Memory on the m1 doesn't behave like it does on x86. My 16 GB intel macbook feels like a boat and sounds like a airplane taking off at load. My 8GB mini feels fast and is silent.
What do you mean for "behave", there are a lot of usecases that require more than 8GB memory (expecially for developers) and there is no CPU magic that will help you with that.
This is a new approach though, for Apple. Firstly, there was a difference between the desktop and mobile class chips used for iMac and MacBook. Secondly, there was a difference between the intel and arm chips.
Are able to and, I guess, must. If they could build a better product (say one with 32GB of RAM), I guess we would have seen it here, even if only at some outlandish price point.
It's amazing in an extremely depressing way, but it's still impressive that they get away with it (assumedly, given the sales of the other devices). The benefits of a walled garden, I suppose.
As someone who owns the M1 MBA, the 8GB unified memory thing isn't working.
It can work for bloggers who only need to have some light tasks open, but once you install and use Docker, you start hitting the swap.
Just in the last ~24 hours, where I used the device for ~16 of those hours, the kernel task has written almost 800GB to disk.
I'm assuming that the storage isn't replaceable, so this raises questions of the longevity of the device due to SSD wear and tear.
The iMac looks beautifully thin though. I would def buy it as a desktop (as someone who has a 64GB Ryzen 9)
Please don't take this the wrong way, but if you're doing serious development and require resources to support Docker ... why did you choose to purchase the lowest spec'd laptop Apple has to sell?
It's a fair question to ask. I have tinnitus at ~30 because of loud poor-thermal expensive work laptops. My work Dell's fan gets really loud, to the point where I can't bear sitting next to it.
I got desperate as they couldn't do anything about it at work (nor could I). So, on the 22nd December, I went to look for an MBA as I'm now sensitive to even the slightest fan noise. At that time, there was a shortage of stock, so I didn't have much choice.
I don't actually know if there's a 16GB option, as all I'm finding in my country is the 8GB.
Nonetheless, even for the iMac, I think a max of 32GB would have been reasonable,
How loud does a computer fan get when running at 100% fan, with a high pitch almost like a drill, in your experience?
I've just tested with a sound meter app on my phone; granted this isn't the most accurate way of doing it.
Silent in my room: 30db
Fan on while running and GPU is activated: max 90db.
I wish a computer manufacturer could guarantee what you're saying, because I could get a letter from my ENT doctor, take precise measurement; and sue the manufacturers for damaging my hearing.
To be -perfectly- fair with you, I would not try to run a VM in 2021 on 8GiB of ram. 16GiB is the minimum, my laptops all have 32GiB.
I would agree that the moniker of "pro" for 8GiB is misgiven, there's very little you can do these days with 8GiB of ram- I think they were banking on developers operating within the constraints of the system, we use exorbitant amounts of memory for basic tasks these days, let alone the genuine needs.
Regardless, if you didn't run docker and only ran chrome/zoom/word and -maybe- pycharm OR photoshop, it would probably be fine.
I'm in the same boat, and it's pretty abysmal. I've had to cut back so much of my workflow to fit into this computer that it can't justify itself, not even if the battery lasted a hundred hours.
Why do you care how thin a desktop computer is? It's not like you are going to move it around a lot. I think it would be better if it was a tad bit thicker, but with actually desktop class specs.
This argument is getting old. If you don't like 8GB, then don't buy one with it.
All my personal Apple notebooks have had 8gb of RAM and I have never ran into a performance issue that made me regret going with 16. I have yet to use Docker on my M1, but it runs fine on my 2017 13" Pro.
Respectfully, if you're in the US or other 'developed' countries, please consider that some people here are from countries where some stock doesn't become available, or readily available.
Also, I'm not mentioning any performance issue. I'm saying that the kernel can write over 500GB a day. There was a post a few months ago about this wearing down SSDs quickly.
As mentioned in my comment, I bought it out of desperation, and was even lucky to find the 8GB option in stock, after calling around and driving around.
To provide more context, I was about to go to a much warmer part of my country, and my work laptop's fan instantly goes to 100% fan once I start using it, because the GPU inside it turns the fan on when its internal temp reaches 50C. When I'm in the city, the GPU's idle temp is ~45C, so I really needed to get an alternative.
I really like the design, including the colors. I realize it's just a standard "slab of glass and metal" design -- and in the mobile space competitors have caught up -- but I've never seen a monitor that sleek, except maybe the Pro Display XDR.
Edit: In fact, give me just the display in a 27" form factor and put all the display connections in a "connect box" like they did for Ethernet and I'd even be willing to pay an Apple tax for such a product. Oh, and give it a way to mount it on an arm rather than use a stand.
Agreed. My ultimate dream - that will never happen - is that Apple would release a version of this which is actually designed to be a dock for the MBP, and priced somewhere between $500-900.
I think the reason they won't do it is that the "computer" is actually a minority of the cost here compared to all the other componentry. So they probably can't make their margins on such a device if they price it below ~$900 or so, and at that point paying $200 less for just a screen makes the screen seem expensive and the computer cheap at the same time, which is not what Apple wants.
Honestly, I dig the styling enough that I'd buy it as a monitor if it supported Target Display still. I really do lament the loss of TDM, it was the perfect solution to the "disposable desktop" problem. Their excuse when they introduced the 5k is that the transports weren't capable. Now their entry-level machines can drive a 6k monitor, the excuse seems lacking.
It could be, but that's something I want to provide myself. I need the ability to hook up arbitrary laptops, PCs, ... and I would just like to run less cables to my display. Having one cable for everything would be much more aesthetically pleasing than running power and two or three display connections separately.
Me too!! I would buy at 1k-1.5k if it was at least 27, but 30" would be better for video. Vesa is nice for anyone who likes a 2nd vertical code monitor.
Maybe someone can figure out a way to offload Chrome into the M1 and allow on bother screens. though a big benefit of that is battery life which doesn't matter at a desk.
You could make an argument that such a box constitutes a dongle, but I don't think it's in the same spirit. In case you didn't catch it: the ethernet port is placed on the power brick rather than directly on the device. I am pretty sure this is purely because they couldn't fit the port in the device itself, but I like the idea.
A desktop monitor will always need a power cord, and all my monitors also have external power bricks already. In this hypothetical scenario I would just want them to take the ports that are normally on the monitor and move them to the other end of the power cord.
Some high-end TVs also have this feature so you don't need to run as many wires to your potentially wall-mounted TV.
Sure, and that's exactly why I want this. But with the same argument they could have put USB-C or even USB-A ports on the brick for permanently connected peripherals, but they didn't. I understand it would be almost impossible for Thunderbolt due to concerns with signal integrity, but normal USB should work fine.
I think the idea is that Ethernet is rarely touched while the USB ports would be quite a bit more. You don’t ever need to access the Ethernet cable except in very few circumstances.
I LOVE the colors - I almost want to get one just as a monitor but it's pretty small sized. same aw pretty reaction as their actual pro monitor until I saw the price not worth it for the video editing i do.
I personally see a good market fit for this. An example is my business partner, who doesn't do intense video rendering or compute, but has n joke 100s of tabs open and does other digital multi-tasking, streaming video & capture from web. Keeping open tens of FB power editor and other large sqlite and hunky react sites is a hit. M1 should be great for that some of that. Maybe some stuff in an ML accelerator might help with too but that sounds like mostly marketing?
Mostly it just looks really cool IMHO +M1 for chrome. Personally I love the style but seems like most comments so far don't.
The max 16 gigs ram limit is really bad though.
I really hope for an update for the large size MBPro I'd totally get a purple one, M1, with a TON of RAM and fast storage NVMe or whatever. I actually miss the 17 inch though my 16 is really nice literally 14 hours a day for a couple years workhorse. If they can get a skinny bump like the iMac that'd be amazing so long as lap heat isn't a problem seems the limit is the power plug.
I bet there will be matching monitors available from a 3rd party within 12 months. Probably outrageously priced for the specs.
The mac accessory community is really good at producing matching products, and I am sure someone is going to license an existing monitor design and put it in a new shell.
This looks like a pretty good computer, I'm a little disappointed with the design and color options though. For starters, there definitely needs to be an option for a color matched or even black screen border. That white strip looks tacky and ugly in my opinion, and seems like a very strange direction for Apple to go in when I thought they left it behind on the old Macbook Airs. I don't like it, and it looks like the peak of "cheap Mac". Not to mention, it would destroy the dark mode experience. I'm also pretty disappointed with the stand on this thing. I would have loved to see a dual hinge design, a-la the Surface Studio that could bend down to be a sort of slate experience. Especially with the focus on wireless peripherals, this would have been a great choice for the Mac, considering it's new design language. Ah well.
Oh, and the pricing. So confusing for the different models. The "base" model has less ports and gets an inferior keyboard out of the box, and it also has a worse-binned chip inside too. You pay an extra few hundred dollars, and you get to choose between more colors, have a non-gimped GPU, and you still don't even have 16 gigs of memory? This originally looked like a decent deal, but I'd really like to see Apple move forwards on this thing. 512 gigs needs to be standard, and Apple is the only manufacturer holding the industry back. The more I read into it, this kinda seems like a hatchet job by Apple standards. I suppose I'll hold my judgement until the reviews roll in, but... I'm not sure who this is for. Rich kids?
Good points about the RAM and pricing. As far as the simplicity of the design, white bezel, bright colors... I suspect that we'll see a black-bezelled iMac Pro in the next few months that addresses some of those issues, and Apple is trying to differentiate the products with those very design flairs.
Startups that just got funded and already know wont be able to deliver. Fake it till you make it, and what better product to fake it than a room full of new iMacs.
That's true. It's a great way to signal to outside investors that you're really planning to get stuff done, but haven't got any "boots on the ground", so to speak.
I don't wear a watch and haven't for many years. I've tried the Apple Watch and wanted to like it, but it just wasn't compelling enough for me to make up for the inconvenience of, well, having to wear a watch.
Admittedly, I do like the health and fitness tracking features, and having Apple Pay on my wrist would be convenient. If they came out with a smaller Apple Watch with much longer battery life (a week?) then I'd probably be converted.
Everyone's milage varies. I stopped wearing a watch when I started carrying a keitai (mobile phone) in the early 90s. This was a switch from at least 15 years of continuous watch wearing.
I bought an Apple Watch 0 shortly after they came out just to see what all the fuss was. My intent was to get a feeling for it, return it within the free return window, and then buy v3 or so when they "got it right" and I thought of something I'd like to write for it.
On day three or four I started driving to work without the watch -- wearing one wasn't muscle memory. When I realized it I turned around and went and got it. It was already that important. That's when I realized it would be a big deal.
In my case I was in a job where I had lots of meetings and calls; so I could use the silent reminders, check (filtered) messages in a meeting without pulling out my phone, and screen calls the same way. I was a single parent so couldn't just leave my phone at my desk when in a meeting.
In the pandemic I've been at home and have a different job where I don't have many appointments. For that case the watch would be less useful....except I'm a convert to the exercise features, and I often run out to the shops without phone, wallet or keys. But, as it sounds for you too, those later features only work because I was already a convert.
Fingers crossed that we bring back Target Display mode.
I've been using an iMac Pro at home for over a year now and my only grievance is that I can't use it as a monitor for my laptop and/or a Windows gaming rig.
Obviously Apple thinks that the extra sales that they get from having 7 different colors outweighs the production, supply chain and retail/physical stock complexities. But I really don't see it; are there really that many people who wouldn't have bought an iMac but because it comes it orange they suddenly want one? Who are these people?
Well, they aren't going to innovate 1000% every year. They can't. So they have to differentiate their products and color has been a classic way they do that.
This harkens back to the original iMac where it was first introduced in Bondi blue and then came in multiple colors. When I bought my iPhone Pro 11 and MacBook Air the fact I could get the iPhone Pro 11 in green made me not upgrade to the 12 pro because blue was the alternative. With the MacBook Air I like the gold color but also it is completely silent.
To me, the design language feels like a cross between an iPad Pro and the iMac G3. The chin, the apple logo on the back, and the rainbow colors.
If anything, I'd expect they're reducing complexity by having the seven colors -- I imagine they're adapting (reusing?) processes from the iPhone and iPad Air to this line of iMacs.
When has Apple ever put out a macOS update that didn't support 4-year-old hardware?
Big Sur still runs on iMacs from mid 2014. (And MacBook Airs from mid 2013.) [1]
And most apps will continue to run on older macOS for several more years anyways.
Plus, while a good monitor might technically last 15 years... that doesn't mean you want to keep using it. New technologies like Retina, P3, micro-LED, etc. mean that by the time you want to upgrade your computer, you often want to upgrade your monitor too.
> When has Apple ever put out a macOS update that didn't support 4-year-old hardware?
Every single time Apple has changed the hardware architecture of their machines.
The last generation of PowerPC macs was only supported for two years. The first generation of Intel macs was only supported for 3 years. The second generation of Intel macs was supported for >8 years.
The first Intel iMac was released in early 2006 and supported until Lion was released in mid 2011.
That's five and a half years. Not three.
And the last PowerPC iMac was late 2005, and supported until Snow Leopard in late 2009. That's four years, not two.
So I guess that is the one case of not supporting four year old hardware (barely), but that's not analogous to the M1 since it dropped support for the old architecture, not an older model of the new architecture.
The first generation Intel Macs used Intel Yonah cores "Core Duo". Those were the ones released in january 2006. These models were discontinued in September 2006, and replaced by Intel Penryn cores "Core 2 Duo".
The main difference being that Intel Yonah cores only support SSE3, while the Penryn cores support SSSE3 and up to SSE4.1 (there is some variation here).
Lion required "Core 2 Duo" hardware, Leopard is the actual last OS that supported the early "Core Duo" macs, and received its last update in 2009. Back then, this was kind of frustrating, because Leopard was released in 2007, so basically those with the very first Intel-based macs only got 1 major OS upgrade. That is, the first generation Intel-based macs reached EOL at the same time as the last generation of PowerPC macs.
I guess the technically-correct thing to say is that the very first generation of Intel macs only got 3 years of support. This is in strong contrast with the Core 2 Duo macs released 6 months later, which got much longer support (some up to Mountain Lion... which had its last update in 2015, 9 years later).
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For this reason, I'm not buying M1 macs. Makes more sense to wait 1 year or so if you can stretch it and get M2s or M3s, chances are any of those will last you a decade.
I completely agree with you that Apple will kill Intel support ASAP. IIRC they guarantee ~2 year of support or so, so probably 2 years after they discontinue their last Intel model all support for Intel will be gone. Makes absolutely no sense to buy an Intel mac right now unless you get them for peanuts and only want it for the next 2 years or so.
Everything I see indicates that the earliest Intel iMac supported Snow Leopard. So it was supported until Lion dropped support -- five and a half years later.
I still don't understand where you're getting three years from.
If you check the official Lion support page from Apple, you will see that it requires an Intel "Core 2 Duo", that's the model that came after the Intel "Core Duo" (without a 2 in between) that shipped with the early Intel macs.
Snow Leopard (the version before Lion) does support the "Core Duo" processors, but they can only run 32-bit apps there, because the very first Intel Macs from Jan 2006 used 32-bit Intel CPUs. The ones that replaced them in September 2006 had x86_64 CPUs.
Apple killed support for PowerPC and 32-bit x86 at the same time with Lion.
For a desktop computer there are an awful lot of design compromises for the sake of thinness. The magsafe port (which the laptops do not get!?!), the weird combo power brick/ethernet dongle thing, very reduced number of ports, and most likely very poor repairability score and no upgradability.
But the thinness doesn't even buy you anything. It take up about the same footprint on your desk thanks to the stand, it's not like you're going to stick it in your pocket or purse or even carryon bag. So many design compromises for effectively no gain. The worst part is it might even be counterproductive in desktop space saving, because some users are going to end up plugging in some USB dock/port multiplier that is going to have to sit on the desk or be glued to the back of the computer.
Also 8GB memory base is almost a crime in 2021. Even if you can get away with that with your current workload, in a couple of years you're gonna be swapping. If this were a more normal machine it wouldn't be so bad because you could always just buy more memory and slap it in. But I can guarantee that the memory on this Mac cannot be upgraded. If you need more you have to throw the whole machine in the trash and buy a new one. If you want to buy one of these definitely get the expensive 16GB option. If you have to choose between upgrading the small 256GB main storage and the small 8GB of RAM, do the RAM. You can always buy an external USB drive for more storage, but you can't buy USB RAM.
I am wondering what is behind the idea of having so many different colors. We used to know imacs or in general notebooks to be mostly black or silver. Aren’t like 90% of people and companies going to purchase just these old colors? Or is this a way to “create identity” as everyone seems to have the same device? Or to make the used and spare parts market more complicated?
- Not a psychologist myself but would be interested to know more.
If you work in engineering or banking, then yes you see all black and silver.
But if you work in fashion, a nice doctor's office, retail, or really any environment that is decor-focused, having color options is HUGE.
This is just taking "OMG I love the color you painted your kitchen, it's so tasteful yet energetic, what is it?" and applying as well to the computer that sits prominently in your home's shared area.
I like the colors and design, but needing a separate work/personal computer at the same desk at different times means I can't have a big display that's only usable by one computer. If they still had target display mode, I'd be very tempted to flip my M1 MacBook Air for one of these.
In 2021 8GB expandable to 16GB of RAM is just laughable. Here's Apple stating "you are a consumer and thus you must consume. Any kind of remotely more complex task is prohibited on a 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD machine". Plain ridiculous.
- Anyone wanting a 27" or a better screen will have to wait.
- Only two TB3 ports.
- No improvement to the Magic Mouse, the worst peripheral in Apple history.
- If you're going to offer three keyboards, one of them had better be a 65% or a TKL. This is bizarrely out of step with the market.
- The colors are nice, but honestly, who cares?
I guess I was expecting more of a desktop computer instead of MacBook Pro with a dedicated screen. It's hard to imagine jumping to one of these until the graphics performance is figured out.
That's a limitation of the M1 silicon itself from my understanding. It doesn't have enough PCI express channels. It's been one of the few commonalities on all the M1 macs. This new iMac I think is the last computer we'll see using it until the release of a higher power chip for the Mac Pro, Macbook Pro (insert larger size here), and maybe some kind of "iMac Pro".
Yes, but the smaller M1 devices have been out for a while ago, and the iMac is the de facto Apple workstation. I don't think it's too unreasonable to expect some iterative improvement 5 months later.
It seems like a half-baked release and a downgrade in some respects from an iMac 27". Maybe that is intentional though?
This seems to be positioned as a replacement for the 21.5" iMac, and the 27" iMac replacement is yet to come. During the announcement they only ever compared it to the 21.5" model, and it's pretty much a strict upgrade compared to that.
Only 8GB RAM and probably not usable as external thunderbolt display, otherwise I would have pressed the buy button as quick as they open it up for orders...
On the other hand, the background images seem like a bit of a reflection on those olden days; looks a lot like the default desktop backgrounds from back then (which still look good! but just not at retina resolutions).
I'm guessing it's anodized aluminum... so will come out differently. I'm not sure it's really worth it... would be happy with a black option, but I'm never going to buy an all in one, so not the target audience.
Perhaps your screen colorspace is too low. (I'm serious.) They looked plenty bright to me. I think if you look at them in person the colors will be much more saturated than your display allows.
What is the point of the chin of the iMac if the logo is removed there? It would be better if it was an all screen iMac and being 27 inches but this one is only available as 24 inches.
Looks more like a beautiful downgrade if you already bought an 27 inch iMac or iMac Pro in 2017. For that memory, screen size and price?
The chin is there so the overall design can be one uniform, very thin slab. If they were to get rid of the chin, they'd have to make the body thicker to accommodate the depth of the USB ports.
Would have loved to see a way to connect my work laptop and use this as a secondary display. Also more sustainable since monitors tend to be useful for longer than compute and memory.
IMHO not doing the 16GB update is a huge mistake. Even though you're going to pay the Apple Tax on it, the memory is going to be the limiting factor in the life of this machine.
I have an 8GB MacBook Air, which I use extensively for development (Xcode, Eclipse, often both at the same time) and I'm actually really happy with it.
8GB on the M1 machines feels much, much faster than 8GB on an Intel MacBook Pro. No doubt there is swapping going on, but it's so fast you just don't notice it.
(I would probably have got the 16GB upgrade if it were available, but 16GB can only be custom ordered directly from Apple)
I think you can get away with it today, but in a couple of years it will feel like a mistake. Apple will do something crazy like put GPU accelerate AI autocomplete in XCode that works great, but eats up 3GB of GPU memory, which is system memory in a unified system like this. The new web framework du jour will eat up 1GB per tab and people will think nothing of it. Apple will release OS updates that consume more and more of the base memory. I think the 8GB devices are going to be living on borrowed time in a couple of years.
The worst part is when you start swapping heavily it is going to eat into the write endurance on the built-in non-replaceable SSD.
If you for years only had 720p front video camera I guess 1megapixel is an improvement but it's a bit of a joke. But I do like the colours and the design.
1080p is 2 Megapixels, but that's beside the point. I maintain that this is a perfectly reasonable resolution for a webcam. They're used almost exclusively for video conferencing and all video conferencing software I've ever used doesn't use a bitrate high enough to take advantage of anything more anyway.
What we really need is a good sensor that has these 2MP.
I only know that my MBP from last year has a shitty camera and the camera quality has been bad for many years. If you compare it to the frontside camera of the iPad.
No disagreement there, the webcams in MacBooks and other laptops are bad. But they're not bad because they don't have enough pixels. They're bad because the lens isn't great, the sensor is too small (or simply a bad sensor) or many other reasons.
- Mac mini ($699)
- iPad Pro ($799)
- MacBook Air ($999)
- MacBook Pro ($1299)
- iMac ($1299)
The only difference is the form factor and does it come with a keyboard.
Said another way, these 5 products are all the exact same "computer".
It's the most amazing market segmentation I've ever seen.