Apple Discontinues 512GB and 1TB SSD Configurations of 4K 21.5-inch iMac

[Freeangel1]

TOLD YOU. APPLE IS SIMPLIFYING IT'S PRODUCT LINE.
NO MORE PRO LINE.
THE FUTURE IS PC AND WINDOWS 10 PRO for HEAVY POWER COMPUTING.

WANNA HAVE DIFFERENT COLOR IMACS AND PLAY WITH TOYS? GET AN APPLE SILICON IMAC.

 

[sublunar]

There are plenty of iMacs that would be improved by using an M1 chip. There's even a dual core still on sale. All the quad cores would have much higher performance, and the six cores would have slightly higher performance with just the M1 chip replacing the Intel processor. And I assume an M1 is cheaper for Apple than six core Intel.

Now since power and cooling are not a problem in an iMac, these M1s could be clocked a bit higher for more performance. And since the four low-power cores are quite pointless in an iMac, there is a theoretical chance for a 6+0 core iMac at practically the same cost as the current 4+4 core M1. So I definitely see _some_ iMacs with an M1 or M1-like processor.

On the other hand, Apple will be working on an 8+4 core design with 32 GB RAM. Most likely all new MacBooks, MacMinis, and iMacs would be available with a choice of 4+4 or 8+4.

Looking at benchmarks for graphics and CPU I don't think there's anything to fear for Apple in making the 21.5" iMac switch to M1 as it stands.

 

[iBungie]

I think your Caps Lock is stuck on

Quote:

TOLD YOU. APPLE IS SIMPLIFYING IT'S PRODUCT LINE.
NO MORE PRO LINE.
THE FUTURE IS PC AND WINDOWS 10 PRO for HEAVY POWER COMPUTING.

WANNA HAVE DIFFERENT COLOR IMACS AND PLAY WITH TOYS? GET AN APPLE SILICON IMAC.

 

[MikeyUnix]

What a stupid reply. "Yeah, I really want to come to work each morning, peer at the metal side of my desktop PC for 7 hours because it doesn't come with a screen and then go home in the evening." That's how you sound. Have you missed the part where he said that they can be converted into a desktop station? Have you ever actually seen a desktop? Do you think they come with attached 27" monitors or something?


Not sure what companies you guys work at, but things are definitely moving away from dedicated desktops in many FAANG and similar companies. If you want to test code or compile anything major, do it on dedicated remotes that are way more powerful than any desktop that you might be able to put together. And with the increase of popularity of VSCode and similar IDEs, it's now trivial to effectively just use your computer as a glorified text editor, while all code is completely transparently to users, compiled/interpreted/executed on remotes via SSH or similar. The data and code has to be kept on protected internal networks and drives anyway, so you will usually need an internet connection to get anything done anyway. And then employees always have access to their full dev environment at work or on the go, which is extra important in the current wfh environment.

I, personally, still have and use a monster Windows workstation at work, but I use it as a remote at least half of the time nowadays. Could easily disconnect the monitors and just use them with a MBP and TB dock, but didn't really get to that yet. Maybe once higher end MBPs are upgraded to AS.

Don't agree at all. My company has dedicated workstations. If you have staff doing presentations on laptops fair enough, but easier just to download the finished result. Writing code is one thing but again isn't what I consider computer intensive.

As far as dedicated remotes, that defeats the point because its not then the laptop doing the work and if you have to rely on internet connections, you downgrade everything and the comment was about laptops serving two purposes and your argument shows that even in your environment they don't.

On that basis are you suggests it should all go to mainframes fed by laptops? Yes laptops can be feeders, but not suitable for 3 shift 24/7 computing.

 

[MikeyUnix]

TOLD YOU. APPLE IS SIMPLIFYING IT'S PRODUCT LINE.
NO MORE PRO LINE.
THE FUTURE IS PC AND WINDOWS 10 PRO for HEAVY POWER COMPUTING.

WANNA HAVE DIFFERENT COLOR IMACS AND PLAY WITH TOYS? GET AN APPLE SILICON IMAC.

Fatuous comment illustrating a complete lack of computer knowledge imo. Good luck.

 

[SuperMatt]

TOLD YOU. APPLE IS SIMPLIFYING IT'S PRODUCT LINE.
NO MORE PRO LINE.
THE FUTURE IS PC AND WINDOWS 10 PRO for HEAVY POWER COMPUTING.

WANNA HAVE DIFFERENT COLOR IMACS AND PLAY WITH TOYS? GET AN APPLE SILICON IMAC.

New Macs will come with new keyboards, presumably ones with a functioning caps lock key.

 

[cmaier]

TOLD YOU. APPLE IS SIMPLIFYING IT'S PRODUCT LINE.
NO MORE PRO LINE.
THE FUTURE IS PC AND WINDOWS 10 PRO for HEAVY POWER COMPUTING.

WANNA HAVE DIFFERENT COLOR IMACS AND PLAY WITH TOYS? GET AN APPLE SILICON IMAC.

Do you work for Intel?

 

[vmistery]

Well this iMac is the most sensible one to target an M1 at so probably clearing out. My hunch though will be a bump in screen size and a smaller bezeled design at the same time as the transition. What I’m really interested to see is if we have options for GPU and CPU

 

[mdriftmeyer]

Exactly. Apple is optimizing its chips right now to prevent iPhone delays. We know this is getting updated this year, but Apple is choosing not to keep the old models in stock until the new one comes out. It’s unprecedented.

What does a third party SSD drive not developed by Apple have to do with anything? The only part of that ‘drive' is the SSD has a controller tied to the T2 chip.

 

[cmaier]

Well this iMac is the most sensible one to target an M1 at so probably clearing out. My hunch though will be a bump in screen size and a smaller bezeled design at the same time as the transition. What I’m really interested to see is if we have options for GPU and CPU

I doubt there will be CPU or GPU options, other than maybe 2 speed/RAM choices. Guess we'll see.

I know Apple has a separate GPU chip ready to go, but not sure if they will offer choices between that and the on-chip GPU or not.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

Do you work for Intel?

He doesn't have to work for Intel or AMD or Fujitsu, HPE, Lenovo, etc., to note that Apple is down sizing their entire product lines. They are making disposable systems that will require upgrades annually or every two years creating far more waste with these solutions.

Unless Apple develops a fully modular, upgradable solution that the Mac Pro is no Professional working with heavy real-time workflows is going to touch them.

They made all this hoopla about the Mac Pro [when they should have gone AMD Zen 2 and future Zen processors] and then they gut it and x86 all together. Instead of rolling out Consumer for M series and then high end only x86 they jumped the shark on the M series. The chief architect of their CPUs bailed to do his own start up and took several key members with him and now is with Qualcomm.

You'd think if anyone would see the long game of ARM and General Purpose Computing it would have been him having stuck it out with Apple for over a decade.

The Industry isn't moving to ARM over x86. Microsoft couldn't care less about it. If they truly wanted to test the waters they'd have introduced an ARM based XBox X system, but they didn't. Without Microsoft 93% of the industry isn't jumping to ARM.

Mobile is saturated and now it's just ‘‘new camera'' better upgrade every 24-36 months. Oh look! A sport watch. Every 12-18 months or 18-24 months on that one.

Telling your professional users that we've developed workflows over the past three years to target their markets only to gut the only Pro lines they have sends the wrong message.

Pros will expect 1TB or more system memory options. And they don't ever buy soldered on memory. How do I know this? The hundreds of low memory ordered Mac Pros now being recycled as Refurb/Clearance by Apple, never mind having worked at Apple and inside Enterprise Services. Same happened with the iMac Pro. They want expandability, socket upgradability for 5-7 years, and will pay for professional service contracts.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

I find it odd that they discontinued the 1 TB SSD option and still kept that damn fusion drive, I bet has something to do with the chip shortage AND a redesign.

Industry chip shortages are going to be here for the next 12-18 months.

 

[iBungie]

The hundreds of low memory ordered Mac Pros now being recycled as Refurb/Clearance by Apple

I've not seen this in the UK store

 

[ikramerica]

He doesn't have to work for Intel or AMD or Fujitsu, HPE, Lenovo, etc., to note that Apple is down sizing their entire product lines. They are making disposable systems that will require upgrades annually or every two years creating far more waste with these solutions.

Unless Apple develops a fully modular, upgradable solution that the Mac Pro is no Professional working with heavy real-time workflows is going to touch them.

They made all this hoopla about the Mac Pro [when they should have gone AMD Zen 2 and future Zen processors] and then they gut it and x86 all together. Instead of rolling out Consumer for M series and then high end only x86 they jumped the shark on the M series. The chief architect of their CPUs bailed to do his own start up and took several key members with him and now is with Qualcomm.

You'd think if anyone would see the long game of ARM and General Purpose Computing it would have been him having stuck it out with Apple for over a decade.

The Industry isn't moving to ARM over x86. Microsoft couldn't care less about it. If they truly wanted to test the waters they'd have introduced an ARM based XBox X system, but they didn't. Without Microsoft 93% of the industry isn't jumping to ARM.

Mobile is saturated and now it's just ‘‘new camera'' better upgrade every 24-36 months. Oh look! A sport watch. Every 12-18 months or 18-24 months on that one.

Telling your professional users that we've developed workflows over the past three years to target their markets only to gut the only Pro lines they have sends the wrong message.

Pros will expect 1TB or more system memory options. And they don't ever buy soldered on memory. How do I know this? The hundreds of low memory ordered Mac Pros now being recycled as Refurb/Clearance by Apple, never mind having worked at Apple and inside Enterprise Services. Same happened with the iMac Pro. They want expandability, socket upgradability for 5-7 years, and will pay for professional service contracts.

My wife is on her 3rd Windows laptop in the same period of time that I am still using my one 2012 MBP 15”.

Granted, I can’t run Big Sur, but I am not crying over that. Will get an M1 machine in the fall, but 9 years is not disposable...

 

[SuperMatt]

My wife is on her 3rd Windows laptop in the same period of time that I am still using my one 2012 MBP 15”.

Granted, I can’t run Big Sur, but I am not crying over that. Will get an M1 machine in the fall, but 9 years is not disposable...

Got a 2006 Mac Pro. I am still using it. I hope Apple sells an expandable Mac Pro with Apple Silicon that is less costly than the current Mac Pro. I like a long-lasting expandable desktop Mac, but I’d prefer not to pay $5K or more for it.

 

[ikramerica]

I doubt there will be CPU or GPU options, other than maybe 2 speed/RAM choices. Guess we'll see.

I know Apple has a separate GPU chip ready to go, but not sure if they will offer choices between that and the on-chip GPU or not.

I would postulate that Apple could add the GPU and simply list it as “extra cores”

So you can get an iMac with 6 performance cores and 8 GPU cores on the M1 chip with 8GB or 16GB, or one with that adds the additional G1 chip with 16 more GPU cores and 16GB additional memory.

So:
6+8 8GB
6+8 16GB
6+24 32GB

Something like that.

Might also add support for 2 more displays that way.

 

[pdoherty]

You missed the part about docks and all the things that go with that, like external monitors. I'm staring at a 34 inch curved monitor attached to my Macbook right now. And lugging to work? Well, many people who work at an office often being something with them every day, like lunches or coffee or whatever. Lugging 3-4 pounds isn't exactly a chore.

But, to each his own.

Even docking doesn’t eliminate all the downsides of laptops. Heat and the resultant throttling is a performance killer. The M1 has helped that out a lot, but everything that came before would throttle itself down pretty quickly if you put it under load for any period of time.

 

[Bubble99]

He doesn't have to work for Intel or AMD or Fujitsu, HPE, Lenovo, etc., to note that Apple is down sizing their entire product lines. They are making disposable systems that will require upgrades annually or every two years creating far more waste with these solutions.

Unless Apple develops a fully modular, upgradable solution that the Mac Pro is no Professional working with heavy real-time workflows is going to touch them.

They made all this hoopla about the Mac Pro [when they should have gone AMD Zen 2 and future Zen processors] and then they gut it and x86 all together. Instead of rolling out Consumer for M series and then high end only x86 they jumped the shark on the M series. The chief architect of their CPUs bailed to do his own start up and took several key members with him and now is with Qualcomm.

You'd think if anyone would see the long game of ARM and General Purpose Computing it would have been him having stuck it out with Apple for over a decade.

The Industry isn't moving to ARM over x86. Microsoft couldn't care less about it. If they truly wanted to test the waters they'd have introduced an ARM based XBox X system, but they didn't. Without Microsoft 93% of the industry isn't jumping to ARM.

Mobile is saturated and now it's just ‘‘new camera'' better upgrade every 24-36 months. Oh look! A sport watch. Every 12-18 months or 18-24 months on that one.

Telling your professional users that we've developed workflows over the past three years to target their markets only to gut the only Pro lines they have sends the wrong message.

Pros will expect 1TB or more system memory options. And they don't ever buy soldered on memory. How do I know this? The hundreds of low memory ordered Mac Pros now being recycled as Refurb/Clearance by Apple, never mind having worked at Apple and inside Enterprise Services. Same happened with the iMac Pro. They want expandability, socket upgradability for 5-7 years, and will pay for professional service contracts.

Intel is dead. Yes dead, 6 years and still no 10nm CPU.

AMD high will probably die out in 4 to 5 years and end up like Intel.

You probably will never get 2nm or less CPU by Intel or AMD ever.

Intel CPUs and AMD CPUs run hot and take lot of power and made for desktop not laptops or tablets.

I have yet to see windows tablet or laptop last 12 plus hours of battery life and fans not run like a steam engine when not playing games or doing video editing.

MS surface tablet sounds like steam engine just browsing the internet.

There is no Windows laptop or tablet that is not power hungry and fan sounds like steam engine.

ARM is the future.

 

[pdoherty]

If you go back to the old Amiga days, they used to have chip memory and fast memory. The FAST RAM could only be accessed by the CPU, whereas the Chip memory was accessed by the rest of the computer, notably by the graphics system.

Just a thought but if they are going to allow RAM upgrades this RAM could be accessible by the CPU only and not be a part of the unified RAM setup that the graphics could access.

For example, this could be something that a Apple could do with the 27" iMac. Make all SKUs 16Gb - theoretically maxing out the on-package unified RAM on the M1. Anything added via the slots would then be accessible by the CPU only.

I expect this could be the model followed by high end Mac mini Pro and iMac for example. Max out the M1 RAM and anything after that is for the CPU only.

Ah, another Amiga aficionado! Yes, the Agnus, Denise and Paula custom chips that handled disk I/O, audio and video all could perform DMA and access that chip RAM without the need for the CPU to do it for them. Great systems, Amigas...

 

[Roller]

He doesn't have to work for Intel or AMD or Fujitsu, HPE, Lenovo, etc., to note that Apple is down sizing their entire product lines. They are making disposable systems that will require upgrades annually or every two years creating far more waste with these solutions.

Unless Apple develops a fully modular, upgradable solution that the Mac Pro is no Professional working with heavy real-time workflows is going to touch them.

They made all this hoopla about the Mac Pro [when they should have gone AMD Zen 2 and future Zen processors] and then they gut it and x86 all together. Instead of rolling out Consumer for M series and then high end only x86 they jumped the shark on the M series. The chief architect of their CPUs bailed to do his own start up and took several key members with him and now is with Qualcomm.

You'd think if anyone would see the long game of ARM and General Purpose Computing it would have been him having stuck it out with Apple for over a decade.

The Industry isn't moving to ARM over x86. Microsoft couldn't care less about it. If they truly wanted to test the waters they'd have introduced an ARM based XBox X system, but they didn't. Without Microsoft 93% of the industry isn't jumping to ARM.

Mobile is saturated and now it's just ‘‘new camera'' better upgrade every 24-36 months. Oh look! A sport watch. Every 12-18 months or 18-24 months on that one.

Telling your professional users that we've developed workflows over the past three years to target their markets only to gut the only Pro lines they have sends the wrong message.

Pros will expect 1TB or more system memory options. And they don't ever buy soldered on memory. How do I know this? The hundreds of low memory ordered Mac Pros now being recycled as Refurb/Clearance by Apple, never mind having worked at Apple and inside Enterprise Services. Same happened with the iMac Pro. They want expandability, socket upgradability for 5-7 years, and will pay for professional service contracts.

I've heard the Apple is abandoning the "pros" arguments for as long as Macs have been around. But it depends on how you define "pro," doesn't it? I use a suite of applications productively on a 7-year-old iMac every day., and I can assure you that I'm every bit as professional as you.

 

[SuperMatt]

I've heard the Apple is abandoning the "pros" arguments for as long as Macs have been around. But it depends on how you define "pro," doesn't it? I use a suite of applications productively on a 7-year-old iMac every day., and I can assure you that I'm every bit as professional as you.

Most people who claim Apple is abandoning “pros” turn out to be gamers. Sometimes it is legitimate complaints from video editors, but the current Mac Pro should keep actual ”pros” happy for many years.

 

[aneftp]

If the M1 iMac is 2nd half of this year. This makes no sense. 512GB is a great option so they must be predicting long-term chip shortages. The M1 MacBook Air is very hard to find in stock right now, so Apple is obviously struggling like others for parts. Dell is quoting 90 days on custom laptop builds right now for my office.

I don’t know what country you are in. But the MacBook Air m1 is available within 2-3 days shipping. I can get from Apple store March 25/26. Even if I customize it. It says April 7-9 2021.
Which is way faster than it took Apple to deliver my March 2020 intel MacBook Air (took 5 weeks) and that was just the base model. Granted that was during pandemic times but it took 5 weeks for base model.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Not sure what you mean by industry?

I read Intel and AMD have shortage of the new CPUs. And there is a shortage of GPUs by AMD and nvidia.

And Samsung has a shortage of CPUs used in their smartphone. And Samsung may not bring out galaxy note series this year because of shortage.

Also xBox and playstation 5 have massive shortage.

I've heard there are pockets of need where parts are unavailable due to shortages of 'silicon'. Chips that just aren't available in the numbers they need. And surprising areas too. I heard some IoT vendors can't find chips, which, to me, isn't a bad thing. The IoT is the weakest link...

 

[9927036]

Intel is dead. Yes dead, 6 years and still no 10nm CPU.

AMD high will probably die out in 4 to 5 years and end up like Intel.

You probably will never get 2nm or less CPU by Intel or AMD ever.

Intel CPUs and AMD CPUs run hot and take lot of power and made for desktop not laptops or tablets.

I have yet to see windows tablet or laptop last 12 plus hours of battery life and fans not run like a steam engine when not playing games or doing video editing.

MS surface tablet sounds like steam engine just browsing the internet.

There is no Windows laptop or tablet that is not power hungry and fan sounds like steam engine.

ARM is the future.

Sure. High end gaming and professional workflows on ARM. Not likely any time soon. Not least because of software support. What GPU are you going to use on this ARM machine?

 

[bluemodocean]

He doesn't have to work for Intel or AMD or Fujitsu, HPE, Lenovo, etc., to note that Apple is down sizing their entire product lines. They are making disposable systems that will require upgrades annually or every two years creating far more waste with these solutions.

Unless Apple develops a fully modular, upgradable solution that the Mac Pro is no Professional working with heavy real-time workflows is going to touch them.

They made all this hoopla about the Mac Pro [when they should have gone AMD Zen 2 and future Zen processors] and then they gut it and x86 all together. Instead of rolling out Consumer for M series and then high end only x86 they jumped the shark on the M series. The chief architect of their CPUs bailed to do his own start up and took several key members with him and now is with Qualcomm.

You'd think if anyone would see the long game of ARM and General Purpose Computing it would have been him having stuck it out with Apple for over a decade.

The Industry isn't moving to ARM over x86. Microsoft couldn't care less about it. If they truly wanted to test the waters they'd have introduced an ARM based XBox X system, but they didn't. Without Microsoft 93% of the industry isn't jumping to ARM.

Mobile is saturated and now it's just ‘‘new camera'' better upgrade every 24-36 months. Oh look! A sport watch. Every 12-18 months or 18-24 months on that one.

Telling your professional users that we've developed workflows over the past three years to target their markets only to gut the only Pro lines they have sends the wrong message.

Pros will expect 1TB or more system memory options. And they don't ever buy soldered on memory. How do I know this? The hundreds of low memory ordered Mac Pros now being recycled as Refurb/Clearance by Apple, never mind having worked at Apple and inside Enterprise Services. Same happened with the iMac Pro. They want expandability, socket upgradability for 5-7 years, and will pay for professional service contracts.

It seems Gerard Williams III and his coworkers left apple to start Nuvia because he saw an opportunity in the market to make/design chips for the server market using arm architecture, but Apple top executives refused the idea. This is based on the intellectual lawsuit between him and Apple.

It doesn't make reasonable sense to leave your place of employment for nothing and also to start a company built on the idea to create ARM chips for servers which is a flaw in your argument. The only reason Microsoft and other companies haven't made the jump to arm is because they are still researching how to make both the hardware and software work within their current frameworks and legacy code that every business and consumer is dependant upon. Developers/programmer/hardware designers know that technical debt slows down the progress of innovation and new software. This applies to Microsoft because they are extremely bloated with technical debt in everything they create because they lack the marketing flare to sell to businesses and consumers new ideas and determination to remove old designs. Microsoft is more willing to cut new products and services then re-innovating them (Windows phone, Microsoft band, Cortana, Groove, etc).

There is a lot of nuance in professional industry; however, I predict (if you allow) that in time most hardware intensive tasks will continue to shift to a more cloud centric architecture. When that happens I don't see how most professionals will be needing anything but a simple laptop or decent desktop with enough monitors for the required task that will potentially hosted on a cloud server. This is backed up by Microsoft and Amazon's large focus on Cloud infrastructure and frameworks right now and the removal of on-premise certifications for IT. They both know the future for business is in the cloud.

The industry will continue move towards ARM or a hybrid of ARM/x86_64. It's an inevitable certainty. ARM is just more efficient than x86.

It also sounds to me that you're more critical about ARM because some inherited bias for x86. Change isn't always liked or easy.