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27-inch iMac gets a major update

340 points by arafsheikh 6y ago

rvz 6y ago
So: A 2020 iMac now with 2018 Hardware. Not a NVMe SSD use in sight. Not exactly a "major update". Looks like the magic on this iMac is already wearing off and the magicians want their reality distortion spells back.
- kirstenbirgit 6y ago
  They use 10th gen Intel CPUs, and PCIe for SSDs. I'm definitely buying one, have waited for quite some time.
- tesseract 6y ago
  The iMac had NVMe SSDs at least as early as 2015[1]. Apple has since moved away from NVMe modules and gone to raw flash chips hanging directly off the proprietary "T2" system controller chipset. I think it's fair to criticize the proprietary/non-upgradeable nature of this storage solution but benchmarks have shown it to be comparable in performance to standard PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives so calling it outdated is not really a valid criticism. [1] https://beetstech.com/blog/apple-proprietary-ssd-ultimate-guide-to-specs-and-upgrades https://beetstech.com/blog/apple-proprietary-ssd-ultimate-gu...
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    They also have a PCIe x4 port on the back of the machine for people who insist on avoiding Apple's storage controller.
  - beervirus 6y ago
    Oh how weird. I just assumed it was an M.2 drive in there.
burlesona 6y ago
Solid spec bump. Interesting how much emphasis they put on the camera, speakers, and mic; makes total sense in the age of Zoom. I’d also speculate this means iMac won’t be the first computer getting Apple Silicon. I wonder if it will be the last? What’s the consensus guess now? Perhaps a new MacBook Air with good performance but the real “breakthrough” is > 12 hours battery life?
- godzillabrennus 6y ago
  I think the MacBook they had discontinued is rumored to be making an Apple Silicon powered return.
  - dbbk 6y ago
    There's no 'intel' to support that as far as I'm aware though, just sensible speculation.
- dijit 6y ago
  It will almost certainly be a low end macbook. In fact, there's a non-pro 'macbook'[0] that already exists which would be perfect, it was discontinued a year ago, but used ultra-low power CPUs. In fact when they were talking about them (prior to release) they thought they would have ARM CPU's back then. They are fanless and have a 5W thermal envelope, which fits in with the current A12X too. The major criticisms of the design at the time was: Butterfly keyboard, the Single USB-C port and the speed of the device (Intel CORE-M is truly, truly painful). But for a $600-$700 machine with an ARM CPU? that's insanely competitive, and is in-line with the "basic" macbook branding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_(2015%E2%80%932019) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_(2015%E2%80%932019)
  - varjag 6y ago
    I have a later 2017 revision of that one, never really had an issue with CPU speed. Mine has RAM maxed to 16Gb though, perhaps that helps. It's a great machine: a real computer but with iPad pro dimensions.
Mindwipe 6y ago
Honestly a fairly mediocre upgrade considering the pricing. It's good that they've finally improved the webcam, but Apple clearly went out of their way to ensure people looking to get an Intel Mac because they need to dual boot weren't going to get anything too compelling. Edit: Downvotes be damned, it is mediocre. Not bad, because it is a spec bump, but there are lots of things about the iMac's architecture that are beginning to show their age and are unchanged here, despite becoming bottlenecks. The cooling system is a big one, and the storage controller support another.
- bluedino 6y ago
  >> upgrade considering the pricing. Don't forget it includes a 5K display...
  - whatever1 6y ago
    That none from the competition has come even close to make almost a decade later.
  - Mindwipe 6y ago
    > Don't forget it includes a 5K display... It included a 5K display at a much lower price point that hasn't been adequately justified by currency changes before too, so I'm not sure that means anything.
  - Jenya_ 6y ago
    It includes a 5K display which may become useless in five years? (when Apple plans to stop updates for Intel based Macs). It seems that iMacs do not support using them as expernal displays right now. I would prefer 5K monitor to last a bit longer than five years.
    - beervirus 6y ago
      When support ends, install Windows.
goalieca 6y ago
I'm sitting here on a 2012 imac with a fusion drive. This drive never seemed to give much performance but it absolutely tanked once it converted to APFS. The computer became unusable to the point that I had to buy an external SSD and use that as my main disk. Now i'm very disappointed that it doesn't support Big Sur despite being only 8 years old. I will wait for the apple silicon because i don't anticipate that intel will be supported for too long. Apple will make "core features" of their OS depend on something that isn't shipping in intel silicon sooner than later.
- donatj 6y ago
  How much RAM do you have? I recently upgraded my 2012 iMac from 8gb to 32gb and the performance is like night and day, I suspect because it has more memory to use for disk cache. It's a fully usable machine again.
  - goalieca 6y ago
    Upgraded to 24GB. It helps restarting applications because it caches.
- api 6y ago
  APFS is as far as I know designed for flash and performs really badly on spinning disk. They still provide HFS+ and ExFAT as the options if you format an external spinning disk.
  - easton 6y ago
    Will macOS install on a non APFS volume though?
    - mistersquid 6y ago
      > Will macOS install on a non APFS volume though? It depends on the macOS. Only Catalina and higher (macOS 10.15) require APFS. macOS 10.14 and Mac OS X 10.x may use HFS+. That is, though High Sierra and Mojave both "want" APFS, they may be coaxed (cloned) into booting on HFS+. [0] [0] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/327051/can-you-update-to-macos-10-14-mojave-without-converting-to-apfs https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/327051/can-you-upd...
graeme 6y ago
Does the imac pro get the better camera and other features listed? I used laptops for years until and rsi issue made me have to avoid trackpads. I can say I’ve been extremely pleased with having a desktop imac. I use an ipad pro when I need something portable. I like just having a station I can get in front of that signifies work, and the imac pro fans basically never make noise.
- pram 6y ago
  iMac Pro already had the better camera/speakers/mics
  - graeme 6y ago
    Ah I see. So no improvement there. Hopefully on the redesigned ARM version.
    - adrianmsmith 6y ago
      I have an iMac Pro and can confirm the microphone is amazing. Miles better than the internal microphones on my colleagues PC laptops. (I don’t have a strong opinion on the camera, and don’t have an iMac to compare to.)
      - rbanffy 6y ago
        As I get older and wrinkled, I appreciate the lack of pixels and soft focus of a crappy camera. I'd be much happier with low noise in dark settings than more pixels. Kind of the same way I appreciated the Dell XPS "nostrilcam" that fools people about the hair on the top of my head in ways my Macbook doesn't.
- pilsetnieks 6y ago
  To the best of my knowledge, most laptops support external displays and peripherals as well.
  - 6y ago
frou_dh 6y ago
When we read "10th generation Intel Core" then we have to go and research whether than means real 10th generation (like i5/i7 MBA, some MBPs) or just another rebadged Skylake (6th gen) derivative.
- ajross 6y ago
  All 10xxx parts are either Ice Lake (10nm) or Comet Lake (14nm), none are Skylake. I mean, if you want to get technical both are "Skylake derivatives", I guess.
  - formerly_proven 6y ago
    The uarch and core differences between Skylake, Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake and Comet Lake are neglible. The most significant changes were claims of hardware fixes for some Spectre and Meltdown variants in Coffee Lake, which is still a really minor change. The minor IPC differences arise from different cache sizes and interconnect.
  - dahauns 6y ago
    Comet Lake's core µarch is identical to Skylake. Ice lake uses Sunny Cove cores, which are Intel's first significant core µarch redesign since Skylake.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Why do you care? They're the fastest cores you can buy and 10 of them in a box is pretty respectable on throughput terms, too. They're all just the umpteenth revision of the pentium pro, if you're trying to be reductive.
- bluedino 6y ago
  Still using the 7th gen in the base 21" model! (which also comes with a 1080p screen instead of Retina)
  - filleduchaos 6y ago
    The linked article states plainly that the updates to the 21.5" model have not yet been posted online. There's also a very handy "New" indicator on the 27" model that's not yet present on the 21.5". Personally I'd reserve my judgment.
ogre_codes 6y ago
Finally they ditch spinning media on the base models. Also notable, the rumored iPad-like style changes are conspicuously absent, these look pretty much identical to the older iMacs. Otherwise this looks like a decent bump all around. Notably, the iMac Pro also got some love (though not too much it seems?)
- PascLeRasc 6y ago
  Massive upgrade for people working at companies whose IT refuses to buy anything but the cheapest model.
  - ddavis 6y ago
    Still only 8GB RAM though, a bit of a bummer.
    - TwoNineA 6y ago
      I thought iMacs have an easy way to upgrade the RAM no?
      - m0xte 6y ago
        Depends which model. Some require taking the screen off, which unlike earlier models is taped on and some have soldered in RAM. Until someone has seen a hole in the back or has torn one down you just don’t know. A friend of mine upgraded his 21 inch one out of the box because Apple RAM pricing and turn around is terrible. However he damaged the screen ribbon cable at the same time. Happens a lot.
      - george_perez 6y ago
        Only the 27-inch iMac has user-upgradable RAM.
    - jyrkesh 6y ago
      Yeah, and upgrading to even 32 GBs is SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS. I get that it has to be soldered on or whatever, but I'm looking at faster RAM on Newegg right now, in brand names, single module DDR4, for ~115. I really wanna buy Apple stuff, but stuff like this continually keeps me away when I finally get to the Buy page.
martini333 6y ago
What on Earth are these bezels in 2020????
- maxbaines 6y ago
  Agree its a spec bump rather than a redesign, i for one was waiting / hoping to see the bezels gone.
- fermienrico 6y ago
  I think I might the only one who likes and wants bezels on everything that has a display. Extra large bezels. Perhaps the only exception would be phones as they increase the size of the device. Bezels are important to frame the screen content from functional perspective. Think of it like a frame for the art work. Black bezels occulude the distracting edges and background noise from the screen and you have always have a constant black border. They can be made to look nice as well like some of those Bang & Olufsen TVs[1] and Sony Trinitron Professional monitors [2]. Contrararily, there is no reason to the opposite besides "aesthetics". Can you think of any? Alas - the momentum behind bezels is so massive, it is impossible to reverse this trend. Same with "borderless" trends in UI/UX. [1] http://www.extravaganzi.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Bang-Olufsen-BeoVision-10-32-inch-LCD-TV-3.jpg http://www.extravaganzi.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Bang-... [2] https://www.proav.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/s/o/son1_9.jpg https://www.proav.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/...
  - ezluckyfree 6y ago
    I agree that bezels can look good, and small bezels are nice to frame the image as you mentioned, but the iMac bezels are neither small nor good looking. Also for the record, [2] looks extremely bad.
    - fermienrico 6y ago
      [2] Looks extremely good to me. I would pay a hefty premium to get bezels like this on my current LG monitor (which has 15mm or less bezels).
asadkn 6y ago
It just feels wrong to buy anything new from Apple with "Intel Inside" - when they're clearly going to dump it soon, in favor of ARM (excuse me for not using the cringey term Apple Silicon).
- dijit 6y ago
  Why does it matter? There will be a period where the Intel Macs are still supported and probably more stable, and it could be ~2y before your upgrade is available if it's ARM based. If you have a retina macbook pro from 2014~ it definitely makes sense to upgrade to a macbook pro 16" today. The thing will see you through another 5-6y easy.
  - ddavis 6y ago
    Yeah I agree. Since this is an iMac thread.. I think notebooks will definitely be first to go ARM, and I wouldn't be surprised if the iMac user base would prefer that native x86 based processor for at least the next 5 years or so.
  - asadkn 6y ago
    Fair point. It does make sense if you really need to upgrade a very dated machine. However, I am assuming since the Macbooks are rumored to get ARM as early as late this year, it is likely iMac would follow next year too. The Developer Transition Kit has a Mac Mini with ARM already.
  - freehunter 6y ago
    My fear isn’t around Apple and OS-level support. My fear is around smaller or indie developers who are already being asked to support macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android and now have to support another target. It’s not uncommon to see these devs not supporting Android or Windows because they can’t keep up. So how long before those devs drop support for Intel Macs (or don’t support ARM Macs for several years)? For most apps it’ll be fine, emulation and cross compiling will be enough. There will be some apps where this isn’t enough though. When the App Store switched to 64-bit, how many apps just disappeared, never to be seen again? I fully support the transition and I think it’s a logical step for Apple, but it’s going to be one more thing that indie or smaller devs have to worry about. Which means it’s one more thing everyone on this forum has to worry about.
kraig911 6y ago
Honestly I want a 21 inch ipad with a stand....
- macintux 6y ago
  I keep hoping for a huge iPad to mount as a drafting table.
haunter 6y ago
Likely this is the machine to buy if you want one of the last Intel Macs that can natively run x86 code
- mvanbaak 6y ago
  erm, no. During the introduction of Apple SOC they stated that they will produce and support Intel based macs for some time together with the apple SOC versions.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - kgwgk 6y ago
    They could continue to produce this model for some time without making it any better.
Scarbutt 6y ago
Apple today also announced that its 21.5-inch iMac will come standard with SSDs across the line for the first time. I wonder what took them so long.
- mvanbaak 6y ago
  price. they could sell the iMac pro for $$$ while the 'budget' version used HDD.
  - natch 6y ago
    IMHO they should build some hysteresis into their cost structure, so when something much better has just crashed in price, they can install that much better thing even though they may have contracted their parts inventory at a higher price. They can eat the cost difference in order to deliver a better machine to the customer. It will be made up in time. For example, over a year ago (maybe two?) I was able to buy a 1 TB SSD, top speed available at the time, and a top brand, for just over $100, retail. They probably plan out their costs ahead of time, so they may have considered the equivalent to be a $200 part. Ignoring the fact that they don't pay retail, they could eat the $100 difference on paper, because future inventory will cost them even less. Sure prices go up sometimes too, but the general trend is down for tech as we know. Not sure why they are so stingy with putting the best into their products when I have the dollar cost amounts in front of me and they are not that high. /rant
raghavtoshniwal 6y ago
Really thought they would phase out fusion drives in the next update. Guess not, still available in the 21”.
bluedino 6y ago
Just when you think they've forgotten the iMac. Can't wait for Barefeats to post the benchmarks, and compare the top level 27" to the Pro. The 27" is interesting now because you can get 10Gbe. One gripe is the 27" iMac comes standard with only 8GB, while the 15" MacBook Pro has came with 16GB standard since 2014... I'm guessing most people are going to the aftermarket to throw 32-64GB in there anyway. Apple offers the 16GB upgrade (from 8GB) for $200, but you can buy 32GB of RAM for $150 and install it yourself.
- save_ferris 6y ago
  Yeah, I’m totally fine with 8GB standard since aftermarket memory is so much cheaper than what Apple offers and it’s really easy to install.
- jdhawk 6y ago
  > but you can buy 32GB of RAM for $150 and install it yourself. what? Since when did they offer a DIY upgrade path?
  - apocalyptic0n3 6y ago
    Haven't the iMac and Mac Mini always offered (relatively) easy memory upgrades? I've upgraded probably 10-15 of them at work. They just use the samller laptop modules instead of a desktop module, and (usually?) only support 2 modules. Mac Pro offers it too, though that's a different style of computer entirely.
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      The post-lamp iMac has always offered user-replaceable SODIMM slots in a number sufficient to occupy all of the CPU's memory channels. The late 2009 model had 4 on the bottom, the 2015 has 2 one the back, these new ones have 2 and the Pro model has 4 (because the Pro CPU has 4 channels).
      - bluedino 6y ago
speedgoose 6y ago
The iMac would be so much more interesting with a touchscreen and a pencil, like the overpriced Microsoft Surface Studio.
- volkk 6y ago
  if that were to happen, then its price point would be unimaginable
- _ph_ 6y ago
  I wonder what the ARM based iMacs will bring. There is a lot of talk about a fundamental redesign and Big Sur really looks like being designed for touch. If an iMac should support touch and pencil, it would need a foot similar to the one of the Surface Studio too.
- naravara 6y ago
  I'm not really sure about that. It would probably be useful for artists and draftsmen, but I keep my iMac pretty far from my face while I would want to keep a drawing table pretty close. The Studio was really cool as a design concept, but I'm not sure how well it translated from showroom to daily use for anyone who isn't a professional artist. And even for professional artists, I have to imaging the portability of an iPad Pro probably blows it out of the water for those use cases. Some people think it's more natural to move their canvas around the pen than vice-versa, so just being able to move the device/screen around is huge.
gjvc 6y ago
8GB RAM is pretty derisory for a 2020 machine. Is there a RAM shortage somewhere I haven't heard about?
- zamadatix 6y ago
  It's so the "starting at" price is low but they can mark up RAM and Storage upgrades when you actually go to order as if they were the expensive piece. They are making something like 80% margin when you max out the RAM, I assume similar for the "SSD storage" of ambiguous type. Dell did the same thing with the RAM in a 7740 and 7750 I recently ordered (work and personal), ironically about the same markup.
  - josho 6y ago
    I swear that the MBAs are ruining the world. This is the crap that mature industries pull to grow profit since they've saturated other growth channels. Instead of product growth, MBAs come up with product bundlings to maximize profit by obscuring the true cost to customers.
- icedchai 6y ago
  I have a first generation iMac 27" 5K (late 2014.) They were shipping with 8 gigs back then and I immediately upgraded to 24G. It's ridiculous that 8 gigs is still the default config! I recently ordered one of the new Raspberry Pi 4's with that much.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  My wife has an 8 GB Macbook Pro and she's quite happy with that. For most uses (and she usually has a dozen Word documents open at any time) it's perfectly fine and the machine is quite snappy. OTOH, I'd expect the average HN user to need a lot more. I'm currently finding 16 GB a bit constrained and would be delighted to have 32 in the same footprint. The server under my desk has 64 and the swap indicators tell me it should have more (or less stuff to do).
saos 6y ago
> The 27-inch iMac now comes standard with SSDs across the line Well. Wow. > Apple today also announced that its 21.5-inch iMac will come standard with SSDs across the line for the first time. Double wow I'll be holding out for complete iMac redesign with ARM. I'm hoping something will be announced at their event?
- JosephRedfern 6y ago
  I had the same reaction. It pains me to use a machine that has a HDD... I had no idea that Apple were selling new, £1000+ machines that relied in spinning rust.
  - sukilot 6y ago
    If Apple sold a decent £1000 machine then they wouldn't sell £1800 machines.
- ShamelessC 6y ago
  As someone who never purchased an iMac, but enjoys Apple's MacBook line of products - it blows my mind that people are praising them for this. Considering the price point, this should have been the case like 4 years ago.
jeffbee 6y ago
I'm always interested in the differences between Apple's Intel OEM CPUs and the ones Intel lists in their catalog. There is no 10th-gen Core i9 CPU that exactly matches what Apple is selling here. In the iMac Pro they are installing a Xeon-W part that has almost twice as much cache as the standard part (43MB vs 25MB). They're not saying how much cache is in the new 27" iMac.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  I'm picturing some binning shenanigans on Intel's part and Apple doing enough benchmarks to pick a minimum amount of cache. Or maybe Intel offered them something with odd specs that they have too many of?
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    Actually is it just marketing shenanigans instead? Are they adding the L2 and L3 together to get their advertised cache size?
    - Dave_Rosenthal 6y ago
      Yes
    - ksec 6y ago
      Yes. It was one of the common misconception that Apple had different parts / spec due to its cache size.
- EricE 6y ago
  Usually it comes down to either not being socketed or as with the cheese grater mac Pro's the CPUs lacked the integrated heat spreader. Sometimes it's cache or clock variations, but usually it's more along the lines of the chip packaging that differs.
fuj 6y ago
The specs are actually good, but those thick 2015 bezels on the other hand...
tambourine_man 6y ago
Nice. The iMac Pro is getting harder to justify. Specially with that sweet nano-texture glass coating. I wonder how they justify charging US$ 500 for the coating on the iMac and US$ 1.000 on the Pro Display XDR. 32" vs 27" don't seem enough.
- PStamatiou 6y ago
  Nano-texture is a blessing and a curse in my experience... https://twitter.com/Stammy/status/1290673590380244994 https://twitter.com/Stammy/status/1290673590380244994
  - tambourine_man 6y ago
    Yeah, I know. They even provide you with a standard approved cloth, which is hilarious. Still, the results are amazing and anyone who dares to even get their filthy greasy fingers near my screen, let alone touch it, are in for some serious trouble anyway. In the case of a nano-texture screen, I should probably require people to sign an insurance agreement to be in the same room as the device.
dylan604 6y ago
Just did the fun "what kind of car could I buy instead" of maxing out the specs on an Apple computer. 10 cores, 128GB RAM, 16GB GPU, 8TB SSD, 10GB ethernet comes out to $8799. ~ A used Civic/Corolla I guess. Not as sticker shocking as the maxed MacPro. Would love to see how the machine performs though.
- icedchai 6y ago
  Now price out an AMD Threadripper build for the same price and compare the performance. You'll be shocked how overpriced the MacPro is...
_ph_ 6y ago
Nice spec-bump for those, who want to stay with Intel-based Macs a bit longer (e.g. depend on x86-virtualisation, running Windows). While I was about ready to upgrade my current iMac in 2020, I am going to try to hold out till the step to Apple Silicon. The one thing I would hope for would be a bigger screen. The 27" is a tiny bit too small, especially vertically. Considering that Apple once sold the 30" Cinema display, the step to 27" always felt like a step back. When going to a design with less bezels, they really should use some of the saved space for a bigger screen.
look_lookatme 6y ago
I wish I could use it as an external display. I would buy one as my personal machine and then use the display during the day with my MBP for work. Would be nice in this new world of remote work.
- pak9rabid 6y ago
  Is Target Display Mode no longer supported on these?
  - mikestew 6y ago
    It is no longer supported. See my reply to sibling comment.
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      I believe no Retina iMac ever supported it. Having mentioned that, it'd be awesome if we could plug it into a MacBook Pro via USB-C and use it as a power supply, an eGPU, and an external monitor. And maybe also mount the disks. That would be great.
      - anentropic 6y ago
        Agreed, I would actually consider buying an iMac in that case
- Someone 6y ago
  Never used it, so I don’t know how well it works, but https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204592 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204592: “With target display mode, you can use your iMac as an external display for another Mac.”
  - mikestew 6y ago
    From that same article: "This article has been archived and is no longer updated by Apple." Because Target Display Mode is no longer supported: "Make sure that your iMac is using macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 or earlier. You can't use target display mode with later versions of macOS, or with Boot Camp and Windows."
pornel 6y ago
Only the $2300 model has an option of upgrading to 5700XT for an extra $500, and that's not even a high-end GPU.
- pat2man 6y ago
  90% of people don't need more than what's in the iMac. For pros who would use it the iMac Pro or Mac Pro are the obvious choices. For gamers Apple has been ignoring the market and everyone knows you are better off building your own rig.
- badsectoracula 6y ago
  5700 XT is a very high end GPU, especially the 16GB option (can you even buy a 5700 XT with16GB for PC? I can't find any in the local price aggregator, all of them are 8GB). It isn't the fastest GPU you can buy, but it is still a high end one. If anything, this is the first time i see an iMac which has a good GPU. Though considering iMac's form factor and my experience of having a PC with a 5700XT i wonder about thermals.
  - kitsunesoba 6y ago
    Yeah the 5700 XT is roughly on par with a 2070 Super, which isn't bad at all even if it isn't a 2080Ti.
- beervirus 6y ago
  It's weird how restricted the choices are on SSDs too. The $1800 model is stuck at 256GB, the $2000 model lets you do 512/1TB/2TB, and the $2300 model adds options for 4TB/8TB. Like, this has to be a totally artificial restriction. I'd much rather buy the cheap one with a bigger SSD, but instead I'm stuck paying hundreds of dollars extra for features I don't care about.
jasoneckert 6y ago
I definitely agree with the general consensus here that this is a solid spec bump, and most welcome at that! And like others, it made me think of their transition to ARM. I know the first ARM Macs this fall will be their lowend MacBook and 13" MBP line, but at WWDC they said the Intel to ARM transition would be complete in under 2 years (like they said with the PPC to Intel transition). And since the PPC to Intel transition only took a little over a year, it could mean that ARM-based iMacs may be here next year to replace the current iMac lineup, and I'm dreadfully curious as to whether they'll be lower performing than this iMac update (which is quite impressive, performance-wise). Or perhaps they'll use multiple ARM CPUs to boost performance. Regardless, every time I see a spec bump now from Apple, I can't help but think of these things.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  Just my speculation, but rather than “lowering the specs“, I think they’re positioning themselves to release a “budget” option in the $800 range with a 4k screen, which will probably match performance with the low end intel iMac. Matching encoding speeds with Apple Silicon is probably an easier task, since they can create on-chip, hardware accelerated encoders, which exist on iPhones already.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    The current bottom end is $1099 and that's the last model with a low-dpi screen. I'd be surprised to see the price drop much below that when it gets renewed.
vincnetas 6y ago
"Up to 65 percent more plug-ins in Logic Pro X." ?
- thelittlenag 6y ago
  I think they mean that you are now able to load/use that many more plugins than you could before?
jakobov 6y ago
it needs thicker bezels
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
Oooh...I'd hate to be the one that shelled out $5K for an iMac Pro. I guess that critter will be seeing a bump of its own, soon.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  They're more or less at the mercy of the Xeon release cycle for that.
thelittlenag 6y ago
Shipping with 8GB memory by default just seems absurd. Also, having only 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports seems a little light as well. I would hope to have had 4 ports at least.
- sukilot 6y ago
  The have to do that in order to offer a machine that has a low price with their 40+% margin. Apple only does value-based pricing. They'd charge you a percentage of your income if they could figure out how.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  A lot of Mac users get the computer and never plug anything to it besides a phone or some USB sticks. If all you want is a computer you can read your e-mail on, 8 GB is fine. Memory, AFAIK, is upgradable post-purchase in all current models.
  - Dahoon 6y ago
    It isn't on all models unless you pay Apple to do so.
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      It was until the previous 27" model, at least: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201191 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201191 The 21.5", however, is a different story.
- beervirus 6y ago
  Also, the three standard configurations (i.e., the ones you'll be able to walk into an Apple store and pick up, rather than ordering a different configuration online) max out at a 512 GB SSD. It's just bizarrely small.
city17 6y ago
Seems like they're going to save the new redesign of the iMacs for the first ARM releases.... at least I hope, otherwise it's really disappointing.
rbanffy 6y ago
Most interesting that, now, the only Mac you can buy with a (SSD-cached) hard disk is the 21" iMac. I guess the next update will get rid of any vestigial spinning metal storage.
- savoytruffle 6y ago
  It seems very important to Apple to get the T2 (similar to an iPhone 7 CPU) controller chip into all the Macs. But it seems unable to accomodate internal HDD or Fusion drives. And Most of the 21.5" models are bargain basement (as far as that goes for Apple) models. Fusion drives were an interesting digression, but obviously not the wave of da future.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    Indeed. With M2 sticks with 8+ GB hard drives become an oddity. I have a laptop with dual storage and the largest hard drive that fits is 2 TB, but, on the M2 side, it can go way beyond that.
n3k5 6y ago
“SSDs across the line with quadruple the storage” 1/4 TB of storage in the $1800 model, 1/2 TB in the $2300 one. Ugh. (So before the lower-end one had 64GB? [Edit: Nope, 1 TB Fusion Drive, thanks smnrchrds!] That would be FULL just from installing the one game the press release mentions.) What kind of magic fairy dust SSDs are they using that you can't have a sensible amount of storage space at those prices? Looking at the upgrade options (which aren't even available for the lower-end model), they charge $300 per TB.
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  > So before the lower-end one had 64GB? No, the lower end ones came with "Fusion Drive", that was 32-128 GB of SSD merged with a 1TB HDD presented as a single disk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_Drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_Drive
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    They dropped down to less than that in the middle, almost completely negating their benefit since everything something you needed would always end up on the slow spinny drive :/
  - KptMarchewa 6y ago
    The audacity they had selling spinning drives for personal computing in 2020.
    - EricE 6y ago
      Meh - my Mom's iMac has the 2TB fusion drive and it works surprisingly well. When I dual boot it into bootcamp with Windows you can tell the SSD caching is not there; it's pretty obvious. Sticking a 32GB SSD (formatted NTFS) and dedicating it to readyboost helps a bit, but it's still no where near as effective as fusion under Mac OS. Obviously being pure SSD would be better, but when she got it almost five years ago that much SSD - even third party - would have been cost prohibitive and it's still pretty expensive to get 2TB as all SSD.
    - 6y ago
wackget 6y ago
Why is this advertisement written as if it's a news article? Starting it with `Cupertino, California -` as if it's breaking news and then launching into a complete sales pitch is just so slimy.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  This is a typical press release. It's been a standard format for decades.
tomcat27 6y ago
Better camera, that's the only thing I see useful to an average user.
Aaronstotle 6y ago
I can't believe it took so long for Apple to add SSDs to the basic configuration. I had the misfortune of coming into a company who purchased 2017 21" iMacs and they were almost worthless with how slow the fusion drive is.
- sukilot 6y ago
  You can upgrade to SSD. It's not supported but it's possible with normal tools.
dschuetz 6y ago
I saw "Intel" and I laughed out loud. Wow. The nerve Apple has trying to sell Intel-Macs after announcing the change to ARM!
- _ph_ 6y ago
  There are people, who require a new machine now, so it is good that they get an up to date offering. Also, there are people, who need x86 compatibility when running virtual machines. Also, as long as Apple expects developers to support x86 Macs, they need to offer x86-based machines for those developers.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  After announcing on stage at WWDC that they would do exactly this?
supernova87a 6y ago
I still find it fascinating how the choice of Intel chip generation is almost an afterthought (well, maybe only for a minority, but do most buyers look carefully? are they aware?) in the difference between models or computers when you click to buy something. Is this a strategy of Apple (or Intel) to be able to get people to ignore (and therefore they can optimize the cost of) the generation of chip used? It's almost as if they realized people fixate on the GHz figure, and overlook the chip generation, which (I guess?) must contribute much more to effective clock speed than a small difference in Hz rate? I even fall into this trap sometimes. It is a bit complicated for the casual buyer to have the clock speed which was the previous metric of "goodness" of your machine now have to be weighed with the generation of processor. When the name of the processor itself doesn't provide clear differentiation between generations.
- thomasedwards 6y ago
  I still don’t fully understand this world, I ‘downgraded’ from an i7 to a slower i5, and my computer got faster. I wish they’d use sensible clear names for the generations so you can clearly understand what’s better.
  - jandrese 6y ago
    The first number after the i# is the generation. i5-5350 is fifth generation, i3-9350k is ninth generation. That said, the difference between generations is pretty minimal thanks to Intel's huge process blunder last decade. If you want to know which chip is actually faster for your workload that turns out to be a fairly difficult question to answer. A lot depends on what you're trying to accomplish and how your code is built.
    - supernova87a 6y ago
      And I would point out, the level of chip model detail you gave above isn't even provided in the buying screens! For some users this is ok -- does the fact of not providing it give some hint about what level of user is being aimed at? I think even for the Mac Pro, they don't go into this detail.
paulpan 6y ago
This essentially confirms Apple's strategy to just refresh existing models/chassis without redesigns going forward; the new Apple chips will be used exclusively for redesigned/relaunches like the Macbook. Smart move since it increases the appeal of the Apple-powered Mac devices. The pricing difference will also help, as based on the expensive base configurations (RAM, SSD as others have pointed out here), it will make the new devices look that much more attractive.
- skohan 6y ago
  Is there credible evidence the new devices will actually be cheaper? It hasn’t been the trend with Apple product launches
  - spideymans 6y ago
    Apple sells an iPad for $349, and their new iPhone SE, with their most powerful SOC, is just $399.
    - Dahoon 6y ago
      "just"
      - EricE 6y ago
        "just"? Pretty ridiculous snark since you can't by an Android device at any price that's faster. "just" indeed...
      - whynotminot 6y ago
        Lol what smartphones are you buying?
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    They've been cutting low-end prices (and raising high-end price via introducing a Pro tier) on iOS devices for a while.
  - 6y ago
karmelapple 6y ago
> T2 ... makes transcoding HEVC video up to twice as fast as the previous generation So the T2's processing power is used to augment the main CPU and graphics card's power. This seems like a new development, but maybe it's been known for awhile?
- perardi 6y ago
  Not new. Obscure! But not new. https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/04/09/apples-t2-chip-makes-a-giant-difference-in-video-encoding-for-most-users https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/04/09/apples-t2-chip-ma...
ianwalter 6y ago
I'm sorry, I know it's a minor cosmetic thing, but those bezels make it look so dated that I can't really see it as new. Not that it matters since I will probably never buy an iMac again after experiencing the issues with dust getting beneath the glass of my last iMac 5k.
achow 6y ago
>..new nano-texture glass option for an even more stunning Retina 5K display I hope next iPad also gets this textured glass, it would be so much better as a drawing writing pad.
fmajid 6y ago
Presumably you cannot install Mojave on these, only Catalina. I sacrificed a Mac to Catalina, then wiped it back to Mojave. Hopefully Big Sur will fix the flaming dumpster fire that is Catalina, but I am not hopeful and working on my Linux migration plan.
- simonklitj 6y ago
  Curious about the bugs in Catalina that made it useless for you. Have been on it since the public beta, and haven't really had anything that has made it impossible to do things I used to do. Care to elaborate? (Edit: I did on 10.15.13 have a bug where I couldn't access files and folders on the desktop, and had to repeatedly reboot. Downgraded to 10.15.12 and went to 10.15.14 when that came out and fixed it. Will admit that this was incredibly frustrating!)
minerjoe 6y ago
Wonderful computer. How much you wanna bet that in < 5 years they drop support forcing almost everyone that purchased one to throw it out and get a new one?
- gnomesteel 6y ago
  I'd take that bet. Apple is generally good about keeping old machines working.
  - beervirus 6y ago
    For 5 years, you're probably right. For 10 years, I think not. For example, the 2011 iMacs are stuck on High Sierra, which hits end of life later this year.
- newscracker 6y ago
  Firstly, you have to consider that Apple has said the transition to ARM will take about two years. So it’s going to have to release a few more Intel Macs next year too. For the less than five years bet, if you’re referring to macOS updates, I can personally bet my entire wealth (which is a decent figure) that you’ll lose. There’s no way the Intel Macs released this year are going to lose macOS support for another six years (into 2026), at the very least. The latest macOS (Big Sur) that’s now in beta supports models that are seven years old (or even older than that). If you’re referring to hardware support and repairs, there are standard ages for each model that Apple uses for that purpose to define what’s obsolete, vintage, etc. I’m sure these will follow the same cycle.
  - minerjoe 6y ago
    Yea, I got the timeline wrong. More like 10 years. I've worked e-waste recycling and the number of beautiful but unsupported macs that were dropped off was very sad and to this day I definitely consider Apple a significant force for evil on this planet, just for the planned obsolecense ecological damage alone, let alone the right to repair. I've gotten linux running on a few of them and they are wonderful machines. Sad that the owners had to throw them in the trash.
_ph_ 6y ago
The one thing I keep missing on my 5k iMac is some form of video-in. Would be great if I could connect my MB Pro to it and use the iMac as a display. Perhaps even in a window and all mouse and keyboard events to the window get passed to the connected MacBook.
- pier25 6y ago
  Yeah, and once something goes wrong with the iMac you could still use it as a monitor.
  - wiredfool 6y ago
    I had one of the appropriate era, and ultimately, the display went. (After roasting several drives, thermal management was not a high point on those machines)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- gnicholas 6y ago
  Yeah my 2008 iMac had this functionality, and I was supposed/bummed to hear they got rid of it a few years later. I’d think Apple would keep the feature around, if only to make it easier for people to buy both a Mac laptop and Mac desktop. My wife would totally use one at work if it were easy, and I’d love to have one for us at home. But instead we just get laptops with fans that come on all the time, and SSDs that are far too small.
- askafriend 6y ago
  This is the reason I went Mac Mini + LG 5k display. It's much more expensive but I needed to be able to hook in my work laptop to a 5k display while working and switch easily to my home setup with a single cable when I want to. Ended up being perfect! It's paying off big time with COVID and WFH.
  - _ph_ 6y ago
    I had a Mini before the iMac, but the Mini had the problem of the lacking GPU. Also, at the time I got the iMac (2015), the Mini was really falling behind. The iMac gave me a quad-core i7 and a GPU. I wished the Mini was available with hardware comparable to the 16" MB Pro. (8 cores, GPU) If Apple only offered a desktop class Mac, I would even start thinking about the pro display.
jmpman 6y ago
Bring back target display mode!
jhatemyjob 6y ago
ORRR you can just build your own PC and run macOS in a vm
theodric 6y ago
Who would buy an x86 Mac now?
- beervirus 6y ago
  Someone who doesn't want to hassle with ARM software compatibility issues until the kinks get worked out?
reaperducer 6y ago
Since these iMacs have the T2 chip, does that open the possibility of keyboards with fingerprint authentication, like on the laptops?
doener 6y ago
"SSDs across the line" Welcome to 2010, Apple.
dopamean 6y ago
I'll never understand the pricing. $1000 extra to get 64gb of memory? Incredible. What circumstance leads a purchaser to look at that and say, "ok sounds great?"
- kccqzy 6y ago
  People who want a Mac but don't need performance.
  - dopamean 6y ago
    I meant who shells out the extra 1k and is ok with that.
    - kstrauser 6y ago
      My boss. I mean, we don't have unlimited cash to throw away, but let's say I'm going to keep a new Mac for 4 years (which is a lot less time than I'll probably actually have it, but we'll round down). I work about 2,000 hours a year, or about 8,000 hours over the time I'll own it. That $1,000 amortizes out to be about $0.13 per hour, which is a rounding error compared to salary, benefits, air conditioning at the office (back in the old days when that use to be a thing), etc. If that makes me 0.2% more efficient -- say by making compiles or "docker build" commands run faster -- then the company made a profit off of it.
      - beervirus 6y ago
        But the RAM is trivial to upgrade. Why not just do it yourself for half the price?
lovetocode 6y ago
I bought a 27” 5k iMac a few years ago and it just made me hate Apple more. I am irritated that they have a monopoly on iOS development.
gfiorav 6y ago
My employer has decided to stop offering Macs for work machines. I think the dev era for Mac might be close to ending
maz1b 6y ago
As expected. They're not going to do a radical form factor redesign and update for Intel based chips, they're saving the all new iMac design for the ARM transition for the extra wow factor. Not sure if the value proposition is there though for a specced out iMac.
omarhaneef 6y ago
The best thing about the introduction of a new line is that the previous line is cheaper.
itsthecourier 6y ago
I bought (and regret to) an iMac around 2 years ago, the "fusion" drive was absurd. I was paying thousands of dollars and getting no SSD. what the fuck is Apple thinking. Let's wrap our minds around this: Marketing is proud of offer SSD in a desktop in 2020.
m0xte 6y ago
Well they can quite frankly fuck off with that one. The 32gb additional memory option costs 4x the price of the entire 32gb of ram in my desktop. It costs independently 60% of the cost of my desktop pc base unit just for the upgrade. The bottom end unit features 256gb SSD (probably soldered) and the next tier up wants +£200 to go from 512 to 1TiB. My entire 1TB Samsung evo plus nvme cost £165. The 5k display isn’t worth it for my use case so I’ve got a 27” iiyama 4K display I paid £379 for. I suspect for 90% of people the story is the same. Add the shit show that has been Catalina so far and this is a comedy gouging. Edit: equivalent spec of my desktop build is £3399 here. I paid £1520 for my desktop approx: ryzen 3700x, 32gb ram, 1TB ssd, gtx1660, 27” 4K display, decent mechanical keyboard, decent mouse, Windows 10 pro. Where is the £1879 advantage?
- cactus2093 6y ago
  Yes, Apple charges a premium over custom building a PC with equivalent parts. Not anything new or shocking there.
  - m0xte 6y ago
    So add £200 to the base. Where’s my £1679 advantage? Also I’m paying full retail not OEM prices for these parts.
    - millstone 6y ago
      Obviously Apple is not courting the pcpartspicker market. This is competing against products like HP Envy 32, Microsoft Surface Studio 2, etc which are priced similarly. You pay a premium for the design and form factor.
      - m0xte 6y ago
        Ah yes the design with the ports on the back that get scratched up, the unopenable case without destroying the screen cables, the dangerously fragile corners, the thermal issues, the proprietary storage thermal monitoring and the fact it’s all in one lump so if something goes wrong you’re in trouble. I have repaired a few and own one (2015) I think the design is absolutely dire.
deleted 6y ago
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antonhalim 6y ago
I am surprised how little bezel is discussed here, Apple has been keeping the almost 2 inches bezel for a decade.
- LeoPanthera 6y ago
  I don't see the relevance of the size of the bezel on a desktop display that isn't portable.
  - antonhalim 6y ago
    Why not? then why TVs do that?
Tepix 6y ago
I can't believe they left the big fat bezel unchanged. It makes the machine look really outdated.
- emdowling 6y ago
  This is likely the final iteration of this design and for Intel processors. They’ll save the redesign for Apple Silicon. They are definitely road testing a few new technologies for that future iteration, like the new screen technology.
mschuster91 6y ago
> iMac Pro now comes standard with a 10-core Intel Xeon processor. How in hell is Apple squeezing a Xeon into an iMac without the thing either melting or being louder than a jet turbine?!
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  Quiet fans and vents: https://www.imore.com/sites/imore.com/files/styles/larger/public/field/image/2017/12/imac-pro-back-vent.jpg https://www.imore.com/sites/imore.com/files/styles/larger/pu...
fiblye 6y ago
I bought a 2012 iMac with 8GB of memory as the baseline. We’re more than halfway through 2020 and Apple is telling us 8GB is still just fine for a >$2000 computer?
- stuart78 6y ago
  Given their crazy RAM price markups, I prefer to have this option so that I can buy my own RAM from another source.
  - blparker 6y ago
    Is the RAM in newer iMac models upgradable or is it soldered to the motherboard?
  - gautamcgoel 6y ago
    Pretty sure you can't upgrade the RAM in the newer models.
bitL 6y ago
"A computer gets an incremental update." It's really a great win for Apple marketing that anybody even discusses such a silly news...
super_mario 6y ago
Interesting machine. But no way would I buy this now. It will be obsolete in 2 years.
plg 6y ago
How does it compare for practical speed to an iMac Pro circa 2018? Asking for a friend ;)
stickyricky 6y ago
Its a shame the screen update didn't translate into smaller bezels.
musicale 6y ago
Apple needs to bring back Target Display mode, which allows the iMac to be usable as a monitor long after its internals have become obsolete.
- willio58 6y ago
  Didn’t know this used to be a thing. I’ve always wanted this.
  - musicale 6y ago
    It looks like the last iMacs with (Thunderbolt) Target Display Mode came out int 2014, but the Retina (and later) models don't support it unfortunately: https://www.lifewire.com/use-imac-as-monitor-with-target-display-mode-2260906 https://www.lifewire.com/use-imac-as-monitor-with-target-dis... No reason Apple can't bring it back - it greatly increases the value and lifespan of an iMac!!
musicale 6y ago
I can see why they didn't roll this out at WWDC! Great machine and no Apple Silicon as yet (which may be a huge advantage if you still need to run Boot Camp or x86 VMs.) I'm also excited about the nano-texture display. I've learned to live with reflective displays because I'm addicted to their high contrast and deep blacks, but nano-texture sounds like the best of both worlds. Nice that they upgraded the anemic FaceTime camera and pulled the plug on the low-speed hard disk (even if it was configured as a fusion drive.) Apple has generally had decent mics and speakers as well, so it's exciting that they are trying to make them even better. Anyone who has suffered through horrible zoom audio will appreciate the benefits of good mics (and not using zoom, which seems to make bad audio even worse.)
xhruso00 6y ago
Is the RAM self-upgradable with T2 chip?
- indianhippie 6y ago
  Yes it is. This might be the last iMac with user accessible RAM chip though.
  - xhruso00 6y ago
    I didn't know 21.5' is not user upgradable. Only 27 https://support.apple.com/guide/imac/install-memory-in-your-27-inch-imac-apdd768f6349/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/imac/install-memory-in-your-...
GeertB 6y ago
After 3 weeks of waiting, I just got my new iMac. Paid $4399 before tax. Old specs, same price as new one with improved camera, 2 additional cores etc. :-( I can't use Zoom with the camera of the old model, without using a 3rd party tool, as the color balance is way off making everybody purple/red. Sad.
dayaz36 6y ago
It doesn't matter what they release, they've already Osborne effected themselves as soon as they announced they're transitioning to ARM chips in a couple years
P4wl0w 6y ago
It does not make any sense for me to buy new macs anymore - especially when I have to run the new macos, which will take SECONDS to open apps that open in MILLISECONDS when you switch off wifi or just use a good OS. Also I do not like their beta product experiments they tend to run on customers since years - I will wait for years before I trust their hard- and software to be useful for work or even personal things. If they want me to beta test they should give me money for it.

340 points by arafsheikh 6y ago

rvz 6y ago

So: A 2020 iMac now with 2018 Hardware. Not a NVMe SSD use in sight. Not exactly a "major update". Looks like the magic on this iMac is already wearing off and the magicians want their reality distortion spells back.

kirstenbirgit 6y ago
They use 10th gen Intel CPUs, and PCIe for SSDs. I'm definitely buying one, have waited for quite some time.
tesseract 6y ago
The iMac had NVMe SSDs at least as early as 2015[1]. Apple has since moved away from NVMe modules and gone to raw flash chips hanging directly off the proprietary "T2" system controller chipset. I think it's fair to criticize the proprietary/non-upgradeable nature of this storage solution but benchmarks have shown it to be comparable in performance to standard PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives so calling it outdated is not really a valid criticism. [1] https://beetstech.com/blog/apple-proprietary-ssd-ultimate-guide-to-specs-and-upgrades https://beetstech.com/blog/apple-proprietary-ssd-ultimate-gu...
- jeffbee 6y ago
  They also have a PCIe x4 port on the back of the machine for people who insist on avoiding Apple's storage controller.
- beervirus 6y ago
  Oh how weird. I just assumed it was an M.2 drive in there.

burlesona 6y ago

Solid spec bump. Interesting how much emphasis they put on the camera, speakers, and mic; makes total sense in the age of Zoom. I’d also speculate this means iMac won’t be the first computer getting Apple Silicon. I wonder if it will be the last? What’s the consensus guess now? Perhaps a new MacBook Air with good performance but the real “breakthrough” is > 12 hours battery life?

godzillabrennus 6y ago
I think the MacBook they had discontinued is rumored to be making an Apple Silicon powered return.
- dbbk 6y ago
  There's no 'intel' to support that as far as I'm aware though, just sensible speculation.
dijit 6y ago
It will almost certainly be a low end macbook. In fact, there's a non-pro 'macbook'[0] that already exists which would be perfect, it was discontinued a year ago, but used ultra-low power CPUs. In fact when they were talking about them (prior to release) they thought they would have ARM CPU's back then. They are fanless and have a 5W thermal envelope, which fits in with the current A12X too. The major criticisms of the design at the time was: Butterfly keyboard, the Single USB-C port and the speed of the device (Intel CORE-M is truly, truly painful). But for a $600-$700 machine with an ARM CPU? that's insanely competitive, and is in-line with the "basic" macbook branding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_(2015%E2%80%932019) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_(2015%E2%80%932019)
- varjag 6y ago
  I have a later 2017 revision of that one, never really had an issue with CPU speed. Mine has RAM maxed to 16Gb though, perhaps that helps. It's a great machine: a real computer but with iPad pro dimensions.

Mindwipe 6y ago

Honestly a fairly mediocre upgrade considering the pricing. It's good that they've finally improved the webcam, but Apple clearly went out of their way to ensure people looking to get an Intel Mac because they need to dual boot weren't going to get anything too compelling. Edit: Downvotes be damned, it is mediocre. Not bad, because it is a spec bump, but there are lots of things about the iMac's architecture that are beginning to show their age and are unchanged here, despite becoming bottlenecks. The cooling system is a big one, and the storage controller support another.

bluedino 6y ago
>> upgrade considering the pricing. Don't forget it includes a 5K display...
- whatever1 6y ago
  That none from the competition has come even close to make almost a decade later.
- Mindwipe 6y ago
  > Don't forget it includes a 5K display... It included a 5K display at a much lower price point that hasn't been adequately justified by currency changes before too, so I'm not sure that means anything.
- Jenya_ 6y ago
  It includes a 5K display which may become useless in five years? (when Apple plans to stop updates for Intel based Macs). It seems that iMacs do not support using them as expernal displays right now. I would prefer 5K monitor to last a bit longer than five years.
  - beervirus 6y ago
    When support ends, install Windows.

goalieca 6y ago

I'm sitting here on a 2012 imac with a fusion drive. This drive never seemed to give much performance but it absolutely tanked once it converted to APFS. The computer became unusable to the point that I had to buy an external SSD and use that as my main disk. Now i'm very disappointed that it doesn't support Big Sur despite being only 8 years old. I will wait for the apple silicon because i don't anticipate that intel will be supported for too long. Apple will make "core features" of their OS depend on something that isn't shipping in intel silicon sooner than later.

donatj 6y ago
How much RAM do you have? I recently upgraded my 2012 iMac from 8gb to 32gb and the performance is like night and day, I suspect because it has more memory to use for disk cache. It's a fully usable machine again.
- goalieca 6y ago
  Upgraded to 24GB. It helps restarting applications because it caches.
api 6y ago
APFS is as far as I know designed for flash and performs really badly on spinning disk. They still provide HFS+ and ExFAT as the options if you format an external spinning disk.
- easton 6y ago
  Will macOS install on a non APFS volume though?
  - mistersquid 6y ago
    > Will macOS install on a non APFS volume though? It depends on the macOS. Only Catalina and higher (macOS 10.15) require APFS. macOS 10.14 and Mac OS X 10.x may use HFS+. That is, though High Sierra and Mojave both "want" APFS, they may be coaxed (cloned) into booting on HFS+. [0] [0] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/327051/can-you-update-to-macos-10-14-mojave-without-converting-to-apfs https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/327051/can-you-upd...

graeme 6y ago

Does the imac pro get the better camera and other features listed? I used laptops for years until and rsi issue made me have to avoid trackpads. I can say I’ve been extremely pleased with having a desktop imac. I use an ipad pro when I need something portable. I like just having a station I can get in front of that signifies work, and the imac pro fans basically never make noise.

pram 6y ago
iMac Pro already had the better camera/speakers/mics
- graeme 6y ago
  Ah I see. So no improvement there. Hopefully on the redesigned ARM version.
  - adrianmsmith 6y ago
    I have an iMac Pro and can confirm the microphone is amazing. Miles better than the internal microphones on my colleagues PC laptops. (I don’t have a strong opinion on the camera, and don’t have an iMac to compare to.)
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      As I get older and wrinkled, I appreciate the lack of pixels and soft focus of a crappy camera. I'd be much happier with low noise in dark settings than more pixels. Kind of the same way I appreciated the Dell XPS "nostrilcam" that fools people about the hair on the top of my head in ways my Macbook doesn't.
pilsetnieks 6y ago
To the best of my knowledge, most laptops support external displays and peripherals as well.
- 6y ago

frou_dh 6y ago

When we read "10th generation Intel Core" then we have to go and research whether than means real 10th generation (like i5/i7 MBA, some MBPs) or just another rebadged Skylake (6th gen) derivative.

ajross 6y ago
All 10xxx parts are either Ice Lake (10nm) or Comet Lake (14nm), none are Skylake. I mean, if you want to get technical both are "Skylake derivatives", I guess.
- formerly_proven 6y ago
  The uarch and core differences between Skylake, Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake and Comet Lake are neglible. The most significant changes were claims of hardware fixes for some Spectre and Meltdown variants in Coffee Lake, which is still a really minor change. The minor IPC differences arise from different cache sizes and interconnect.
- dahauns 6y ago
  Comet Lake's core µarch is identical to Skylake. Ice lake uses Sunny Cove cores, which are Intel's first significant core µarch redesign since Skylake.
jeffbee 6y ago
Why do you care? They're the fastest cores you can buy and 10 of them in a box is pretty respectable on throughput terms, too. They're all just the umpteenth revision of the pentium pro, if you're trying to be reductive.
bluedino 6y ago
Still using the 7th gen in the base 21" model! (which also comes with a 1080p screen instead of Retina)
- filleduchaos 6y ago
  The linked article states plainly that the updates to the 21.5" model have not yet been posted online. There's also a very handy "New" indicator on the 27" model that's not yet present on the 21.5". Personally I'd reserve my judgment.

ogre_codes 6y ago

Finally they ditch spinning media on the base models. Also notable, the rumored iPad-like style changes are conspicuously absent, these look pretty much identical to the older iMacs. Otherwise this looks like a decent bump all around. Notably, the iMac Pro also got some love (though not too much it seems?)

PascLeRasc 6y ago
Massive upgrade for people working at companies whose IT refuses to buy anything but the cheapest model.
- ddavis 6y ago
  Still only 8GB RAM though, a bit of a bummer.
  - TwoNineA 6y ago
    I thought iMacs have an easy way to upgrade the RAM no?
    - m0xte 6y ago
      Depends which model. Some require taking the screen off, which unlike earlier models is taped on and some have soldered in RAM. Until someone has seen a hole in the back or has torn one down you just don’t know. A friend of mine upgraded his 21 inch one out of the box because Apple RAM pricing and turn around is terrible. However he damaged the screen ribbon cable at the same time. Happens a lot.
    - george_perez 6y ago
      Only the 27-inch iMac has user-upgradable RAM.
  - jyrkesh 6y ago
    Yeah, and upgrading to even 32 GBs is SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS. I get that it has to be soldered on or whatever, but I'm looking at faster RAM on Newegg right now, in brand names, single module DDR4, for ~115. I really wanna buy Apple stuff, but stuff like this continually keeps me away when I finally get to the Buy page.

martini333 6y ago

What on Earth are these bezels in 2020????

maxbaines 6y ago
Agree its a spec bump rather than a redesign, i for one was waiting / hoping to see the bezels gone.
fermienrico 6y ago
I think I might the only one who likes and wants bezels on everything that has a display. Extra large bezels. Perhaps the only exception would be phones as they increase the size of the device. Bezels are important to frame the screen content from functional perspective. Think of it like a frame for the art work. Black bezels occulude the distracting edges and background noise from the screen and you have always have a constant black border. They can be made to look nice as well like some of those Bang & Olufsen TVs[1] and Sony Trinitron Professional monitors [2]. Contrararily, there is no reason to the opposite besides "aesthetics". Can you think of any? Alas - the momentum behind bezels is so massive, it is impossible to reverse this trend. Same with "borderless" trends in UI/UX. [1] http://www.extravaganzi.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Bang-Olufsen-BeoVision-10-32-inch-LCD-TV-3.jpg http://www.extravaganzi.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Bang-... [2] https://www.proav.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/s/o/son1_9.jpg https://www.proav.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/...
- ezluckyfree 6y ago
  I agree that bezels can look good, and small bezels are nice to frame the image as you mentioned, but the iMac bezels are neither small nor good looking. Also for the record, [2] looks extremely bad.
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    [2] Looks extremely good to me. I would pay a hefty premium to get bezels like this on my current LG monitor (which has 15mm or less bezels).

asadkn 6y ago

It just feels wrong to buy anything new from Apple with "Intel Inside" - when they're clearly going to dump it soon, in favor of ARM (excuse me for not using the cringey term Apple Silicon).

dijit 6y ago
Why does it matter? There will be a period where the Intel Macs are still supported and probably more stable, and it could be ~2y before your upgrade is available if it's ARM based. If you have a retina macbook pro from 2014~ it definitely makes sense to upgrade to a macbook pro 16" today. The thing will see you through another 5-6y easy.
- ddavis 6y ago
  Yeah I agree. Since this is an iMac thread.. I think notebooks will definitely be first to go ARM, and I wouldn't be surprised if the iMac user base would prefer that native x86 based processor for at least the next 5 years or so.
- asadkn 6y ago
  Fair point. It does make sense if you really need to upgrade a very dated machine. However, I am assuming since the Macbooks are rumored to get ARM as early as late this year, it is likely iMac would follow next year too. The Developer Transition Kit has a Mac Mini with ARM already.
- freehunter 6y ago
  My fear isn’t around Apple and OS-level support. My fear is around smaller or indie developers who are already being asked to support macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android and now have to support another target. It’s not uncommon to see these devs not supporting Android or Windows because they can’t keep up. So how long before those devs drop support for Intel Macs (or don’t support ARM Macs for several years)? For most apps it’ll be fine, emulation and cross compiling will be enough. There will be some apps where this isn’t enough though. When the App Store switched to 64-bit, how many apps just disappeared, never to be seen again? I fully support the transition and I think it’s a logical step for Apple, but it’s going to be one more thing that indie or smaller devs have to worry about. Which means it’s one more thing everyone on this forum has to worry about.

kraig911 6y ago

Honestly I want a 21 inch ipad with a stand....

macintux 6y ago
I keep hoping for a huge iPad to mount as a drafting table.

haunter 6y ago

Likely this is the machine to buy if you want one of the last Intel Macs that can natively run x86 code

mvanbaak 6y ago
erm, no. During the introduction of Apple SOC they stated that they will produce and support Intel based macs for some time together with the apple SOC versions.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- kgwgk 6y ago
  They could continue to produce this model for some time without making it any better.

Scarbutt 6y ago

Apple today also announced that its 21.5-inch iMac will come standard with SSDs across the line for the first time. I wonder what took them so long.

mvanbaak 6y ago
price. they could sell the iMac pro for $$$ while the 'budget' version used HDD.
- natch 6y ago
  IMHO they should build some hysteresis into their cost structure, so when something much better has just crashed in price, they can install that much better thing even though they may have contracted their parts inventory at a higher price. They can eat the cost difference in order to deliver a better machine to the customer. It will be made up in time. For example, over a year ago (maybe two?) I was able to buy a 1 TB SSD, top speed available at the time, and a top brand, for just over $100, retail. They probably plan out their costs ahead of time, so they may have considered the equivalent to be a $200 part. Ignoring the fact that they don't pay retail, they could eat the $100 difference on paper, because future inventory will cost them even less. Sure prices go up sometimes too, but the general trend is down for tech as we know. Not sure why they are so stingy with putting the best into their products when I have the dollar cost amounts in front of me and they are not that high. /rant

raghavtoshniwal 6y ago

Really thought they would phase out fusion drives in the next update. Guess not, still available in the 21”.

bluedino 6y ago

Just when you think they've forgotten the iMac. Can't wait for Barefeats to post the benchmarks, and compare the top level 27" to the Pro. The 27" is interesting now because you can get 10Gbe. One gripe is the 27" iMac comes standard with only 8GB, while the 15" MacBook Pro has came with 16GB standard since 2014... I'm guessing most people are going to the aftermarket to throw 32-64GB in there anyway. Apple offers the 16GB upgrade (from 8GB) for $200, but you can buy 32GB of RAM for $150 and install it yourself.

save_ferris 6y ago
Yeah, I’m totally fine with 8GB standard since aftermarket memory is so much cheaper than what Apple offers and it’s really easy to install.
jdhawk 6y ago
> but you can buy 32GB of RAM for $150 and install it yourself. what? Since when did they offer a DIY upgrade path?
- apocalyptic0n3 6y ago
  Haven't the iMac and Mac Mini always offered (relatively) easy memory upgrades? I've upgraded probably 10-15 of them at work. They just use the samller laptop modules instead of a desktop module, and (usually?) only support 2 modules. Mac Pro offers it too, though that's a different style of computer entirely.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    The post-lamp iMac has always offered user-replaceable SODIMM slots in a number sufficient to occupy all of the CPU's memory channels. The late 2009 model had 4 on the bottom, the 2015 has 2 one the back, these new ones have 2 and the Pro model has 4 (because the Pro CPU has 4 channels).
    - bluedino 6y ago

speedgoose 6y ago

The iMac would be so much more interesting with a touchscreen and a pencil, like the overpriced Microsoft Surface Studio.

volkk 6y ago
if that were to happen, then its price point would be unimaginable
_ph_ 6y ago
I wonder what the ARM based iMacs will bring. There is a lot of talk about a fundamental redesign and Big Sur really looks like being designed for touch. If an iMac should support touch and pencil, it would need a foot similar to the one of the Surface Studio too.
naravara 6y ago
I'm not really sure about that. It would probably be useful for artists and draftsmen, but I keep my iMac pretty far from my face while I would want to keep a drawing table pretty close. The Studio was really cool as a design concept, but I'm not sure how well it translated from showroom to daily use for anyone who isn't a professional artist. And even for professional artists, I have to imaging the portability of an iPad Pro probably blows it out of the water for those use cases. Some people think it's more natural to move their canvas around the pen than vice-versa, so just being able to move the device/screen around is huge.

gjvc 6y ago

8GB RAM is pretty derisory for a 2020 machine. Is there a RAM shortage somewhere I haven't heard about?

zamadatix 6y ago
It's so the "starting at" price is low but they can mark up RAM and Storage upgrades when you actually go to order as if they were the expensive piece. They are making something like 80% margin when you max out the RAM, I assume similar for the "SSD storage" of ambiguous type. Dell did the same thing with the RAM in a 7740 and 7750 I recently ordered (work and personal), ironically about the same markup.
- josho 6y ago
  I swear that the MBAs are ruining the world. This is the crap that mature industries pull to grow profit since they've saturated other growth channels. Instead of product growth, MBAs come up with product bundlings to maximize profit by obscuring the true cost to customers.
icedchai 6y ago
I have a first generation iMac 27" 5K (late 2014.) They were shipping with 8 gigs back then and I immediately upgraded to 24G. It's ridiculous that 8 gigs is still the default config! I recently ordered one of the new Raspberry Pi 4's with that much.
rbanffy 6y ago
My wife has an 8 GB Macbook Pro and she's quite happy with that. For most uses (and she usually has a dozen Word documents open at any time) it's perfectly fine and the machine is quite snappy. OTOH, I'd expect the average HN user to need a lot more. I'm currently finding 16 GB a bit constrained and would be delighted to have 32 in the same footprint. The server under my desk has 64 and the swap indicators tell me it should have more (or less stuff to do).

saos 6y ago

> The 27-inch iMac now comes standard with SSDs across the line Well. Wow. > Apple today also announced that its 21.5-inch iMac will come standard with SSDs across the line for the first time. Double wow I'll be holding out for complete iMac redesign with ARM. I'm hoping something will be announced at their event?

JosephRedfern 6y ago
I had the same reaction. It pains me to use a machine that has a HDD... I had no idea that Apple were selling new, £1000+ machines that relied in spinning rust.
- sukilot 6y ago
  If Apple sold a decent £1000 machine then they wouldn't sell £1800 machines.
ShamelessC 6y ago
As someone who never purchased an iMac, but enjoys Apple's MacBook line of products - it blows my mind that people are praising them for this. Considering the price point, this should have been the case like 4 years ago.

jeffbee 6y ago

I'm always interested in the differences between Apple's Intel OEM CPUs and the ones Intel lists in their catalog. There is no 10th-gen Core i9 CPU that exactly matches what Apple is selling here. In the iMac Pro they are installing a Xeon-W part that has almost twice as much cache as the standard part (43MB vs 25MB). They're not saying how much cache is in the new 27" iMac.

dehrmann 6y ago
I'm picturing some binning shenanigans on Intel's part and Apple doing enough benchmarks to pick a minimum amount of cache. Or maybe Intel offered them something with odd specs that they have too many of?
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Actually is it just marketing shenanigans instead? Are they adding the L2 and L3 together to get their advertised cache size?
  - Dave_Rosenthal 6y ago
    Yes
  - ksec 6y ago
    Yes. It was one of the common misconception that Apple had different parts / spec due to its cache size.
EricE 6y ago
Usually it comes down to either not being socketed or as with the cheese grater mac Pro's the CPUs lacked the integrated heat spreader. Sometimes it's cache or clock variations, but usually it's more along the lines of the chip packaging that differs.

fuj 6y ago

The specs are actually good, but those thick 2015 bezels on the other hand...

tambourine_man 6y ago

Nice. The iMac Pro is getting harder to justify. Specially with that sweet nano-texture glass coating. I wonder how they justify charging US$ 500 for the coating on the iMac and US$ 1.000 on the Pro Display XDR. 32" vs 27" don't seem enough.

PStamatiou 6y ago
Nano-texture is a blessing and a curse in my experience... https://twitter.com/Stammy/status/1290673590380244994 https://twitter.com/Stammy/status/1290673590380244994
- tambourine_man 6y ago
  Yeah, I know. They even provide you with a standard approved cloth, which is hilarious. Still, the results are amazing and anyone who dares to even get their filthy greasy fingers near my screen, let alone touch it, are in for some serious trouble anyway. In the case of a nano-texture screen, I should probably require people to sign an insurance agreement to be in the same room as the device.

dylan604 6y ago

Just did the fun "what kind of car could I buy instead" of maxing out the specs on an Apple computer. 10 cores, 128GB RAM, 16GB GPU, 8TB SSD, 10GB ethernet comes out to $8799. ~ A used Civic/Corolla I guess. Not as sticker shocking as the maxed MacPro. Would love to see how the machine performs though.

icedchai 6y ago
Now price out an AMD Threadripper build for the same price and compare the performance. You'll be shocked how overpriced the MacPro is...

_ph_ 6y ago

Nice spec-bump for those, who want to stay with Intel-based Macs a bit longer (e.g. depend on x86-virtualisation, running Windows). While I was about ready to upgrade my current iMac in 2020, I am going to try to hold out till the step to Apple Silicon. The one thing I would hope for would be a bigger screen. The 27" is a tiny bit too small, especially vertically. Considering that Apple once sold the 30" Cinema display, the step to 27" always felt like a step back. When going to a design with less bezels, they really should use some of the saved space for a bigger screen.

look_lookatme 6y ago

I wish I could use it as an external display. I would buy one as my personal machine and then use the display during the day with my MBP for work. Would be nice in this new world of remote work.

pak9rabid 6y ago
Is Target Display Mode no longer supported on these?
- mikestew 6y ago
  It is no longer supported. See my reply to sibling comment.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    I believe no Retina iMac ever supported it. Having mentioned that, it'd be awesome if we could plug it into a MacBook Pro via USB-C and use it as a power supply, an eGPU, and an external monitor. And maybe also mount the disks. That would be great.
    - anentropic 6y ago
      Agreed, I would actually consider buying an iMac in that case
Someone 6y ago
Never used it, so I don’t know how well it works, but https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204592 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204592: “With target display mode, you can use your iMac as an external display for another Mac.”
- mikestew 6y ago
  From that same article: "This article has been archived and is no longer updated by Apple." Because Target Display Mode is no longer supported: "Make sure that your iMac is using macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 or earlier. You can't use target display mode with later versions of macOS, or with Boot Camp and Windows."

pornel 6y ago

Only the $2300 model has an option of upgrading to 5700XT for an extra $500, and that's not even a high-end GPU.

pat2man 6y ago
90% of people don't need more than what's in the iMac. For pros who would use it the iMac Pro or Mac Pro are the obvious choices. For gamers Apple has been ignoring the market and everyone knows you are better off building your own rig.
badsectoracula 6y ago
5700 XT is a very high end GPU, especially the 16GB option (can you even buy a 5700 XT with16GB for PC? I can't find any in the local price aggregator, all of them are 8GB). It isn't the fastest GPU you can buy, but it is still a high end one. If anything, this is the first time i see an iMac which has a good GPU. Though considering iMac's form factor and my experience of having a PC with a 5700XT i wonder about thermals.
- kitsunesoba 6y ago
  Yeah the 5700 XT is roughly on par with a 2070 Super, which isn't bad at all even if it isn't a 2080Ti.
beervirus 6y ago
It's weird how restricted the choices are on SSDs too. The $1800 model is stuck at 256GB, the $2000 model lets you do 512/1TB/2TB, and the $2300 model adds options for 4TB/8TB. Like, this has to be a totally artificial restriction. I'd much rather buy the cheap one with a bigger SSD, but instead I'm stuck paying hundreds of dollars extra for features I don't care about.

jasoneckert 6y ago

I definitely agree with the general consensus here that this is a solid spec bump, and most welcome at that! And like others, it made me think of their transition to ARM. I know the first ARM Macs this fall will be their lowend MacBook and 13" MBP line, but at WWDC they said the Intel to ARM transition would be complete in under 2 years (like they said with the PPC to Intel transition). And since the PPC to Intel transition only took a little over a year, it could mean that ARM-based iMacs may be here next year to replace the current iMac lineup, and I'm dreadfully curious as to whether they'll be lower performing than this iMac update (which is quite impressive, performance-wise). Or perhaps they'll use multiple ARM CPUs to boost performance. Regardless, every time I see a spec bump now from Apple, I can't help but think of these things.

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
Just my speculation, but rather than “lowering the specs“, I think they’re positioning themselves to release a “budget” option in the $800 range with a 4k screen, which will probably match performance with the low end intel iMac. Matching encoding speeds with Apple Silicon is probably an easier task, since they can create on-chip, hardware accelerated encoders, which exist on iPhones already.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  The current bottom end is $1099 and that's the last model with a low-dpi screen. I'd be surprised to see the price drop much below that when it gets renewed.

vincnetas 6y ago

"Up to 65 percent more plug-ins in Logic Pro X." ?

thelittlenag 6y ago
I think they mean that you are now able to load/use that many more plugins than you could before?

jakobov 6y ago

it needs thicker bezels

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

Oooh...I'd hate to be the one that shelled out $5K for an iMac Pro. I guess that critter will be seeing a bump of its own, soon.

rsynnott 6y ago
They're more or less at the mercy of the Xeon release cycle for that.

thelittlenag 6y ago

Shipping with 8GB memory by default just seems absurd. Also, having only 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports seems a little light as well. I would hope to have had 4 ports at least.

sukilot 6y ago
The have to do that in order to offer a machine that has a low price with their 40+% margin. Apple only does value-based pricing. They'd charge you a percentage of your income if they could figure out how.
rbanffy 6y ago
A lot of Mac users get the computer and never plug anything to it besides a phone or some USB sticks. If all you want is a computer you can read your e-mail on, 8 GB is fine. Memory, AFAIK, is upgradable post-purchase in all current models.
- Dahoon 6y ago
  It isn't on all models unless you pay Apple to do so.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    It was until the previous 27" model, at least: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201191 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201191 The 21.5", however, is a different story.
beervirus 6y ago
Also, the three standard configurations (i.e., the ones you'll be able to walk into an Apple store and pick up, rather than ordering a different configuration online) max out at a 512 GB SSD. It's just bizarrely small.

city17 6y ago

Seems like they're going to save the new redesign of the iMacs for the first ARM releases.... at least I hope, otherwise it's really disappointing.

rbanffy 6y ago

Most interesting that, now, the only Mac you can buy with a (SSD-cached) hard disk is the 21" iMac. I guess the next update will get rid of any vestigial spinning metal storage.

savoytruffle 6y ago
It seems very important to Apple to get the T2 (similar to an iPhone 7 CPU) controller chip into all the Macs. But it seems unable to accomodate internal HDD or Fusion drives. And Most of the 21.5" models are bargain basement (as far as that goes for Apple) models. Fusion drives were an interesting digression, but obviously not the wave of da future.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  Indeed. With M2 sticks with 8+ GB hard drives become an oddity. I have a laptop with dual storage and the largest hard drive that fits is 2 TB, but, on the M2 side, it can go way beyond that.

n3k5 6y ago

“SSDs across the line with quadruple the storage” 1/4 TB of storage in the $1800 model, 1/2 TB in the $2300 one. Ugh. (So before the lower-end one had 64GB? [Edit: Nope, 1 TB Fusion Drive, thanks smnrchrds!] That would be FULL just from installing the one game the press release mentions.) What kind of magic fairy dust SSDs are they using that you can't have a sensible amount of storage space at those prices? Looking at the upgrade options (which aren't even available for the lower-end model), they charge $300 per TB.

smnrchrds 6y ago
> So before the lower-end one had 64GB? No, the lower end ones came with "Fusion Drive", that was 32-128 GB of SSD merged with a 1TB HDD presented as a single disk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_Drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_Drive
- saagarjha 6y ago
  They dropped down to less than that in the middle, almost completely negating their benefit since everything something you needed would always end up on the slow spinny drive :/
- KptMarchewa 6y ago
  The audacity they had selling spinning drives for personal computing in 2020.
  - EricE 6y ago
    Meh - my Mom's iMac has the 2TB fusion drive and it works surprisingly well. When I dual boot it into bootcamp with Windows you can tell the SSD caching is not there; it's pretty obvious. Sticking a 32GB SSD (formatted NTFS) and dedicating it to readyboost helps a bit, but it's still no where near as effective as fusion under Mac OS. Obviously being pure SSD would be better, but when she got it almost five years ago that much SSD - even third party - would have been cost prohibitive and it's still pretty expensive to get 2TB as all SSD.
  - 6y ago

wackget 6y ago

Why is this advertisement written as if it's a news article? Starting it with `Cupertino, California -` as if it's breaking news and then launching into a complete sales pitch is just so slimy.

CydeWeys 6y ago
This is a typical press release. It's been a standard format for decades.

tomcat27 6y ago

Better camera, that's the only thing I see useful to an average user.

Aaronstotle 6y ago

I can't believe it took so long for Apple to add SSDs to the basic configuration. I had the misfortune of coming into a company who purchased 2017 21" iMacs and they were almost worthless with how slow the fusion drive is.

sukilot 6y ago
You can upgrade to SSD. It's not supported but it's possible with normal tools.

dschuetz 6y ago

I saw "Intel" and I laughed out loud. Wow. The nerve Apple has trying to sell Intel-Macs after announcing the change to ARM!

_ph_ 6y ago
There are people, who require a new machine now, so it is good that they get an up to date offering. Also, there are people, who need x86 compatibility when running virtual machines. Also, as long as Apple expects developers to support x86 Macs, they need to offer x86-based machines for those developers.
saagarjha 6y ago
After announcing on stage at WWDC that they would do exactly this?

supernova87a 6y ago

I still find it fascinating how the choice of Intel chip generation is almost an afterthought (well, maybe only for a minority, but do most buyers look carefully? are they aware?) in the difference between models or computers when you click to buy something. Is this a strategy of Apple (or Intel) to be able to get people to ignore (and therefore they can optimize the cost of) the generation of chip used? It's almost as if they realized people fixate on the GHz figure, and overlook the chip generation, which (I guess?) must contribute much more to effective clock speed than a small difference in Hz rate? I even fall into this trap sometimes. It is a bit complicated for the casual buyer to have the clock speed which was the previous metric of "goodness" of your machine now have to be weighed with the generation of processor. When the name of the processor itself doesn't provide clear differentiation between generations.

thomasedwards 6y ago
I still don’t fully understand this world, I ‘downgraded’ from an i7 to a slower i5, and my computer got faster. I wish they’d use sensible clear names for the generations so you can clearly understand what’s better.
- jandrese 6y ago
  The first number after the i# is the generation. i5-5350 is fifth generation, i3-9350k is ninth generation. That said, the difference between generations is pretty minimal thanks to Intel's huge process blunder last decade. If you want to know which chip is actually faster for your workload that turns out to be a fairly difficult question to answer. A lot depends on what you're trying to accomplish and how your code is built.
  - supernova87a 6y ago
    And I would point out, the level of chip model detail you gave above isn't even provided in the buying screens! For some users this is ok -- does the fact of not providing it give some hint about what level of user is being aimed at? I think even for the Mac Pro, they don't go into this detail.

paulpan 6y ago

This essentially confirms Apple's strategy to just refresh existing models/chassis without redesigns going forward; the new Apple chips will be used exclusively for redesigned/relaunches like the Macbook. Smart move since it increases the appeal of the Apple-powered Mac devices. The pricing difference will also help, as based on the expensive base configurations (RAM, SSD as others have pointed out here), it will make the new devices look that much more attractive.

skohan 6y ago
Is there credible evidence the new devices will actually be cheaper? It hasn’t been the trend with Apple product launches
- spideymans 6y ago
  Apple sells an iPad for $349, and their new iPhone SE, with their most powerful SOC, is just $399.
  - Dahoon 6y ago
    "just"
    - EricE 6y ago
      "just"? Pretty ridiculous snark since you can't by an Android device at any price that's faster. "just" indeed...
    - whynotminot 6y ago
      Lol what smartphones are you buying?
- rsynnott 6y ago
  They've been cutting low-end prices (and raising high-end price via introducing a Pro tier) on iOS devices for a while.
- 6y ago

karmelapple 6y ago

> T2 ... makes transcoding HEVC video up to twice as fast as the previous generation So the T2's processing power is used to augment the main CPU and graphics card's power. This seems like a new development, but maybe it's been known for awhile?

perardi 6y ago
Not new. Obscure! But not new. https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/04/09/apples-t2-chip-makes-a-giant-difference-in-video-encoding-for-most-users https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/04/09/apples-t2-chip-ma...

ianwalter 6y ago

I'm sorry, I know it's a minor cosmetic thing, but those bezels make it look so dated that I can't really see it as new. Not that it matters since I will probably never buy an iMac again after experiencing the issues with dust getting beneath the glass of my last iMac 5k.

achow 6y ago

>..new nano-texture glass option for an even more stunning Retina 5K display I hope next iPad also gets this textured glass, it would be so much better as a drawing writing pad.

fmajid 6y ago

Presumably you cannot install Mojave on these, only Catalina. I sacrificed a Mac to Catalina, then wiped it back to Mojave. Hopefully Big Sur will fix the flaming dumpster fire that is Catalina, but I am not hopeful and working on my Linux migration plan.

simonklitj 6y ago
Curious about the bugs in Catalina that made it useless for you. Have been on it since the public beta, and haven't really had anything that has made it impossible to do things I used to do. Care to elaborate? (Edit: I did on 10.15.13 have a bug where I couldn't access files and folders on the desktop, and had to repeatedly reboot. Downgraded to 10.15.12 and went to 10.15.14 when that came out and fixed it. Will admit that this was incredibly frustrating!)

minerjoe 6y ago

Wonderful computer. How much you wanna bet that in < 5 years they drop support forcing almost everyone that purchased one to throw it out and get a new one?

gnomesteel 6y ago
I'd take that bet. Apple is generally good about keeping old machines working.
- beervirus 6y ago
  For 5 years, you're probably right. For 10 years, I think not. For example, the 2011 iMacs are stuck on High Sierra, which hits end of life later this year.
newscracker 6y ago
Firstly, you have to consider that Apple has said the transition to ARM will take about two years. So it’s going to have to release a few more Intel Macs next year too. For the less than five years bet, if you’re referring to macOS updates, I can personally bet my entire wealth (which is a decent figure) that you’ll lose. There’s no way the Intel Macs released this year are going to lose macOS support for another six years (into 2026), at the very least. The latest macOS (Big Sur) that’s now in beta supports models that are seven years old (or even older than that). If you’re referring to hardware support and repairs, there are standard ages for each model that Apple uses for that purpose to define what’s obsolete, vintage, etc. I’m sure these will follow the same cycle.
- minerjoe 6y ago
  Yea, I got the timeline wrong. More like 10 years. I've worked e-waste recycling and the number of beautiful but unsupported macs that were dropped off was very sad and to this day I definitely consider Apple a significant force for evil on this planet, just for the planned obsolecense ecological damage alone, let alone the right to repair. I've gotten linux running on a few of them and they are wonderful machines. Sad that the owners had to throw them in the trash.

_ph_ 6y ago

The one thing I keep missing on my 5k iMac is some form of video-in. Would be great if I could connect my MB Pro to it and use the iMac as a display. Perhaps even in a window and all mouse and keyboard events to the window get passed to the connected MacBook.

pier25 6y ago
Yeah, and once something goes wrong with the iMac you could still use it as a monitor.
- wiredfool 6y ago
  I had one of the appropriate era, and ultimately, the display went. (After roasting several drives, thermal management was not a high point on those machines)
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gnicholas 6y ago
Yeah my 2008 iMac had this functionality, and I was supposed/bummed to hear they got rid of it a few years later. I’d think Apple would keep the feature around, if only to make it easier for people to buy both a Mac laptop and Mac desktop. My wife would totally use one at work if it were easy, and I’d love to have one for us at home. But instead we just get laptops with fans that come on all the time, and SSDs that are far too small.
askafriend 6y ago
This is the reason I went Mac Mini + LG 5k display. It's much more expensive but I needed to be able to hook in my work laptop to a 5k display while working and switch easily to my home setup with a single cable when I want to. Ended up being perfect! It's paying off big time with COVID and WFH.
- _ph_ 6y ago
  I had a Mini before the iMac, but the Mini had the problem of the lacking GPU. Also, at the time I got the iMac (2015), the Mini was really falling behind. The iMac gave me a quad-core i7 and a GPU. I wished the Mini was available with hardware comparable to the 16" MB Pro. (8 cores, GPU) If Apple only offered a desktop class Mac, I would even start thinking about the pro display.

jmpman 6y ago

Bring back target display mode!

jhatemyjob 6y ago

ORRR you can just build your own PC and run macOS in a vm

theodric 6y ago

Who would buy an x86 Mac now?

beervirus 6y ago
Someone who doesn't want to hassle with ARM software compatibility issues until the kinks get worked out?

reaperducer 6y ago

Since these iMacs have the T2 chip, does that open the possibility of keyboards with fingerprint authentication, like on the laptops?

doener 6y ago

"SSDs across the line" Welcome to 2010, Apple.

dopamean 6y ago

I'll never understand the pricing. $1000 extra to get 64gb of memory? Incredible. What circumstance leads a purchaser to look at that and say, "ok sounds great?"

kccqzy 6y ago
People who want a Mac but don't need performance.
- dopamean 6y ago
  I meant who shells out the extra 1k and is ok with that.
  - kstrauser 6y ago
    My boss. I mean, we don't have unlimited cash to throw away, but let's say I'm going to keep a new Mac for 4 years (which is a lot less time than I'll probably actually have it, but we'll round down). I work about 2,000 hours a year, or about 8,000 hours over the time I'll own it. That $1,000 amortizes out to be about $0.13 per hour, which is a rounding error compared to salary, benefits, air conditioning at the office (back in the old days when that use to be a thing), etc. If that makes me 0.2% more efficient -- say by making compiles or "docker build" commands run faster -- then the company made a profit off of it.
    - beervirus 6y ago
      But the RAM is trivial to upgrade. Why not just do it yourself for half the price?

lovetocode 6y ago

I bought a 27” 5k iMac a few years ago and it just made me hate Apple more. I am irritated that they have a monopoly on iOS development.

gfiorav 6y ago

My employer has decided to stop offering Macs for work machines. I think the dev era for Mac might be close to ending

maz1b 6y ago

As expected. They're not going to do a radical form factor redesign and update for Intel based chips, they're saving the all new iMac design for the ARM transition for the extra wow factor. Not sure if the value proposition is there though for a specced out iMac.

omarhaneef 6y ago

The best thing about the introduction of a new line is that the previous line is cheaper.

itsthecourier 6y ago

I bought (and regret to) an iMac around 2 years ago, the "fusion" drive was absurd. I was paying thousands of dollars and getting no SSD. what the fuck is Apple thinking. Let's wrap our minds around this: Marketing is proud of offer SSD in a desktop in 2020.

m0xte 6y ago

Well they can quite frankly fuck off with that one. The 32gb additional memory option costs 4x the price of the entire 32gb of ram in my desktop. It costs independently 60% of the cost of my desktop pc base unit just for the upgrade. The bottom end unit features 256gb SSD (probably soldered) and the next tier up wants +£200 to go from 512 to 1TiB. My entire 1TB Samsung evo plus nvme cost £165. The 5k display isn’t worth it for my use case so I’ve got a 27” iiyama 4K display I paid £379 for. I suspect for 90% of people the story is the same. Add the shit show that has been Catalina so far and this is a comedy gouging. Edit: equivalent spec of my desktop build is £3399 here. I paid £1520 for my desktop approx: ryzen 3700x, 32gb ram, 1TB ssd, gtx1660, 27” 4K display, decent mechanical keyboard, decent mouse, Windows 10 pro. Where is the £1879 advantage?

cactus2093 6y ago
Yes, Apple charges a premium over custom building a PC with equivalent parts. Not anything new or shocking there.
- m0xte 6y ago
  So add £200 to the base. Where’s my £1679 advantage? Also I’m paying full retail not OEM prices for these parts.
  - millstone 6y ago
    Obviously Apple is not courting the pcpartspicker market. This is competing against products like HP Envy 32, Microsoft Surface Studio 2, etc which are priced similarly. You pay a premium for the design and form factor.
    - m0xte 6y ago
      Ah yes the design with the ports on the back that get scratched up, the unopenable case without destroying the screen cables, the dangerously fragile corners, the thermal issues, the proprietary storage thermal monitoring and the fact it’s all in one lump so if something goes wrong you’re in trouble. I have repaired a few and own one (2015) I think the design is absolutely dire.

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antonhalim 6y ago

I am surprised how little bezel is discussed here, Apple has been keeping the almost 2 inches bezel for a decade.

LeoPanthera 6y ago
I don't see the relevance of the size of the bezel on a desktop display that isn't portable.
- antonhalim 6y ago
  Why not? then why TVs do that?

Tepix 6y ago

I can't believe they left the big fat bezel unchanged. It makes the machine look really outdated.

emdowling 6y ago
This is likely the final iteration of this design and for Intel processors. They’ll save the redesign for Apple Silicon. They are definitely road testing a few new technologies for that future iteration, like the new screen technology.

mschuster91 6y ago

> iMac Pro now comes standard with a 10-core Intel Xeon processor. How in hell is Apple squeezing a Xeon into an iMac without the thing either melting or being louder than a jet turbine?!

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
Quiet fans and vents: https://www.imore.com/sites/imore.com/files/styles/larger/public/field/image/2017/12/imac-pro-back-vent.jpg https://www.imore.com/sites/imore.com/files/styles/larger/pu...

fiblye 6y ago

I bought a 2012 iMac with 8GB of memory as the baseline. We’re more than halfway through 2020 and Apple is telling us 8GB is still just fine for a >$2000 computer?

stuart78 6y ago
Given their crazy RAM price markups, I prefer to have this option so that I can buy my own RAM from another source.
- blparker 6y ago
  Is the RAM in newer iMac models upgradable or is it soldered to the motherboard?
- gautamcgoel 6y ago
  Pretty sure you can't upgrade the RAM in the newer models.

bitL 6y ago

"A computer gets an incremental update." It's really a great win for Apple marketing that anybody even discusses such a silly news...

super_mario 6y ago

Interesting machine. But no way would I buy this now. It will be obsolete in 2 years.

plg 6y ago

How does it compare for practical speed to an iMac Pro circa 2018? Asking for a friend ;)

stickyricky 6y ago

Its a shame the screen update didn't translate into smaller bezels.

musicale 6y ago

Apple needs to bring back Target Display mode, which allows the iMac to be usable as a monitor long after its internals have become obsolete.

willio58 6y ago
Didn’t know this used to be a thing. I’ve always wanted this.
- musicale 6y ago
  It looks like the last iMacs with (Thunderbolt) Target Display Mode came out int 2014, but the Retina (and later) models don't support it unfortunately: https://www.lifewire.com/use-imac-as-monitor-with-target-display-mode-2260906 https://www.lifewire.com/use-imac-as-monitor-with-target-dis... No reason Apple can't bring it back - it greatly increases the value and lifespan of an iMac!!

musicale 6y ago

I can see why they didn't roll this out at WWDC! Great machine and no Apple Silicon as yet (which may be a huge advantage if you still need to run Boot Camp or x86 VMs.) I'm also excited about the nano-texture display. I've learned to live with reflective displays because I'm addicted to their high contrast and deep blacks, but nano-texture sounds like the best of both worlds. Nice that they upgraded the anemic FaceTime camera and pulled the plug on the low-speed hard disk (even if it was configured as a fusion drive.) Apple has generally had decent mics and speakers as well, so it's exciting that they are trying to make them even better. Anyone who has suffered through horrible zoom audio will appreciate the benefits of good mics (and not using zoom, which seems to make bad audio even worse.)

xhruso00 6y ago

Is the RAM self-upgradable with T2 chip?

indianhippie 6y ago
Yes it is. This might be the last iMac with user accessible RAM chip though.
- xhruso00 6y ago
  I didn't know 21.5' is not user upgradable. Only 27 https://support.apple.com/guide/imac/install-memory-in-your-27-inch-imac-apdd768f6349/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/imac/install-memory-in-your-...

GeertB 6y ago

After 3 weeks of waiting, I just got my new iMac. Paid $4399 before tax. Old specs, same price as new one with improved camera, 2 additional cores etc. :-( I can't use Zoom with the camera of the old model, without using a 3rd party tool, as the color balance is way off making everybody purple/red. Sad.

dayaz36 6y ago

It doesn't matter what they release, they've already Osborne effected themselves as soon as they announced they're transitioning to ARM chips in a couple years

P4wl0w 6y ago

It does not make any sense for me to buy new macs anymore - especially when I have to run the new macos, which will take SECONDS to open apps that open in MILLISECONDS when you switch off wifi or just use a good OS. Also I do not like their beta product experiments they tend to run on customers since years - I will wait for years before I trust their hard- and software to be useful for work or even personal things. If they want me to beta test they should give me money for it.