Aye, it always seemed daft that you had to lean over or spin the computer around to plug in your headphones.
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New iMac Tidbits: Headphone Jack on Side, Ethernet Port on Power Adapter, Spatial Audio and WiFi 6 Support, No SD Card Slot
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Aye, it always seemed daft that you had to lean over or spin the computer around to plug in your headphones.
I think their legacy hubris of speration of devices is getting in their way of truly innovating with the M1.
this device could have easily been a large touch screen iPad with MacOS as it's core, with some limited battery life, but dockable into the stand for a iMac. It would be a great 2-in-1 for home users who don't travel move around with their devices. But still want some basic portability throughout their home
they've clearly shown that they can make the desktop equivelant in power and performance for the base models with the iPad Pro. So it's not a technical limitation why they're not venturing out and trying to do new things in the space.
Clearly it's a business decision to continue to keep the mac lineup and ipad lineup as distinctly seperate as they can.
I just struggle to identify pros who bought the 21in iMac. It was consumers. This is an exceptional replacement for those folks. They want a cool looking machine (if they are purely price sensitive there are cheaper windows machines and chrome boxes), mainly use it for internet, working with their content (photos from their iPhone, music, etc), and probably can't be bothered to plug in external stuff (I.e. speakers). Most discerning, demanding prosumers would get the 27in, and this is not a replacement for that. Same as the M1 air, 13Pro. It does not replacement the 4 TB 13in or the 16in pro.
I agree...and as usual Apple undo all the excuses for some of the features, ie TouchID is now secure enough for Macs and apparently everyone wants a headphone Jack again?
Some of us never wanted the jack to leave in the first place
well, the SD reader started on the side. then the tapered edge design came, and it was shifted to the back side. i agree, its a PITA to handle it and the same goes for the headphone jack.
but apple could have put it back to the side, next to the headphone jack.
with actual thickness on the device edge, we might also have a power button there, right?
Most people don't need the SD port anymore. I would rather have a USB port than SD.
so a power adapter with an Ethernet port, and I suppose the cable from said adapter to the iMac is a power/ethernet cable ... way to go Apple, something else is PROPRIETARY again ...
I guess the cable/adapter comes with the iMac and is not a heavily used part, but still ...
I guess the cable/adapter comes with the iMac and is not a heavily used part, but still ...
there are 4 (with 2 thunderbolt) ports. if having a proprietary ethernet plug in your power adapter is a bridge too far, buy a USB one and use that on your desk.
Ethernet is one of those things you plug in and leave. like power. having it on the powerbrick is a move that I loved when Google did it with the chromecasts and I think is a great move for the iMac.
Back then all those ports were necessary since there wasn’t a single port that could handle all those functions, with or without adapters.
Apple says TouchID isn’t secure enough for us and provides FaceID and then proceeds to keep it TouchID on laptops, desktops and iPads....and some phones?
Apple are courageous and remove headphone Jack from iPhones because 80% people are using wireless and yet they fit a headphone Jack to every single product they make aside from iPhones?
more like Adaptors or die if you ask me.
that's not how this works
having an SD card doesn't mean you remove a USB port. it's not a one or the other, especially if you design the proper PCI-lane math for the devices in question.
Firstly, SD card readers don't even need to sit directly on the PCI-E bus. the transfer rates are sufficient to sit on an internal USB-2 bus if it required that much. The power and performance requirements are very low. Low enugh that most have likely been sharing internal USB busses for decades.
The simple fact is there's really no technical reason to have not put a SD Card in other than apple sayingh "we didn't want to"
and that's fine. That's their business decision
as for the space?
There's no shortage of physical space in the new iMac. MKHBD in his iMac video had an internal view and the vast majority of the internals of the new iMac are empty. This means ommission of ports/devices is likely intentional business choice and not technical
Screen grab from the video
Pro is just a marketing term. Any computer is a “pro” computer if you use it as such. I was a pro video editor for years on an older 21.5 iMac. Like any tool, the person using it is more important than the tool itself. And computers today are powerful enough that even low to mid-level machines make for competent tools.
that's "
even if Apple jumped on the "pro" marketing.in the IT world, Pro actually has a vastly different intentional meaning.
but consumers don't care as long as they get to call themselves "pro"
PROFESSIONAL equipment generally requires something to be scalable, modular, and capable of being adjusted in those to handle variety of different technologically demanding activities
The modern "PRO" labeled to things like SURFACE PRO and IPAD PRO don't meet that. in these cases its mostly marketting towards convincing users they're "pros" because of the naming.
Even the MacBook Pro is more an ultrabook. Not a Pro level laptop. its a damn nice ultrabook. But it's NOT scalable. It's not modular, and it doesn't have the capability of expanding it's productivity over time to match increasing workloads.
The power brick should definately have at least one thunderbolt port.I am sure when there will be next redesign in some years, everything will be in that powerbrick
And what business advantage would there be there? It can't be dongle sales, because third parties already make those. And using this argument (there's plenty of space), why stop with SD slots? Why not add in some USB-A too? HDMI? Why did they have to move the ethernet port to the power brick if there's "no shortage of physical space in the new iMac"?that's not how this works
having an SD card doesn't mean you remove a USB port. it's not a one or the other, especially if you design the proper PCI-lane math for the devices in question.
Firstly, SD card readers don't even need to sit directly on the PCI-E bus. the transfer rates are sufficient to sit on an internal USB-2 bus if it required that much. The power and performance requirements are very low. Low enugh that most have likely been sharing internal USB busses for decades.
The simple fact is there's really no technical reason to have not put a SD Card in other than apple sayingh "we didn't want to"
and that's fine. That's their business decision
as for the space?
There's no shortage of physical space in the new iMac. MKHBD in his iMac video had an internal view and the vast majority of the internals of the new iMac are empty. This means ommission of ports/devices is likely intentional business choice and not technical
Spoiler: it will probably have exactly the same performance as the M1 Mini and M1 13" MBP, and a slight advantage over the M1 MBA due to being better cooled.
...which is perfectly fine as a replacement for the 21.5" iMac it replaced, which it should conclusively thrash - maybe not quite as thoroughly as the Mini/MBP beat their Intel counterparts because the 21.5" Intel iMac did at least have a discrete GPU.
What it's mainly lost is the ability to support 2 external displays, which is not good but probably not a dealbreaker for the target market. The target market - especially for the cheapest model with just the two TB ports and no Ethernet - probably won't care about the ports, either. The two TB ports presumably - like the other M1 machines - each have a separate controller now, so the I/O bandwidth has doubled c.f. the 21.5" and now you can get more TB ports via a hub. (I'd prefer more ports but, frankly, using a hub/dongles with a desktop isn't as stupid as with a laptop where you have to carry them around).
However, Apple need to get a wiggle on with the M1X/M2 whatever, and the "pro" Macs using them.
Example:
Storage soldered in, with zero internal expansion will tend to drive users to purchase those upgrades internally up front. Apple's upgrade pricing is known to have incredibly high margins in comparison to the lower skews.
And why NOT add an HDMI port to the side? or a single USB-A? these are also purely business choices Apple has made for whatever reason. And yes. Dongle sales are a big part of it.
Best Buy in 2019 announced that their #1 accessories sales accross their company was Apple related dongles.
tell me how you’re getting an M1 iPad Pro and a Mac mini for the same cost as the base model iMac?.
Base iMac = $1599 CAD
12.9” iPad Pro = $1399 CAD.
Mac mini = $899 CAD.
So, you’re actually spending $700 more without getting a 4.5K display, a TouchID keyboard, Dolby Atmos capable speakers.