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The WORST iMac to buy
- Thread starter jobinhosyntax
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Linus made another video crying about Apple... I guess he's still not over Apple not giving him special treatment with his iMac Pro LOL
The title is for clicks only. He doesn't scrap it that much. And what he says is actually pretty good. You buy a 4000$ CAD machine without knowing if support from app and OS will be there for more than 3 years. it actually reminded me that yeah ... I would buy this machine for not so long, with an inexistant resell value.
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Doesn’t make sense.. clearly a clickbait video to get clicks..
his review of the 2020 iMac included no actual review of the iMac besides speculation on the new apple silicon.
It’s actually a very good and fair review. Most of us who bought one knew the dangers going in (and in some cases, chose it for its Intel chip), but warning prospective users who don’t have a need for Intel about the uncertainty of future support is both a fair critique and a service to prospective users who don’t follow Apple news obsessively.
Yeah he puts things in perspective in a stark way. This reality and the graphical glitch are making me think about a return, and mine hasn't even arrived yet.
Why don’t you just get the 5500 instead of the 5700 then? 5500 doesn’t have the glitch.
And what computer are you upgrading from?
A lot of people here reflexively hate on Linus, but aside from the click baity title, he's always fair with his opinions. Nothing he says is really unjustified.
It could have been better.
Speculating on Apple support for Intel should not be based solely on the previous switch. Europe now has standards for consumer purchases, which may suggest Apple will have to continue to support these 2020 machines for longer than the 3 years predicted (albeit was only a possibility). If it does, why would it have two standards of worldwide support - one for Europe and one for everyone else? Either scenario is possible, but the latter wasn't considered.
Then there's developers. I completely agree that with Apple silicon, all those quaint iPhone apps won't be made to work with with Mac Intel as well. But I could care less - that's what my iPhone is for. What will the real software developers do? It is likely that with the opportunity to make apps on very powerful desktops, developers who have made some sophisticated iOS apps will expand them into very serious software. Will today's main software players take the extra time and money for Apple silicon? Will established game developers?
One more thing: The change from Motorola to Intel was a boon to Apple; Intel to Apple silicon - I wonder. Will software developers be flocking to create apps for quite possibly an even smaller market than Apple has today? Unless the new Apple silicon Macs are significantly better than the next Intel PCs - very significantly, we might see Apple desktops diminished to very select niche markets. In my very uninformed opinion, I think Apple would be wise to keep a form of Bootcamp available with it's new desktops, or a Rosetta that will also play nice with x86 apps.
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It’s imperative that they do. Because otherwise no one will bother with a Mac anymore. There would be three main CPU players and two of them run the same software.
And one other thing Linus didn’t consider is that if in fact Apple’s gamble fails, my Intel Mac will still be useful; an AS Mac not so much.
It's not a gamble, it's a calculated roll out of proven tech. They've roadmapped their future product cycles of AS years prior to the announcement. We just don't know much about the specifics, but its not a gamble. Running AMD GPU's is a gamble, as we're finding out 😭
Can't stand videos with misleading titles like that, but at the same time I know they work. To me, I expect a minimum support life for these last Intel Macs of about 4 years, which is approx. how much the PPC machines did. Anything more than that is great, but I am not holding my breath for much more than 4 years. Would love to be proven wrong.
The problem is that after those 4 years (probably already after 2 or 3) the resale value will be close to zero, which wasn't the case with previous Macs. So maybe the video's title, while a tad sensationalistic, is not that misleading after all?
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You’re missing the point. I have no doubt the CPUs will be successful. Better choice of software vs superior processor. What will consumers choose?
Developers don't need to create apps for Apple Silicon, they just need to recompile the ones they already have. That probably takes no more than a couple of minutes on the higher end 2020 iMacs. Also I completely disagree that the iPhone apps won't be made to run on Intel Macs as well. If the app can already run properly on an Apple Silicon Mac, clicking the catalyst checkbox and recompiling the app should be all that is required.
Bootcamp will die with the Intel Macs and a reverse Rosetta is not needed, just recompile the app.
It's something a LOT more complicated than this. This is the best case scenario. When you are doing something fancy or directly use lower level libraries it can be a more tedious process.
I really don't see the risk myself. Apple has said they will sell Intel Macs for another two years, add three more years of waiting for the last machines AppleCare to expire and you are already at 5 years. Given the size of the installed base of Intel Macs, I think Apple support will last longer than 5 years. Third party app support will last as long as Intel Mac's form a large part of the installed base.
The PowerPC to Intel transition was fairly quick but the Mac installed base was much smaller at the time and Apple was also transitioning to 64bit at about the same time.
iOS apps already build on x86 CPUs every time you run them in the simulator. Both the ARM CPUs and the Intel CPUs are both little endian and the the APIs are largely the same on Intel and ARM versions of MacOS (except for some Metal APIs).
Until recently I used to support an 25 year old C++ codebase on Solaris for both Sparc and x86. Like the Power PC, Sparc is a big endian architecture so I did have to make some changes but that was a one time effort. It was harder to support the code on both Solaris and Linux.
I think it was harder to support both 32bit and 64bit ARM during the iOS 64bit transition (something we didn't even attempt with the Solaris C++ code base).
There are of course edge cases. These are the ones listed by Apple for apps moving to ARM
- Interacts with third-party libraries you don’t own.
- Interacts with the kernel or hardware.
- Relies on specific GPU behaviors.
- Contains assembly instructions.
- Manages threads or optimizes your app’s multithreaded behavior.
- Contains hardware-specific assumptions or performance optimizations.
However (aside from GPU issues) most of these problems are much more likely moving existing x86 Mac Apps to ARM.
Good description. So it can be a little bit more complicated than clicking on the "Play" button 
In most case it will be just a recompile, yes. But in some Pro apps, it can be harder, especially if you need to move an engine to Metal.
In most case it will be just a recompile, yes. But in some Pro apps, it can be harder, especially if you need to move an engine to Metal.
What does the 2020 imac replace?
Is it clearly better than the 2019 imac? Perhaps not.
Is it clearly better than the 2017 imac? Maybe.
Is it clearly better than the 2015 or 2014 variations? Of course. But if you aim to replace a mac that old, you're probably not eager to replace it with a machine that might become obsolete after two years.
It is clearly better than the 2019 imac?
It is clearly better than the 2017 imac?
That said I replaced a 2014 MacBook Pro that was never leaving my desk. And yes, I specifically wanted an Intel Mac, I have been thinking about a new Mac for a couple of years, the Apple Silicon announcement pushed me to pull the trigger.
It's the opposite for me. I would love to be able to buy an AS iMac right now
I even consider installing a GUI on my Ubuntu compute server for waiting as much as possible for AS iMac. I'm so tired of having an overheating laptop for work. I want the full fledged experience and performance. Average temperature of my Late-2013 MBP through a typical day is 85 degrees. It has to end.