And I can confidently say, my All-In-One never had any blurry text or wake from sleep issues.
No problem with the 5K monitor I chose. It looks as good as the iMac it replaced. No problem with sleep/wake either.
I bought my 4.5K M1 iMac for €1050 with display, keyboard, mouse, webcam, speakers and microphones included. Try to beat that on price!
If the contest is about price, pretty much EVERY other tech maker does NOT demand Apple's very high margins.
And if you are envisioning an iMac UW at traditional iMac "bargain" pricing, that ship has very likely sailed. Apple has just proven that "we" will pay as much as we used to pay for iMac 27" for the monitor portion alone. The next iMac "bigger" seems destined to add the cost of adding a whole Mac to that screen. My guess is "Starting at" will be towards about DOUBLE the traditional pricing of iMac "starting at."
It isn't. Selecting a suitable external monitor for a Mac already covers dozens of threats with thousands of posts on this forum with no proper conclusion. Buy an iMac and you never need to worry about displays.
I haven't seen any "threats." In general, many monitor problems involve cheap monitors with poor resolutions. Macs are very finicky about resolutions. Apple has chosen NOT to make macOS effectively scale to any resolution as Windows does and instead somewhat "forces" choices to be non-standard resolutions like (expensive) 5K vs. (commodity) 4K. If Apple would re-work macOS to scale, it would look as good as it could on any choice of screen.
The one I chose is 5K and looks sharp. The one Apple sells is 5K too. If you want to consider any other option, choose monitor wisely.
Nope, just two USB 1.0 ports and not even floppy drive. It's the other way around. The latest iMacs offer a lot of connectivity over Thunderbolt.
Step forward a bit from very first iMacs. The "golden period from about 2006-2018 generally offered the equivalent of a whole "hub" built in back there. I included pictures to compare to the latest iMac "hub?".
However, yes, Thunderbolt offers a lot of connectivity. Generally one needs to buy a (relatively expensive) Thunderbolt hub to then get the variety of ports they need to connect things... much of which does not connect directly to Thunderbolt in 2023 or even USB-C in 2023.
No, later Macs omitted optical drives for good. The rise of internet download speed made physical data mediums obsolete. That's why you stopped buying CDs for your iPod. You didn't put them in external optical drives, you abandoned them for $1 on eBay.
I understand and yet some clients STILL deliver some files on disc so I need a disc reader, which puts a big box on my desk whether iMac or Separates. And I personally still opt for the higher-quality of Blu Ray to rip vs. the much more compressed streaming files. And I personally still buy most of my music on higher-quality CDs to then rip to lossless for listening vs. settling for compressed audio files that throw out some detail to deliver the smaller file size. Since we both like value for our money, I generally buy discs used because digital files on them is as good as brand new. Often, this gets me higher quality files for less cost than the streaming alternative.
There's nothing easy of using unsupported third-party hardware on a Mac. I'm also stingy and I won't spend that much on a monitor alone. The Mac needs to be in the chin. All-In-One all the way!
I appreciate the demand for more value for your money. We share that thinking. However, I think you are looking backwards to when Apple used to offer a whole Mac plus a whole (great) screen for relatively bargain pricing. IMO, that ship has sailed... the real reason iMac 27" was discontinued... to first establish the monitor alone at former iMac "starting at..." pricing and then to put iMac guts back inside at something towards former iMac PRO starting at pricing. We'll see about that but I near 100% doubt any iMac "bigger" or iMac UW will ever arrive again at seemingly "bargain" pricing vs. other Macs.
My guess is that iMac "bigger" will be resurrected in the next year or two with a starting at price of about $3499 for minimal configuration... but maybe down to $2999. I have 0% confidence of $1999 or lower.
There are only one or two 5K monitors and they are both ugly.
Eye of the beholder. I really don't give a hoot what people think of the case of the screen. I just care about the screen itself. This one I chose looks as good to my good eyes as my former iMac 27" screen... while adding much more usable width. I never bother to look at the back and don't miss the iMac chin (or logo) at all.
However,
Samsung has a SD-competitor (Viewfinity S9) about the be released that seems as "pretty" as Apple creations. You might want to await that one and see if it sufficiently scratches this itch. General perception is that it will be cheaper than SD without compromising on view screen quality.
The Studio Display is too expensive already. $1,599 is just $100 less of what a brand-new 27" iMac cost in 2009. This is a horrible deal.
I agree that SD is overpriced. I think iMac 27" will never revive at <$2K pricing and doubt iMac "bigger" will revive at <$3K pricing. I would imagine if Apple went to the trouble of creating and launching a big iMac UW, "starting at" would probably be north of $4K.
So for the same cost of SD, I got a 5K ultra-wide in 2022 instead and enjoy it every day NOW. I feel that was "expensive" for a screen too but I'm getting the same macOS screen experience with a lot of extra screen for that expense. Between those 2 5K screen choices, I'd rather spend about the same for the UW screen.
