The big iMac is the quintessential Mac. The all in one that put the category on the map. It’s the ultimate representation of desktop computing as an integrated system.
The 2020 iMac is one of the best apple computers ever, one of the best performing, and a fantastic deal.
A Mac Studio is nice for the Mac mini buyers who need more than the mini and for the Mac Pro buyers who have no Mac Pro to buy. But it is nowhere near a replacement for the iMac.
The only caveat is that Apple needs to leave the crazy Mac studio pricing with the Mac studio. And there is zero reason not to expect fair pricing when apple was shelling out to Intel and Nvidia with the 2020 iMac - and increased the webcam to 1080p. The only thing stopping decent pricing is corporate greed.
As the iMac Pro stood in for the Mac Pro while the modern Mac Pro was being designed, the iMac is anything but an entry level family device. It’s s workhorse and a professional dream machine. Sure if you want a stock m1 small iMac, that may work well for your kitchen. But the larger iMac is s professional tool that rips through jobs on an elite level. An apple silicon version would be the ultimate Mac.
The big iMac is the quintessential Mac. The all in one that put the category on the map. It’s the ultimate representation of desktop computing as an integrated system.
The 2020 iMac is one of the best apple computers ever, one of the best performing, and a fantastic deal.
A Mac Studio is nice for the Mac mini buyers who need more than the mini and for the Mac Pro buyers who have no Mac Pro to buy. But it is nowhere near a replacement for the iMac.
The only caveat is that Apple needs to leave the crazy Mac studio pricing with the Mac studio. And there is zero reason not to expect fair pricing when apple was shelling out to Intel and Nvidia with the 2020 iMac - and increased the webcam to 1080p. The only thing stopping decent pricing is corporate greed.
As the iMac Pro stood in for the Mac Pro while the modern Mac Pro was being designed, the iMac is anything but an entry level family device. It’s s workhorse and a professional dream machine. Sure if you want a stock m1 small iMac, that may work well for your kitchen. But the larger iMac is s professional tool that rips through jobs on an elite level. An apple silicon version would be the ultimate Mac.
[AMD, not “Nvidia,” of course.] What you say is largely true, but you are looking back, not ahead. Plus, your sense of it being a bargain relative to the Mac Studio + Studio Display (and your claim of “gouging”) ignores a few things. Yes, the 5K iMac was a bargain if you were happy with the base configurations, but for anyone else the BTO pricing was similar to the Mac Studio. I think I paid about $4500, all told (including 32 GB of high-quality third-party RAM), an i7 with best graphics and 2 TB storage.
Looking ahead, there are things Apple can do with the Mac Studio that they could never do with the iMac. Starting with displays. They could produce a line of different displays aimed at different uses.
Another thing that is easier to do with the Mac Studio is subscriptions. That’s coming soon, possibly very soon, for the iPhone (and probably also the Watch), but Macs won’t be far behind. Swapping out the Mac Studio module every year or so is a far simpler proposition than an entire iMac. It’s a better model, more reality-based, it acknowledges that display technology evolves at a different rate than SoC technology.
Many have no idea how close Apple was to going under when the iMac was released. There was virtually no chance it would survive in the face of the onslaught by industry-standard Windows, which had finally been able to copy the Mac’s ease of use after more than a decade of trying. Today, Apple is arguably the most powerful company to ever exist. Truly unbelievable, and all thanks to one man: Steve Jobs.
All of that is complete bunk.
Apple was in no danger of going under. Apple was consistently profitable, had a huge chunk of cash in the bank, and was making far better computers than everybody else.
Where Apple was struggling was with the development of the next generation operating system. The NeXT purchase made sense for picking up a good UNIX-based OS, but sadly came with Steve Jobs, the man who was very justifiably fired from Apple in the early '80s. Had Amelio been slightly more competent the first thing he'd have done after buying NeXT would have been to fire Jobs again, or at least contain him to the marketing department, with no influence on computer design.
Oh, and Microsoft didn't approach Macintosh ease of use for another decade and a half. The ONLY release they've ever had that came close was Windows 7, what they had in the '90s was absolute garbage. I know there were people at the time saying things like "Windows 95 = Macintosh 87" but the reality was very different, Win95 was still ultimately a shell on top of DOS.
Thanks for trolling with all your false information. We get it, you hate Steve Jobs. Apple was 3 months away from bankruptcy after filing a loss of $750M for the prior quarter. They were not profitable, they were bleeding. Ship with a big hole in it. Apple had 32 SKUs of garbage products. There is even a keynote that shows all 32 SKUs of Macs that made no sense. Their Macs in the 90s were riddled with quality problems. Bad PowerBooks and cheap PowerPC Macs running on a 680x0 32bit board for most models. And then the Performas added to the mess. The iMac and Steve Jobs saved Apple.
I would not say the iMac is better than ever. The 24" is a poor design. No SD slot, headphone jack on the side, Ethernet in a power brick? Limited to 16GB of RAM, limited to 2TB of storage, no dedicated graphics, and the M1 has slower multi-core scores than Intel. Without improved graphics, the prior models with dedicated GPUs smoked the M1. Once Apple makes an iMac with the M Pro and M Max CPUs, like the new MacBook Pros, then they will be worthy once again...and bringing back the 27" model.
Many have no idea how close Apple was to going under when the iMac was released. There was virtually no chance it would survive in the face of the onslaught by industry-standard Windows, which had finally been able to copy the Mac’s ease of use after more than a decade of trying. Today, Apple is arguably the most powerful company to ever exist. Truly unbelievable, and all thanks to one man: Steve Jobs.
All of that is complete bunk.
Apple was in no danger of going under. Apple was consistently profitable, had a huge chunk of cash in the bank, and was making far better computers than everybody else.
Where Apple was struggling was with the development of the next generation operating system. The NeXT purchase made sense for picking up a good UNIX-based OS, but sadly came with Steve Jobs, the man who was very justifiably fired from Apple in the early '80s. Had Amelio been slightly more competent the first thing he'd have done after buying NeXT would have been to fire Jobs again, or at least contain him to the marketing department, with no influence on computer design.
Oh, and Microsoft didn't approach Macintosh ease of use for another decade and a half. The ONLY release they've ever had that came close was Windows 7, what they had in the '90s was absolute garbage. I know there were people at the time saying things like "Windows 95 = Macintosh 87" but the reality was very different, Win95 was still ultimately a shell on top of DOS.
Apple had the equivalent of 3.5 billion dollars and no debt when Steve Jobs took over, those CEO’s after Steve Jobs the first time around may not have been the best but they did one right, they were profitable and didn’t create debt something that most people/companies can’t do live within a budget, great idea’s by Job’s (Next) and no debt saved Apple, if you were still using Apple computers (1997-2000) nothing coming from Microsoft played any part, for me personally at the time new Mac’s and OS X made it a easy decision to use Apple computers, it also made it a easy decision to buy shares later on.
Many have no idea how close Apple was to going under when the iMac was released. There was virtually no chance it would survive in the face of the onslaught by industry-standard Windows, which had finally been able to copy the Mac’s ease of use after more than a decade of trying. Today, Apple is arguably the most powerful company to ever exist. Truly unbelievable, and all thanks to one man: Steve Jobs.
All of that is complete bunk.
Apple was in no danger of going under. Apple was consistently profitable, had a huge chunk of cash in the bank, and was making far better computers than everybody else.
Where Apple was struggling was with the development of the next generation operating system. The NeXT purchase made sense for picking up a good UNIX-based OS, but sadly came with Steve Jobs, the man who was very justifiably fired from Apple in the early '80s. Had Amelio been slightly more competent the first thing he'd have done after buying NeXT would have been to fire Jobs again, or at least contain him to the marketing department, with no influence on computer design.
Oh, and Microsoft didn't approach Macintosh ease of use for another decade and a half. The ONLY release they've ever had that came close was Windows 7, what they had in the '90s was absolute garbage. I know there were people at the time saying things like "Windows 95 = Macintosh 87" but the reality was very different, Win95 was still ultimately a shell on top of DOS.
Even today still, except for the Apple Watch almost everything Apple does that makes the big bucks (the core elements) was green lighted by Steve Jobs. No Steve Jobs no Apple by 2001.
My favourite was the lamp. I had a 17” one and loved it. Right now I have a 21.5” Intel iMac. It’s fine for a mid teens computer. But I’d like to update it to an M2.
Right, the "lamp" had the most original design ever:
Unfortunately I did not have the opportunity to use one. Now I am on a 27-inch iMac overloaded with RAM. It is three years old now and it still feels like new. Loads of memory and the Core i5 certainly help here but its time will pass. I hope bigger than 24-inch iMac will return in the future; I would not like to go down in screen size when the time will come, after having used the iMac in full 5K resolution.
Many have no idea how close Apple was to going under when the iMac was released. There was virtually no chance it would survive in the face of the onslaught by industry-standard Windows, which had finally been able to copy the Mac’s ease of use after more than a decade of trying. Today, Apple is arguably the most powerful company to ever exist. Truly unbelievable, and all thanks to one man: Steve Jobs.
All of that is complete bunk.
Apple was in no danger of going under. Apple was consistently profitable, had a huge chunk of cash in the bank, and was making far better computers than everybody else.
Where Apple was struggling was with the development of the next generation operating system. The NeXT purchase made sense for picking up a good UNIX-based OS, but sadly came with Steve Jobs, the man who was very justifiably fired from Apple in the early '80s. Had Amelio been slightly more competent the first thing he'd have done after buying NeXT would have been to fire Jobs again, or at least contain him to the marketing department, with no influence on computer design.
Oh, and Microsoft didn't approach Macintosh ease of use for another decade and a half. The ONLY release they've ever had that came close was Windows 7, what they had in the '90s was absolute garbage. I know there were people at the time saying things like "Windows 95 = Macintosh 87" but the reality was very different, Win95 was still ultimately a shell on top of DOS.
Tell me you know absolutely nothing about Apple’s history or reason for success without telling me… Yup, you nailed it! About every single thing you said is wrong. Not surprising for a PC troll or whatever it is you’re here to do.
Where Apple goes with the follow-on to the 27” iMac 5K is still a big mystery.
The 24” M1 iMac was a massive upgrade from the 21” iMac, both in processing and in screen quality, but it’s obviously not quite enough for 27” iMac 5K users who see the smaller screen as a downgrade.
The challenge is how does Apple make a similar generational leap from the last generation 27” iMac to its Apple Silicon successor as they did with the smaller iMac without driving the price through the roof or cannibalizing Mac Studio based systems?
Would current 27” iMac holdouts be satisfied simply by putting high end Mx chips in the same form factor with the same 5K screen? Some would, but the total impact would be greatly enhanced if Apple could find a way to upgrade the big iMac screen as well.
Apple’s off the shelf screen upgrade options for a new larger iMac appear rather limited right now. The 5K panel in the Studio display isn’t really an upgrade and the 6K XDR display panel is a budget buster.
My theory is that a worthy replacement for the 27” iMac is being gated by Apple coming up with a suitable new display panel that they can properly slot into a big iMac, say a 5.5K panel in the 30”-32” size, with a cost reduced implementation of some of the features from the XDR panel. I simply cannot imagine Apple sticking the 6K XDR panel into an iMac, but maybe they can tweak up something closer to it for a much lower cost, just like the 24” iMac has something a little less than a full 5K panel.
It’s a simple answer: Apple just needs to CHOOSE to not gouge.
That’s what they are doing with Mac Studio. Gouging the heck out of customers.
The 2020 iMac had a tremendous screen, a fantastic CPU, even though they had to pay Intel for it, included a keyboard and mouse, had top notch GPU options and could support 128 GB RAM.
and you could get it for much less than a Mac studio with keyboard and display. And apple had to pay more to make it.
Right now, we are seeing Apple try to change the price game by making you pay more for less. It’s pretty bad.
The M series was supposed to be a price benefit as it was done by Apple in-house as a derivative of the already established a series. And it seemed like it was at least even money at launch. But what we didn’t realize was how apple would crush us on pricing once they controlled the cpu/ram/GPU package. And it’s a nightmare.
No doubt one of the reasons apple didn’t launch a successor to the big boy iMac yet was the fact that the 2020 iMac was such a good deal. So along comes the studio to blow pricing sky high and separate everyone from the memory of the amazingly well priced iMac. Next year we will finally get the iMac we want, but with the pricing we don’t.
Can you link us to evidence of your claim that switching from Intel to in-house was done to offer customers a lower price? Where was this claim made? Which exec went on record? Cook?
I think you misunderstood why Apple got off the Intel train. It was to get off that vendor dependency, and be able to control their own core tech and future. Not being beholden to the limitations of Intel’s roadmap and poor power efficiency.
I hardly feel gouged. You can get a cheap Mac mini M-class machine. The MBAs are amazing, we love our M2. And if you need super juice the Studio. But if you aren’t earning a living from it and just want the top of the line for fun, sure, you will find it expensive. But you don’t need that tool.
Many have no idea how close Apple was to going under when the iMac was released. There was virtually no chance it would survive in the face of the onslaught by industry-standard Windows, which had finally been able to copy the Mac’s ease of use after more than a decade of trying. Today, Apple is arguably the most powerful company to ever exist. Truly unbelievable, and all thanks to one man: Steve Jobs.
Lore is great, but no. It's never one person. He'd be the first to tell you that. In fact, he was:
I grow little of the food I eat, and of the little I do grow I did not breed or perfect the seeds. I do not make any of my own clothing. I speak a language I did not invent or refine. I did not discover the mathematics I use. I am protected by freedoms and laws I did not conceive of or legislate, and do not enforce or adjudicate. I am moved by music I did not create myself. When I needed medical attention, I was helpless to help myself survive. I did not invent the transistor, the microprocessor, object oriented programming, or most of the technology I work with. I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and well being.
I wouldn’t say the iMac is better than ever today though. It’s looks are the same as before but with a polarizing color scheme (bezels), and odd choice of port placement. It’s also a bit too small.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Nearly all of this could have been said (and was said, a LOT, about the first iMac.
Many have no idea how close Apple was to going under when the iMac was released. There was virtually no chance it would survive in the face of the onslaught by industry-standard Windows, which had finally been able to copy the Mac’s ease of use after more than a decade of trying. Today, Apple is arguably the most powerful company to ever exist. Truly unbelievable, and all thanks to one man: Steve Jobs.
All of that is complete bunk.
Apple was in no danger of going under. Apple was consistently profitable, had a huge chunk of cash in the bank, and was making far better computers than everybody else.
Where Apple was struggling was with the development of the next generation operating system. The NeXT purchase made sense for picking up a good UNIX-based OS, but sadly came with Steve Jobs, the man who was very justifiably fired from Apple in the early '80s. Had Amelio been slightly more competent the first thing he'd have done after buying NeXT would have been to fire Jobs again, or at least contain him to the marketing department, with no influence on computer design.
Oh, and Microsoft didn't approach Macintosh ease of use for another decade and a half. The ONLY release they've ever had that came close was Windows 7, what they had in the '90s was absolute garbage. I know there were people at the time saying things like "Windows 95 = Macintosh 87" but the reality was very different, Win95 was still ultimately a shell on top of DOS.
Sounds like you've got a bone to pick with Jobs! He was and always will be the secret sauce of Apple. Tim continues to carry his torch proudly, and rightfully so. The next CEO will see dramatic changes to Apple's force in the market place. We'll lose the focus on simplicity.
I fail to see why you're so anti-Jobs. It was his leadership and vision that brought Apple to where it is today. There were some painful missteps during the past 20 years, but in the end, Apple came out better for it. We, as users, are better for it.
I was about to say the same thing after reading the OP.
And I'd argue that Jobs had a ton more integrity than today's technical leaders. Really pushing the vision of technology being used to enhance our abilities (the original vision of people like Vannevar Bush and Doug Engelbart) rather than simply creating it to fool and addict people for profit . Fool them in the sense of obscuring your true business model (they are the product), and addicting people to using technology as a replacement for social needs and feeling connected with each other. I was part of the movement in the 1990s where we were inventing/refining existing technology to connect with each other online (IRC, MUDs, MOOs, etc), and I can say for certain that this wasn't the future we had in mind.
That's the vision that people who are fixated on technical details like how expandable a machine is don't see. Technology is more than the sum of the parts, and has applications far beyond those of the engineers behind it. Computational machines are yet another tool in the evolution of tools which have changed the course of human history. So what direction do we want them to take us? I'm firmly in the camp of using them to enhance our abilities and facilitating real connections, even if that's not the easiest or most profitable route.
You could not open the business section of a newspaper anywhere in the world in 1995-1997 without a story about “beleaguered Apple computer”. In fact, just about any article with Apple in it back then, regardless of publication, would adverbalise “beleaguered” as if it was part of the company’s name. It became a running gag.
Its value in stock was not too different to its cash holdings. Beleaguered Apple was expected to either die or be bought out by Larry Ellison.
Then came the Macworld featuring Bill Gates as Big Brother, and the release of the Bondi blue iMac. Those two things symbolically represented the resurrection of Apple. Behind the scenes the reality was the fear of death, and the surgery of aggressive, dictatorial cost cutting and production line simplification and product realignment. Apple’s balance of design and engineering fully returned. And all those things combined, worked.
You could not open the business section of a newspaper anywhere in the world in 1995-1997 without a story about “beleaguered Apple computer”. In fact, just about any article with Apple in it back then, regardless of publication, would adverbalise “beleaguered” as if it was part of the company’s name. It became a running gag.
Its value in stock was not too different to its cash holdings. Beleaguered Apple was expected to either die or be bought out by Larry Ellison.
Then came the Macworld featuring Bill Gates as Big Brother, and the release of the Bondi blue iMac. Those two things symbolically represented the resurrection of Apple. Behind the scenes the reality was the fear of death, and the surgery of aggressive, dictatorial cost cutting and production line simplification and product realignment. Apple’s balance of design and engineering fully returned. And all those things combined, worked.
In the immortal words of the great Jack Miller: "Who's beleaguered now, punk?"
Comments
Another thing that is easier to do with the Mac Studio is subscriptions. That’s coming soon, possibly very soon, for the iPhone (and probably also the Watch), but Macs won’t be far behind. Swapping out the Mac Studio module every year or so is a far simpler proposition than an entire iMac. It’s a better model, more reality-based, it acknowledges that display technology evolves at a different rate than SoC technology.
I think you misunderstood why Apple got off the Intel train. It was to get off that vendor dependency, and be able to control their own core tech and future. Not being beholden to the limitations of Intel’s roadmap and poor power efficiency.
I hardly feel gouged. You can get a cheap Mac mini M-class machine. The MBAs are amazing, we love our M2. And if you need super juice the Studio. But if you aren’t earning a living from it and just want the top of the line for fun, sure, you will find it expensive. But you don’t need that tool.
Lore is great, but no. It's never one person. He'd be the first to tell you that. In fact, he was:
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Nearly all of this could have been said (and was said, a LOT, about the first iMac.
And I'd argue that Jobs had a ton more integrity than today's technical leaders. Really pushing the vision of technology being used to enhance our abilities (the original vision of people like Vannevar Bush and Doug Engelbart) rather than simply creating it to fool and addict people for profit . Fool them in the sense of obscuring your true business model (they are the product), and addicting people to using technology as a replacement for social needs and feeling connected with each other. I was part of the movement in the 1990s where we were inventing/refining existing technology to connect with each other online (IRC, MUDs, MOOs, etc), and I can say for certain that this wasn't the future we had in mind.
That's the vision that people who are fixated on technical details like how expandable a machine is don't see. Technology is more than the sum of the parts, and has applications far beyond those of the engineers behind it. Computational machines are yet another tool in the evolution of tools which have changed the course of human history. So what direction do we want them to take us? I'm firmly in the camp of using them to enhance our abilities and facilitating real connections, even if that's not the easiest or most profitable route.
Its value in stock was not too different to its cash holdings. Beleaguered Apple was expected to either die or be bought out by Larry Ellison.