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

[femike]

I hope that Apple redesigns the iMac so that the internals can be totally swapped out and replaced with updated units that Apple can make in the future. But if Apple makes an Mac Pro Mini or something like it, it would be better.
I prfer MacOS but I loath the waste that is the all-in-one iMac.

 

[MacRazySwe]

Really looking forward to the new iMacs.

I’m positive we will see a redesign with the Apple Silicon release. If there was ever a time to reinvent the iMac, it’s now.

Whenever their products are getting long in the tooth, without significant upgrades, it usually indicates that they are focused on something big. Think about the iPhone. iPhone 6s/iPhone 7/iPhone 8 were only iterative upgrades and didn’t bring much to the table. The reason was that Apple were busy with big picture upgrades, the iPhone X which reinvented the iPhone.

Same goes with the Macs. We were waiting more than a year and a half for updated Skylake MacBook Pros. The reason they took their sweet time, was they were planning a complete redesign of the MacBook Pro, with new keyboards (let’s not go there!), Touch Bar, and so on.

The iMac has been receiving only iterative upgrades since 2017. Sure, good performance upgrades, but nothing more. No Touch Bar keyboards, no reduced bezels, no 6k display upgrades, nothing. This to me, indicates that Apple have been working on something big for a while now. The rumours have also been stacking up for a 30” iMac as well as a 24” iMac for some time. This surely doesn’t come out of the blue.

Apple have obviously been planning for the shift to Apple Silicon for a while. My guess is that their new chip design and their reduced need for cooling will allow a significant design change. Pretty much an “iPad Pro on a stick” design. Perhaps the shift in architecture will also allow Touch input? An iMac G4/Surface Pro like swivel stand?

With the chip performance in laptops today, and flexibility thanks to USBC/TB, having a second desktop like the iMac make less and less sense unless you have a very specific use case (video editing, graphics and so on). I believe this shows in the sales numbers. This is why I think it would make sense for Apple to bring some USP back to the iMac. Something for the creatives, gamers, or ideally both.

I‘m super excited either way, let’s hope I won’t be disappointed.

 

[bmot]

Not offering a proper iMac will actually cause Apple to loose customers in this segment leaving to Windows solutions. Very strange strategy.

 

[G4DPII]

Keeping the fusion drive offering helps to draw consumers who may have a set budget.

People with a real budget aren't looking at Apple computers. No computer over $500 should come with a platter based drive.

 

[gnasher729]

It might be still going, and I don't doubt that. I use a pimped up imac2012 in my hall, which I just put a 256Gb SSD in and the difference in performance was amazing.

A fusion drive of 3Tb? Is it really necessary or technically worthwhile?

With 3TB I suspect much of that is data storage, whatever form that data takes, whether its photos, films, rendering etc., and therefore you are getting that storage on a fusion drive at the cost of performance on many of your computing tasks.

I suspect you'd have been better off with an SSD where you could easily pick up decent fast storage as an external.

On a 3TB drive, most of the data will be ancient, but you want it there in case you need it. It doesn't slow down your computing tasks because you rarely need it, and _when_ you needed it is a lot quicker from a Fusion drive than having to make space on your SSD drive and copying the data over from an external drive, and when you are done, copy it back to the external drive and copying the things you removed from your SSD drive.

If you are a film editor needing fast access to 3TB of video data all the time, you are not getting a fusion drive.

 

[iPadified]

Considering sales of the iMac Pro which launched in December 2017 ended just this month, it likely means the Mac Pro launched in December of 2019, might be discontinued by late 2022 or 2023. That’s a machine that’s between a rock and a hard place. It’s still worth buying this year, but next year, but next year it will be 4 years old.

Intel Mac Pro : another stop gap

 

[rp2011]

Tell that to business? The iMac, the iMac Pro and the Mac Pro are the workhorses in many companies, including mine.

Yes I did mentioned the higher end MX iMacs would do better with professional work spaces on a previous post. I was talking specifically about the base M1 iMac and consumers choosing the MacBook Air instead because it’s a better value and it’s portable.

 

[Bubble99]

The chip shortage theory is patently wrong.

There is massive shortage for AMD CPUs and Intel CPUs. There also massive shortage for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3000 Series and AMD GPUs. And also the new consoles like PS5 and xBox.

But I hd no idea there was a SSD shortage.

 

[DanTSX]

I’m now convinced that the Apple Silicon iMac is imminent. Hopefully, it includes a redesign.

I’m just waiting for Apple store we sight to go down for a product announcement at this point. Money is in-hand and ready to hand over to Apple.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

This sounds crazy, but are they going to kill the 21" iMac?

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

There is massive shortage for AMD CPUs and Intel CPUs. There also massive shortage for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3000 Series and AMD GPUs. And also the new consoles like PS5 and xBox.

But I hd no idea there was a SSD shortage.

The 'shortage', real or imagined, is spread across multiple industries.

 

[mlody]

I hope that Apple redesigns the iMac so that the internals can be totally swapped out and replaced with updated units that Apple can make in the future. But if Apple makes an Mac Pro Mini or something like it, it would be better.
I prfer MacOS but I loath the waste that is the all-in-one iMac.

I would not count on it. If anything, the Apple Silicon Macs will more be like iPhones and iPads than any traditional systems, meaning more items will be tightly integrated and un-upgradable. Not sure how that will work for Pro machines, perhaps I am wrong. Time will tell.

 

[cakeloverpro]

I been using a 16gb MBA 1TB as a iMac since day one. I use a callidigit ts3 docking station connected to a 34" ultrawide. However instant the 14" or 16" macbook comes out, its a buy.

New iMac? maybe I will have to see what is offered. iMac offered a chance to play windows x86 games and run linux/freebsd. Its that simple. I was at that cross roads. I ended up comparing the price with a ryzen 3950x / 2080 Super to an iMac, and the microcenter brand won me over, they even updated the CPU forr a small fee.

What I will tell everyone. The MBA M1, is a complete game changer. Apple has really forced Intel aand AMD to innovate. Windows 10 & Linux is going to have to respond AFTERR AMD & Intel.

the unified memory access is why the M1 is incredibly powerful no more passing it to the video card, the GPU has direct access. all this cascades into a ffast machine.

 

[gnasher729]

This sounds crazy, but are they going to kill the 21" iMac?

There are rumours of a 24” iMac. You decide what’s most likely: a. Rumours are false. b. Apple sells three sizes. c. Apple drops 21.5 inch. d. Apple drops 27 inch. e. Apple sells only 24 inch. f. You wake up and it was all a dream.

 

[SuperMatt]

Their exact wording is as follows:

“So what’s the timeline for this transition? Well, for developers it begins this week with the valuable information delivered at this conference as well as applying for the Quick Start Program. And for the customers, we expect to ship our first Mac with Apple silicon by the end of this year, and we expect the transition to take about two years. We plan to continue to support and release new versions of macOS for Intel-based Macs for years to come.” — Tim Cook, WWDC 2020 keynote

Trust and believe that they meticulously thought out every word there. Given the RAM and I/O limitations on the M1 SoC, I can’t really fault someone for thinking it bodes poorly for replacements of high-end Macs within two years. My personal expectation is that they’re resolved soon and every Mac does get replaced, but Apple seems pretty careful to avoid saying or implying that the transition will necessarily include all Macs.

As for macOS updates for Intel-based Macs, they left it at a nebulous “for years to come.” That could put the EOL date as early as June 22, 2022, or two years from the day those words left Tim Cook’s mouth. I suspect that regular macOS updates will be released through 2025 or so, and security updates for the usual three years thereafter…but again, Apple covered their bases to give them a great deal of leeway here.

I’m not arguing against that. It’s just that some members of the forum are apparently shocked 😮 that Intel-based Macs are being slowly discontinued.

And if somebody honestly believes that Apple is going to use the same chip in a MacBook Air that they use in a Mac Pro…. I just give up right now.

 

[SuperMatt]

Not offering a proper iMac will actually cause Apple to loose customers in this segment leaving to Windows solutions. Very strange strategy.

What makes you think they won’t offer a “proper” iMac?

 

[SuperMatt]

People with a real budget aren't looking at Apple computers. No computer over $500 should come with a platter based drive.

The 21.5-inch iMac is the only Mac with a traditional hard drive, and they are phasing that out. So this statement doesn’t really make sense.

 

[gnasher729]

People with a real budget aren't looking at Apple computers. No computer over $500 should come with a platter based drive.

The arrogance. I want the best value for my money. A 3TB SSD drive is not good value for me. For an iMac, best value for me would be 512GB SSD + 8TB HDD as a Fusion drive.

 

[opeter]

Worse case scenario, if they announced macOS 12 is the last Intel supported release, they are gonna get bad press and likely backtrack that decision immediately. This is not 2008 where they can get away things like that. They did have a Snow Leopard release in development for PPC but never did release it. But, I think that was strategically lazy and greedy move to get people to abandon PowerPC for a new shiny Intel Mac at the time. Sorry, but 25 million versus a 100 million user base is different.

We will see. But I have a feeling, that the last official macOS with intel support will be the one, that will be released in 2022, in the best possible scenario 2023.

But don't have high hopes.
They will simply discontinue the Intel Macs as soon as possible and move forward.

 

[opeter]

This sounds crazy, but are they going to kill the 21" iMac?

Yeah, it can happen. Some predicts, that the new iMac will be coming in following sizes (/ means or):
3/24", 27/28" and 30/32"

 

[ikramerica]

Apple painted themselves in a corner with the 5k iMac.

1. 5k is expensive
2. 5k monitors and panels are rare
3. Most people don’t need 5k in an iMac if it means $1000 more than 4k even if it’s 50% more pixels.

The only option for Apple moving forward is to dump the large iMac.

24” M1 4k iMac is the only model to come.

That leaves room for a “mini pro/pro mini” and Apple branded thunderbolt displays of 4k, 5k and 6k of various sizes.

 

[Apple_Robert]

There are rumours of a 24” iMac. You decide what’s most likely: a. Rumours are false. b. Apple sells three sizes. c. Apple drops 21.5 inch. d. Apple drops 27 inch. e. Apple sells only 24 inch. f. You wake up and it was all a dream.

My vote is option F.

 

[Mr. Dee]

We will see. But I have a feeling, that the last official macOS with intel support will be the one, that will be released in 2022, in the best possible scenario 2023.

But don't have high hopes.
They will simply discontinue the Intel Macs as soon as possible and move forward.

They can’t because the M1 user base won’t be substantial enough to justify doing it. On top of the fact that they will still be selling Intel Macs all the way into 2022. I suspect we will have Intel macOS releases all the way up to 2025 or 2026.

 

[jonblatho]

And if somebody honestly believes that Apple is going to use the same chip in a MacBook Air that they use in a Mac Pro…. I just give up right now.

I think the broader concern is that the apparent limitations on the M1 SoC are actual limitations that Apple hasn’t yet figured out how to move past…and won’t do so within the two-year timeline, which of course would have serious implications for higher-end Macs.

Again, can’t fault someone for being a bit worried along those lines, even though I don’t think it’s the case.

 

[jonblatho]

They can’t because the M1 user base won’t be substantial enough to justify doing it. On top of the fact that they will still be selling Intel Macs all the way into 2022. I suspect we will have Intel macOS releases all the way up to 2025 or 2026.

About three years past the final Intel-based Mac’s discontinuation (so 2024–2026) is my guess, too, plus three years of security updates thereafter. 2022 would be way too early.