Oh and the 8GB of RAM they've come with by default since 2013 is getting pretty damn stingy now, especially as it's not upgradable on the smaller model. The best model of both sizes should at a minimum include 12GB RAM, but why do that when you can rip people off with a £300 RAM upgrade?
I have yet to run into any issues with 8GB of RAM I got in my 2018 Mac mini. There's no reason for everyone to have over 8GB of RAM today. Only people who care about specs care to have more RAM than they need. And yes, I even run my Mac in Windows, play games, etc and I've never had issues pertaining to lack of RAM.
Ohhh sorry I never realised your use case was the same as most other people. My iMac with 12GB RAM right now has just 1GB free. The rest is used by Safari, Xcode, VSCode, the Windowserver and iTunes(!). Good luck running Windows with 4GB of RAM and expecting any kind of performance. My friend does a small amount of science research, using her Mac to write reports and papers. It has only 8GB (non-expandable) RAM. It is always out of RAM, taking 8 or 9 seconds just to open a tab in Safari. And that's with a SSD. Another friend's iMac that I mentioned earlier has 8GB RAM and a HDD. More than a few tabs open in Safari with maybe Word or Excel running in the background and the HDD is thrashing trying to keep up. it's a bad experience.
In any case you're missing the point: for a machine positioned as the "best" configuration, to have only 8GB of RAM is verging on scandalous. People buying that configuration aren't doing run-of-the-mill Number/Excel/Pages work, they're power users. They'll almost certainly need more than 8GB RAM. Why do you keep making excuses for Apple giving customers a bad experience, for a company that can easily afford to stop ripping off its customers? I'm a big an Apple fan as the next guy, and I hold Apple shares, but I don't assume my use case is the same as everyone's, and I can see their flaws and ripoffs.
That is exactly the point: that base model is apparently targeted to home users, not power users. If you expect pro performance from a affordable 4K home computer then sorry man, it is you that must go back the same day, not the computer. Why would you use Windows in 4 GB? BootCamp it and use the full 12 GB. If you need to use a VM then consider at least 8 GB for both OS and make it 16 GB RAM. If you choose 12 GB RAM configuration for your pro work in Xcode VScode and alike then that is your business decision, I wish you a better deal a.s.a.p.
This Dell is £1029, slightly less than the base iMac. It has an 8th Gen i5, newer than the iMac. It has faster RAM. It has a much better GPU, a Nvidia GTX1050 vs Intel Integrated. It has a 128GB SSD and a 7200RPM 1TB HDD. Still think the iMac should have an SSD? Granted, the display is likely to be better (though the iMac one is smaller, and neither are 4k)
The iMac is actually much closer to Dell's £749 offering. That still has a faster HDD, and faster RAM, though the graphics are slightly worse. Other than that, you get pretty much the same machine for £300 less. Of course you have to then deal with Windows, but Windows 10 whilst not exactly great, is nowhere near as bad as older versions. I love Apple, but the prices are just becoming ridiculous. The prices are markedly affecting sales, but for some reason Cook is obsessed with maximising profit, even if it means less sales and ultimately, less total revenue.
This 2017 1 terabyte which has a 32gb fusion (not 64gb like the previous poster said) is terrible at launching apps.
Oh geez I didn't realise they'd gone down to just 32GB now. That's a f**king piss take.
This is not the 2019 4K iMac described in the article, this is the $1099 1080p iMac you're comparing. The article says: "The 21.5-inch 4K iMac that we're reviewing is the base model iMac that you can buy for $1,299 (or on sale for $1,249 at Amazon) and it features a Quad-core i3 Processor, 8GB of RAM, a 5400RPM 1TB Hard Drive, and it's also equipped with a Radeon Pro 555X with 2GB of VRAM."
Oh and the 8GB of RAM they've come with by default since 2013 is getting pretty damn stingy now, especially as it's not upgradable on the smaller model. The best model of both sizes should at a minimum include 12GB RAM, but why do that when you can rip people off with a £300 RAM upgrade?
I have yet to run into any issues with 8GB of RAM I got in my 2018 Mac mini. There's no reason for everyone to have over 8GB of RAM today. Only people who care about specs care to have more RAM than they need. And yes, I even run my Mac in Windows, play games, etc and I've never had issues pertaining to lack of RAM.
Ohhh sorry I never realised your use case was the same as most other people. My iMac with 12GB RAM right now has just 1GB free. The rest is used by Safari, Xcode, VSCode, the Windowserver and iTunes(!). Good luck running Windows with 4GB of RAM and expecting any kind of performance. My friend does a small amount of science research, using her Mac to write reports and papers. It has only 8GB (non-expandable) RAM. It is always out of RAM, taking 8 or 9 seconds just to open a tab in Safari. And that's with a SSD. Another friend's iMac that I mentioned earlier has 8GB RAM and a HDD. More than a few tabs open in Safari with maybe Word or Excel running in the background and the HDD is thrashing trying to keep up. it's a bad experience.
In any case you're missing the point: for a machine positioned as the "best" configuration, to have only 8GB of RAM is verging on scandalous. People buying that configuration aren't doing run-of-the-mill Number/Excel/Pages work, they're power users. They'll almost certainly need more than 8GB RAM. Why do you keep making excuses for Apple giving customers a bad experience, for a company that can easily afford to stop ripping off its customers? I'm a big an Apple fan as the next guy, and I hold Apple shares, but I don't assume my use case is the same as everyone's, and I can see their flaws and ripoffs.
That is exactly the point: that base model is apparently targeted to home users, not power users. If you expect pro performance from a affordable 4K home computer then sorry man, it is you that must go back the same day, not the computer. Why would you use Windows in 4 GB? BootCamp it and use the full 12 GB. If you need to use a VM then consider at least 8 GB for both OS and make it 16 GB RAM. If you choose 12 GB RAM configuration for your pro work in Xcode VScode and alike then that is your business decision, I wish you a better deal a.s.a.p.
No, the point is the best model still has only 8GB RAM. And as I said, my friend's brand new base model iMac is slow as molasses. It's much slower than the 2015 base MBP it replaced, and slower than my 2012 iMac. That's ridiculous, and it's all down to the HDD being so crap. Also, the base iMac isn't 4k. Nor is it "affordable". You just said you use Windows, and fine if you want to reboot all the time to use the full 8GB you have, otherwise it's 8GB shared between macOS and Windows. And in any case, my iMac is fine with 12GB RAM, even with Windows running in a VM. But 8GB definitely wasn't ok.
Also your point is moot as you've not used a HDD-only iMac. Maybe you'd like me to film my friend's one to prove how slow it is?
This Dell is £1029, slightly less than the base iMac. It has an 8th Gen i5, newer than the iMac. It has faster RAM. It has a much better GPU, a Nvidia GTX1050 vs Intel Integrated. It has a 128GB SSD and a 7200RPM 1TB HDD. Still think the iMac should have an SSD? Granted, the display is likely to be better (though the iMac one is smaller, and neither are 4k)
The iMac is actually much closer to Dell's £749 offering. That still has a faster HDD, and faster RAM, though the graphics are slightly worse. Other than that, you get pretty much the same machine for £300 less. Of course you have to then deal with Windows, but Windows 10 whilst not exactly great, is nowhere near as bad as older versions. I love Apple, but the prices are just becoming ridiculous. The prices are markedly affecting sales, but for some reason Cook is obsessed with maximising profit, even if it means less sales and ultimately, less total revenue.
This 2017 1 terabyte which has a 32gb fusion (not 64gb like the previous poster said) is terrible at launching apps.
Oh geez I didn't realise they'd gone down to just 32GB now. That's a f**king piss take.
This is not the 2019 4K iMac described in the article, this is the $1099 1080p iMac you're comparing. The article says: "The 21.5-inch 4K iMac that we're reviewing is the base model iMac that you can buy for $1,299 (or on sale for $1,249 at Amazon) and it features a Quad-core i3 Processor, 8GB of RAM, a 5400RPM 1TB Hard Drive, and it's also equipped with a Radeon Pro 555X with 2GB of VRAM."
Oh, so it's even more expensive, has an even slower CPU, and still a worse GPU than the Dell. Great, thanks for pointing that out.
This Dell is £1029, slightly less than the base iMac. It has an 8th Gen i5, newer than the iMac. It has faster RAM. It has a much better GPU, a Nvidia GTX1050 vs Intel Integrated. It has a 128GB SSD and a 7200RPM 1TB HDD. Still think the iMac should have an SSD? Granted, the display is likely to be better (though the iMac one is smaller, and neither are 4k)
The iMac is actually much closer to Dell's £749 offering. That still has a faster HDD, and faster RAM, though the graphics are slightly worse. Other than that, you get pretty much the same machine for £300 less. Of course you have to then deal with Windows, but Windows 10 whilst not exactly great, is nowhere near as bad as older versions. I love Apple, but the prices are just becoming ridiculous. The prices are markedly affecting sales, but for some reason Cook is obsessed with maximising profit, even if it means less sales and ultimately, less total revenue.
Anything with an HDD in 2019 (2015, really) is 0 stars out of 5. Come on.
Then don’t buy the cheapest 21” iMac, as the 27” all have Fusion or SSD. If you need the cheapest base model for some reason, upgrade the storage. Problem solved, something for everyone. Users like my dad are not performance oriented, and just want something to hold photos, surf, etc.
A Fusion Drive at least should be included in all the iMacs, especially when all the MacBooks and the old MacBook Air has an SSD and costs less than the iMac. They recently nerfed the Fusion Drive's SSD down to 64GB from the 128GB it used to be. Oh and even the top tier model that starts at £2,250 still has a hard drive. Apple's just taking the piss there. Plus upgrades to a SSD are ridiculously overpriced. Not only that, it's incredulous that the base iMac only has a 5400RPM drive. If that's not nickel and diming I don't know what is, and how you can try and defend that I dont know, and totally discredits anything you say.
A friend recently bought the base HDD iMac before the recent refresh, and it's so sluggish it's embarrassing. It's like a machine that's 5 or 6 years old. Hell, my 2012 iMac is faster than the HDD 2015 model she purchased in 2019.
Upgrade to a fusion drive is just $100. So all your chagrin is for that $100 difference? And if you pay $200 instead of $100 you get 1TB Fusion drive + 8th gen i5 + 4GB GPU. It is not meaningful to default to Fusion drive in all models because only the HDD component of that drive can be partitioned for BootCamp and this is not as easy as partitioning a 1TB HDD.
Yeah, but then as the Fusion drive is only 32GB it isn't much better than a HDD. And Apple's charging $100 for a M.2 SSD that can be bought on eBay, singularly, for £35. Apple will be getting them cheaper than that. That Cook is willing to cause such a crap experience to save £35 on a £1000 machine is really quite saddening.
Great, then build your external SSD solution because you already have Thunderbolt 3. As for the internal, sorry no internal configuration is built with off-the-shelf components, because this is a matter of scale. You can buy one on eBay, but Apple needs to buy these in millions. Let the industrial production be a little different than your DIY fantasies.
This Dell is £1029, slightly less than the base iMac. It has an 8th Gen i5, newer than the iMac. It has faster RAM. It has a much better GPU, a Nvidia GTX1050 vs Intel Integrated. It has a 128GB SSD and a 7200RPM 1TB HDD. Still think the iMac should have an SSD? Granted, the display is likely to be better (though the iMac one is smaller, and neither are 4k)
The iMac is actually much closer to Dell's £749 offering. That still has a faster HDD, and faster RAM, though the graphics are slightly worse. Other than that, you get pretty much the same machine for £300 less. Of course you have to then deal with Windows, but Windows 10 whilst not exactly great, is nowhere near as bad as older versions. I love Apple, but the prices are just becoming ridiculous. The prices are markedly affecting sales, but for some reason Cook is obsessed with maximising profit, even if it means less sales and ultimately, less total revenue.
Anything with an HDD in 2019 (2015, really) is 0 stars out of 5. Come on.
Then don’t buy the cheapest 21” iMac, as the 27” all have Fusion or SSD. If you need the cheapest base model for some reason, upgrade the storage. Problem solved, something for everyone. Users like my dad are not performance oriented, and just want something to hold photos, surf, etc.
A Fusion Drive at least should be included in all the iMacs, especially when all the MacBooks and the old MacBook Air has an SSD and costs less than the iMac. They recently nerfed the Fusion Drive's SSD down to 64GB from the 128GB it used to be. Oh and even the top tier model that starts at £2,250 still has a hard drive. Apple's just taking the piss there. Plus upgrades to a SSD are ridiculously overpriced. Not only that, it's incredulous that the base iMac only has a 5400RPM drive. If that's not nickel and diming I don't know what is, and how you can try and defend that I dont know, and totally discredits anything you say.
A friend recently bought the base HDD iMac before the recent refresh, and it's so sluggish it's embarrassing. It's like a machine that's 5 or 6 years old. Hell, my 2012 iMac is faster than the HDD 2015 model she purchased in 2019.
Upgrade to a fusion drive is just $100. So all your chagrin is for that $100 difference? And if you pay $200 instead of $100 you get 1TB Fusion drive + 8th gen i5 + 4GB GPU. It is not meaningful to default to Fusion drive in all models because only the HDD component of that drive can be partitioned for BootCamp and this is not as easy as partitioning a 1TB HDD.
Yeah, but then as the Fusion drive is only 32GB it isn't much better than a HDD. And Apple's charging $100 for a M.2 SSD that can be bought on eBay, singularly, for £35. Apple will be getting them cheaper than that. That Cook is willing to cause such a crap experience to save £35 on a £1000 machine is really quite saddening.
Great, then build your external SSD solution because you already have Thunderbolt 3. As for the internal, sorry no internal configuration is built with off-the-shelf components, because this is a matter of scale. You can buy one on eBay, but Apple needs to buy these in millions. Let the industrial production be a little different then your DIY fantasies.
Why should I have to fork out several hundred for a Thunderbolt caddy and SSD ontop of that, when Apple could put a SSD in the iMac to begin with?
Sorry what? Do you think someone makes a HDD and SSD for Apple specifically? That's funny, why do the chips have "Samsung" printed on? What about the Intel CPU, is that made bespoke for Apple?
And yes, you're right, it is a matter of scale. As i said before, the more Apple buys, the cheaper they become. If I can buy a 32GB M.2 SSD on eBay for £35, Apple can buy them for much less than that. I'm an electronics engineer, I'm quite well versed with industrial production, thanks, and funny how Dell are able to provide a machine with my apparent "DIY fantasies". The only fantasy is your perception of the performance of the HDD in the iMac.
This demonstrates how sluggish the HDD iMacs are, including my friend's one. That's acceptable to you?
This Dell is £1029, slightly less than the base iMac. It has an 8th Gen i5, newer than the iMac. It has faster RAM. It has a much better GPU, a Nvidia GTX1050 vs Intel Integrated. It has a 128GB SSD and a 7200RPM 1TB HDD. Still think the iMac should have an SSD? Granted, the display is likely to be better (though the iMac one is smaller, and neither are 4k)
The iMac is actually much closer to Dell's £749 offering. That still has a faster HDD, and faster RAM, though the graphics are slightly worse. Other than that, you get pretty much the same machine for £300 less. Of course you have to then deal with Windows, but Windows 10 whilst not exactly great, is nowhere near as bad as older versions. I love Apple, but the prices are just becoming ridiculous. The prices are markedly affecting sales, but for some reason Cook is obsessed with maximising profit, even if it means less sales and ultimately, less total revenue.
This 2017 1 terabyte which has a 32gb fusion (not 64gb like the previous poster said) is terrible at launching apps.
Oh geez I didn't realise they'd gone down to just 32GB now. That's a f**king piss take.
This is not the 2019 4K iMac described in the article, this is the $1099 1080p iMac you're comparing. The article says: "The 21.5-inch 4K iMac that we're reviewing is the base model iMac that you can buy for $1,299 (or on sale for $1,249 at Amazon) and it features a Quad-core i3 Processor, 8GB of RAM, a 5400RPM 1TB Hard Drive, and it's also equipped with a Radeon Pro 555X with 2GB of VRAM."
Oh, so it's even more expensive, has an even slower CPU, and still a worse GPU than the Dell. Great, thanks for pointing that out.
This is 8th generation i3. 8th gen i5 is $200 more. Plus, 1 TB Fusion drive and 4 GB GPU are included into that $200. Not to mention Thunderbolt 3 which is default on all Macs.
This Dell is £1029, slightly less than the base iMac. It has an 8th Gen i5, newer than the iMac. It has faster RAM. It has a much better GPU, a Nvidia GTX1050 vs Intel Integrated. It has a 128GB SSD and a 7200RPM 1TB HDD. Still think the iMac should have an SSD? Granted, the display is likely to be better (though the iMac one is smaller, and neither are 4k)
The iMac is actually much closer to Dell's £749 offering. That still has a faster HDD, and faster RAM, though the graphics are slightly worse. Other than that, you get pretty much the same machine for £300 less. Of course you have to then deal with Windows, but Windows 10 whilst not exactly great, is nowhere near as bad as older versions. I love Apple, but the prices are just becoming ridiculous. The prices are markedly affecting sales, but for some reason Cook is obsessed with maximising profit, even if it means less sales and ultimately, less total revenue.
This 2017 1 terabyte which has a 32gb fusion (not 64gb like the previous poster said) is terrible at launching apps.
Oh geez I didn't realise they'd gone down to just 32GB now. That's a f**king piss take.
This is not the 2019 4K iMac described in the article, this is the $1099 1080p iMac you're comparing. The article says: "The 21.5-inch 4K iMac that we're reviewing is the base model iMac that you can buy for $1,299 (or on sale for $1,249 at Amazon) and it features a Quad-core i3 Processor, 8GB of RAM, a 5400RPM 1TB Hard Drive, and it's also equipped with a Radeon Pro 555X with 2GB of VRAM."
Oh, so it's even more expensive, has an even slower CPU, and still a worse GPU than the Dell. Great, thanks for pointing that out.
This is 8th generation i3. 8th gen i5 is $200 more. Plus, 1 TB Fusion drive and 4 GB GPU are included into that $200. Not to mention Thunderbolt 3 which is default on all Macs.
You literally keep proving my own points for me haha. Let me put it into bullet points for you:
The £1029 Dell is £220 less than the iMac.
The £1029 Dell has a 1TB 7200RPM HDD, and a 128GB SSD. The £1249 iMac has noSSD, and a 5400RPM HDD.
The £1029 Dell has an 8th gen i5. The iMac has an 8th gen i3.
The £1029 Dell has a Geforce GTX1050 with 4GB GDDR5 graphics memory. The £1249 iMac has a slower Radeon Pro 555X with 2GB graphics memory.
About the only thing the Dell lacks is a quality Aluminium case, and Thunderbolt. But it does have USB C.
Thunderbolt is great, but from my experience, pretty much no one uses it, much like Firewire back in the day. USB 3.1 Type C is fast enough for almost everything.
Speccing the iMac to make it similar to Dell's £1379 All-in-one (i7, 16GB RAM inferior Fusion drive, can't upgrade the GPU as there is no option) takes it to £1789. That's £410 more than the iMac.
Oh yeah, you can upgrade the RAM yourself in the Dell, too.
This Dell is £1029, slightly less than the base iMac. It has an 8th Gen i5, newer than the iMac. It has faster RAM. It has a much better GPU, a Nvidia GTX1050 vs Intel Integrated. It has a 128GB SSD and a 7200RPM 1TB HDD. Still think the iMac should have an SSD? Granted, the display is likely to be better (though the iMac one is smaller, and neither are 4k)
The iMac is actually much closer to Dell's £749 offering. That still has a faster HDD, and faster RAM, though the graphics are slightly worse. Other than that, you get pretty much the same machine for £300 less. Of course you have to then deal with Windows, but Windows 10 whilst not exactly great, is nowhere near as bad as older versions. I love Apple, but the prices are just becoming ridiculous. The prices are markedly affecting sales, but for some reason Cook is obsessed with maximising profit, even if it means less sales and ultimately, less total revenue.
Anything with an HDD in 2019 (2015, really) is 0 stars out of 5. Come on.
Then don’t buy the cheapest 21” iMac, as the 27” all have Fusion or SSD. If you need the cheapest base model for some reason, upgrade the storage. Problem solved, something for everyone. Users like my dad are not performance oriented, and just want something to hold photos, surf, etc.
A Fusion Drive at least should be included in all the iMacs, especially when all the MacBooks and the old MacBook Air has an SSD and costs less than the iMac. They recently nerfed the Fusion Drive's SSD down to 64GB from the 128GB it used to be. Oh and even the top tier model that starts at £2,250 still has a hard drive. Apple's just taking the piss there. Plus upgrades to a SSD are ridiculously overpriced. Not only that, it's incredulous that the base iMac only has a 5400RPM drive. If that's not nickel and diming I don't know what is, and how you can try and defend that I dont know, and totally discredits anything you say.
A friend recently bought the base HDD iMac before the recent refresh, and it's so sluggish it's embarrassing. It's like a machine that's 5 or 6 years old. Hell, my 2012 iMac is faster than the HDD 2015 model she purchased in 2019.
Upgrade to a fusion drive is just $100. So all your chagrin is for that $100 difference? And if you pay $200 instead of $100 you get 1TB Fusion drive + 8th gen i5 + 4GB GPU. It is not meaningful to default to Fusion drive in all models because only the HDD component of that drive can be partitioned for BootCamp and this is not as easy as partitioning a 1TB HDD.
Yeah, but then as the Fusion drive is only 32GB it isn't much better than a HDD. And Apple's charging $100 for a M.2 SSD that can be bought on eBay, singularly, for £35. Apple will be getting them cheaper than that. That Cook is willing to cause such a crap experience to save £35 on a £1000 machine is really quite saddening.
Great, then build your external SSD solution because you already have Thunderbolt 3. As for the internal, sorry no internal configuration is built with off-the-shelf components, because this is a matter of scale. You can buy one on eBay, but Apple needs to buy these in millions. Let the industrial production be a little different then your DIY fantasies.
Why should I have to fork out several hundred for a Thunderbolt caddy and SSD ontop of that, when Apple could put a SSD in the iMac to begin with?
Sorry what? Do you think someone makes a HDD and SSD for Apple specifically? That's funny, why do the chips have "Samsung" printed on? What about the Intel CPU, is that made bespoke for Apple?
And yes, you're right, it is a matter of scale. As i said before, the more Apple buys, the cheaper they become. If I can buy a 32GB M.2 SSD on eBay for £35, Apple can buy them for much less than that. I'm an electronics engineer, I'm quite well versed with industrial production, thanks, and funny how Dell are able to provide a machine with my apparent "DIY fantasies". The only fantasy is your perception of the performance of the HDD in the iMac.
This demonstrates how sluggish the HDD iMacs are, including my friend's one. That's acceptable to you?
This is a matter of expectations. You can try before your buy in an Apple Store. The sluggishness as apparent as you mention is not undetectable during a demo in an Apple Store. Since you say brand new I assume it is the $1099 1080p iMac. If she is satisfied with her purchase decision stop harassing her computer. Many people don't care about sluggishness, especially for kids it doesn't matter because what counts in their Windows game is the performance of the GPU. That is primarily pre-rendering frames that causes slow loading, not disk read/write.
This Dell is £1029, slightly less than the base iMac. It has an 8th Gen i5, newer than the iMac. It has faster RAM. It has a much better GPU, a Nvidia GTX1050 vs Intel Integrated. It has a 128GB SSD and a 7200RPM 1TB HDD. Still think the iMac should have an SSD? Granted, the display is likely to be better (though the iMac one is smaller, and neither are 4k)
The iMac is actually much closer to Dell's £749 offering. That still has a faster HDD, and faster RAM, though the graphics are slightly worse. Other than that, you get pretty much the same machine for £300 less. Of course you have to then deal with Windows, but Windows 10 whilst not exactly great, is nowhere near as bad as older versions. I love Apple, but the prices are just becoming ridiculous. The prices are markedly affecting sales, but for some reason Cook is obsessed with maximising profit, even if it means less sales and ultimately, less total revenue.
Anything with an HDD in 2019 (2015, really) is 0 stars out of 5. Come on.
Then don’t buy the cheapest 21” iMac, as the 27” all have Fusion or SSD. If you need the cheapest base model for some reason, upgrade the storage. Problem solved, something for everyone. Users like my dad are not performance oriented, and just want something to hold photos, surf, etc.
A Fusion Drive at least should be included in all the iMacs, especially when all the MacBooks and the old MacBook Air has an SSD and costs less than the iMac. They recently nerfed the Fusion Drive's SSD down to 64GB from the 128GB it used to be. Oh and even the top tier model that starts at £2,250 still has a hard drive. Apple's just taking the piss there. Plus upgrades to a SSD are ridiculously overpriced. Not only that, it's incredulous that the base iMac only has a 5400RPM drive. If that's not nickel and diming I don't know what is, and how you can try and defend that I dont know, and totally discredits anything you say.
A friend recently bought the base HDD iMac before the recent refresh, and it's so sluggish it's embarrassing. It's like a machine that's 5 or 6 years old. Hell, my 2012 iMac is faster than the HDD 2015 model she purchased in 2019.
Upgrade to a fusion drive is just $100. So all your chagrin is for that $100 difference? And if you pay $200 instead of $100 you get 1TB Fusion drive + 8th gen i5 + 4GB GPU. It is not meaningful to default to Fusion drive in all models because only the HDD component of that drive can be partitioned for BootCamp and this is not as easy as partitioning a 1TB HDD.
Yeah, but then as the Fusion drive is only 32GB it isn't much better than a HDD. And Apple's charging $100 for a M.2 SSD that can be bought on eBay, singularly, for £35. Apple will be getting them cheaper than that. That Cook is willing to cause such a crap experience to save £35 on a £1000 machine is really quite saddening.
Great, then build your external SSD solution because you already have Thunderbolt 3. As for the internal, sorry no internal configuration is built with off-the-shelf components, because this is a matter of scale. You can buy one on eBay, but Apple needs to buy these in millions. Let the industrial production be a little different then your DIY fantasies.
Why should I have to fork out several hundred for a Thunderbolt caddy and SSD ontop of that, when Apple could put a SSD in the iMac to begin with?
Sorry what? Do you think someone makes a HDD and SSD for Apple specifically? That's funny, why do the chips have "Samsung" printed on? What about the Intel CPU, is that made bespoke for Apple?
And yes, you're right, it is a matter of scale. As i said before, the more Apple buys, the cheaper they become. If I can buy a 32GB M.2 SSD on eBay for £35, Apple can buy them for much less than that. I'm an electronics engineer, I'm quite well versed with industrial production, thanks, and funny how Dell are able to provide a machine with my apparent "DIY fantasies". The only fantasy is your perception of the performance of the HDD in the iMac.
This demonstrates how sluggish the HDD iMacs are, including my friend's one. That's acceptable to you?
This is a matter of expectations. You can try before your buy in an Apple Store. The sluggishness as apparent as you mention is not undetectable during a demo in an Apple Store. Since you say brand new I assume it is the $1099 1080p iMac. If she is satisfied with her purchase decision stop harassing her computer. Many people don't care about sluggishness, especially for kids it doesn't matter because what counts in their Windows game is the performance of the GPU. That is primarily pre-rendering frames that causes slow loading, not disk read/write.
You are happy with a brand new machine stalling for 15 seconds when opening Safari? You're happy for it to beachball when a new tab opens? "Harrassing her computer" haha that's a new one. She was happy, until she realised how slow it was. Apple is about exceeding people's expectations, not coming short. People spending £1000+ on a computer absolutely do care about sluggishness, otherwise why would my friend have spoken to me about it? I was embarrassed to tell her that the £1000 she just forked out on that machine was not good value, and by then it was past the 14 days return window. Plus as I said before, Apple doesn't have the base model on display. It's always the mid-range one with at least a fusion drive.
And who buys a new £1000 iMac for their kids?! You think the Radeon 555x is a good performer in games with a 4k display? 2GB GRAM is pretty abysmal, especially when the textures will have to be loaded in during gameplay from a slow hard disk.
Mate, you really have no idea what you're talking about and you're just embarrassing yourself now... like Apple's embarrassing themselves with their base iMac. Oh and I haven't noticed that you've failed to refute again that the iMac's a lesser spec for more money 😉
This Dell is £1029, slightly less than the base iMac. It has an 8th Gen i5, newer than the iMac. It has faster RAM. It has a much better GPU, a Nvidia GTX1050 vs Intel Integrated. It has a 128GB SSD and a 7200RPM 1TB HDD. Still think the iMac should have an SSD? Granted, the display is likely to be better (though the iMac one is smaller, and neither are 4k)
The iMac is actually much closer to Dell's £749 offering. That still has a faster HDD, and faster RAM, though the graphics are slightly worse. Other than that, you get pretty much the same machine for £300 less. Of course you have to then deal with Windows, but Windows 10 whilst not exactly great, is nowhere near as bad as older versions. I love Apple, but the prices are just becoming ridiculous. The prices are markedly affecting sales, but for some reason Cook is obsessed with maximising profit, even if it means less sales and ultimately, less total revenue.
Anything with an HDD in 2019 (2015, really) is 0 stars out of 5. Come on.
Then don’t buy the cheapest 21” iMac, as the 27” all have Fusion or SSD. If you need the cheapest base model for some reason, upgrade the storage. Problem solved, something for everyone. Users like my dad are not performance oriented, and just want something to hold photos, surf, etc.
A Fusion Drive at least should be included in all the iMacs, especially when all the MacBooks and the old MacBook Air has an SSD and costs less than the iMac. They recently nerfed the Fusion Drive's SSD down to 64GB from the 128GB it used to be. Oh and even the top tier model that starts at £2,250 still has a hard drive. Apple's just taking the piss there. Plus upgrades to a SSD are ridiculously overpriced. Not only that, it's incredulous that the base iMac only has a 5400RPM drive. If that's not nickel and diming I don't know what is, and how you can try and defend that I dont know, and totally discredits anything you say.
A friend recently bought the base HDD iMac before the recent refresh, and it's so sluggish it's embarrassing. It's like a machine that's 5 or 6 years old. Hell, my 2012 iMac is faster than the HDD 2015 model she purchased in 2019.
Upgrade to a fusion drive is just $100. So all your chagrin is for that $100 difference? And if you pay $200 instead of $100 you get 1TB Fusion drive + 8th gen i5 + 4GB GPU. It is not meaningful to default to Fusion drive in all models because only the HDD component of that drive can be partitioned for BootCamp and this is not as easy as partitioning a 1TB HDD.
Yeah, but then as the Fusion drive is only 32GB it isn't much better than a HDD. And Apple's charging $100 for a M.2 SSD that can be bought on eBay, singularly, for £35. Apple will be getting them cheaper than that. That Cook is willing to cause such a crap experience to save £35 on a £1000 machine is really quite saddening.
Great, then build your external SSD solution because you already have Thunderbolt 3. As for the internal, sorry no internal configuration is built with off-the-shelf components, because this is a matter of scale. You can buy one on eBay, but Apple needs to buy these in millions. Let the industrial production be a little different then your DIY fantasies.
Why should I have to fork out several hundred for a Thunderbolt caddy and SSD ontop of that, when Apple could put a SSD in the iMac to begin with?
Sorry what? Do you think someone makes a HDD and SSD for Apple specifically? That's funny, why do the chips have "Samsung" printed on? What about the Intel CPU, is that made bespoke for Apple?
And yes, you're right, it is a matter of scale. As i said before, the more Apple buys, the cheaper they become. If I can buy a 32GB M.2 SSD on eBay for £35, Apple can buy them for much less than that. I'm an electronics engineer, I'm quite well versed with industrial production, thanks, and funny how Dell are able to provide a machine with my apparent "DIY fantasies". The only fantasy is your perception of the performance of the HDD in the iMac.
This demonstrates how sluggish the HDD iMacs are, including my friend's one. That's acceptable to you?
This is a matter of expectations. You can try before your buy in an Apple Store. The sluggishness as apparent as you mention is not undetectable during a demo in an Apple Store. Since you say brand new I assume it is the $1099 1080p iMac. If she is satisfied with her purchase decision stop harassing her computer. Many people don't care about sluggishness, especially for kids it doesn't matter because what counts in their Windows game is the performance of the GPU. That is primarily pre-rendering frames that causes slow loading, not disk read/write.
You are happy with a brand new machine stalling for 15 seconds when opening Safari? You're happy for it to beachball when a new tab opens? "Harrassing her computer" haha that's a new one. She was happy, until she realised how slow it was. Apple is about exceeding people's expectations, not coming short. People spending £1000+ on a computer absolutely do care about sluggishness, otherwise why would my friend have spoken to me about it? I was embarrassed to tell her that the £1000 she just forked out on that machine was not good value, and by then it was past the 14 days return window. Plus as I said before, Apple doesn't have the base model on display. It's always the mid-range one with at least a fusion drive.
And who buys a new £1000 iMac for their kids?! You think the Radeon 555x is a good performer in games with a 4k display? 2GB GRAM is pretty abysmal, especially when the textures will have to be loaded in during gameplay from a slow hard disk.
Mate, you really have no idea what you're talking about and you're just embarrassing yourself now... like Apple's embarrassing themselves with their base iMac. Oh and I haven't noticed that you've failed to refute again that the iMac's a lesser spec for more money ߘ馬t;/div>
The iMac has Thunderbolt, that means eGPU support and plenty of high-end storage solutions. It has also 4K, which has never been a trivial matter on a PC since people are cheated with fake 4K and even if not, at least such a deal mostly ends with a hidden adapter cost. I am sorry for your friend who noticed the sluggishness afterwards, maybe your diagnostic is wrong and that machine has rather a RAM problem? I wish it isn't because if it is the hard drive then the $100 Fusion update or 256 SSD will save her investment, better than embarassing her with a wrong purchase decision.
The base iMac reviewed in the article is an affordable 4K home computer with many inexpensive upgrade options. That's all I will say on that matter.
This Dell is £1029, slightly less than the base iMac. It has an 8th Gen i5, newer than the iMac. It has faster RAM. It has a much better GPU, a Nvidia GTX1050 vs Intel Integrated. It has a 128GB SSD and a 7200RPM 1TB HDD. Still think the iMac should have an SSD? Granted, the display is likely to be better (though the iMac one is smaller, and neither are 4k)
The iMac is actually much closer to Dell's £749 offering. That still has a faster HDD, and faster RAM, though the graphics are slightly worse. Other than that, you get pretty much the same machine for £300 less. Of course you have to then deal with Windows, but Windows 10 whilst not exactly great, is nowhere near as bad as older versions. I love Apple, but the prices are just becoming ridiculous. The prices are markedly affecting sales, but for some reason Cook is obsessed with maximising profit, even if it means less sales and ultimately, less total revenue.
Anything with an HDD in 2019 (2015, really) is 0 stars out of 5. Come on.
Then don’t buy the cheapest 21” iMac, as the 27” all have Fusion or SSD. If you need the cheapest base model for some reason, upgrade the storage. Problem solved, something for everyone. Users like my dad are not performance oriented, and just want something to hold photos, surf, etc.
A Fusion Drive at least should be included in all the iMacs, especially when all the MacBooks and the old MacBook Air has an SSD and costs less than the iMac. They recently nerfed the Fusion Drive's SSD down to 64GB from the 128GB it used to be. Oh and even the top tier model that starts at £2,250 still has a hard drive. Apple's just taking the piss there. Plus upgrades to a SSD are ridiculously overpriced. Not only that, it's incredulous that the base iMac only has a 5400RPM drive. If that's not nickel and diming I don't know what is, and how you can try and defend that I dont know, and totally discredits anything you say.
A friend recently bought the base HDD iMac before the recent refresh, and it's so sluggish it's embarrassing. It's like a machine that's 5 or 6 years old. Hell, my 2012 iMac is faster than the HDD 2015 model she purchased in 2019.
Upgrade to a fusion drive is just $100. So all your chagrin is for that $100 difference? And if you pay $200 instead of $100 you get 1TB Fusion drive + 8th gen i5 + 4GB GPU. It is not meaningful to default to Fusion drive in all models because only the HDD component of that drive can be partitioned for BootCamp and this is not as easy as partitioning a 1TB HDD.
Yeah, but then as the Fusion drive is only 32GB it isn't much better than a HDD. And Apple's charging $100 for a M.2 SSD that can be bought on eBay, singularly, for £35. Apple will be getting them cheaper than that. That Cook is willing to cause such a crap experience to save £35 on a £1000 machine is really quite saddening.
Great, then build your external SSD solution because you already have Thunderbolt 3. As for the internal, sorry no internal configuration is built with off-the-shelf components, because this is a matter of scale. You can buy one on eBay, but Apple needs to buy these in millions. Let the industrial production be a little different then your DIY fantasies.
Why should I have to fork out several hundred for a Thunderbolt caddy and SSD ontop of that, when Apple could put a SSD in the iMac to begin with?
Sorry what? Do you think someone makes a HDD and SSD for Apple specifically? That's funny, why do the chips have "Samsung" printed on? What about the Intel CPU, is that made bespoke for Apple?
And yes, you're right, it is a matter of scale. As i said before, the more Apple buys, the cheaper they become. If I can buy a 32GB M.2 SSD on eBay for £35, Apple can buy them for much less than that. I'm an electronics engineer, I'm quite well versed with industrial production, thanks, and funny how Dell are able to provide a machine with my apparent "DIY fantasies". The only fantasy is your perception of the performance of the HDD in the iMac.
This demonstrates how sluggish the HDD iMacs are, including my friend's one. That's acceptable to you?
This is a matter of expectations. You can try before your buy in an Apple Store. The sluggishness as apparent as you mention is not undetectable during a demo in an Apple Store. Since you say brand new I assume it is the $1099 1080p iMac. If she is satisfied with her purchase decision stop harassing her computer. Many people don't care about sluggishness, especially for kids it doesn't matter because what counts in their Windows game is the performance of the GPU. That is primarily pre-rendering frames that causes slow loading, not disk read/write.
You are happy with a brand new machine stalling for 15 seconds when opening Safari? You're happy for it to beachball when a new tab opens? "Harrassing her computer" haha that's a new one. She was happy, until she realised how slow it was. Apple is about exceeding people's expectations, not coming short. People spending £1000+ on a computer absolutely do care about sluggishness, otherwise why would my friend have spoken to me about it? I was embarrassed to tell her that the £1000 she just forked out on that machine was not good value, and by then it was past the 14 days return window. Plus as I said before, Apple doesn't have the base model on display. It's always the mid-range one with at least a fusion drive.
And who buys a new £1000 iMac for their kids?! You think the Radeon 555x is a good performer in games with a 4k display? 2GB GRAM is pretty abysmal, especially when the textures will have to be loaded in during gameplay from a slow hard disk.
Mate, you really have no idea what you're talking about and you're just embarrassing yourself now... like Apple's embarrassing themselves with their base iMac. Oh and I haven't noticed that you've failed to refute again that the iMac's a lesser spec for more money ߘ馬t;/div>
The iMac has Thunderbolt, that means eGPU support and plenty of high-end storage solutions. It has also 4K, which has never been a trivial matter on a PC since people are cheated with fake 4K and even if not, at least such a deal mostly ends with a hidden adapter cost. I am sorry for your friend who noticed the sluggishness afterwards, maybe your diagnostic is wrong and that machine has rather a RAM problem? I wish it isn't because if it is the hard drive then the $100 Fusion update or 256 SSD will save her investment, better than embarassing her with a wrong purchase decision.
The base iMac reviewed in the article is an affordable 4K home computer with many inexpensive upgrade options. That's all I will say on that matter.
This Dell is £1029, slightly less than the base iMac. It has an 8th Gen i5, newer than the iMac. It has faster RAM. It has a much better GPU, a Nvidia GTX1050 vs Intel Integrated. It has a 128GB SSD and a 7200RPM 1TB HDD. Still think the iMac should have an SSD? Granted, the display is likely to be better (though the iMac one is smaller, and neither are 4k)
The iMac is actually much closer to Dell's £749 offering. That still has a faster HDD, and faster RAM, though the graphics are slightly worse. Other than that, you get pretty much the same machine for £300 less. Of course you have to then deal with Windows, but Windows 10 whilst not exactly great, is nowhere near as bad as older versions. I love Apple, but the prices are just becoming ridiculous. The prices are markedly affecting sales, but for some reason Cook is obsessed with maximising profit, even if it means less sales and ultimately, less total revenue.
Anything with an HDD in 2019 (2015, really) is 0 stars out of 5. Come on.
Then don’t buy the cheapest 21” iMac, as the 27” all have Fusion or SSD. If you need the cheapest base model for some reason, upgrade the storage. Problem solved, something for everyone. Users like my dad are not performance oriented, and just want something to hold photos, surf, etc.
A Fusion Drive at least should be included in all the iMacs, especially when all the MacBooks and the old MacBook Air has an SSD and costs less than the iMac. They recently nerfed the Fusion Drive's SSD down to 64GB from the 128GB it used to be. Oh and even the top tier model that starts at £2,250 still has a hard drive. Apple's just taking the piss there. Plus upgrades to a SSD are ridiculously overpriced. Not only that, it's incredulous that the base iMac only has a 5400RPM drive. If that's not nickel and diming I don't know what is, and how you can try and defend that I dont know, and totally discredits anything you say.
A friend recently bought the base HDD iMac before the recent refresh, and it's so sluggish it's embarrassing. It's like a machine that's 5 or 6 years old. Hell, my 2012 iMac is faster than the HDD 2015 model she purchased in 2019.
Upgrade to a fusion drive is just $100. So all your chagrin is for that $100 difference? And if you pay $200 instead of $100 you get 1TB Fusion drive + 8th gen i5 + 4GB GPU. It is not meaningful to default to Fusion drive in all models because only the HDD component of that drive can be partitioned for BootCamp and this is not as easy as partitioning a 1TB HDD.
Yeah, but then as the Fusion drive is only 32GB it isn't much better than a HDD. And Apple's charging $100 for a M.2 SSD that can be bought on eBay, singularly, for £35. Apple will be getting them cheaper than that. That Cook is willing to cause such a crap experience to save £35 on a £1000 machine is really quite saddening.
Great, then build your external SSD solution because you already have Thunderbolt 3. As for the internal, sorry no internal configuration is built with off-the-shelf components, because this is a matter of scale. You can buy one on eBay, but Apple needs to buy these in millions. Let the industrial production be a little different then your DIY fantasies.
Why should I have to fork out several hundred for a Thunderbolt caddy and SSD ontop of that, when Apple could put a SSD in the iMac to begin with?
Sorry what? Do you think someone makes a HDD and SSD for Apple specifically? That's funny, why do the chips have "Samsung" printed on? What about the Intel CPU, is that made bespoke for Apple?
And yes, you're right, it is a matter of scale. As i said before, the more Apple buys, the cheaper they become. If I can buy a 32GB M.2 SSD on eBay for £35, Apple can buy them for much less than that. I'm an electronics engineer, I'm quite well versed with industrial production, thanks, and funny how Dell are able to provide a machine with my apparent "DIY fantasies". The only fantasy is your perception of the performance of the HDD in the iMac.
This demonstrates how sluggish the HDD iMacs are, including my friend's one. That's acceptable to you?
This is a matter of expectations. You can try before your buy in an Apple Store. The sluggishness as apparent as you mention is not undetectable during a demo in an Apple Store. Since you say brand new I assume it is the $1099 1080p iMac. If she is satisfied with her purchase decision stop harassing her computer. Many people don't care about sluggishness, especially for kids it doesn't matter because what counts in their Windows game is the performance of the GPU. That is primarily pre-rendering frames that causes slow loading, not disk read/write.
You are happy with a brand new machine stalling for 15 seconds when opening Safari? You're happy for it to beachball when a new tab opens? "Harrassing her computer" haha that's a new one. She was happy, until she realised how slow it was. Apple is about exceeding people's expectations, not coming short. People spending £1000+ on a computer absolutely do care about sluggishness, otherwise why would my friend have spoken to me about it? I was embarrassed to tell her that the £1000 she just forked out on that machine was not good value, and by then it was past the 14 days return window. Plus as I said before, Apple doesn't have the base model on display. It's always the mid-range one with at least a fusion drive.
And who buys a new £1000 iMac for their kids?! You think the Radeon 555x is a good performer in games with a 4k display? 2GB GRAM is pretty abysmal, especially when the textures will have to be loaded in during gameplay from a slow hard disk.
Mate, you really have no idea what you're talking about and you're just embarrassing yourself now... like Apple's embarrassing themselves with their base iMac. Oh and I haven't noticed that you've failed to refute again that the iMac's a lesser spec for more money ߘ馬t;/div>
Really the only thing embarrassing is your thinking you’re entitled to a cheaper iMac. You’re not old enough to know, but people have been complaining about Apple’s prices for at least 35 years! You think you’ve come up with some breaking news here? Yeah no.
They’re Macs. They’re expensive. Get over it. Apple’s prices are what they are. If you can’t afford it, buy used or buy a $300 windows laptop and replace it ever year or two when it fries out.
If you want the 21.5” iMac, you can spend as little as $1,099. It has an HDD; so what? My Grandma sure as hell doesn’t need an SSD. Why should she have to pay an extra $200 for YOUR minimum config? She doesn’t want to spend 1,299, she wants to spend $1,099. Leave her the eff alone—she doesn’t need an SSD. If you do, no problem. You can even get a six-core i7, 32GB RAM, a Vega 20 GPU and a 1TB SSD. All you need to do is write a check for $3,349. What’s the problem?
If that’s not enough performance for you, get a 27” iMac Pro with an 18-core Xeon, 256GB of RAM, a Vega 64X GPU and a 4 TB SSD. Yours for $15,699. If you need more performance than that in a Mac, you’re going to have to wait until the new Mac Pro is released. Could be $20-30K (including monitor) for the maximum configuration, depending on what’s available; it’s currently unknown if it will support dual CPUs or 512+GB RAM or even which CPU family it will use... Skylake SP?
The point is, you don’t have the right to a Mac that’s priced at what YOU want to pay. Apple prices their products at what its customers are willing to pay. 18+ million customers a year pay the prices Apple’s asking for their Macs, so clearly they are NOT overpriced. They are NOT too expensive. Too expensive for you, maybe, sure... but not for the people who actually buy them.
This Dell is £1029, slightly less than the base iMac. It has an 8th Gen i5, newer than the iMac. It has faster RAM. It has a much better GPU, a Nvidia GTX1050 vs Intel Integrated. It has a 128GB SSD and a 7200RPM 1TB HDD. Still think the iMac should have an SSD? Granted, the display is likely to be better (though the iMac one is smaller, and neither are 4k)
The iMac is actually much closer to Dell's £749 offering. That still has a faster HDD, and faster RAM, though the graphics are slightly worse. Other than that, you get pretty much the same machine for £300 less. Of course you have to then deal with Windows, but Windows 10 whilst not exactly great, is nowhere near as bad as older versions. I love Apple, but the prices are just becoming ridiculous. The prices are markedly affecting sales, but for some reason Cook is obsessed with maximising profit, even if it means less sales and ultimately, less total revenue.
Anything with an HDD in 2019 (2015, really) is 0 stars out of 5. Come on.
Then don’t buy the cheapest 21” iMac, as the 27” all have Fusion or SSD. If you need the cheapest base model for some reason, upgrade the storage. Problem solved, something for everyone. Users like my dad are not performance oriented, and just want something to hold photos, surf, etc.
A Fusion Drive at least should be included in all the iMacs, especially when all the MacBooks and the old MacBook Air has an SSD and costs less than the iMac. They recently nerfed the Fusion Drive's SSD down to 64GB from the 128GB it used to be. Oh and even the top tier model that starts at £2,250 still has a hard drive. Apple's just taking the piss there. Plus upgrades to a SSD are ridiculously overpriced. Not only that, it's incredulous that the base iMac only has a 5400RPM drive. If that's not nickel and diming I don't know what is, and how you can try and defend that I dont know, and totally discredits anything you say.
A friend recently bought the base HDD iMac before the recent refresh, and it's so sluggish it's embarrassing. It's like a machine that's 5 or 6 years old. Hell, my 2012 iMac is faster than the HDD 2015 model she purchased in 2019.
Upgrade to a fusion drive is just $100. So all your chagrin is for that $100 difference? And if you pay $200 instead of $100 you get 1TB Fusion drive + 8th gen i5 + 4GB GPU. It is not meaningful to default to Fusion drive in all models because only the HDD component of that drive can be partitioned for BootCamp and this is not as easy as partitioning a 1TB HDD.
Yeah, but then as the Fusion drive is only 32GB it isn't much better than a HDD. And Apple's charging $100 for a M.2 SSD that can be bought on eBay, singularly, for £35. Apple will be getting them cheaper than that. That Cook is willing to cause such a crap experience to save £35 on a £1000 machine is really quite saddening.
Great, then build your external SSD solution because you already have Thunderbolt 3. As for the internal, sorry no internal configuration is built with off-the-shelf components, because this is a matter of scale. You can buy one on eBay, but Apple needs to buy these in millions. Let the industrial production be a little different then your DIY fantasies.
Why should I have to fork out several hundred for a Thunderbolt caddy and SSD ontop of that, when Apple could put a SSD in the iMac to begin with?
Sorry what? Do you think someone makes a HDD and SSD for Apple specifically? That's funny, why do the chips have "Samsung" printed on? What about the Intel CPU, is that made bespoke for Apple?
And yes, you're right, it is a matter of scale. As i said before, the more Apple buys, the cheaper they become. If I can buy a 32GB M.2 SSD on eBay for £35, Apple can buy them for much less than that. I'm an electronics engineer, I'm quite well versed with industrial production, thanks, and funny how Dell are able to provide a machine with my apparent "DIY fantasies". The only fantasy is your perception of the performance of the HDD in the iMac.
This demonstrates how sluggish the HDD iMacs are, including my friend's one. That's acceptable to you?
This is a matter of expectations. You can try before your buy in an Apple Store. The sluggishness as apparent as you mention is not undetectable during a demo in an Apple Store. Since you say brand new I assume it is the $1099 1080p iMac. If she is satisfied with her purchase decision stop harassing her computer. Many people don't care about sluggishness, especially for kids it doesn't matter because what counts in their Windows game is the performance of the GPU. That is primarily pre-rendering frames that causes slow loading, not disk read/write.
You are happy with a brand new machine stalling for 15 seconds when opening Safari? You're happy for it to beachball when a new tab opens? "Harrassing her computer" haha that's a new one. She was happy, until she realised how slow it was. Apple is about exceeding people's expectations, not coming short. People spending £1000+ on a computer absolutely do care about sluggishness, otherwise why would my friend have spoken to me about it? I was embarrassed to tell her that the £1000 she just forked out on that machine was not good value, and by then it was past the 14 days return window. Plus as I said before, Apple doesn't have the base model on display. It's always the mid-range one with at least a fusion drive.
And who buys a new £1000 iMac for their kids?! You think the Radeon 555x is a good performer in games with a 4k display? 2GB GRAM is pretty abysmal, especially when the textures will have to be loaded in during gameplay from a slow hard disk.
Mate, you really have no idea what you're talking about and you're just embarrassing yourself now... like Apple's embarrassing themselves with their base iMac. Oh and I haven't noticed that you've failed to refute again that the iMac's a lesser spec for more money ߘ馬t;/div>
Really the only thing embarrassing is your thinking you’re entitled to a cheaper iMac. You’re not old enough to know, but people have been complaining about Apple’s prices for at least 35 years! You think you’ve come up with some breaking news here? Yeah no.
They’re Macs. They’re expensive. Get over it. Apple’s prices are what they are. If you can’t afford it, buy used or buy a $300 windows laptop and replace it ever year or two when it fries out.
If you want the 21.5” iMac, you can spend as little as $1,099. It has an HDD; so what? My Grandma sure as hell doesn’t need an SSD. Why should she have to pay an extra $200 for YOUR minimum config? She doesn’t want to spend 1,299, she wants to spend $1,099. Leave her the eff alone—she doesn’t need an SSD. If you do, no problem. You can even get a six-core i7, 32GB RAM, a Vega 20 GPU and a 1TB SSD. All you need to do is write a check for $3,349. What’s the problem?
If that’s not enough performance for you, get a 27” iMac Pro with an 18-core Xeon, 256GB of RAM, a Vega 64X GPU and a 4 TB SSD. Yours for $15,699. If you need more performance than that in a Mac, you’re going to have to wait until the new Mac Pro is released. Could be $20-30K (including monitor) for the maximum configuration, depending on what’s available; it’s currently unknown if it will support dual CPUs or 512+GB RAM or even which CPU family it will use... Skylake SP?
The point is, you don’t have the right to a Mac that’s priced at what YOU want to pay. Apple prices their products at what its customers are willing to pay. 18+ million customers a year pay the prices Apple’s asking for their Macs, so clearly they are NOT overpriced. They are NOT too expensive. Too expensive for you, maybe, sure... but not for the people who actually buy them.
I don't think I'm entitled to anything, but if you think the sluggish base iMac is good value and represents the perfection Apple usually strives from, you're a long way off the mark. Macs haven't always been so expensive. My first Mac was a Perfoma 475 in 1993. It was expensive, but it was much better than Windows. Prices after that time slowly converged, now they're accelerating faster than ever before, whilst both Windows and PCs are improving in quality faster than ever before. When Jobs was around, iMacs were at one point £699, eMacs were £399. Now, the cheapest iMac is £1049. And at the time, the iMacs were price and spec-competitive with PCs, and their growth was off the charts.
Now, coincidentally, and inspite of your inward-looking thoughts are on the subject - and very much like in the early '90's, the Mac sales are flat or declining, as price is rising. Less and less people are willing to pay Apple's overinflated price. If they weren't too expensive, why are Mac sales declining? I could go and get a $300 Windows laptop, and it'd probably be faster than the iMac and likely even outlast it as it would probably have a SSD.
"Why should she have to pay an extra $200 for YOUR minimum config?" Again missing the point. Apple is easily able to absorb the cost of that £35 32GB M.2 drive in the base iMac for everyone, making everyone's experience better for no extra cost. Just like Dell does. Is that so hard to understand? Apple loses out on £35 (that's with no economies of scale factored in), but ensures the performance of the Mac is good for years to come, building goodwill and satisfaction with customers. Do you mean to say these base iMacs are only for grandmas? What about students on a budget? Or people who want a Mac but are looking at the PC options that're cheaper with much better specs? Should they have to suffer because Cook wants the Fusion drive to be a £100 upsell? Why doesn't Apple put a 7200RPM drive in the base model, is that cost too? What's your excuse for that? Are you also one of these naïve people who thinks that the price of the iPhone isn't actually an issue, and Apple's revenue warning and subsequent price cuts are actually nothing to do with the price of the iPhone? Oh, and do you think the trashcan Mac Pro is still good value?
Like I said, AI thinks the HDD really should go. Remove your head from the sand and look around. The iMac is supposed to be a premium product, so why budget internals?
This Dell is £1029, slightly less than the base iMac. It has an 8th Gen i5, newer than the iMac. It has faster RAM. It has a much better GPU, a Nvidia GTX1050 vs Intel Integrated. It has a 128GB SSD and a 7200RPM 1TB HDD. Still think the iMac should have an SSD? Granted, the display is likely to be better (though the iMac one is smaller, and neither are 4k)
The iMac is actually much closer to Dell's £749 offering. That still has a faster HDD, and faster RAM, though the graphics are slightly worse. Other than that, you get pretty much the same machine for £300 less. Of course you have to then deal with Windows, but Windows 10 whilst not exactly great, is nowhere near as bad as older versions. I love Apple, but the prices are just becoming ridiculous. The prices are markedly affecting sales, but for some reason Cook is obsessed with maximising profit, even if it means less sales and ultimately, less total revenue.
This 2017 1 terabyte which has a 32gb fusion (not 64gb like the previous poster said) is terrible at launching apps.
Oh geez I didn't realise they'd gone down to just 32GB now. That's a f**king piss take.
This is not the 2019 4K iMac described in the article, this is the $1099 1080p iMac you're comparing. The article says: "The 21.5-inch 4K iMac that we're reviewing is the base model iMac that you can buy for $1,299 (or on sale for $1,249 at Amazon) and it features a Quad-core i3 Processor, 8GB of RAM, a 5400RPM 1TB Hard Drive, and it's also equipped with a Radeon Pro 555X with 2GB of VRAM."
Oh, so it's even more expensive, has an even slower CPU, and still a worse GPU than the Dell. Great, thanks for pointing that out.
Your link states that the Dell has a Core i5-8400T. This is a 6-core running at 1.7 GHz base clock, 3.3 GHz turbo clock CPU. This looks to be a mobile chip with with a 35W TDP.
The iMac 4K base model has a Core i3-8100B. This a 4-core running 3.6 GHz. There isn’t a turbo or base clock. It just runs at 3.6 GHz. It’s a desktop chip with a 65 W TDP.
The i3-8100B will outperform the i5-8400T by virtue of its higher clock in single thread, and since it runs all 4 cores at 3.6 GHz while the Core i5-8400T has 6 cores, this 6 cores will run at 1.7 GHz for sustained workloads, and the i3-8100B will out perform it in multi-core too.
The GTX 1050 is indeed faster than the AMD Radeon 555X, by up to 50%.
Is this pestering just fun for you or something? You are pointing to a PC that is cheaper by component features. Buying cheaper by component list features isn’t why people buy Mac or iPhones or whatever Apple device. The list of components is but one thing people look at when buying things. To some, Apple’s intangibles are enough to pay the £200 difference.
An intangible is the design. The Dell comes with a power brick. That alone will prevent me from buying it. The Dell looks nice from the front, not so much on the side, and it looks like plastic construction. The aluminum and glass ID of the iMac is enough to get people to pay 20% more.
Heck, why would you recommend this Dell model at all as it has a 23.8” 1920x1080 resolution display? 1920x1080 on 23.8” display, displaying MS Windows software! Recommend a Dell model with a 4K model at least. And bah, it comes with “8GB, 1x8GB, DDR4, 2666MHz”. Am I reading it right? It comes with 1 8GB memory DIMM? So this model is only using 1 memory channel and therefore has half the memory performance of a typical 2 memory channel Intel system? Recommend the next model up at least.
Maybe you don’t know, but nobody would recommend the base model iMac 21.5. It’s only there for education buys (who will get it for some amount less per machine depending on number of machines purchased) or to serve as an upsell. Upsells are bad values on purpose to get people to get the next model up. Standard sales tactic for virtually everyone. You won’t find anyone on this forum that’ll recommend it.
"You can, however, configure this iMac with a Fusion Drive at purchase which can improve the performance a bit, or spend a bit more and get an NVMe SSD which is what we would recommend that most AppleInsider readers do. "
How does one get or install an NVMe SSD on the iMac? Is that an option when buying an iMac?
This Dell is £1029, slightly less than the base iMac. It has an 8th Gen i5, newer than the iMac. It has faster RAM. It has a much better GPU, a Nvidia GTX1050 vs Intel Integrated. It has a 128GB SSD and a 7200RPM 1TB HDD. Still think the iMac should have an SSD? Granted, the display is likely to be better (though the iMac one is smaller, and neither are 4k)
The iMac is actually much closer to Dell's £749 offering. That still has a faster HDD, and faster RAM, though the graphics are slightly worse. Other than that, you get pretty much the same machine for £300 less. Of course you have to then deal with Windows, but Windows 10 whilst not exactly great, is nowhere near as bad as older versions. I love Apple, but the prices are just becoming ridiculous. The prices are markedly affecting sales, but for some reason Cook is obsessed with maximising profit, even if it means less sales and ultimately, less total revenue.
Anything with an HDD in 2019 (2015, really) is 0 stars out of 5. Come on.
Then don’t buy the cheapest 21” iMac, as the 27” all have Fusion or SSD. If you need the cheapest base model for some reason, upgrade the storage. Problem solved, something for everyone. Users like my dad are not performance oriented, and just want something to hold photos, surf, etc.
A Fusion Drive at least should be included in all the iMacs, especially when all the MacBooks and the old MacBook Air has an SSD and costs less than the iMac. They recently nerfed the Fusion Drive's SSD down to 64GB from the 128GB it used to be. Oh and even the top tier model that starts at £2,250 still has a hard drive. Apple's just taking the piss there. Plus upgrades to a SSD are ridiculously overpriced. Not only that, it's incredulous that the base iMac only has a 5400RPM drive. If that's not nickel and diming I don't know what is, and how you can try and defend that I dont know, and totally discredits anything you say.
A friend recently bought the base HDD iMac before the recent refresh, and it's so sluggish it's embarrassing. It's like a machine that's 5 or 6 years old. Hell, my 2012 iMac is faster than the HDD 2015 model she purchased in 2019.
Upgrade to a fusion drive is just $100. So all your chagrin is for that $100 difference? And if you pay $200 instead of $100 you get 1TB Fusion drive + 8th gen i5 + 4GB GPU. It is not meaningful to default to Fusion drive in all models because only the HDD component of that drive can be partitioned for BootCamp and this is not as easy as partitioning a 1TB HDD.
Yeah, but then as the Fusion drive is only 32GB it isn't much better than a HDD. And Apple's charging $100 for a M.2 SSD that can be bought on eBay, singularly, for £35. Apple will be getting them cheaper than that. That Cook is willing to cause such a crap experience to save £35 on a £1000 machine is really quite saddening.
Great, then build your external SSD solution because you already have Thunderbolt 3. As for the internal, sorry no internal configuration is built with off-the-shelf components, because this is a matter of scale. You can buy one on eBay, but Apple needs to buy these in millions. Let the industrial production be a little different then your DIY fantasies.
Why should I have to fork out several hundred for a Thunderbolt caddy and SSD ontop of that, when Apple could put a SSD in the iMac to begin with?
Sorry what? Do you think someone makes a HDD and SSD for Apple specifically? That's funny, why do the chips have "Samsung" printed on? What about the Intel CPU, is that made bespoke for Apple?
And yes, you're right, it is a matter of scale. As i said before, the more Apple buys, the cheaper they become. If I can buy a 32GB M.2 SSD on eBay for £35, Apple can buy them for much less than that. I'm an electronics engineer, I'm quite well versed with industrial production, thanks, and funny how Dell are able to provide a machine with my apparent "DIY fantasies". The only fantasy is your perception of the performance of the HDD in the iMac.
This demonstrates how sluggish the HDD iMacs are, including my friend's one. That's acceptable to you?
This is a matter of expectations. You can try before your buy in an Apple Store. The sluggishness as apparent as you mention is not undetectable during a demo in an Apple Store. Since you say brand new I assume it is the $1099 1080p iMac. If she is satisfied with her purchase decision stop harassing her computer. Many people don't care about sluggishness, especially for kids it doesn't matter because what counts in their Windows game is the performance of the GPU. That is primarily pre-rendering frames that causes slow loading, not disk read/write.
You are happy with a brand new machine stalling for 15 seconds when opening Safari? You're happy for it to beachball when a new tab opens? "Harrassing her computer" haha that's a new one. She was happy, until she realised how slow it was. Apple is about exceeding people's expectations, not coming short. People spending £1000+ on a computer absolutely do care about sluggishness, otherwise why would my friend have spoken to me about it? I was embarrassed to tell her that the £1000 she just forked out on that machine was not good value, and by then it was past the 14 days return window. Plus as I said before, Apple doesn't have the base model on display. It's always the mid-range one with at least a fusion drive.
And who buys a new £1000 iMac for their kids?! You think the Radeon 555x is a good performer in games with a 4k display? 2GB GRAM is pretty abysmal, especially when the textures will have to be loaded in during gameplay from a slow hard disk.
Mate, you really have no idea what you're talking about and you're just embarrassing yourself now... like Apple's embarrassing themselves with their base iMac. Oh and I haven't noticed that you've failed to refute again that the iMac's a lesser spec for more money ߘ馬t;/div>
Really the only thing embarrassing is your thinking you’re entitled to a cheaper iMac. You’re not old enough to know, but people have been complaining about Apple’s prices for at least 35 years! You think you’ve come up with some breaking news here? Yeah no.
They’re Macs. They’re expensive. Get over it. Apple’s prices are what they are. If you can’t afford it, buy used or buy a $300 windows laptop and replace it ever year or two when it fries out.
If you want the 21.5” iMac, you can spend as little as $1,099. It has an HDD; so what? My Grandma sure as hell doesn’t need an SSD. Why should she have to pay an extra $200 for YOUR minimum config? She doesn’t want to spend 1,299, she wants to spend $1,099. Leave her the eff alone—she doesn’t need an SSD. If you do, no problem. You can even get a six-core i7, 32GB RAM, a Vega 20 GPU and a 1TB SSD. All you need to do is write a check for $3,349. What’s the problem?
If that’s not enough performance for you, get a 27” iMac Pro with an 18-core Xeon, 256GB of RAM, a Vega 64X GPU and a 4 TB SSD. Yours for $15,699. If you need more performance than that in a Mac, you’re going to have to wait until the new Mac Pro is released. Could be $20-30K (including monitor) for the maximum configuration, depending on what’s available; it’s currently unknown if it will support dual CPUs or 512+GB RAM or even which CPU family it will use... Skylake SP?
The point is, you don’t have the right to a Mac that’s priced at what YOU want to pay. Apple prices their products at what its customers are willing to pay. 18+ million customers a year pay the prices Apple’s asking for their Macs, so clearly they are NOT overpriced. They are NOT too expensive. Too expensive for you, maybe, sure... but not for the people who actually buy them.
It may have missed your attention, but all the billions spent on tech innovations (+ those piled up and never used) were once funded by (former) customers - who are now supposed to pay more to reap the fruits of advancement (now suddenly remarketed as high-end, “capucchino” Pro-lines, Pencil docks rebranded as “professional” iPads etc.) Innovation, as per Moore’s law, implies that those who pay the same for the same - get less effectively. Now with stalled innovation (that leads to feature shrinking/throttling across the line and spreading over a larger time span) the milking strategy even doubles in effect. Which can only happen as some donuts that don’t understand the impact of innovation allow it to happen, pointing to other donuts... Welcome to supercapitalism and incumbent industries (and feel free to be willingly ripped off) but don’t impose your norms on others
Anything with an HDD in 2019 (2015, really) is 0 stars out of 5. Come on.
Well, SDDs are optional for a few hundred dollars more.
I agree with the OP, in this day and age HDDs should even be an option! It's very unlike Apple not to lead the way into the future as they have always done.
This Dell is £1029, slightly less than the base iMac. It has an 8th Gen i5, newer than the iMac. It has faster RAM. It has a much better GPU, a Nvidia GTX1050 vs Intel Integrated. It has a 128GB SSD and a 7200RPM 1TB HDD. Still think the iMac should have an SSD? Granted, the display is likely to be better (though the iMac one is smaller, and neither are 4k)
The iMac is actually much closer to Dell's £749 offering. That still has a faster HDD, and faster RAM, though the graphics are slightly worse. Other than that, you get pretty much the same machine for £300 less. Of course you have to then deal with Windows, but Windows 10 whilst not exactly great, is nowhere near as bad as older versions. I love Apple, but the prices are just becoming ridiculous. The prices are markedly affecting sales, but for some reason Cook is obsessed with maximising profit, even if it means less sales and ultimately, less total revenue.
This 2017 1 terabyte which has a 32gb fusion (not 64gb like the previous poster said) is terrible at launching apps.
Oh geez I didn't realise they'd gone down to just 32GB now. That's a f**king piss take.
This is not the 2019 4K iMac described in the article, this is the $1099 1080p iMac you're comparing. The article says: "The 21.5-inch 4K iMac that we're reviewing is the base model iMac that you can buy for $1,299 (or on sale for $1,249 at Amazon) and it features a Quad-core i3 Processor, 8GB of RAM, a 5400RPM 1TB Hard Drive, and it's also equipped with a Radeon Pro 555X with 2GB of VRAM."
Oh, so it's even more expensive, has an even slower CPU, and still a worse GPU than the Dell. Great, thanks for pointing that out.
Your link states that the Dell has a Core i5-8400T. This is a 6-core running at 1.7 GHz base clock, 3.3 GHz turbo clock CPU. This looks to be a mobile chip with with a 35W TDP.
The iMac 4K base model has a Core i3-8100B. This a 4-core running 3.6 GHz. There isn’t a turbo or base clock. It just runs at 3.6 GHz. It’s a desktop chip with a 65 W TDP.
The i3-8100B will outperform the i5-8400T by virtue of its higher clock in single thread, and since it runs all 4 cores at 3.6 GHz while the Core i5-8400T has 6 cores, this 6 cores will run at 1.7 GHz for sustained workloads, and the i3-8100B will out perform it in multi-core too.
The GTX 1050 is indeed faster than the AMD Radeon 555X, by up to 50%.
Is this pestering just fun for you or something? You are pointing to a PC that is cheaper by component features. Buying cheaper by component list features isn’t why people buy Mac or iPhones or whatever Apple device. The list of components is but one thing people look at when buying things. To some, Apple’s intangibles are enough to pay the £200 difference.
An intangible is the design. The Dell comes with a power brick. That alone will prevent me from buying it. The Dell looks nice from the front, not so much on the side, and it looks like plastic construction. The aluminum and glass ID of the iMac is enough to get people to pay 20% more.
Heck, why would you recommend this Dell model at all as it has a 23.8” 1920x1080 resolution display? 1920x1080 on 23.8” display, displaying MS Windows software! Recommend a Dell model with a 4K model at least. And bah, it comes with “8GB, 1x8GB, DDR4, 2666MHz”. Am I reading it right? It comes with 1 8GB memory DIMM? So this model is only using 1 memory channel and therefore has half the memory performance of a typical 2 memory channel Intel system? Recommend the next model up at least.
Maybe you don’t know, but nobody would recommend the base model iMac 21.5. It’s only there for education buys (who will get it for some amount less per machine depending on number of machines purchased) or to serve as an upsell. Upsells are bad values on purpose to get people to get the next model up. Standard sales tactic for virtually everyone. You won’t find anyone on this forum that’ll recommend it.
The i3-8100B is slightly faster single threaded, but multithreaded you're miles off. The i5 is much faster. Here's a i3 Mac Mini and an i5 iMac for proof.
A power brick prevents you from buying a device? You don't have a Macbook then? 20% more cost, but with lesser specs; so in fact it ends up as more than 20% more expensive. My issue is that Apple's pricing is getting higher and higher and they skimp on things on their supposedly "premium" hardware, like the SSD, when it'd cost them so little to do so. I mentioned previously the Dell has a lesser display and case, but a 4K screen isn't much more expensive now than a HD model.
If no one would recommend the base model and it's for education, why is it for sale to the general public? If someone who knows they want a Mac but doesn't know much about computing gets the base model, they'll be disappointed. Just like my friend is with hers. You're saying thats fine, and it's her fault for buying that model rather than Apple's fault for selling a crap configuration? Apple sells computers as appliances, and people expect that when they buy an expensive Mac, that it's good.
Oh and even the next model up at £1249 still has a 5400RPM HDD. And the top tier £1449 one has a fusion drive, but with a tiny 32GB SSD. You still think that's fine?
Comments
"The 21.5-inch 4K iMac that we're reviewing is the base model iMac that you can buy for $1,299 (or on sale for $1,249 at Amazon) and it features a Quad-core i3 Processor, 8GB of RAM, a 5400RPM 1TB Hard Drive, and it's also equipped with a Radeon Pro 555X with 2GB of VRAM."
Also your point is moot as you've not used a HDD-only iMac. Maybe you'd like me to film my friend's one to prove how slow it is?
Oh, so it's even more expensive, has an even slower CPU, and still a worse GPU than the Dell. Great, thanks for pointing that out.
Sorry what? Do you think someone makes a HDD and SSD for Apple specifically? That's funny, why do the chips have "Samsung" printed on? What about the Intel CPU, is that made bespoke for Apple?
And yes, you're right, it is a matter of scale. As i said before, the more Apple buys, the cheaper they become. If I can buy a 32GB M.2 SSD on eBay for £35, Apple can buy them for much less than that. I'm an electronics engineer, I'm quite well versed with industrial production, thanks, and funny how Dell are able to provide a machine with my apparent "DIY fantasies". The only fantasy is your perception of the performance of the HDD in the iMac.
This demonstrates how sluggish the HDD iMacs are, including my friend's one. That's acceptable to you?
- The £1029 Dell is £220 less than the iMac.
- The £1029 Dell has a 1TB 7200RPM HDD, and a 128GB SSD. The £1249 iMac has no SSD, and a 5400RPM HDD.
- The £1029 Dell has an 8th gen i5. The iMac has an 8th gen i3.
- The £1029 Dell has a Geforce GTX1050 with 4GB GDDR5 graphics memory. The £1249 iMac has a slower Radeon Pro 555X with 2GB graphics memory.
- About the only thing the Dell lacks is a quality Aluminium case, and Thunderbolt. But it does have USB C.
- Thunderbolt is great, but from my experience, pretty much no one uses it, much like Firewire back in the day. USB 3.1 Type C is fast enough for almost everything.
Speccing the iMac to make it similar to Dell's £1379 All-in-one (i7, 16GB RAM inferior Fusion drive, can't upgrade the GPU as there is no option) takes it to £1789. That's £410 more than the iMac.Oh yeah, you can upgrade the RAM yourself in the Dell, too.
And who buys a new £1000 iMac for their kids?! You think the Radeon 555x is a good performer in games with a 4k display? 2GB GRAM is pretty abysmal, especially when the textures will have to be loaded in during gameplay from a slow hard disk.
Mate, you really have no idea what you're talking about and you're just embarrassing yourself now... like Apple's embarrassing themselves with their base iMac. Oh and I haven't noticed that you've failed to refute again that the iMac's a lesser spec for more money 😉
The base iMac reviewed in the article is an affordable 4K home computer with many inexpensive upgrade options. That's all I will say on that matter.
They’re Macs. They’re expensive. Get over it. Apple’s prices are what they are. If you can’t afford it, buy used or buy a $300 windows laptop and replace it ever year or two when it fries out.
If you want the 21.5” iMac, you can spend as little as $1,099. It has an HDD; so what? My Grandma sure as hell doesn’t need an SSD. Why should she have to pay an extra $200 for YOUR minimum config? She doesn’t want to spend 1,299, she wants to spend $1,099. Leave her the eff alone—she doesn’t need an SSD. If you do, no problem. You can even get a six-core i7, 32GB RAM, a Vega 20 GPU and a 1TB SSD. All you need to do is write a check for $3,349. What’s the problem?
If that’s not enough performance for you, get a 27” iMac Pro with an 18-core Xeon, 256GB of RAM, a Vega 64X GPU and a 4 TB SSD. Yours for $15,699. If you need more performance than that in a Mac, you’re going to have to wait until the new Mac Pro is released. Could be $20-30K (including monitor) for the maximum configuration, depending on what’s available; it’s currently unknown if it will support dual CPUs or 512+GB RAM or even which CPU family it will use... Skylake SP?
The point is, you don’t have the right to a Mac that’s priced at what YOU want to pay. Apple prices their products at what its customers are willing to pay. 18+ million customers a year pay the prices Apple’s asking for their Macs, so clearly they are NOT overpriced. They are NOT too expensive. Too expensive for you, maybe, sure... but not for the people who actually buy them.
Now, coincidentally, and inspite of your inward-looking thoughts are on the subject - and very much like in the early '90's, the Mac sales are flat or declining, as price is rising. Less and less people are willing to pay Apple's overinflated price. If they weren't too expensive, why are Mac sales declining? I could go and get a $300 Windows laptop, and it'd probably be faster than the iMac and likely even outlast it as it would probably have a SSD.
"Why should she have to pay an extra $200 for YOUR minimum config?" Again missing the point. Apple is easily able to absorb the cost of that £35 32GB M.2 drive in the base iMac for everyone, making everyone's experience better for no extra cost. Just like Dell does. Is that so hard to understand? Apple loses out on £35 (that's with no economies of scale factored in), but ensures the performance of the Mac is good for years to come, building goodwill and satisfaction with customers. Do you mean to say these base iMacs are only for grandmas? What about students on a budget? Or people who want a Mac but are looking at the PC options that're cheaper with much better specs? Should they have to suffer because Cook wants the Fusion drive to be a £100 upsell? Why doesn't Apple put a 7200RPM drive in the base model, is that cost too? What's your excuse for that? Are you also one of these naïve people who thinks that the price of the iPhone isn't actually an issue, and Apple's revenue warning and subsequent price cuts are actually nothing to do with the price of the iPhone? Oh, and do you think the trashcan Mac Pro is still good value?
Like I said, AI thinks the HDD really should go. Remove your head from the sand and look around. The iMac is supposed to be a premium product, so why budget internals?
Apple’s charging at least 20% more for every product this year and we’re all going to pay it
Your link states that the Dell has a Core i5-8400T. This is a 6-core running at 1.7 GHz base clock, 3.3 GHz turbo clock CPU. This looks to be a mobile chip with with a 35W TDP.
The iMac 4K base model has a Core i3-8100B. This a 4-core running 3.6 GHz. There isn’t a turbo or base clock. It just runs at 3.6 GHz. It’s a desktop chip with a 65 W TDP.
The i3-8100B will outperform the i5-8400T by virtue of its higher clock in single thread, and since it runs all 4 cores at 3.6 GHz while the Core i5-8400T has 6 cores, this 6 cores will run at 1.7 GHz for sustained workloads, and the i3-8100B will out perform it in multi-core too.
The GTX 1050 is indeed faster than the AMD Radeon 555X, by up to 50%.
Is this pestering just fun for you or something? You are pointing to a PC that is cheaper by component features. Buying cheaper by component list features isn’t why people buy Mac or iPhones or whatever Apple device. The list of components is but one thing people look at when buying things. To some, Apple’s intangibles are enough to pay the £200 difference.
An intangible is the design. The Dell comes with a power brick. That alone will prevent me from buying it. The Dell looks nice from the front, not so much on the side, and it looks like plastic construction. The aluminum and glass ID of the iMac is enough to get people to pay 20% more.
Heck, why would you recommend this Dell model at all as it has a 23.8” 1920x1080 resolution display? 1920x1080 on 23.8” display, displaying MS Windows software! Recommend a Dell model with a 4K model at least. And bah, it comes with “8GB, 1x8GB, DDR4, 2666MHz”. Am I reading it right? It comes with 1 8GB memory DIMM? So this model is only using 1 memory channel and therefore has half the memory performance of a typical 2 memory channel Intel system? Recommend the next model up at least.
Maybe you don’t know, but nobody would recommend the base model iMac 21.5. It’s only there for education buys (who will get it for some amount less per machine depending on number of machines purchased) or to serve as an upsell. Upsells are bad values on purpose to get people to get the next model up. Standard sales tactic for virtually everyone. You won’t find anyone on this forum that’ll recommend it.
How does one get or install an NVMe SSD on the iMac? Is that an option when buying an iMac?
Innovation, as per Moore’s law, implies that those who pay the same for the same - get less effectively.
Now with stalled innovation (that leads to feature shrinking/throttling across the line and spreading over a larger time span) the milking strategy even doubles in effect.
Which can only happen as some donuts that don’t understand the impact of innovation allow it to happen, pointing to other donuts...
Welcome to supercapitalism and incumbent industries (and feel free to be willingly ripped off) but don’t impose your norms on others
The i3-8100B is slightly faster single threaded, but multithreaded you're miles off. The i5 is much faster. Here's a i3 Mac Mini and an i5 iMac for proof.
A power brick prevents you from buying a device? You don't have a Macbook then? 20% more cost, but with lesser specs; so in fact it ends up as more than 20% more expensive. My issue is that Apple's pricing is getting higher and higher and they skimp on things on their supposedly "premium" hardware, like the SSD, when it'd cost them so little to do so. I mentioned previously the Dell has a lesser display and case, but a 4K screen isn't much more expensive now than a HD model.
If no one would recommend the base model and it's for education, why is it for sale to the general public? If someone who knows they want a Mac but doesn't know much about computing gets the base model, they'll be disappointed. Just like my friend is with hers. You're saying thats fine, and it's her fault for buying that model rather than Apple's fault for selling a crap configuration? Apple sells computers as appliances, and people expect that when they buy an expensive Mac, that it's good.
Oh and even the next model up at £1249 still has a 5400RPM HDD. And the top tier £1449 one has a fusion drive, but with a tiny 32GB SSD. You still think that's fine?