roundaboutnow

saarek said:

I had planned on buying one of these iMacs, but I have to say I'm massively underwhelmed. £1649 for the model with 512GB SSD and a paltry 8GB of Ram and last years entry level chip.

Real nasty taste in the mouth with the £200 jump from the base model which they deliberately neutered to try and force people into buying the middle model.

Well, that "last years entry level chip" is still the chip in all currently shipping M1 Macs. The new iMac is considered entry level too.

And if you compare the new iMac with a similarly equipped M1 MBP, you get the same specs (CPU/RAM/SSD) for the pretty much the same price. No battery with the iMac of course, but compared to the MBP, you do get a bigger screen, better camera, better sound, a mouse, and separate keyboard. Put in perspective, the pricing is at least consistent with the rest of the product line.

PS: Here on AI, I regularly see discounts on M1 Macs. Don't know if they apply to your region, but it looks like it is possible to save a decent amount on M1 Macs in the US, so I would anticipate the same discounts will apply to the new iMacs before too long.

keithw said:

To a lot of users, an M1 Mac Mini with a 5k display (or even the XDR like I have) will make a lot more sense than this iMac.

Perhaps so, but 5K monitors ain't cheap--you can get the base model iMac for the price of a 5K monitor. A mini with a 4K monitor (or two) would be more sensible. A mini with the 6K XDR sounds real nice, but I would say "luxurious," not sensible.

I wonder if we'll see matching 4.5K monitors soon...

Having a matching monitor on an iMac for the dual screen set up would be nice.

Pairing one or two with an M1 Mac mini could be nice too, and allow replacement/trade-in of the mini if upgrade desired.

Or pair with a MBP or MBA for the mobile+desktop option. A monitor with integrated "hub" for I/O expansion would be super cool for this scenario.

I would say "all of the above," although the fact that Apple TV+,  Homekit, and Airplay are included in other devices does make me ponder the "give up the hobby" route. Gaming would seem to be a strong differentiator (although the whole home hub concept is unique as well), but see my example below.

I especially like the soundbar concept, but I couldn't wait...last week I pulled the trigger on the Roku Smart Soundbar to replace my aging ATV 3rd gen and powered Altec 2.1 PC speaker system connected to my not-quite-smart-enough Sony 46" TV. The Roku was on sale for $149 and I think represents really good value, since I didn't have much interest in gaming. It is 4K and includes the AppleTV+ app (although I don't subscribe to it), as well as all the major streamers and then some. Airplay 2, Homekit and Bluetooth also included. Audio from TV comes in via HDMI ARC, so cable box, blu-ray, and other TV sources play through the soundbar too. You can talk into the remote for Siri, but I haven't tried that yet. So far, sound quality is decent soundbar level--a bit boxy sounding with default setting. Definitely better that the TV speakers, and a little better than the PC system (not bad considering PC system has a sub). I also ordered the Roku wireless sub (also $149). It just arrived today, so I haven't hooked it up yet. The sub should help (it better!), and I will play around with some of the limited audio adjustments to hear what happens. Overall, I don't expect audiophile quality, but for TV sound in a small living room, I think it should be pretty good.

Virtual 3D objects and scenes can be generated to a viewer by means of a stereographic method (a slightly different image to each eye, like how 3D movies work)...so the images themselves are not likely true holograms. My guess is that it is a Holographic Optical Element (HOE) that is the "projection hologram" used to direct the images to each eye.

Combine this with eye-tracking and dynamically focussing (or even de-focussing) both the actual scene and the virtual objects depending on where the user is looking, as well as incorporating actual 3D scene detection, I can imagine a very convincing integration of real and virtual imagery would be possible.