4 Pro
- MacBooks on Wednesday, debut M4 Max
Now in the “I wish” category (zero percent chance):
- Thursday would be MacStudio with HBM memory for Max and Ultra
- Friday would be macPro with 1 to 4 Ultra in NUMA configuration.
Now I don’t believe those last two.
But I do want to see the X-ray of the max chip to see if it has the UltraFusion part that allowed for combining two chips. It was missing from the M3 Max (and maybe all future odd numbered max chips). If it returns, then we know an Ultra is on the way for sure.
But... new colors!
why would you want an imac of all things for that? I suspect we are going to see m4 studios, which, given their current options, will support your rediculous ram requirements.
iMacs are, generally speaking, targeted for home users, normies.
We should do a "Most HackerNews HackerNews Comment Of The Year" award each year; in homage to the O.G. [1]. I'd like to nominate this comment.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
> in homage to the O.G.
That is a poor example of the thing you’re trying to mock. That exchange is an example of what one should do, it does not deserve derision. dang explained it well:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27067281
I agree with the premise but this isn't a great nomination, I think saying "this device won't appeal to the niche LLM gadgetry crowd" is valid in this case since yeah, it won't.
Agree. LLMs are really next generation requirements. Previously people would run a dozen docker containers in Kubernetes cluster on Mac or further before a dozen linux VMs etc and predictably but sadly macs never worked well for these requirements.
It's also not like the comment was claiming the iMac isn't going to sell well. (And to be fair, it probably won't sell spectacularly well compared to than prior iMacs anyway, given how the MacBooks, Mac Minis, the Mac Studio, etc. have eaten that desktop's lunch.)
While it's not a great one, it certainly checks the tone deaf attitude some HN comments have.
Hrm. My OG vote goes to:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079
> pg: That has to be the comeback of all time.
That's a great piece of HN lore.
Same original article:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35103
Tarsnap is functionally unchanged as a start-up and Dropbox is $2.5bn in revenue
That was hilarious, thank you for posting this :-)
Why can't I see this comment when viewing the original article?
Do you have showdead enabled? The chain is flagged so I think it would be hidden by default.
Probably because it was flagged.
This isn’t even a comparable or relevant comparison.
I really wish that "elite" LLM folks like yourself or many others in the field would just abandon apple/mac.
Yes, they make better laptops from a hardware perspective. No, M series chips are not actually competitive with Nvidia hardware on anything except cheap (and relatively slow) inference of big models.
The fact that windows laptops are considered DOA despite the insane amount of inertia behind Nvidia GPUs is just sad. I want a world where Dell/Lenovo can actually convince folks like you or other "elites" to use their shit. The XPS should be a better laptop than the macbook pro. Yet, I have to watch as the technical elites fawn over a company which continues to sell a starting level un-upgradable laptop with 8gb of ram and a gimped "SSD" in 2024 (this was criminal to do back in 2018) all because other companies can't make a good keyboard or touchpad.
I have a similar old-man yelling at cloud tier rant about the slow death of X86...
> The XPS should be a better laptop than the macbook pro.
Except its.. not. I'm a longtime windows/linux user who recently switched to mac, and my mac somehow manages to get better performance out of the same specs while lasting 2x longer on battery. In my price range, there is no competition on price:performance:battery.
> all because other companies can't make a good keyboard or touchpad
Or screen, sound, battery life, cooling, weight...
Are MBPs the best possible configuration out there? Of course not. But they're just much better _mobile devices_ than anything else available.
I don't do LLM so I can't comment there. But in general, devs/pros would use windows/linux laptops if they could. All we get is crappy build quality or bad battery endurance or bad performance (CPU or super basic stuff like the touchpad etc) or bad software.
XPS are horrible though. Native linux support is almost literally the only redeeming quality.
> all because other companies can't make a good keyboard or touchpad.
The whole point of a laptop is to have integrated input and display. Why wouldn't you expect the laptops with the best displays and input devices to be the most popular?
Most of the world is x86/Windows machines, developers included. I would bet that for every MacBook issued there's at least a hundred Precision/Latitude/ThinkPad/Optiplex machines that went into someone's hands. The Apple hard-on is from a specific region and culture where the technical "elites" have made a bajillion dollars working on shitty phone apps and other such light work where it's possible for your trackpad/keyboard to be the biggest issue. It sounds a bit mean-spirited, but I think it's pretty telling that as the gravity of the work increases, you see less and less Apple products being used to do it.
No, it isn't mean-spirited at all. A lot of lucrative software development has been based around fairly trivial software, all things considered. The barrier to entry was dramatically reduced, the resources required for development were too, and the option to choose your favourite hardware became an option. I think some people might be offended by that, but the variation of required hardware goes in all kinds of directions. Look at working on firmware vs the web, for example. You'll probably encounter a ton of friction on a mac if you get into robotics.
> It sounds a bit mean-spirited, but I think it's pretty telling that as the gravity of the work increases, you see less and less Apple products being used to do it.
it does sound like envy. I hate macos post 10.8ish myself, but the hardware is pretty solid. my 12 year old Mac book air would be enough for my work although I have to use a windows laptop issued by work. I don't want to dox myself, but I'd say my work is of international interest even though it's quite niche.
macbook pros are by far the best device you can get for running local llms. first of all nvidia gpu's have extremely limited vram relative to the 100+gb afforded to macbook pros. second you cant take an llm server on the subway with you.
until you can show me small nvidia laptop with 128gb of vram and 20 hours of battery life, i'll keep using my macbook.
Nvidia's laptop range isn't all that impressive, really the magic is in the 3090/4090 desktop cards where they're hitting a magic trifecta of power+memory+value.
As absurd as it is I just built a PC with a 3090 at both home and work for training and inference then carry around a MBP for everything else.
You pretty casually dismiss the value of being able to run big models, when it's literally impossible on a mobile Geforce in a lot of cases since they max out at 16GB!
> No, M series chips are not actually competitive with Nvidia hardware
Integrated memory is important, since CPU <-> GPU bandwidth is often a limiting factor
They would run from Mac when nvidia offers a 128gb or 512gb laptop offering.
Until then it’s meaningless to even consider windows (laptop)
There are a lot of "power users" that refuse to realize that they simply will never be in Apple's target market. They love Apple so much for cosmetic reasons, for wanting to be in the "in-crowd" reasons, or for whatever the fanboy reason, that they can't see the writing on the wall. Apple is not making hardware for their use cases, and likely never will again.
I own a MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2021) Apple M1 Max 64 GB. I'm just adding to this that at the time of purchase, this was Apple's top-of-the-line MacBook Pro model, and it's just not that great, in my opinion.
Apple's new hardware pales in comparison to the relative abilities of what features existed on a 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K Display 10 years ago.
All of the power of modern computers come primarily from their GPUs, and Apple's aren't very good, and have been chronically underpowered compared to the competition for years now.
I'm considering relegating Apple devices to being good for just design work.
Edit: I agree with Der_Einzige's sentiments. It's beyond time for us to move past Apple hardware.
Can you elaborate on this? It’s my understanding that the CPU alone on that machine even blows the iMac Pro out of the water in terms of performance.
Can you share where you’re finding inadequate performance? Genuinely curious to know
Unless Op has a very special use case that requires an Nvidia card or something then he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The M2 Max fully specced 14” is insane. Being able to take the laptop anywhere and not need to plug it in and still get all the same power I normally get if it’s plugged in without the worry of the battery dying in 30m is incredible.
2.1x faster than M1, but they tested an M4 with 32 Gb vs. an M1 with 16Gb. Sad to see this kind of comparison. I guess in "performance-per-"dollar it still stands since they just doubled the baseline RAM levels.
Do they sell matching monitors to go with these all in one style iMac's?
I'm not really an Apple person, but I can't imagine having a single monitor in this day and age and any other color would look silly next to a weird pastel pink device.
No. If you’re that kind of power user, the iMac isn’t for you. Get a Mac mini or studio.
A lot of people in this thread commenting without making an attempt to understand who this is for.
> A lot of people in this thread commenting without making an attempt to understand who this is for.
Why do you seem defensive? I asked a reasonable question of a group of people I thought might have product knowledge I lacked. I am not a Very Pink Apple Product SME, and stated as much in my question.
This isn't directed at you. I just happened to read a bunch of comments before yours. Stu2b50's response seemed like a good enough place to point out the dynamic.
I don't use an iMac, but I do use a single display with a similar resolution, and I personally much prefer it to a multi-monitor setup
I agree... on the proviso that I can never afford 3 monitors, and I've never quite found 2-monitor setups comfortable because even with the very small bezels today I'm constantly shifting and turning away from the centre.
Question. Is this "Apple Intelligence" phoning home all the time?
No. It's mostly on device, and the not on-device stuff uses incredibly clever computer science to run code in an auditable, non trackable way on cloud hardware. It's called "Private Cloud Compute" https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/
It's worse: Any file you open results in phoning home, Intelligence or not, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959
That’s overstating what happened there and what was sent. OCSP validation happened only for signed executables and the only bit of information is the hash of the developer certificate being verified, which was not logged in conjunction with your IP.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/mac-certificate-chec...
Typically when there are concerns about phoning home it’s both more detailed information and something being traceable back to an individual.
There are a lot of good explanations in my link why the current setup is outrageous, including the danger of deanonymization of Tor users by Apple.
There’s a lot of uninformed speculation, you mean. The Tor part, for example, was guessing which was not correct.
How is this not correct? Apple knows when I open Tor browser, which enables a timing attack.
Apple knows that a Mac user checked the revocation status of the TOR Project’s signing key. They don’t log your IP, your Mac caches the result so it’s not even every time you launch the browser, and if knowing when your browser was launched is a successful timing attack it means the TOR protocol is too broken to be used – which I rather doubt is true regardless of what random commenters may confidently assert.
I believe just executable files, right? (Still terrible of course.)
Curious who uses iMac over a MBP with an external monitor? Is it mainly for front desk, businesses, and perhaps people with large homes and need stationary mac?
I'm a typical software engineer nerd who uses a MacBook Pro for work.
My last two home computers have been 27" iMacs. Each one has lasted me about 8 years and I've been happy with both of them. Nice big display, good specs, not a lot of clutter. Really good bang for the buck.
At home, I use them for making music (Ableton Live), video production (DaVinci Resolve), photo processing (Photoshop and Lightroom), and programming (various IDEs and editors). I much prefer one good display over a pair of them.
Long-term, maybe it would be more cost effective to get a Mac Mini so that I don't end up paying to replace the display when I replace the machine. But display technology seems to advance about as fast as other hardware specs do, so I suspect I'd want a new monitor at about that rate anyway.
Going forward, though, I probably won't buy another iMac. That's largely because now that I make music with Ableton Live, I want a laptop that I can (aspirationally!) take to shows to play live on.
But for well over a decade, I've been a happy iMac user. I don't care about upgradeability. I buy a machine that has the specs I want when I buy it.
It might also be a good choice for those who always work at one desk, have established a work/life balance such that they don't need a portable computer, and would prefer not to pay extra to have portability that they just don't require.
An M4 iMac with 10 CPU cores, 10 GPU cores, 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD costs $1700.
A 14" MBP with 8 CPU cores, 10 GPU cores, 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD costs $2000. Before you add a 27" monitor and desktop keyboard/pointing device.
Why pay that premium if you don't actually need to carry your desktop PC around?
Great "Family Computer"
> The M4 chip brings a boost in performance to iMac. Featuring a more capable CPU with the world’s fastest CPU core,(4)
Then, deeper in the footnotes where no one ever reads
> (4) Testing was conducted by Apple in October 2024 using shipping competitive systems and select industry-standard benchmarks.
This is why I could never take this company seriously.
Oh, and 1499€ for a computer with 256GB of storage. That you can't upgrade.
I guess it is just me, but I cannot stand working on small screens on the desktop. I will accept a small screen on a laptop because it is inconvenient carrying around something larger, but on a desktop, there is no reason to compromise.
I use a 48" OLED with my MacBook Air M3 and for me that is a near ultimate web development experience both on desktop and when travelling: https://bsky.app/profile/benhouston3d.bsky.social/post/3l7li...
I'm not sure I could do this - I think it would do horrible things to my neck! But I am curious:
Do you run that at 3840x2160 without high-dpi support? How do you find text clarity?
I tried couple of monitor sizes and anything above 27-28 inches came across as downright inconvenient for work at least for me. Also, 4K was not great at all. 2K was.
It was opposite of how I want my TV.
I love the screen real-estate resolution for coding, it really is a lower cognitive load.
I can have the terminal window open with lots of output, the ChatGPT window for AI, the source code with a ton of lines on the screen. And then on the other side have the browser window open with the console/debugger below. No need to swap in-and-out windows at all, just shift my gaze.
Yeah, 27” was about the sweet spot for me. We now have 32” monitors at work, and I find them a _little_ uncomfortable to use. Depends on your field of view, I suppose.
What's the actual resolution of this? The idea of using something with such low pixel density seems really painful to me.
It is 4K. I wish it was higher. But practically, I cannot find an affordable 6K OLED monitor. And 8K is both unaffordable as well as not supported by my MacBook Air:
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/macbook-air/apd8cdd74f....
I do set my MacBook resolution to maximum and it works well.
So you value just the physical size of things, not being able to display more 'stuff'? For example, a 27" 5k (5120 x 2880) display will give you more space/resolution for stuff than a 4k 48" display.
I can't imagine how pleasent that would be, the display being so physically large with pixels the side of boulders. As long as it works for you, I guess! I'm with you in spirit though - I ditched dual monitors for an ultrawide and its now the only way I can work.
I do wish it was higher resolution for sure, but that isn't feasible this year. I would have to squint at a 27" 5K monitor to read the fonts if I put this much on screen at once.
Having to turn your head to see a full 16:9 screen doesn’t sound great either.
Looking at pixelated text all day on a low-resolution monitor doesn't seem very ultimate to me.
The pixel density would kill me. Now if it was an 8k monitor…
DELL has a 32" 8K monitor if you’re interested. Personally I’ve gotten bitten by both the pixel density and the high refresh rate bugs. So now I want a 27" 5K 120hz monitor, or none at all :P
And if MacBook's supported 8K monitors (they max out at 6K 60Hz, where as 4K does 144Hz.) That would be my next upgrade once they are affordable. But I think they won't be affordable until 8K TVs are common as that will drive the volume.
Many of them can do 8K 60Hz over HDMI: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102236
Edit: You need an M2/M3 Pro or above.
If 32GB is the max, why not just make that the one and only model and get rid of this weird segmentation. That's a ridiculously low minimum and only just barely adequate. 8GB was practically criminal.
Or -- and I know this is crazy -- slottable RAM on a device that is designed for things other than portability. Wild, I know.
Presumably, their career economists found that this "weird" pricing scheme is actually optimal—that selling tiny RAM upgrades for $200 or $400 is empirically, measurably an effective way to sort their consumers by purchasing power, and optimally drain their wallets.
It goes by many names, the "microeconomic pricing strategy where identical or largely similar goods or services are sold at different prices by the same provider to different buyers based on which market segment they are perceived to be part of",
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
> optimally drain their wallets
I mean, that's basically it. The difference between part costs of 8GB/16GB/32GB RAM chips is nearly a rounding error, and they're probably eating a bunch more costs stocking and adding assembly for different RAM SKUs.
That explains it then. The extra cost of supporting extra RAM SKUs has to be recouped somehow. What better way than by stocking extra RAM SKUs and charging a premium? :)
Arbitrary markup based on whatever they can maximally extract from their consumers is the name of the game. Product segmentation is just one of a variety of tools used to that purpose.
> Product segmentation is just one of a variety of tools used to that purpose.
I think people here forget that Apple is targeting a certain profit margin. Currently, their gross profit margin is about 45%.
If you're rolling this out on the Mac line, it's okay to have a profit margin closer to 35% on the base model; but maybe with 55%-65% margins on the higher-tier professional equipment, to "balance" it out. It also turns out, professionals have money, and will pay despite the grumbling. The RAM prices are basically a progressive tax.
Isn’t that the name of every game?
I’ve never felt memory limited on my 16gb macbook pro, on which I code, run rust-analyzer (major memory hog), video edit, etc. Most people definitely don’t need 32GB
Says the first owner of the machine. Macbooks, and Apple devices in general, have a strong reputation for high resale value. That high resale value is based on having them last quite a while. This falls apart in a few years as hardware requirements continue to balloon.
That was fine when Intel was sitting on their ass, raking in the cash, and nearly everything else (storage, especially external drives, RAM, and even batteries weren't too bad) is upgradeable. This is less great when you can no longer upgrade the component most likely to be the first bottleneck.
Apple pays people to be smarter than me about this, but I still think it's a stupid long-term play to damage one of your biggest selling points
I’ve definitely been memory limited on a 32GB MacBook Pro. Though it’s probably due to Docker, Slack, multiple IDEs, and dozens and dozens of browser tabs all open at the same time. Consider me part of the exception.
Agreed. I was XCode'ing on an 8gb M1 back during the lockdown, it was great.
It's nice to see more RAM and Apple was being very stingy about it, but the real-world is totally overblown.
If you use your PC to only run a single application at any time then yes, 8GB might be usable. If you need to have an Electron app opened, a few browser tabs and XCode (let alone some less efficient IDE)? Your compute will grind to a halt...
Well yeah… like, that's why Electron apps are terrible, though, I bend over backward to avoid them.
The problem is the insane markups, but my anecdata is the opposite of yours.
I'm also doing Rust dev, but I can't work with less than ~24GB.
On my headless rackmount dev box that I use for my remote development environment, the box sits around 17GB of memory in use + 8GB of cache. I've got an M3 with 36GB running a few Visual Studios Code (plus browser/Docker/Dropbox) with about 30GB used (8GB of that is cache).
16GB would not have been enough for me for my work at Deno. My current job involves both Rust and Python work and I'd quickly hit the limits of 16GB if I'm running my code while developing it, let alone running a browser or keeping my email client open.
Definitely constrained by my 16gb, it's only 2 years old. Rubymine takes 4gb on it's own, Chrome eats a lot... I'm usually hovering around 10gb of swap.
My M1 MacBook is currently sitting at 46GB usage. It's not heavily under load
(WebStorm, Rider, Android Studio, Chrome, Discord & Slack), not currently running an Android Emulator, LLM or Docker
The OS will use more RAM if you give it more RAM. The fact that you are currently using 46GB on an (I assume) 64GB model doesn't necessarily mean that your workload would run badly on a 32GB or 16GB model.
I might get away with 48GB (don't know, I have 64 now on my work machine) but I had a lot of swap usage when I was running on 32GB. Some of us do need a lot of ram.
But are "us" imac users?
I do on my 24gb one running a custom typescript compiler, running backend + 2 frontends (a backoffice and an embedded one) + E2Es.
Have you considered that your way of using the machine is based around the limitations, hence you don't recognize them?
Whenever switching company I went from a 64 gb ram computer to a 16 gb ram. Yes, it worked, but only because I had to adapt to it. But one might not see it if one's never tried.
"640K of memory should be enough for anybody." -- apocryphal BillG
The ram is on the package for more than portability. It’s necessary for fast enough transfer speeds for the iGPU.
Then again, the rest of the industry has figured out a way to make slottable RAM almost as fast and compact as soldered RAM with the new CAMM2/LPCAMM2 standards. The M4 has LPDDR5X-7500 120GB/sec memory and there are already LPCAMM2-7500 120GB/sec modules, with even faster ones on the way: https://www.anandtech.com/show/21390/micron-ships-crucialbra...
Two of those modules working in parallel would hit "M Pro" speeds as well. I doubt Apple will be adopting them though, for the same reason they don't offer standard M.2 SSD slots even on systems that could obviously support them with minimal design compromises.
> Then again, the rest of the industry has figured out a way to make slottable RAM almost as fast and compact as soldered RAM…
Just be patient, the EU will take a large stick and force Apple to allow users to replace their RAM soon too.
Very unlikely. Apple can argue that less than 1% of computers users ever upgrade their memory (which is true), and after all, did the EU intervene when GPUs dropped their slotted memory?
> did the EU intervene when GPUs dropped their slotted memory?
The difference there is that slotted GPU memory is demonstrably impactical, but the memory on the M4 isn't demonstrably better than the LPCAMM2 module above. It's literally the exact same spec. Not that I expect the EU to do anything either when they didn't act on Apples soldered-in SSDs, which definitely aren't any better than standardized M.2 drives.
Actually, incorrect. On some scenarios, you’d need up to 4 CAMM2 slots to do what Apple does. This is due to CAMM2 maxing out at 128 bit busses; but M3 Max chips are currently at 512. Needless to say, battery life most affected.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40287592
Yes, the higher end Max and Ultra chips would still need soldered memory for sure. Two CAMM modules flanking opposite sides of the SOC is probably doable though, so I think the M Pros could practically have socketed memory.
GPU memory is 20 MT/s+, Apple is ~6 MT/s, LPCAMM supports ~7500 MT/s.
Easy heuristic: if your memory transfer rate is more than 1.5x the standard, you can solder RAM. If not, you must use the standard.
These are still well below what Apple offers at the high end and you can not buy systems like that right now. If you want high memory bandwidth on the CPU today, you will be charged a big markup on Epyc/Xeon/ThreadripperPro CPUs and motherboards, rather than the DRAM.
For SSD speeds, that was already dismistified with iBoff new adapter which makes an M1 Macbook Air upgradable and faster. I wouldn't be surprised if the same was true for RAM using the CAMM standard positioned near the CPU. Or maybe even better, slotted memory chips like in the old days, with a memory controller ready to accept multiple chip sizes.
> necessary for fast enough transfer speeds
Source?
When was the last time you saw a GPU with slottable memory?
For transfer speeds, look at the data sheets for the M series. Much faster than DDR4 or DDR5 RAM. In the ballpark of GPU memory.
Would the people who were buying the baseline 8GB model (presumably just for general computing/office work) care about the GPU being slightly slower, though?
I bet that the extreme lag when you run out of memory because you have an Electron app or two, several browser tabs and something like Excel is way more noticeable.
Hardly anyone is using Macs for gaming these days and almost anybody who does something GPU intense would need more than 16GB anyway.
https://www.apple.com/ie/newsroom/2020/11/apple-unleashes-m1...
This has been the approach since the M1s.
See: https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/19/apple_m1_high_bandwid...
> The SoC has access to 16GB of unified memory. This uses 4266 MT/s LPDDR4X SDRAM (synchronous DRAM) and is mounted with the SoC using a system-in-package (SiP) design. A SoC is built from a single semiconductor die whereas a SiP connects two or more semiconductor dies.
Source for what? Parallel RAM interfaces have strict timing and electrical requirements. Classic DDR sockets are modular at the cost of peak bandwidth and bus width. The wider your bus, the more traces you have to run in parallel from the socket to the compute complex, which becomes harder and harder. You don't see sockets for HBM or GDDR for a good reason. The proof is there.
LPCAMM solutions mentioned upthread resolve some of this by making the problem more "three dimensional" from what I can tell. They reduce the length of the traces by making the pinout more "square" (as opposed to thin and rectangular) and stacking them closer to the actual dies they connect to. This allows you to cram swappable memory into the same form factor, while retaining the same clock speeds/size/bus width, and without as many design complexities that come from complex socket traces.
In Apple's case they connect their GPU to the same pool of memory that their CPU uses. This is a key piece of the puzzle for their design, because even if the CPU doesn't need 200GB/s of bandwidth, GPUs are a very different story. If you want them to do work, you have to feed them with something, so you need lots of memory bandwidth to do that. Note that Samsung's LPCAMM solutions are only 128-bits wide and reported around 120GB/s. Apple's gone as high as 1024-bit busses with hundreds of GB/s of bandwidth; the M1 Max was released years ago and does 400GB/s. LPCAMM is still useful and a good improvement over the status quo, of course, but I don't think you're even going to see 256-bit or 512-bit versions just so soon.
And if your problem can be parallelized, then the higher your bus width, the lower your clock speeds can go, so you can get lower power while retaining the same level of performance. This same dynamic is how an A100 (1024-bit bus) can smoke a 3090 (384-bit) despite a far lower clock speed and power usage.
There is no magical secret or magical trick. You will always get better performance, less noise, at lower power by directly integrating these components together. It's a matter of if it makes sense given the rest of your design decisions -- like whether your GPU shares the memory pool or not.
There are alternative memory solutions like IBM using serial interfaces for disaggregating RAM and driving the clock speeds higher in the Power10 series, allowing you to kind of "socket-ify" GDDR. But these are mostly unobtainium and nobody is doing them in consumer stuff.
The vast majority of HN users are not the target customer for the iMac
How else can they upsell 16GB of ram worth 50 euros for 400?
32 GB seems plenty for me for the target audience. The iMac is aimed at a rather casual computer user, especially now that they nixed the larger screen size one.
I agree, I run 32gb on a dev Macbook pro and it's enough, even our largest app is around 20k files and the language server uses 5gb of ram. I often sit around 22-24gb of usage with Docker running.
For most people 32gb is not going to hold them back.
Wow. And I thought several hundred MiB for my langservers was absurd.
Yeah I'm a huge fan of Apple hardware and even I can't handle this. The different in price between 8GB and 16GB for the M3 Air was like $500 at Costco. My air from 2016 came with 8GB.
On the one hand, sure, Apple loves to get that extra margin for more RAM and SSD, no doubt.
On the other hand, the MacBook Air ships with 8GiB RAM standard, and it's robustly popular. One could suppose that all those customers are suffering from the lack of RAM, or one could suppose that for many use cases, it's an adequate amount.
The latter is more likely. macOS manages memory well, and a fast SSD means that swapping is fast enough that it often results in no visible delays to the user.
I'm not sure how can we tell. The Mac revenue has peaked back in 2022 and has been declining since. But assure, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people use their Macs as they would an iPad (i.e. at most a single app and/or browser and 8GB might be enough for that).
How we can tell what?
That they sell a lot of stock MacBook Airs? They do. I don't find the topic interesting enough to find a link, but I'm pretty confident on this one.
> a lot of people use their Macs as they would an iPad
A lot of people have pretty undemanding requirements in a laptop, yes. 8GiB is more than enough for some web browsing and light document editing, a bit of photo retouching, that kind of thing. There are many Chromebooks on the market right now with 4 GiB and they sell in numbers.
The HN tilt trends toward systematically overestimating system requirements because development is fairly demanding of them.
> but I'm pretty confident on this one.
I just doubt there is actual meaningful data available (at least that's publicly accessible). We'd need to measure the proportion of base config MBA users who regularly get OOM warnings?
> many Chromebooks
Yes. People just have different use cases. I mean almost nobody who does anything that might require > 16-32 GB of memory would likely buy this iMac (even if Apple sold such configs).
It's an entirely different product than the 27 inch "Pro" iMacs with Xeons from back in the day.
Hardly anybody "needs" a desktop PC these days (outside of gaming and some niche applications). So this is just basically a generic office / front desk PC for people who don't need laptops.
> That's a ridiculously low minimum and only just barely adequate.
What are you doing? I'm still doing web development with Chrome, JetBrains, and Docker on a 16GB M1 Pro and it isn't a problem. For the average Chrome-using citizen, 16GB should be fine.
There are Chromebooks currently shipping with 4GB of RAM. People don't understand how low the bar is for normies.
Opening large files, such as large Figma files, eats up RAM like no tomorrow
I'm over here doing hobbyist C++ development and web browsing on an 8gb m1 air without any issues.
> the new iMac is up to 1.7x faster than iMac with M1
This seems like a much lower than expected speed bump for M1 to M4? Would’ve been nice to see something more for something designed to be non-upgradeable.
How about a bigger model? 24” is kinda small.
> The iMac also features a new 12MP Center Stage camera with Desk View
(from the marketing page)
wait so this thing has the universally reviled Studio Display camera??
How much of the price is the AI tax
Interesting to roll out the M4 with the low end machine
They will be unveiling more M4 devices every day this week. Probably started with the least remarkable to build intensity.
They tend to do that; the M1 took some time to get from the Mini and Air to the other machines. _Years_ for the Pro.
M4 already rolled out with the iPad Pro update in the spring.
Accessories are updated to USB-C instead of Lightning
I see lots of people in this thread mentioning this, but am confused. I've never seen a lighting port on an Apple computer- only on iphones and ipads, and the cables that come with those are USB-C on the other end. Haven't all Apple computer accessories been USB-C for almost a decade now?
The past: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102292
> Recharge the built-in battery in your Apple keyboard, mouse, or trackpad [...] To charge your device's battery, connect a Lightning to USB cable to its Lightning port,
The future: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/10/apple-introduces-new-...
> Every iMac comes with a color-matched Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse or optional Magic Trackpad, all of which now feature a USB-C port, so users can charge their favorite devices with a single cable.
Thanks! That seems like a minor issue because in both cases you still use usb-c on the computer end. However it will certainly be nice to not need to have 3 different kinds of cables, and have everything just take usb-c at some point. Although I'll bet they'll have a new usb connector right about the time the usb-a and lightning devices finally start to disappear.
Not sure if they are purchasable separately yet though.
Looks like they don't have the color-matched options for individual purchase, but the b/w trackpad, keyboard, and at least 1 keyboard variant are available.
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MXK93AM/A
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MXK53AM/A
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MXK73LL/A
32gb RAM max?
I don't understand, macbooks on battery power have 128gb, why this limitation on an always powered device
I believe it’s a limitation of the memory controller on the M4 chip. It can only address 32 gb of ram. Addressing more ram would require more die space
Form factor isn't updated afaik, but man, I am just so so impressed with the form factor. It looks like a giant tablet. Makes me want to hold it and draw on it.
> the new iMac is up to 1.7x faster than iMac with M1
Now 4 generations in, they are still comparing performance to M1. I get that 15-20% improvements aren't too exciting but it feels old.
In this case it's more fair since the last iMac did indeed have an M1.
EDIT: This is wrong: apparently there was a M3 refresh that went under the radar, including mine: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/10/apple-supercharges-24...
TIL it went that long without a refresh.
I actually think it makes sense to advertise this way.
Most people I know who bought an M1 (myself included) are still rocking the M1.
People who’ve purchased M2/M3 machines are less likely to be jumping on an M4.
Comparing to an M1 tells the most likely customer exactly what they need to know.
Exactly this. It cuts through the noise and frames the benefit for the people who are most likely to upgrade.
The nerds will find the relevant information anyway so no need to cater the high level marketing to them.
>Now 4 generations in, they are still comparing performance to M1. I get that 15-20% improvements aren't too exciting but it feels old.
FTA: "Compared to the most popular 24-inch all-in-one PC with the latest Intel Core 7 processor, the new iMac is up to 4.5x faster.1"
First off, "up to" is the most bullshit metric. I am also up to 10x more productive when I get coffee, but that's when comparing to days where I just play Satisfactory all day long.
Secondly, "compared to a random HP AIO PC with a 5 year old CPU" (since there are approximately zero chances that the most popular PC in a market that is heavily Apple dominated would be a 2023 Raptor Lake) is just, once again, Apple's piss poor comparisons.
Nah, it's a Core 7 150U, which is Raptor Lake.
The trick is they used a GPU accelerated benchmark (Affinity) that highlights how trash the Intel GPU is.
_No-one_ buying this is upgrading from an M3. Honestly, most people buying this would be upgrading from some sort of elderly Intel thing; these tend to have long operating lifetimes.
Probably because most iMac owners are still on M1.
They're trying to get current M1 users to upgrade.
I know it's not the same, but it's like Intel saying the Pentium IV is however many times faster than then Pentium MMX
If they compared against the M3, people would be complaining that apple encourages needless frequent upgrades.
And even with that they're still only boasting of < 2.0x speedups...
Will it blend?
It sucks that the TB4 ports still point out the back of the machine like that. It has never made sense! Every Thunderbolt cable has a bulky active electronic assembly that is at least a few centimeters long, followed by a cable strain relief. I hate having my cables hanging out like that. It seems like it would be possible to build a little port hutch on the back, with the ports pointing straight down.
Mmm, in an era where monitors no longer need large bezels, apple sure decided to keep the neck fat on the iMac which to me makes it quite ugly.
They're just never gonna make a 32" one, huh?
Side note, is there anyone that uses a Magic Mouse? It looks uncomfortable to use for an extended period of time and curious if that's true.
I use one for 8+ hours a day. I keep reading about the design being uncomfortable, but definitely hasn't been the case for me.
I guess if I actually kept my hand directly in line with the mouse it'd be pretty painful. I just about always keep my hand in a slant, more similar to how you'd use a trackpad, or as if you were holding a sort of slanted mouse.
I've stuck with it because of the well implemented 2d scrolling. Using a physical scrolling wheel feels off at this point.
It has its fans but lots of people find it uncomfortable.
My biggest issue with it is that it's way too heavy. Once you go back to 50-60g mice you can't go back.
Yup, for years. It feels exactly the same as a MacBook track pad and lets you use all the same gestures. I like it better than a mouse for my work machine.
I guess it's what you're used to and how large your hands are. For me, I've use it since it came out and prefer it to any other mouse, once you get used to the touch top surface using mechanical button/wheel seems archaic. It's also a lot easier to keep clean without a scroll wheel.
That said, the change to the rechargeable version was a huge unforced error apart from the deserved mocking for the charge port location because the mouse also reports low batt condition about 10 minutes before it actually dies, I don't know what the thinking there was.
Been using it for 10 years. It's my favorite mouse to use. Scrolling and tap gesture is the main reason I prefer it. I also like touching glass/aluminum over plastic.
I have one and I don't much care for it. But one thing it does better than other mice is scrolling left and right. It scrolls left and right as easily as it scrolls up and down. I edit audio files and work in DAWs a lot and it's really great for that. If I'm not performing those tasks, I generally don't use it.
My work bought one for me so I gave a try. Maybe they updated the sensor but the one I got a few years ago was a bad optical mouse compared to what I’m used to (Logitech MX and Razer).
The bigger issue with the Magic Mouse is moving it. It has rails instead of PFT feet and it tends to tire my wrist out.
When I got an iMac I paid the $50 extra for the Magic Trackpad and it was worth it.
I love it. The touch-scroll works so well it's like an extension of my mind.
I agree but some people love it. The rest of have a Logitech MX
Let me guess, all USB connectors are on the back side again? Great thinking, Apple.
An arbitrary limit of 32G of memory? Laughable. Glad I exited the Apple ecosystem long ago. Only have 2-3 year old machines now. Current phone is “free” from carrier due to trade ins.
I think Apple should shift away from personal computing (iMac, MBP/A, iPhone) and focus on selling their SoC. Get these into data centers.
Powering a data center with their chips would likely result in significant decrease in power consumption. I am running an “old” M1 as a small remote k8s cluster for personal dev work and home automation. Works wonderfully.
Power consumption during peak load (20 W?) is very low compared to my Intel based computer (120-150W?) I use for occasional gaming.
Apple has very little understanding of Enterprise and Datacenter markets. They proved that with the Xserve, despite having some success - they should have "owned" the market by driving down the costs of running, managing and maintaining hardware over the long term - but didn't, or got bored about it, and missed the opportunity.
> I think Apple should shift away from personal computing (iMac, MBP/A, iPhone)
This is going to be the most insane thing I read all day.
> Get [their SoC] into data centers.
This is a great idea. Apple discontinued servers a long time ago, and it's too bad, now that they've got the new silicon they could be crushing it in the sector.
Apple makes some dubious claims:
> Gamers can enjoy incredibly smooth gameplay, with up to 2x higher frame rates5 than on iMac with M1.
What games do run on the Mac? Certainly, most AAA titles do not.
>Compared to the most popular 24-inch all-in-one PC with the latest Intel Core 7 processor, the new iMac is up to 4.5x faster.
You can build PCs there are more powerful than that Mac, cheaper. And you can easily repair them.
> You can build PCs there are more powerful than that Mac, cheaper. And you can easily repair them
Why would anyone buy a Porsche? You can buy an F-150 with a >1 ton payload capacity, fit 6 people in it and if you get the EV version it might be even faster than the base config Porsche.
The PC will take up a lot of space, use a lot more power, be loud and be look ugly. Some people might care about these things even if you don't.
To be honest it's the Mac that feels clunky, at least compared to Linux. Why does every app have its own updater? Why are the animations so painfully slow?
[delayed]
> You can build PCs there are more powerful than that Mac, cheaper. And you can easily repair them.
Nobody’s buying a Mac to game. The gaming is a bonus for a segment of their market, is why they mention it at all. Zero Mac sales are motivated primarily by gaming. “Does this do enough gaming, well enough, that I can avoid buying a Steamdeck, or that I can get rid of this bulky PC that I use only for gaming?” are things their prospective buyers might wonder, not “should I buy this if I want a gaming computer?” (No, obviously)
Games I play on my M1 Macbook Air:
- BG3
- CIV
- Stardew Valley
- Football Manager
- Subnautica
- XCOM
- ARMA 3
A few games do work on mac. Factorio, Baldur's Gate 3 etc