It would be great if a vendor sold iMac mainboard swap kits to convert older models into general purpose monitors. The monitors in iMacs are useful well beyond

It would be great if a vendor sold iMac mainboard swap kits to convert older models into general purpose monitors. The monitors in iMacs are useful well beyond the period Apple supports the builtin computing parts. It would be interesting to see how big a market there is for such a set of products. I suspect a lot of iMacs are collecting dust because they can’t install a version of MacOS that still receives security updates. Ideally, a customer would enter their iMac model and serial number to see if a kit was available so they wouldn’t have to crack open their computer to find the display panel model. This may be complicated because different models have different sets of ports and it’s possible that batches of the same model were made with different LCD panels and display controllers. The varying ports would not be an issue if customers were willing to modify their cases with a rotary grinder. The resulting monitors would have DisplayPort (regular & USB-C), HDMI, and DVI-I inputs that could be switched between. A builtin USB hub would also be great. It would be better if the embedded iSight webcam was connected to the USB hub internally and the audio jacks repurposed to utilize the builtin microphone and amplified speakers. In an alternate universe Apple could have included a monitor input port and let users switch between displaying the internal and external computers. They sort of did this with Thunderbolt on a few models but that was only useful with other Macs. I really wish the iMac had never been an all-in-one product and instead was a minitower or pizza box chassis with regular PCI Express slots and a separate monitor but here we are. In that scenario, folks with less compute and expansion needs would get a Mac Mini. Is connecting 3 extra cables (monitor, monitor power, and USB) such a heavy lift?