The previous 27" iMac started at $1800. A Mac Studio with Studio Display starts at $3600...
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iFixit Teardown: Studio Display Features iMac-Like Internal Setup
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The previous 27" iMac started at $1800. A Mac Studio with Studio Display starts at $3600...
I would encourage you to think about these numbers and any logical errors that may exist.
I've commented in a previous post that Apple has indeed been impacted by the world wide chip shortage. I believe the Studio Display is a prime example of this. Because of the popularity of the Mac Book Pro's, Apple probably only had just enough M1 Pro's and M1 Max's to satisfy demand for these devices. Apple probably intended to release the M1 iMac 27" replacement around the same time as the 24" M1 iMac or soon thereafter. They were either waiting to see how well the Mac Book Pro's would do sales wise or more than likely to see if they could get more M1 Pro's and Max's manufactured for the larger iMac. They also may have geared up to manufacture the larger iMacs in case this became possible with the backup plan being to repurpose it as the Studio Display.
If this was the case, I'd love to know who came up with the idea for this as it is pure genius!
Right and the 24 inch iMac is much cheaper, faster and better equipped than that stripped $1800 27 inch iMac, and with 90% of the screen width and height.
Lots of 27 inch iMacs sold for $3,000 to $4,000. None were remotely as fast or expandable as the Studio combo.
In between you can pair a M1 mini with a Studio monitor and starting at $2,300 get much better performance and a brighter 5k screen than the 27 inch iMac.
Apple has clearly replaced the 27 inch iMac with better options all around
Well go look at a 27” iMac power supply and ask yourself where you’re going to stick that in the flat chassis. They had to do a hell of a lot of head scratching engineering to build out a modular power supply like that with very thin magnetics and actually get an EMC pass on it. Its really impressive from an EE point of view.
As always with apple they persist their designs inside the unit as well. If you look at a TV it’ll have a beige cheap ass FR2 PCB with whatever they could get lying around stuffed on it with a mish mash of the cheapest connections they could muster. This isn’t that. Someone cared about doing it right and not to a price point.
My only comment is CapXon capacitors. Seriously? I’d expect something a bit more classy like Rubycon or Nichicon in there at this price.
You could get a Pro in there easily.
But I’m not sure you should. There’s a ton of old iMacs out there which have perfectly good displays but hosed logic boards. I unsuccessfully attempted to intercept some exiting work to make frankenmacs. If you chop the unit in half the amount of stuff you have to throw away when something breaks is halved.
"Similar sized devices?"
"Similar capabilities?"
a M1 iMac 24" vs a M1 Pro, M1 Max or even a M2 iMac 27"
I'd definitely get the latter in a heartbeat!
Apple designed and simultaneously released a great 5K P3 color gamut 600 nits external display with decent sound to go with their just released Mac Studio, the combination being great for content creators.
And people go nuts with a major case of the shakes because the display is...just a display. And will satisfy the needs of many content creators when used with the Mac Studio computer.
And people go nuts with a major case of the shakes because the display is...just a display. And will satisfy the needs of many content creators when used with the Mac Studio computer.
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Nice video. A 27” iMac looking similar to Studio Display would be great.
Very impressive, but I would rather have a power brick with a LAN-Port.
The A13 does not appear to play a role in displaying content, so there should be no added latency.
I went to the Apple store yesterday to see the display and brain unit in person. I like the design of the brain. The screen was a bit underwhelming. Picture is sharp and bright, for sure. But having got used to a 32" screen the 27" seemed a little cramped. I'm not sure I can comfortably go back to 27". The screen was sitting next to a 24" iMac and the available real estate didn't seem much less on the all-in-one. Possibly an illusion caused by the chin.
The sound of the new display was reasonably good, but that is useless to me since I use very high quality external speakers. The webcam is useless to me. If I want to make a video call I'll use my phone or iPad.
Bottom line first impression: I will buy the brain unless something else interesting comes out in June (like a 30" iMac) but I'm not sure about the display. For me it's right in the middle: too expensive for what it is, and providing things I don't use. I'd buy it for $1,000-$1,200 with no camera & speakers. Or I'd buy it for $2,000-$2,500 if it were 30-32".
So what do I do?
1. Keep using my 32" LG which is adequate (but creates horrendous EMF when I'm recording guitars)?
2. Buy the XDR for $5,000 and drop several other items from my spending plans?
3. Buy the Studio Display, learn to love the 27" screen again and use satellite iPads for additional screen real-estate?
4. Keep waiting for the perfect solution that may never come?
The sound of the new display was reasonably good, but that is useless to me since I use very high quality external speakers. The webcam is useless to me. If I want to make a video call I'll use my phone or iPad.
Bottom line first impression: I will buy the brain unless something else interesting comes out in June (like a 30" iMac) but I'm not sure about the display. For me it's right in the middle: too expensive for what it is, and providing things I don't use. I'd buy it for $1,000-$1,200 with no camera & speakers. Or I'd buy it for $2,000-$2,500 if it were 30-32".
So what do I do?
1. Keep using my 32" LG which is adequate (but creates horrendous EMF when I'm recording guitars)?
2. Buy the XDR for $5,000 and drop several other items from my spending plans?
3. Buy the Studio Display, learn to love the 27" screen again and use satellite iPads for additional screen real-estate?
4. Keep waiting for the perfect solution that may never come?
Well in theory there will be a higher-end Apple Studio Display Pro that will add MiniLED HDR for around $1000 more, though it will still be 27 inches.
While this display looks like it is just a a few ports shy of being an iMac 27”, after seeing the heat sink on the M1 Max in the Max Studio, it seems to me that putting anything more powerful than the M1 Pro in this chassis would EV extremely difficult to engineer.
I don’t think we will ever see an iMac with the M1 max or Ultra. The Studio is it.
I don’t think we will ever see an iMac with the M1 max or Ultra. The Studio is it.
Except you are paying for performance you do not need. Most users, especially those that bought iMacs, are running single thread processes. They do not need the multi-core capabilities of an M1 Pro, Max, or Ultra. For the vast majority of users, there will be little performance increase but there is now a giant price increase. Even an M1 mini + Studio Display is pretty pricey compared to the old base model iMac. And while the performance if the two in synthetic benchmarks may look drastically different, that is not necessarily playing out in real-world use. This is especially true for the person who is interested in a base model or slightly above 27" iMac.
So yeah, you are getting a more powerful machine. The issue is that the vast majority have no use for that power but are now stuck paying for it.
Well, that'll make the current studio display seem like a bargain for my purposes.
Agreed
Interesting considering when the M1's first came out we had half the forum insisting that Apple had "done it again" and "bent the laws of physics" and "blew everyone away" with efficiency and performance combinations never even dreamt of!!
Except for the heat -- oh yes -- the heat
Turns out ASi stuff is great -- but to your point, it's perhaps a bit more of a mere mortal on the cooling required than initially we thought when only seeing the entry level M1 stuff.
Ironically - they've turned some of the Mac lineup into the iPads in that way.
All this performance that is wasted on a lot of users -- many with few other options that makes sense for their situations.
Until recently, they were selling an entry-level 5k iMac which was essentially a $1100 i5 Mac Mini built in to a comparable 5k display with mic, half-decent speakers, webcam and a $99 keyboard and a $99 mouse for $1800.
OTOH, the top end i9 iMac with 32GB used to cost about the same as a Mac Studio Max + Studio Display combo.
These prices have everything to do with Apple's strategically chosen price points, based on what they think the market will bear, and very little to do with any concept of "bill of materials + costs + margin".
Pretty much for my use case as my wife prefers the 27" size and she thought the 24" is too small of a screen coming from her 2012 imac 27. May just bite the bullet and spend the extra $1800 or just get one of the last imac 27s that are still available, but I really don't want to get another intel mac at this point....
Performance has been wasted on users across the board since at least the early 2000’s.
For the vast majority of folks, an i3 from back then can do the same Facebooking, web searching and emailing that most folks do today. That’s why for millions, a phone or an iPad can be a laptop replacement… because they never needed a laptop in the first place, there was just nothing other than a laptop or desktop that would provide the experience they desired.I do find it humorous that “too much performance” is seen as a negative, though.
With few other things to complain about, though, I guess that’s where we are!
All of the M-series SoCs are running at two-thirds to one-half the temps Intel and AMD were so heat dissipation is not an issue with any Mac or any SoC.
The main issue holding back Apple Silicon performance right now is power - the SoCs don't have access to enough power to run all the cores (CPU and GPU) at their maximum frequencies so the more you add, the less of a gain you see.
The question now is that due to a design issue (the SoCs can only handle so much input wattage) or is it a decision by Apple to limit how much input power they will allow to keep the SoCs cool and keep the fans at idle.
The former will mean that the M1 family is as good as it will get right now and we will need to wait for later generations to increase power-vs-performance. The latter should be able to be addressed by Apple releasing new firmware that allows for more power and more heat and louder fans.