strangenoises

I bought an iMac at the start of this year. At the time I thought one of three things would happen:

1. There'd be a new iMac soon and it'll be great and I'll wish I'd waited.
2. There'd be a new iMac soon and it'll be worse (eg: no accessible RAM / more expensive / more appliancy and less useful) and I'll be glad I didn't wait.
3. There won't be a new iMac soon enough for me to worry about, besides minor spec bumps. Complete lack of rumours supported this.

Looks like it's 2, but even worse than imagined. That is a dreadful design and I can't believe they'll actually do it.

anome said:

I'm surprised no-one's offering a physical escape key that plugs into a USB-C port so you can add one if you need it. I suppose as long as there was a keyboard that offered one, you didn't have to.

I think because if you're OK to have extra devices lying around you're on a desk and you might as well just get a nice bluetooth or USB keyboard? ;-)

Although I think you're envisaging a tiny little USB-C "keyboard" with just the one key that you just plug into the socket closest to where the escape key should be... would want to be able to rest it somehow on the top of the base unit though. if it was sticking out of the socket like a USB thumb drive it'll snap off, given how escape keys, when wanted, tend to get used with vigour...

I had the first version for three years, in gold, bought as a self-reward for completing nanowrimo that year. I loved almost everything about it but especially it's incredible lightness of being. It was light enough to take anywhere whether or not I thought I might use it.

The only real downside, which did start to get to me later, was that it wasn't very desktoppable. as in, the single USB-C reall was a bit inadequate. In the first version it couldn't actually do 4K@60 at all, and in fact even seemed to have problems with 1440p, let alone the problems if you wanted it to get power at the same time. Just a *leetle* bit more oomph, and a thunderbolt 3 instead of USB-C, and I'd have got a new one when, instead, I got the 2018 Macbook Air. (with which, btw, I've never had cause to plug anything into the second TB3 port, so one is enough there, with a TB3 dock.) The Air is *just* a bit too heavy to take everywhere.

But as a satellite system, supplementary to a "proper" work machine on the desk so desktopping it wasn't really an issue, it was just superb. Oh, and the keyboard on mine never went wrong either. Nor has it yet on the Air I got next, and I *keep* spilling crumbs on it almost like I'm *trying* to make it go...

What about sitting it on top of a bag of frozen peas? ;-) Or, productized, some kit that replaces the base and pushes cold air up into the system? I know I know, I'm pretty sure the cost/benefit analysis of any such "cooling base" product would never work out.

Well, FWIW I want one, and if I get it, it'll be my sixth, though the last one was a 2011 Mac Mini Server model. ... Just one niggling doubt to wait for when braver people get their hands on it: How good is the cooling / how bad is the thermal throttling / if you actually give the top-end CPU option some real work to do? It looks hopeful...