Kuo: 24-Inch iMac With New Design to Launch in Fourth Quarter of 2020

[NervousFish2]

I can never remember how this works. But this new 24" inch model will have the same screen real estate as the current 27"? As in, taking away the bezel means smaller computer face but same size actual screen? Maybe someone here can clarify

 

[cheese01]

I can never remember how this works. But this new 24" inch model will have the same screen real estate as the current 27"? As in, taking away the bezel means smaller computer face but same size actual screen? Maybe someone here can clarify

24" is the screen real estate, so the physical size would (probably) be similar to the current 21.5", while the screen size would be between the 21.5" and the 27".

 

[simonmet]

5 years too late on a redesign.

I can understand 7-8 years between Mac Pro design changes (even 10 at a stretch), but 10 years for a consumer-oriented product? That’s crazy!

The MacBook Pro went through 3-4 generations with significant design changes in that time. Why did Apple ignore the desktops so much?

 

[sakurarain]

I will place the order on day-1. My 2011 mini asked for retirement for a while.

 

[AdamJD]

If they're bumping up the size of the 21.5 to 24, maybe they'll do the same with the 27 inch to 32? I've really grown accustomed to the larger size with my docked MacBook Pro....

Which MBP are you on and how is the battery doing? I've got a docked mid 2014 MBP...I'm using a 28" 4k monitor and I'm on my 3rd battery. The first was replaced by Apple when the entire machine was rocking because the battery was so bloated. The mouse would barely depress. Things were almost back to the same last year, so I replaced the battery again. This machine also had issues for years with YouTube video (apparently endemic to mid-2014 MBP retinas). I've been planning to avoid the MBP line in the future and go to iMac. Never had issues with other Macs.

 

[Zoboomafoo]

Not a chance! I would think it'll be ARM for all new Macs like this, and ARM for upgrades for existing Macs as soon as they can roll it out. It could have quite an effect on Mac sales for the next two years if people wait for ARM. For example, I was thinking of upgrading my MacBook Air next year, pretty much for the hell of it to be honest, but I'll certainly wait for ARM now as that is obviously the future of Mac hardware and software.
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Too much to hope they might release a 27" version as a monitor, I suppose?

Didn’t Tim say there were more intel products coming at the end? At the very least, it seems like there’s a chance

 

[rmeurant]

So much for the breathless rumors and youtube videos describing the new iMacs that were to be announced...

 

[immortalwind]

hmmm....

 

[anthony13]

Just curious - what makes you think ARM Macs won't be competitive?
Personally I don't think Apple would announce a full transition unless they had complete confidence they could overtake Intel's offerings across all their products. Going by my rough calculations I'd expect an A14 based iMac to be faster than an Intel iMac, at least in raw performance. Whether or not it's faster in real world use probably depends on how much overhead Rosetta introduces.

Rosetta concerns me, and that’s partly because I’m reminded of the PPC transition. The software i predominately use will most likely not run native on ARM until 2022. I’m not a tech expert at the level that I can argue numbers, but I’ve read articles that suggest there are heat distribution and real world factors that will temper the wide eye’d optimism people have regarding desktop ARM Mac’s. More than that, i really don’t think a lot of the niche software I use will be ready for a while.

 

[immortalwind]

I do hope these new Apple Silicon macs can support Windows Bootcamp.

 

[TheStygimoloch]

Just curious - what makes you think ARM Macs won't be competitive?

Incompatibility with every app and Windows. Not just now with apps that won't be ported over, Apple will have some kind of emulation to limp along the transition. But eventually like with Snow Leopard and PPC, anything not converted will have zero support.
No windows virtualization. No windows booting. No games. No professional apps. Nothing written in the last 15 years.

They've literally made the Mac a toy again. Welcome back to the 90's.
Yet I can boot into Windows 10 on my 2015 iMac and play Need For Speed II from 1997 if I please. But Halo Mac from 2001, updated to Intel? Nope. 32 bit, Catalina ended the possibility of playing that.

 

[Dreamail]

If this was a traditional keynote, it would’ve been 2.5 hours due to all of the applause breaks and pauses between segments.

I thought that too.

But still, so many of the presentations in that video seemed rushed, presenters speaking at breakneck speeds.
Apple is notorious for planning things. If they knew they had 12 minutes extra for their 2 hours reserved slot, why not slow things down a bit with some of the speakers? Spread the same information but into the full 2 hour slot?
I bet they would have.

Yet the fact that this WWDC seemed rushed and it was 12 minutes shorter than usual/possible, tells a story, I think.

 

[cheese01]

Rosetta concerns me, and that’s partly because I’m reminded of the PPC transition. The software i predominately use will most likely not run native on ARM until 2022. I’m not a tech expert at the level that I can argue numbers, but I’ve read articles that suggest there are heat distribution and real world factors that will temper the wide eye’d optimism people have regarding desktop ARM Mac’s. More than that, i really don’t think a lot of the niche software I use will be ready for a while.

Fair enough! I use some niche CAD software, but it's all already Windows exclusive - I can't lose what's already been lost, lol. I doubt we'll have a way to run x86 Windows on the new Macs, which is a shame, because it's come in handy for me from time to time. Let's hope the performance benefits are worth what we're leaving behind.

 

[robinp]

I hope they release an upgraded Apple TV that they allow MacOS to be installed on. ~£250 for low end power efficient Mac would be awesome

 

[teejaysplace24]

Not a chance! I would think it'll be ARM for all new Macs like this, and ARM for upgrades for existing Macs as soon as they can roll it out. It could have quite an effect on Mac sales for the next two years if people wait for ARM. For example, I was thinking of upgrading my MacBook Air next year, pretty much for the hell of it to be honest, but I'll certainly wait for ARM now as that is obviously the future of Mac hardware and software.
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Too much to hope they might release a 27" version as a monitor, I suppose?

I think you might be surprised, at least i hope you are. While it doesnt make much sense on the surface, the fact is the ARM mac’s wont be competitive with Intel mac’s from jump. I think we’ll see ARM in the lower end products at first. Further, and perhaps more importantly, the professional sector will be slow to release native versions of software for ARM mac’s. That means many design houses and firms will rely on Intel mac’s for years to come.

Tim Cook flat out said that they still had new Intel Macs in the pipeline. If you look back to the Intel transition, a redesigned iMac G5 was released in October 2005 (with iSight and remote), then the same language was reused for the first Intel iMac in January 2006. (IIRC, the body thickness was slimed down slightly, but all else remained visually identical to the G5.) So Apple's own history suggests that multiple iMac releases are a distinct possibility. It's also feasible that they could launch the redesign across the entire iMac line, but maintain the Intel architecture only in the iMac Pro. That would assuage both pro users nervous about software compatibility and new users unwilling to invest in devolving tech.

What I'm more interested in is whether Apple's update will include that fancy new $1000 hinge from the Pro Display. The aluminum foot design has grown really static over the years and the inability to adjust the iMac's height has been among its biggest annoyances since the G4 went away.

 

[cheese01]

Incompatibility with every app and Windows. Not just now with apps that won't be ported over, Apple will have some kind of emulation to limp along the transition. But eventually like with Snow Leopard and PPC, anything not converted will have zero support.
No windows virtualization. No windows booting. No games. No professional apps. Nothing written in the last 15 years.

They've literally made the Mac a toy again. Welcome back to the 90's.

On the macOS side, I think Apple has been carefully planning this for several years now. Dropping support for 32-bit and non notarized apps last year were just the cherry on top - these should have already weeded out most of the inactive developers.

Since the Intel transition nearly 15 years ago, software toolchains have matured enormously. In 2005, writing parts of your software in native x86 assembly was reasonably common. These days, it's unheard of - compiler optimization has improved to the point that you won't find a single line of assembly in desktop software; there's simply no need for it. Just about anything that runs on macOS is compiled through Apple's Xcode toolchain. Without esoteric assembly to port over, getting an x86 app to run on Apple silicon will be as easy as clicking a button. Personally, I think things will go very, very smoothly with the transition on macOS.

Windows virtualization is a hairy one though - by the looks of things, we won't have x86 virtualization out of the box. It's definitely theoretically possible to host an emulated x86 virtual machine, but I really don't think Apple will support this; it would likely to be up to a (very) ambitious third party to implement. Chances are we won't see it. Thankfully, Windows for ARM already exists, so we can likely run ARM windows in a virtual machine. Of course, this doesn't solve the Windows x86 app problem. Microsoft hasn't been carefully planning for an x86->ARM transition in the way Apple has, so the state of ARM support in the Windows ecosystem is a mess. Like you said, we'll probably be screwed on x86 Windows games and professional apps, which is a shame.

On the bright side, we'll likely gain a lot of performance in native Mac apps, and the games and pro apps with Mac support should run very nicely.

 

[Dreamail]

I do hope these new Apple Silicon macs can support Windows Bootcamp.

I would not bet money on this.

As far as I can read between the lines no Windows software will easily run on the new ARM chips.
I cannot foresee VM Ware or Parallels offering Windows 10 environments that fully support most of the Windows 10 apps, let alone games.

Even for Intel Mac applications Rosetta 2 does not support high-performance x86 instructions, so it can only support apps that have fall-backs to slower code which does not use these features. Some Mac software will not have these fall-backs, and therefore simply not run with Rosetta 2.

I remember the days of Rosetta 1 and while it was very impressive, there was a good portion of applications that would either not run at all (i.e. crash) or have certain features not working (printing e.g.).
I bet it will be the same with Rosetta 2.

And an order of magnitude more complex with native Windows applications - if they ever find a way to run them at all.

I think it is more likely that Windows 10 on ARM will be supported at some point in the new virtualization options, perhaps even with Bootcamp for Windows 10 on ARM.
But Windows 10 on Intel, I would not get my hopes up. Sadly.

Those current Mac "Windows" users will be left out in the cold...
They'll be the proverbial sacrifice in this transition.

 

[entropys]

5 years too late on a redesign.

I can understand 7-8 years between Mac Pro design changes (maybe even 10 at a stretch), but 10 years for a consumer-oriented product? That’s crazy!

The MacBook Pro went through 3-4 generations with significant design changes in that time. Why did Apple ignore the desktops so much?

Well, clearly, internally it was focussed on workshopping the A series chips into the next Big Mac thing. It has taken a while to execute.

 

[Bob Br]

So if that iMac display is accurate are we now going to have to suffer with rounded corners when viewing standard 16:9 video? I'm already having to deal with that nonsense on my iPad when I watch videos in picture in picture view.

In fact it crops the corners round for any video that you watch in PiP view. So 16:9 and 4:3 have the rounded corners and 1:85 is slightly cropped if the video includes the black bars on top and bottom. Only the widest aspect ratios that have the black bars top and bottom escape the nonsense cropping.

On the iPad Pro full screen, 4:3 videos are rounded in the corners because it’s still a 4:3 display. Looks ridiculous. Like you're watching an old tube TV.

Absolutely outrageous that Apple thinks it’s OK to crop people’s videos like that because they prefer the aesthetics of stupid round corner displays. We had rounded corner displays decades ago with tube TVs! Squared corners was an advancement, and now Apple has taken us backwards again!
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I just really want one iteration of this design with an intel chip. PLEASE APPLE.

Why would it matter if Apple's chip are at least as good? In fact, they are likely to be better. Apple makes the most powerful chips.

 

[JacobHarvey]

So if that iMac display is accurate are we now going to have to suffer with rounded corners when viewing standard 16:9 video? I'm already having to deal with that nonsense on my iPad when I watch videos in picture in picture view.

In fact it crops the corners round for any video that you watch in PiP view. So 16:9 and 4:3 have the rounded corners and 1:85 is slightly cropped if the video includes the black bars on top and bottom. Only the widest aspect ratios that have the black bars top and bottom escape the nonsense cropping.

On the iPad Pro full screen, 4:3 videos are rounded in the corners because it’s still a 4:3 display. Looks ridiculous. Like you're watching an old tube TV.

Absolutely outrageous that Apple thinks it’s OK to crop people’s videos like that because they prefer the aesthetics of stupid round corner displays. We had rounded corner displays decades ago with tube TVs! Squared corners was an advancement, and now Apple has taken us backwards again!

Agree wholeheartedly, rounded corners are truly a stupid feature. On a phone it is somewhat excusable and I'm somewhat ok with it as it is a small device and they want to screen to seem like it is hugging the edge of the device.

But it would seriously irritate me having parts of the corners of my screen cut off on a large desktop or laptop, to fulfill some obsessed designers' 'vision' of how things should look (when really it'd just be form over actual function).

Hopefully they don't take us back to emulating the rounded corners on old 4:3 CRTs, though I guess these designers have to keep revisiting past trends and changing things up for little reason to give themselves work and justify getting their paycheck (e.g. see how having transparent windows everywhere is back in fashion in macOS 11 like from the 2006 Windows Vista days).

 

[simonmet]

I do hope these new Apple Silicon macs can support Windows Bootcamp.

This is the million dollar question, but given that they specifically went out of their way to not mention Windows (but did Linux) when they mentioned virtualisation several times, it’s unlikely for the foreseeable future.

And while there’s a Windows for ARM version apparently, I think it’s pretty limited so far. I like and appreciate having access to the full-fat Windows. I’ve generally much preferred using Office in Windows than on Mac, which is usually behind the Windows version in both features and speed. Then there’s ancillary Windows software and games, including some professional platforms like ArcGIS that I use. I also prefer SPSS in Windows because the Mac version forces you to install Java (🥵), which is slow and I deem a security threat.

The games I play in Windows aren’t usually even that demanding, but since macOS dropped 32-bit support, in some cases Windows is my only option. Demanding games also tend to play better in DirectX than on Mac. Though Metal is closing the gap I think, not all developers seem to want to port to it, for fairly obvious reasons.

Since Apple is going all-in on ARM, I really hope they finally offer a consumer-oriented gaming desktop with support for one or two full-sized graphics cards (and NVIDIA!) to help encourage porting and lessen the blow of a probable loss of Windows support; for the foreseeable future anyway.

 

[Bob Br]

On the macOS side, I think Apple has been carefully planning this for several years now. Dropping support for 32-bit and non notarized apps last year were just the cherry on top - these should have already weeded out most of the inactive developers.

Since the Intel transition nearly 15 years ago, software toolchains have matured enormously. In 2005, writing parts of your software in native x86 assembly was reasonably common. These days, it's unheard of - compiler optimization has improved to the point that you won't find a single line of assembly in desktop software; there's simply no need for it. Just about anything that runs on macOS is compiled through Apple's Xcode toolchain. Without esoteric assembly to port over, getting an x86 app to run on Apple silicon will be as easy as clicking a button. Personally, I think things will go very, very smoothly with the transition on macOS.

Windows virtualization is a hairy one though - by the looks of things, we won't have x86 virtualization out of the box. It's definitely theoretically possible to host an emulated x86 virtual machine, but I really don't think Apple will support this; it would likely to be up to a (very) ambitious third party to implement. Chances are we won't see it. Thankfully, Windows for ARM already exists, so we can likely run ARM windows in a virtual machine. Of course, this doesn't solve the Windows x86 app problem. Microsoft hasn't been carefully planning for an x86->ARM transition in the way Apple has, so the state of ARM support in the Windows ecosystem is a mess. Like you said, we'll probably be screwed on x86 Windows games and professional apps, which is a shame.

On the bright side, we'll likely gain a lot of performance in native Mac apps, and the games and pro apps with Mac support should run very nicely.

Inactive developers don’t need "weeding out." By being inactive they have already done that themselves. If Apple removes choice on the Mac, or any of their other products, then it is only for their benefit.

I plan on eventually making my photo editing iMac, a maxed out and heavily upgraded late 2012 27”, a stand-alone photo editing computer that will always be offline once Mojave support ceases, since I run Lightroom 6 and Photoshop CS6. No rent for Adobe and no new iMac payment for Apple. Does everything I need. I also use it to rip my movie and TV shows discs that I occasionally purchase.

 

[cheese01]

Agree wholeheartedly, rounded corners are truly a stupid feature. On a phone it is somewhat excusable and I'm somewhat ok with it as it is a small device and they want to screen to seem like it is hugging the edge of the device.

But it would seriously irritate me having parts of the corners of my screen cut off on a large desktop or laptop, to fulfill some obsessed designers' 'vision' of how things should look (when really it'd just be form over actual function)

Eh, the rounded corners thing doesn't bother me too much, as long as the corners don't have a huge radius. It's not like our eyes are rectangular 😛
That being said, as long as there's an option to shrink content down to prevent cutting off the corners, everyone can be happy.

Looking at the Big Sur UI that's been shown, I think we'll be seeing Macs with rounded display corners soon - rounded window corners and other UI elements, as well as increased padding in the menu bar seem to hint at this.

 

[domsodidavid]

The main question for me is that, do we stuck with the old design if we want the intel/amd, and the new design would be ARM only, or we also get the new form factor for a last time.

 

[Jaekae]

Not sure how they'll reach their "incredible performance" goals by the end of the year, though. Right now, the A14Z is dramatically slower than Intel desktop CPUs and graphics performance is nothing compared to (some) dedicated GPUs.

think they will do desktop versions that require active cooling. And desktops eill probably still use amd graphics also and automatic switching