But don't pick a nice 4K monitor. Remember, we want to prove that $599 for a Mac without any peripherals is still a good deal. People who would complain about a missing $19 20W charger in the iPhone box, praise the nothing-in-one (NIO) Mini as if they made the bargain of a lifetime. Meanwhile the no-need-to-bring-your-own-display-keyboard-and-mouse (NNBYODKM) iMac is shunned. How dare Apple sell me all I need to start working in one device?
I guess my point is, the M1 chip revolutionised the Mac and personal computing. It brought a significant boost to performance and let’s face it, iMac isn’t a pro machine, it never has been. The iMac Pro got close but it was still prosumer, not Pro Pro if that makes sense? So why upgrade it so frequently? I just think all these people getting obsessed with a small spec bump on a machine when, the people using it won’t notice any real world difference is nuts and consumerism at its worst.
You know that when the M1 Mac runs into RAM constraints it uses the SSD as a buffer? Can I ask what you’re using your M1 Mac for? Chances are an 8GB model will last you 6,7,8 years and I sounds like you have 16gb.
www.macrumors.com
I don't disagree with you on this point. Maybe the right move moving forward really is to pair a Mac mini with a monitor (even if it's a costly studio display) and finally decouple the CPU from the display, now that both the Mac mini and iMac essentially sport the same specs.
It’s a good idea! And then when you want to upgrade the computer, it’ll cost you a lot less as you’ll already have the display, keyboard, mouse/trackpad etc which will typically need updating a lot less frequently (for people that like to upgrade regularly).
The AIO iMac continues to have its' appeal. It includes keyboard and mouse, and as someone else noted somewhere... theMacBooks and the iPads also trash their displays when updated, so the iMac is not alone in that aspect. It remains the "value" solution. The Apple studio display alone cost more that the iMac. Add in a Mini and that combo costs twice what an iMac costs. That said, it would be nice if these displays had a life after component obsolescence.
They certainly have appeal, just not for me. I wouldn’t recommend this to my sister, but it’s a waste of money for me to keep buying an iMac. I use it for creative projects and browsing the web. A RAM upgraded Mini is more than enough for my workload.
I can't help you with the RAM, but there are at least two iMac24 "hubs" that almost appear to be part of the iMac that support NVME SSDs at 10GBS in addition to the extra ports the hubs bring. One company's offering is a base for the iMac and is even color matched to your iMac24.
www.macrumors.com
If they sport the same CPU/GPU/RAM, What difference does the enclosure make? The Studio has more ports, but at a given task, don't comparable, e.g., "M2 Pro" chips do the same work? Honest query here. If an M1 iMac accomplishes your task, does the same chip in a Mac Studio do it better?
The difference the enclosure makes is that I don't have to repurchase the screen part of it when i need a new computer.
I understand the power comparisons between Minis and Studios (though for what it's worth, every Studio is substantially more powerful than my base model Mini).
Mini was a standard M2 or the Pro M2 chip. The studio the Max M2 chip or the Ultra M2 chip. These are all physical different chips, with different sizes, power consumption, memory bandwidths, number of CPU and number of GPU. Any of the existing M2 Studio configurations is more powerful than the most powerful M2 Mac mini.
