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Apple Still Developing Bigger iMac With Over 30-Inch Display
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Well I have a M1 Studio ultra connected to Pro XDR and it all works like a dream.
I bought the XDR and Stand because:
1. It is just a beautiful display and so beautifully engineered.
2. I was worried it might be discontinued.
3. I can easily afford it.
Darth Tulhu
macrumors 68020
If Apple is going to keep that form factor around, they need to do with it what Microsoft did with their Studio: give it a touchscreen and turn it into a graphic arts workstation.
They certainly already have the horsepower and the touch OS to go with it.
A fork of iPadOS for this-- iMacOS, would be killer. The real blend of iPad & Mac OSes everyone has been waiting for.
NOW the iMac has a justifiable use case to exist.
Otherwise, ANY other Mac + Monitor is a more reasonable (and responsible) configuration than the giant throwaway computer.
They certainly already have the horsepower and the touch OS to go with it.
A fork of iPadOS for this-- iMacOS, would be killer. The real blend of iPad & Mac OSes everyone has been waiting for.
NOW the iMac has a justifiable use case to exist.
Otherwise, ANY other Mac + Monitor is a more reasonable (and responsible) configuration than the giant throwaway computer.
The intel iMac pragmatically had fans no where near the CPU also. (fans move, ducts do not).
iMac Intel 27" Retina 5K Display Teardown
Think of the most colorful and radiant display you’ve ever seen. Now, discard that memory and stare at Apple’s newest iMac Intel 27” with Retina 5K...
www.ifixit.com
The CPU placement is more about the exhaust vent placement (partial hidden behind the pedestal arm) , than the fan placement. there is plastic duct coming from the actual fan to the zone near the exit (and CPU raditiator).
Similar issue with iMac Pro
iMac Pro Teardown
We dropped $4,999 to get our hands on the hot new space gray Magic Mouse and Magic Keyboard—and Apple was generous enough to throw in a brand-new...
www.ifixit.com
Here the exhaust vent is also being hidden, but needs to be bigger (higher volume of exhaust ) so the RAM door gets tossed. But the Fans are substantively not moved closer.
For a plain Mn large screen iMac, Apple could have tossed the back side exhaust vent.
The studio display
Studio Display Teardown: Is this secretly an iMac?
Apple’s Studio Display looks nearly identical to an iMac and has a lot of computer inside it, too. You’ve got to check out these ultra-slim power supplies.
www.ifixit.com
The two fans are pretty closely in same location as the iMac Pro. Where the air is being vented to is what is radically different. ( the Studio's dual fan set up also moves less volume. (thinner). )
This couln't have been a performance 27" iMac , but a port pruned , 27 iMac with plain Mn only (iPad Pro thermal envelope) SoC could have fit. That pragmatically would not have been a "Intel i7 + good dGPU" replacement though. ( If could not use Mn Pro or Mn Max. ) . Regressions on memory capacity , GPU performance options , etc would have gotten blowback just like the Mac Pro did. It goes further down the "magically cooler" no easily visible vents path.
Unfortunately, there's only one non-Apple option for those of us who want a large (27"+) 220 ppi display, and strongly dislike a matte screen: The LG 5k, which has a spotty QC record. [I'm aware of the 280 ppi Dell 32" 8k, which is also glossy, but that's a different beast.]
Matte screens are fine for photography and video but, on 220 ppi displays, are noticeably less sharp for text than their glossy counterparts. I was able to do a side-by-side comparison between the glossy and matte ASD's, and the difference was readily apparent. And the matte finish also turns white backgrounds into sparkly snowfields.
It's too bad Dell doesn't offer a glossy monitor-only (no camera or cloth-covered soundbar) version of their 32" 6k. While the Dell doesn't have local dimming, that only matters if you're using it for video (production or watching) or photography. For text work, the static constrast is more important, and the Dell's is twice than on the XDR (2000:1 vs. 1000:1). Neither are great, but the Dell's is better.
Yeah, you can do that with either Luna Display or Apple's AirPlay; there may be other vehicles as well. The problem is that the signal to the iMac must be heavily compressed (the iMac doesn't have a full-bandwidth video input), so it's not as sharp as viewing it natively; and it's also laggy. Thus you probably wouldn't want to use a connected iMac as your main monitor. It might work OK if you had a three-monitor setup, and used the iMac as one of your side monitors.
Well, we're all coming up on the 3-year anniversary of the demise of the 27" iMac and it's clear from the CIRP data folks have been posting that Apple Studio has never and will never supplant a large iMac. The marketing mistake here has always been the thinking that desktop Mac users were a single demographic. But the reality is, there are all-in-one users and non-all-in-one users.
Different wants and needs.
Tim is smart and knows where Steve built a goldmine of users, I expect the return of ≥27 iMacs by springtime '25, if not sooner.
Different wants and needs.
Tim is smart and knows where Steve built a goldmine of users, I expect the return of ≥27 iMacs by springtime '25, if not sooner.
Another way at looking at the same data is most iMac AOI enthusiast, of the past, have move to MBA and MBP. Still an AOI, now with the same computational power as desktop. Giving up the larger screen for portability.
I have to agree with you on the glossy vs. matte issue - but we may be in the minority there. That's my main disappointment with my current displays - the matte finish. I've seen far worse in terms of blurring/sparkle but, at some times of day, light from the window to my left completely wipes out the matte display and I have to shut the blinds, whereas my previous iMac was much better in that one respect. Then, of course, Apple's "glossy" display isn't just "glossy" - it has an optical anti-reflection coating that actually reduces reflectivity without just scattering light (a few decades agou I could have regurgitated the math).
I have a number of "secondary" quibbles about the Studio Display that make it feel like poor value for money, but the quality of the image is not one of them.
Still, I got a pair of matching displays, insane "real estate" and height-adjustable stands for significantly less than the price of a single Studio Display - and while I might have been persuaded to spring for one Studio Display, two was probably not going to happen (...that's one more webcam and two more 96W power supplies and speaker systems than I need) so shutting the blinds for 2 hours on sunny days is an acceptable compromise.
Aha! So the 2014 iMac was originally going to be the new Thunderbolt Display (that was "almost certainly coming" at the time) but they decided to force us to buy a Mac Mini CPU with it!!!
But seriously... The iMac/iMac Pro fans might not be on top of the CPU (that would be too thick for Jony!) but they're adjacent to where the CPU is so they can be connected with a short duct - or, if you prefer, the CPU is placed between the fan and the air outlet. On the Studio Display the A13 CPU board and fans are on the opposite sides of one of the PSU boards - you wouldn't arrange things like that if you were going to duct the fans to the CPU.
Well, yes - but Apple already had a base-M1 24" iMac which could have been simply scaled up to 27" if they just wanted an M1 5k iMac. A "pro" iMac range would presumably have included M1 Pro, Max and maybe even Ultra processor options, so a design that could only support base M1 would have been unlikely.
I wouldn't bet against a "fanless" (as in - no dedicated active cooler for the SoC) M4 Pro fitting in there today (and even the M4 Max may run cooler than its predecessors) - but power efficiency has improved since the M1 era when the "SD is an iMac" suggestion was made - and look at the size of the coolers in the M1 Max/Ultra Studio...
I think the source of the "is it an iMac or a display?" confusion - as illustrated in the iFixit video - is that those power supply boards really don't look like power supplies with those large, flat, square components.
You can run a thunderbolt cable directly between two Macs as a fast network connection which might help reduce lag and enable lower compression levels. Not sure how that works in practice with Airplay or Luna. I'd still agree that it's a solution for a "bonus" second/third display rather than a main display. Plus, it means having an iMac (likely featuring an Intel SpaceHeater(tm) processor and hitting the GPU for decoding) running - and not just idling, either - all the time.
Revenue charts and figures do not show unrealized and lost sales and customers. Looking at only half-the-data only tells half-the-story.
That raises an excellent point most folks probably aren't aware of—that the AR coating on Apple's glossy* screens is so good it's actually better at cutting reflections than most other brands' matte screens.
If you have both (like I do), you can test it yourself with a flashlight.
[*I'm willing to call it "glossy" because it doesn't scatter light, and thus is effectively glossy for my intents and purposes.]
Alternately, I've had a couple of older (pre-Retina) MBP's, and with those I preferred a matte display, for two reasons: 1) The AR coating on the glossy displays wasn't as effective at cutting reflections as the current treatment; and (2) With their lower-resolution screens, the loss in text sharpness from the matte treatment wasn't as apparent as it is with the Retina displays.
But given how good the coating is on Apple's current glossy displays, I think most are better-served by it than the nano-textured model. Though just FYI, if you really do need to strongly control reflections, the nano-texture is significantly more effective at it than even Apple's glossy coating.
Yeah, I think it's unfortunate they don't offer a less expensive ASD in a monitor-only version.
Did you go with 2 x 4k@27"? I've been spoiled by my iMac's 218 ppi pixel density (and glossy coating), so I don't think I could go back—at least for my main (central) screen. I've got a three-display setup, and I'm OK with having non-Retina displays for my two side monitors.
I went with a pair of Huawei Mateview 28.2" "4k+" (3840x2560 3:2 ratio) screens. I paid £600 for one and £400 for the other. Think of a 27" 4k screen with an extra inch or so of vertical real estate tacked on the bottom. The display isn't in the same league as the Studio Display but then it's a fraction of the price, certainly isn't rubbish, and I find them more suited to my needs than the old iMac. I use them in 2:1 "looks like 1920x1280" mode (c.f. 1920x1080 on 4k) and find the extra vertical space goes a long way to compensating for the slightly chunky UI. so I don't have to resort to non-integer scaling - alrhough they work fine in "2560x1707" mode. Great for... well, everything except watching wide-screen TV, basically (and I have this nifty device called a "TV" for that).
Sadly, I believe they always were hard to get in the US (because Huawei) and it looks like they are now discontinued everywhere. The world needs more 3:2 displays.
Many people have often written that, but they are ignoring that iMacs can easily be used for more than 10 years. I have a 16 year old iMac that still works, and recently added a 6 year old iMac just to able to use a newer OS (Ventura). I plan on using it for several more years.
There are some who really miss the large iMac's clean form factor.
But for most, it's financial. The absence of a 27" iMac, as it was actually configured, has made a high-quality large-screen desktop user experience much less financially accessible for two reasons:
1) When consumers bought an iMac, they would typically buy the model with base RAM, and upgrade the RAM on their own, thus avoiding Apple's substantial OEM RAM prices.
2) Apple doesn't offer a consumer-grade 27" Retina model. The ASD's pricing is more prosumer.
Of course, with AS, #1 isn't coming back. But there's still #2.
Yes, there's the 24". But after having gotten used to a 27", the 24" can feel constraining. Some don't mind it, but many would.
And yes, there are $500 4k 27" displays. But having gotten used to the sharpness of a Retina 27", a 4k can feel like a significant downgrade (I run the two side-by-side, so I'm directly aware of the difference).
I'm not trying to criticize Apple, but instead just wanted to point out the realities of the changes experienced by Apple desktop customers.
One added tidbit: Several years ago, when I had to make frequent calls to Apple Support to deal with a failing MBP, I occasionally asked the reps what machine Apple issued them. My sample size was small (maybe four people), but in each case the response was the same: A 27" iMac.
But for most, it's financial. The absence of a 27" iMac, as it was actually configured, has made a high-quality large-screen desktop user experience much less financially accessible for two reasons:
1) When consumers bought an iMac, they would typically buy the model with base RAM, and upgrade the RAM on their own, thus avoiding Apple's substantial OEM RAM prices.
2) Apple doesn't offer a consumer-grade 27" Retina model. The ASD's pricing is more prosumer.
Of course, with AS, #1 isn't coming back. But there's still #2.
Yes, there's the 24". But after having gotten used to a 27", the 24" can feel constraining. Some don't mind it, but many would.
And yes, there are $500 4k 27" displays. But having gotten used to the sharpness of a Retina 27", a 4k can feel like a significant downgrade (I run the two side-by-side, so I'm directly aware of the difference).
I'm not trying to criticize Apple, but instead just wanted to point out the realities of the changes experienced by Apple desktop customers.
One added tidbit: Several years ago, when I had to make frequent calls to Apple Support to deal with a failing MBP, I occasionally asked the reps what machine Apple issued them. My sample size was small (maybe four people), but in each case the response was the same: A 27" iMac.
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Same here on my iMac, and it's gotten progressively worse over the past two years. I initially thought it was because of website incompatability with Safari, but I've even had it freeze on apple.com:
Why does Safari freeze scrolling while other browsers do not?
I'm running MacOS Monterey 12.7.4 with Safari 17.4 in a 2019 27" i9 iMac. Starting several months ago, I've regularly encountered scrolling freezes in Safari—where the page becomes unresponsive to scrolling. I read the NY Times daily, so I often encounter it there. I'm aware that many...
forums.macrumors.com
I've got a 7-year old iMac that can still do what it always did... but the CPU is outdated, hot and noisy c.f. modern M-series chips. My Mac Studio is about 50% faster, barely audible and consumes a fraction of the power. The old iMac is not supported by Sonoma, so by the time it's 10 it probably won't be getting security updates. (I've got a 10+ year old MacBook Air that was cast off because its old OS wasn't supported by a certain institution's email servers). I also had a 2011 MBP that I used as a daily driver for 7 years before it died - but it had no USB 3 and the drivers for the USB3 ExpressCard I used dropped out of support and if it hadn't died it would have been written off by the same problem as the MBA.
...whereas the screen in the iMac - if only it could be used separately - would be as good as anything you can buy for < $1200 today.
Plan A is - when I get around it - is to "boot camp" the iMac and use it as a Windows machine... even then, I'm not sure if it can go past Windows 10 and I'm finding less and less reasons to use Windows. Plan B would be to stick Linux on it and use it as a home server - but then the screen is wasted and all the storage would have to dangle off the back...
...or I could sell it/hand it down... and wait for the call "I'm trying to install ${software} but it says it needs Mac Os 14 or later..."
Certainly, that $1800 base 5k iMac represented "who are you and what have you done with the real Tim Cook?" value for money, by Apple standards. Personally, I think the Studio Display is overpriced at $1600 but not that overpriced and not because of the display quality. I couldn't see a truly comparable 5k display - even from a third party - selling for much less than $1200. Especially since 5k@27" is only a "sweet spot" because of MacOS's quirks and history and the bulk of the PC market - Windows users - just aren't interested. So $1200 display + the rough equivalent of a (then) $800 Mac Mini + keyboard and mouse for $1800 was kind of a steal.
...and, I think that's why it has gone. Apple don't do loss leaders - but the entry level iMac was probably the closest they've got and I suspect their bulk markets in education and business for desktop computers that the base 5k used to promote have been decimated by the move to laptops and tablets (not to mention the 24" iMac). Apple may also have been counting on 5k displays to take off more widely, which would have bought the cost down.
I think the base 5k is the only real loss, though - having the computer tied to the display is less of an issue at the low end ($1200 display + $600 low-end computer vs. $1200 display + $2000 high-end computer)
The great thing for Apple is that the Studio Display has a wider potential market than the iMac - and has clearly been designed at least partly as the ultimate MacBook docking station. It has the potential to sell to MAcBook users, Mini users, Studio Users and Mac Pro users... even iPad Pro users, at a stretch.
I agree, Apple doesn't do loss leaders—they're not going to make a product on which they lose money. But Apple still offers something equivalent in accessibility to the $1800 27" base Intel iMac (i.e., a lower-profit entry-level AIO): The 24" M3 iMac for $1,300.
I don't know how much more the BOM would be on a 27" M3 iMac. But it seems a reasonable first-order estimate would be to increase the cost in proportion to the increase in screen area, so $1,300 x (27/24)^2 = $1,650. That's why the 27" ASD seems so overpriced—at least for a consumer on a budget who is looking to replace their 27" Intel iMac and doesn't want to downsize the screen.
And they could make the 27" panel on the same production line as the one they use for the 24", since they'd be the same ppi. Modern LCD plants can be programmed to subdivide the mother panels into a range of different sizes.
From my perspective, here's the essence of the problem for entry-level Apple consumers who like a desktop config with a large display: With Mojave, Apple abandoned subpixel text rendering, which enabled text to look pleasingly sharp on a commodity $500 27" 4k (≈160 ppi) display. I.e., starting with Mojave, I found you needed a Retina display (≈220 ppi) for text to not have that hint of blur that makes looking at text all day fatiguing.
Thus you went from being able to do:
$600 Mini + $500 4k display = $1300
or:
$1,000 Air + $500 4k display = $1500
to:
$1,800 27" 5k iMac.
But now you've gone from that to:
$600 Mini + $1600 5k ASD = $2,200
or:
$1,000 Air + $1,600 5k ASD = $2,600
I think it's a big stretch for a consumer whose budget limited them to a $600–$900 Mini or a $1,000–$1,300 Air (i.e., to small upgrades over the base model to get reasonable RAM & SSD sizes) to spend $1,600 on a display. The overwhelming majority just aren't going to do it.
Unless you account for RAM and SSD upgrades (which, granted, is more about the change to AS than the loss of the 27" iMac):
A 2019 i9 iMac with 580X, 8 GB RAM/512 GB SSD was $3000. Upgrading to a 2 TB SSD and 128 GB RAM would bring the price to $4,000: $3,000 + $300 (2 TB SSD pricing in 2019) + $100 (SSD install) + $600 (128GB OWC RAM pricing in 2019) = $4,000. That's the machine I'm using now. Getting that same RAM and SSD, along with a 5k screen, with AS, costs nearly $7,000! [And if I needed a 4 TB SSD, the differential would be even larger.] Specifically:
To get that much RAM and SSD today, the minimum you'd need to spend would be $6,800 (= $2,800 more):
$5,200 (M2 Ultra Studio with 2 TB SSD & 128 GB RAM) + $1,600 ASD =$6,800
Even if the Max Studio had a 128 GB option for an extra $400 over the 96 GB config, that would be $5,600 (= $1,600 more): $3,600 (M2 Max Studio with 2 TB SSD & 96 GB RAM) + $400 + $1,600 = $5,600.
Indeed, I suspect one of the things Apple really likes about AS is that it gives them an excuse to disallow RAM upgrades from their desktops, thus requiring their customers to pay Apple's RAM upgrade prices, which helps them with their profit margins. That's also why they've moved away from allowing aftermarket SSD upgrades on their desktops, even though (unlike the case with post-purchase RAM upgrades, which are precluded by AS), the AS architecture certainly allows it.
Now of course you can argue those are much more powerful computers than my now 5-year-old iMac. But that's always going to be the case when you advance 5 years.
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Darth Tulhu
macrumors 68020
I have a 27" iMac paperweight that I have to install Windows onto just so I can use it for something other than a black mirror, as High Sierra is the last supported OS.
I just haven't had the energy to do this.
To your point, though, the M-Series chips seem to have very, very long legs so we have to wait and see when Apple starts cutting the M1 out of OS updates.
That is what will actually indicate the computer's lifespan.
However, no matter what the monitor is still throwaway, as they generally last longer. So Apple offsets this by pricing the iMac cheaper than a laptop (which also has a throwaway screen).
Hope that is correct. But with oldest M-Series being almost 4 years old, it is still too early to determine if they have long legs or not.
This new iMac with 27 or 30 screen seems like the biggest challenge for Apple. Close to the TITAN project. They have been working on it for how many years?
On a serious note, I do wait for 27 iMac. 30 might be too big and would not fit the space. And I'm tired working from laptop. More and more these days, I do prefer work at the dedicated space. But for some reason I could never enjoy working with external display.. iMac is just great. Only issue is 24 is too small nowadays and too weak.
On a serious note, I do wait for 27 iMac. 30 might be too big and would not fit the space. And I'm tired working from laptop. More and more these days, I do prefer work at the dedicated space. But for some reason I could never enjoy working with external display.. iMac is just great. Only issue is 24 is too small nowadays and too weak.
5k imac in 2014? wow.. now it's almost 2025.. again this is like another decade going into the toilet like car... Why does apple wait so long and has us thinking that they are gonna come out with something so revolutionary. I am sorry, you already failed that **** w/ vision pro in public as DOA as well as failed to launch disaster that is car.. it's just frustrating that apple thinks that they are coming out with some never seen before stuff.. I am sorry, at apple, all they do is jump ship. Now they are all in AI by trying to buy other AI companies.
There is no more steve jobs.. there is no one at the company who are in right position who has ounce of creative juice left in them. I am sorry.. and this is coming from apple fan.
He who makes no mistakes usually makes nothing.
I think the Vision Pro is the new Newton, or the new Lisa - At the moment, people just aren't going to pay a small fortune to spend 8 hours a day looking like a Daft Punk tribute band. 15-20 years down the line, when the technology is up to the job, people will be pointing at it as being ahead of its time. It's not about Apple pretending they invented the VR headset, but they have come up with a bunch of interesting ideas as to how it could be used in the workplace.
I hope they got a bunch of useful patents out of the work they did on the car. Reality is that Tesla made the Apple Car (for better or worse) before they did.
Apple probably had to talk the AI talk to maintain credibility with Wall Street.
Jobs didn't really invent much really new technology, but he certainly had an impressive hit rate at spotting niches in the market where the tech was mostly there but nobody was putting it together into an attractive product. The guy was a marketing whiz who - most unusually - had a good grasp of both technology and design. Apple would be very lucky to find a direct replacement for that skill set.
Are they waiting? There's not much out there better than the Pro XDR display (if you're prepared to pay that much). The dual-layer OLED going into the iPad pro and maybe the next MacBook Pros seems to be pretty cutting edge - maybe that will be coming to 27-32" screens in the next few years (which is why I wouldn't pay $$$$ for a 5k edge-lit IPS panel at the moment) but I don't think the tech is quite there yet,
Meanwhile, Apple had a huge breakthrough in successfully switching the Mac to a non-x86 processor,. They also got to 3nm tech in laptops/desktops first. It may not have the same cultural impact as the iPhone but it has certainly sent ripples through the PC industry and set new standards for power vs. performance in laptops. I have plenty of detailed beefs about Apple's products and prices - but credit where credit is due, Apple Silicon is quite an achievement.