2015 iMac Reviews: 'Best All-in-One' Desktop, But Lacks USB-C and Fusion Drive Isn't Standard

[nuckinfutz]

"Apple did change how the Fusion Drive works in 2015. To allow for a lower-cost Fusion Drive option, Apple paired a 1TB hard drive with a 24GB SSD. In the past, the 1TB Fusion Drive matched a 1TB standard hard drive with a 128GB SSD. Now, if you want the 128GB SSD, you'll need to have a 2TB or 3TB Fusion Drive offering. "

And there's me telling myself I wouldn't get riled up. What an absolute crock of ****, it's an utter joke that a company worth this much and who claim to be about user experience/specs dick their consumers so hard.

It's reminiscent of RIM, they're just taking advantage of their users who are already in the ecosystem. If they made pricing decisions/spec limitations that the user suffers for back in 2000, you'd be sure as hell that Apple wouldn't be where they are today.

It's getting beyond stupid now. **** off Tim Cook, bring back some passion to the products, screw the monsterous profits, and make every Apple product available as nice as it could be for that price point. You know, so people are comforted in the fact that any Apple product they buy is well thought out and not crippled with planned obsolecence. How it used to be, how it should be, and how you claim Apple is. Get your heads out of your asses.

(never thought I'd fall into the 'Steve wouldn't have done this' trap)

Remember folks. Apple is a business ...not your friend.

 

[TallManNY]

Apple was the first to get rid of floppy drives, CD/DVD drives, and is almost eager to get rid of technology that isn't moving forward at the same pace they are. Why they still have 5400RPM drives in the company anywhere in any line is beyond me.

It'd be a different story if you didn't have to disassemble the whole thing to upgrade the HDD/SSD. What a disappointment.

That computer isn't for personal use. It is the version that is supposed to be bought by an institution and then used by someone else for whom performance is not a compelling interest. Think of the computers in the library or available for use in a hotel lobby. In some ways you don't want the computers there to be really great since you want people to just use them a bit and then move on. This is the computer for the airport skybar lounge.

If you are spending your own money to get your own machine as a daily driver, you aren't supposed to buy that version.

 

[tuxon86]

Remember folks. Apple is a business ...not your friend.

So's the Mafia...

 

[Norcal.]

"Apple did change how the Fusion Drive works in 2015. To allow for a lower-cost Fusion Drive option, Apple paired a 1TB hard drive with a 24GB SSD. In the past, the 1TB Fusion Drive matched a 1TB standard hard drive with a 128GB SSD. Now, if you want the 128GB SSD, you'll need to have a 2TB or 3TB Fusion Drive offering. "

And there's me telling myself I wouldn't get riled up. What an absolute crock of ****, it's an utter joke that a company worth this much and who claim to be about user experience/specs dick their consumers so hard.

It's reminiscent of RIM, they're just taking advantage of their users who are already in the ecosystem. If they made pricing decisions/spec limitations that the user suffers for back in 2000, you'd be sure as hell that Apple wouldn't be where they are today.

It's getting beyond stupid now. **** off Tim Cook, bring back some passion to the products, screw the monsterous profits, and make every Apple product available as nice as it could be for that price point. You know, so people are comforted in the fact that any Apple product they buy is well thought out and not crippled with planned obsolecence. How it used to be, how it should be, and how you claim Apple is. Get your heads out of your asses.

(never thought I'd fall into the 'Steve wouldn't have done this' trap)

Yeah, I've been a long time apple fan and even i'm starting to get pissed off at this BS. Whether or not it's due to Tim Cook, they've been going downhill past few years in regards to valuing user experience in their products. I thought fusion drive as they were was a little big of a cop out, they should've just added SSD to base models. But to make it worse cutting 128 down to -24-???

Not even mentioning:

• Doubling cost of "magic" trackpad/mouse/keyboard for very minimal updates
• Shipping a -2015- 4k 21" iMac with DDR3 and a very outdated HDD.. And you can't even replace the HDD or the RAM. Obsolete the day it's shipped.
• Continuing to use 16GB base iPhone's that can record 4k and live photos, not to mention how bigger Apps have gotten since the 3GS.. But wait, you can buy our cloud storage!

I'm pretty much going to sell my iMac and build my own Desktop at this point, and just connect my MacBook to a thunderbolt display if I want a Mac Desktop experience. People gave Jobs ****, but in one of his infamous lines he said that Apple "doesn't ship junk" and that they only ship things that they themselves would use and be proud to recommend. He was never known for selling cheap products, but premium products that were worth the premium. I can't imagine him saying that about these penny-pinching tactics that corrode user experience.

Don't mind paying a few hundred dollars premium for a good quality product, but them trying to sell me an immediately outdated product for an outrageous price (by anyones standard) is just an insult.

 

[Mildredop]

RIM's managers said a similar thing about Blackberry phones back in the day. Not to play the Apple is doomed card, but as soon as you begin to take the proverbial and abuse your position by overcharging consumers wherever you can (ultimately bringing out products with a worse experience), you'll eventually get bitten. With Apple's current financial situation and claimed mentality of never bringing out second-rate products, they should be doing the opposite of what they're doing now - bringing out better and better specs.

These last few 'upgrades' have actually been downgrades - worse hardware to meet some stupid price point and encourage consumers to pay more to get an experience that should've been there as standard. It's proposterous.

Problem is, there's no real alternative. I don't want to use Macs anymore, but what else is there? PCs just aren't as nice and run Windows which is a bit... primary school. And I've tried Chromebooks which just made no sense to me. Apple have no real competitor for trendy, beautiful computers.

 

[whodatrr]

I just ordered a maxed out 27. Also have a Macbook Pro 15 enroute. I had planned on converting from a desktop to a laptop, for my main system, but this bump was enough to make me reconsider. I won't even open the MacBook but take it back to the Apple Store. If it had Skylake, that might be another story? But I refresh every 2.5yrs, so I can sell my old system while it's still under Applecare, which usually funds about half of my new purchase. I don't buy these systems, I "lease" them... LOL

Though my work provides me with a 13" MBA, that display is a joke, and it doesn't have near enough horsepower for me. I wind us using my Surface Pro 3, as a portable. And I'll probably update that to an SP4, within the next year.

Regarding the base iMacs having slow spinning disks, that sucks for Apple. It sucks because these are the systems that'll be on display at Best Buy and similar stores. These are pretty much the configs that they'l be selling there. So, people that are new to the Macs will play with them for a bit and think Macs are slow as molasses. Penny wise and pound foolish move.

 

[Bubba Satori]

I predict Vaseline sales are going to skyrocket.

 

[fathergll]

Has anyone tried running OS X in a VM on non-Apple hardware? That might become the future for many of us if this trend towards mediocre Apple hardware continues. It's not all about the display, Apple.

I'll be running Windows long before that day comes

 

[FuNGi]

Can we assume that when Skylake with integrated Iris Pro graphics comes out they will offer a 21.5" retina iMac with a discrete GPU? I just have a hard time believing the 6200 can power this display well.

 

[TallManNY]

The 5400 RPM drive is a joke, and a poor joke at that. It's akin to those automobile dealers advertising a car for $12,999 when that model has a standard transmission, no AC, an AM radio, and windows with crank handles. They know nobody will want that, so it's an opportunity to up-sell to a higher priced bundle.

No, it is a version to sell to a school to put in the library, to a hotel to put in their lobby, to your nice gym to put in their lobby, to the airport sky lounge, etc. etc. It is the version for temporary and short term usage. It is not for someone to buy as their daily driver.

 

[d0minick]

never thought i'd see the day apple pulling old RIM, Microsoft, & Apple 1990 moves. You can clearly see production and manufacturing minded people controlling the fold. The tech enthusiast is long dead and not there to say "ARE YOU NUTS".

iPad pro with no force/3d touch
imac with a spinning hard drive?
macbook airs with no retina. dont want to cannibalize their MBP, i get it, but a gimped macbook replaces the air?

MS baited me with the pro 3 and ive jumped to the surface book. Perhaps not the most powerful, but my money goes to the team with the most heart.

Good luck because in 10 years, if you dont turn this around, you'll be the underdog once again, and there is no Jobs to come back.

 

[iReality85]

I'm all for high PPI, but Full 4K at 21" seems like overkill to me. It guarantees that you'll be scaling the UI, which is fine, but isn't going to be as valuable as it is on a 27" or 32" since the amount of screen real estate is relatively low at 21". Would have much rather seen 2560 x 1440, which is trending in the 21" - 25" size range now.

The benefits of wide gamut panels are overstated, and I speak as someone who owns one. Unless you're a professional photographer/videographer and are using a color space aware program (like Adobe, or Apple's offerings), it can even be detrimental as colors will appear to be over saturated in normal use scenarios. Like the web, which uses sRGB. You don't want to be using DCI-P3 or Adobe RGB for that. Same goes for the majority of programs, games, content, and media out there. You're not going to all of a sudden start magically seeing colors that you never knew were there before. Plus, wide gamut panels are still much more expensive than standard gamut ones, especially at 4K. Seems like the average person who buys a 21" iMac will be vastly overpaying for something that's not really needed at this point in time. Apple could have passed on that cost elsewhere, like more immediately beneficial offerings such as DDR4 RAM, or something that is not a 5400RPM HD.

 

[TallManNY]

Dell 5k Monitor - $2,199
27" 5K iMac with Skylake i7 and 4GB M395x GPU - $2,799

This iMac is still just an unbeatable deal.

 

[fathergll]

Dell 5k Monitor - $2,199
27" 5K iMac with Skylake i7 and 4GB M395x GPU - $2,799

This iMac is still just an unbeatable deal.

I thought the Dell 5k was at $2,000 now? Still a great deal for the iMac. I think the Dell was at $2500 when the Retina iMac first came out last year which was the same price as the iMac.

 

[tillsbury]

Wow these have jumped in price in NZ. The maxed-out 27" as far as I can see is exactly the same as last year but with a tiny jump in CPU and GPU speed. Yet it's now NZ$7500, a whole thousand bucks more than it was last year.

 

[scott911]

mystifying.

will the "let's make a really, really good product" guys ever win over the marketers?

I can almost hear the discussion, "But sir, it was actually cost us more to source these old 5400 rpm drives."

 

[SteveJobs2.0]

Apple needs to take notice that the main reason for cons in reviews of their products is the use of inferior parts for the sole purpose of upselling. It's sad that a company would give ammunition to reviewers in order to save a few dollars. For example, number one complaint across the board with the new iPhone is the 16gb of storage.

 

[whodatrr]

Yep, even the U2713HM (2560x1440) displays I bough a couple years ago are going for ~$700. When you look at what you're getting, the 5k iMac is a pretty good deal. While some of the bumps are pricey, I thought others were OK. Going from a 3.3 i5 to a 4.0 i7 was only ~$220, for example. I pretty much maxed mine out, except for RAM which is ridiculously overpriced.

There's a lot of bang for the buck, here. But I have a feeling that this may be my last Mac. Apple still makes the best desktop OS out there, but Win 10 is catching up. And my mobile system is and will continue to be a Surface Pro. While I'm still on an SP3, I'll likely be upgrading that to an SP4 next year. Going from my SP3 to the 13" MBA that my work issues me feels like stepping back a decade.

Still, we're way to invested in the Apple ecosystem to ditch it yet, and I'm still more productive with OX as a desktop. Becoming a Power User with apps on Win 10 will take some time. But if Apple still has a bipolar view of computing 2-3 years form now, my next desktop refresh will be to a PC.

But yeah, the new 5k iMac is pretty much state of the art, for what I do.

Overall, good refresh. But Apple needs to step up their game on the laptop/hybrid side.

Dell 5k Monitor - $2,199
27" 5K iMac with Skylake i7 and 4GB M395x GPU - $2,799

This iMac is still just an unbeatable deal.

 

[Harleg]

5400rpm. 25GB SSD. WTF? I've been using Macs for 20-years and PCs for almost 40-years, and it's a race to the bottom for both platforms. Wish like hell some major player would get into the Unix os business.

The new 21" iMacs will be absolute duds. But that's probably the point: Apple wants to Supersize their customers.

 

[iSee]

It makes no sense to complain about low-end options... it is easy to click on another option.

 

[OneMike]

About a month ago, for the first time in over a decade I build a PC. Skylake processor, etc.. I'll buy another mac laptop, but doubt I'll get another desktop unless it's a pro.

 

[antisocialzone]

Not playing Apple's game anymore. If they keep suckering this way... well I will just wait for the right product and I can only hope all will do that. If companies don't move towards making customers happy, well then I won't move in buying from them!

Thanks Apple for making me a patient person.

 

[Jim L]

This move is in line with others like...

• Most recent update to mac Mini (soldered RAM, no quad-core I7, non-user serviceable case)
• The new Apple TV 4 (gimped with no 4K capability)
• Macbook (1 USB-C port and that's it! really?)
• iPhones and iPads starting at 16 GB storage when the next level up is 64 GB @ $100 extra
• iPhones that have a 64-bit processor but only 1 GB RAM

I've been a fan for the last few years but after a few generations of different products, I'm beginning to see the built-in upsell and planned obsolescence in almost everything. I am getting a little fed up because Apple is just becoming a big money-suck.

When they are already sitting on a $200 BILLION cash pile, they're dabbling in cars and who knows what else.
I wish they would invest some of their resources and fix stuff that is being neglected or only half-working:

• iTunes - a hot mess that needs to be scrapped and rebuilt from the ground up
• iCloud - still buggy after all these years (Dropbox on the other hand always works)
• HomeKit - a half-baked POS that is like a red-headed stepchild. Not even mentioned lately.
• Airport Utility - how about an updated app to better manage and configure your overprice router?

/END RANT

 

[jakebrosy]

The 21" iMac at 4K only serves to highlight how miserably Apple is treating their Cinema Display. The current Cinema Display is eclipsed by most screens on the market today - and at almost $1K it's laughably overpriced.

There was a time when an Apple Display was a coveted and much-sought-after technology bit. I still fondly remember the day that massive 30" Cinema Display arrived to my home with my 2008 MacPro. At $3200 it was a massive upgrade to an already expensive system but it was head-and-shoulders above anything I could buy elsewhere and when I added one to my office setup the 30" display became the primary bargaining chip (along with an Aeron) during annual reviews.

My Cinema Display (though 7 years old) is still the primary display on my new MacPro trashcan and, while it's noticeably dimmer than the display on last year's iMac, until there's a competitive offering from Apple I can't imagine replacing it. I dread the day it dies and would happily give Apple more of my money for a rock-solid display that lasts longer than the computer it was purchased with.

I hate that Apple is ignoring this product line.

 

[Melodeath]

I agree that the 5400 RPM and downgrade of the SSD portion of the Fusio Drive are pathetic. But do the same people who criticize this 21.5" iMac thinkt he 27" is also a rip-off?

I wonder if I'm crazy for still wanting the 27" even though I think the 21.5" is terrible value. I work with audio, so I don't NEED 5k, but I need the CPU specs of the 27" Retina machine