from Hacker News

27-inch iMac gets a major update

by arafsheikh on 8/4/20, 3:05 PM with 598 comments

• by burlesona on 8/4/20, 3:22 PM

  Solid spec bump. Interesting how much emphasis they put on the camera, speakers, and mic; makes total sense in the age of Zoom.

  I’d also speculate this means iMac won’t be the first computer getting Apple Silicon. I wonder if it will be the last?

  What’s the consensus guess now? Perhaps a new MacBook Air with good performance but the real “breakthrough” is > 12 hours battery life?

• by ogre_codes on 8/4/20, 3:29 PM

  Finally they ditch spinning media on the base models.

  Also notable, the rumored iPad-like style changes are conspicuously absent, these look pretty much identical to the older iMacs.

  Otherwise this looks like a decent bump all around. Notably, the iMac Pro also got some love (though not too much it seems?)

• by jeffbee on 8/4/20, 3:51 PM

  I'm always interested in the differences between Apple's Intel OEM CPUs and the ones Intel lists in their catalog. There is no 10th-gen Core i9 CPU that exactly matches what Apple is selling here. In the iMac Pro they are installing a Xeon-W part that has almost twice as much cache as the standard part (43MB vs 25MB). They're not saying how much cache is in the new 27" iMac.

• by _ph_ on 8/4/20, 6:09 PM

  The one thing I keep missing on my 5k iMac is some form of video-in. Would be great if I could connect my MB Pro to it and use the iMac as a display. Perhaps even in a window and all mouse and keyboard events to the window get passed to the connected MacBook.

• by n3k5 on 8/4/20, 4:42 PM

  “SSDs across the line with quadruple the storage”

  1/4 TB of storage in the $1800 model, 1/2 TB in the $2300 one. Ugh. (So before the lower-end one had 64GB? [Edit: Nope, 1 TB Fusion Drive, thanks smnrchrds!] That would be FULL just from installing the one game the press release mentions.)

  What kind of magic fairy dust SSDs are they using that you can't have a sensible amount of storage space at those prices? Looking at the upgrade options (which aren't even available for the lower-end model), they charge $300 per TB.

• by look_lookatme on 8/4/20, 4:07 PM

  I wish I could use it as an external display. I would buy one as my personal machine and then use the display during the day with my MBP for work. Would be nice in this new world of remote work.

• by Aaronstotle on 8/4/20, 4:44 PM

  I can't believe it took so long for Apple to add SSDs to the basic configuration. I had the misfortune of coming into a company who purchased 2017 21" iMacs and they were almost worthless with how slow the fusion drive is.

• by thelittlenag on 8/4/20, 4:31 PM

  Shipping with 8GB memory by default just seems absurd.

  Also, having only 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports seems a little light as well. I would hope to have had 4 ports at least.

• by asadkn on 8/4/20, 3:31 PM

  It just feels wrong to buy anything new from Apple with "Intel Inside" - when they're clearly going to dump it soon, in favor of ARM (excuse me for not using the cringey term Apple Silicon).

• by paulpan on 8/4/20, 5:09 PM

  This essentially confirms Apple's strategy to just refresh existing models/chassis without redesigns going forward; the new Apple chips will be used exclusively for redesigned/relaunches like the Macbook.

  Smart move since it increases the appeal of the Apple-powered Mac devices. The pricing difference will also help, as based on the expensive base configurations (RAM, SSD as others have pointed out here), it will make the new devices look that much more attractive.

• by gjvc on 8/4/20, 3:46 PM

  8GB RAM is pretty derisory for a 2020 machine. Is there a RAM shortage somewhere I haven't heard about?

• by bitL on 8/4/20, 10:44 PM

  "A computer gets an incremental update."

  It's really a great win for Apple marketing that anybody even discusses such a silly news...

• by frou_dh on 8/4/20, 3:27 PM

  When we read "10th generation Intel Core" then we have to go and research whether than means real 10th generation (like i5/i7 MBA, some MBPs) or just another rebadged Skylake (6th gen) derivative.

• by supernova87a on 8/4/20, 5:04 PM

  I still find it fascinating how the choice of Intel chip generation is almost an afterthought (well, maybe only for a minority, but do most buyers look carefully? are they aware?) in the difference between models or computers when you click to buy something.

  Is this a strategy of Apple (or Intel) to be able to get people to ignore (and therefore they can optimize the cost of) the generation of chip used? It's almost as if they realized people fixate on the GHz figure, and overlook the chip generation, which (I guess?) must contribute much more to effective clock speed than a small difference in Hz rate? I even fall into this trap sometimes.

  It is a bit complicated for the casual buyer to have the clock speed which was the previous metric of "goodness" of your machine now have to be weighed with the generation of processor. When the name of the processor itself doesn't provide clear differentiation between generations.

• by fiblye on 8/4/20, 9:52 PM

  I bought a 2012 iMac with 8GB of memory as the baseline. We’re more than halfway through 2020 and Apple is telling us 8GB is still just fine for a >$2000 computer?

• by rbanffy on 8/4/20, 4:42 PM

  Most interesting that, now, the only Mac you can buy with a (SSD-cached) hard disk is the 21" iMac.

  I guess the next update will get rid of any vestigial spinning metal storage.

• by m0xte on 8/4/20, 7:46 PM

  Well they can quite frankly fuck off with that one.

  The 32gb additional memory option costs 4x the price of the entire 32gb of ram in my desktop. It costs independently 60% of the cost of my desktop pc base unit just for the upgrade.

  The bottom end unit features 256gb SSD (probably soldered) and the next tier up wants +£200 to go from 512 to 1TiB. My entire 1TB Samsung evo plus nvme cost £165.

  The 5k display isn’t worth it for my use case so I’ve got a 27” iiyama 4K display I paid £379 for. I suspect for 90% of people the story is the same.

  Add the shit show that has been Catalina so far and this is a comedy gouging.

  Edit: equivalent spec of my desktop build is £3399 here. I paid £1520 for my desktop approx: ryzen 3700x, 32gb ram, 1TB ssd, gtx1660, 27” 4K display, decent mechanical keyboard, decent mouse, Windows 10 pro.

  Where is the £1879 advantage?

• by saos on 8/4/20, 3:51 PM

  > The 27-inch iMac now comes standard with SSDs across the line

  Well. Wow.

  > Apple today also announced that its 21.5-inch iMac will come standard with SSDs across the line for the first time.

  Double wow

  I'll be holding out for complete iMac redesign with ARM. I'm hoping something will be announced at their event?

• by _ph_ on 8/4/20, 4:04 PM

  Nice spec-bump for those, who want to stay with Intel-based Macs a bit longer (e.g. depend on x86-virtualisation, running Windows). While I was about ready to upgrade my current iMac in 2020, I am going to try to hold out till the step to Apple Silicon. The one thing I would hope for would be a bigger screen. The 27" is a tiny bit too small, especially vertically. Considering that Apple once sold the 30" Cinema display, the step to 27" always felt like a step back. When going to a design with less bezels, they really should use some of the saved space for a bigger screen.

• by pornel on 8/4/20, 4:25 PM

  Only the $2300 model has an option of upgrading to 5700XT for an extra $500, and that's not even a high-end GPU.

• by graeme on 8/4/20, 3:26 PM

  Does the imac pro get the better camera and other features listed?

  I used laptops for years until and rsi issue made me have to avoid trackpads. I can say I’ve been extremely pleased with having a desktop imac. I use an ipad pro when I need something portable. I like just having a station I can get in front of that signifies work, and the imac pro fans basically never make noise.

• by jasoneckert on 8/4/20, 4:25 PM

  I definitely agree with the general consensus here that this is a solid spec bump, and most welcome at that!

  And like others, it made me think of their transition to ARM. I know the first ARM Macs this fall will be their lowend MacBook and 13" MBP line, but at WWDC they said the Intel to ARM transition would be complete in under 2 years (like they said with the PPC to Intel transition). And since the PPC to Intel transition only took a little over a year, it could mean that ARM-based iMacs may be here next year to replace the current iMac lineup, and I'm dreadfully curious as to whether they'll be lower performing than this iMac update (which is quite impressive, performance-wise). Or perhaps they'll use multiple ARM CPUs to boost performance. Regardless, every time I see a spec bump now from Apple, I can't help but think of these things.

• by dylan604 on 8/4/20, 4:04 PM

  Just did the fun "what kind of car could I buy instead" of maxing out the specs on an Apple computer. 10 cores, 128GB RAM, 16GB GPU, 8TB SSD, 10GB ethernet comes out to $8799. ~ A used Civic/Corolla I guess. Not as sticker shocking as the maxed MacPro. Would love to see how the machine performs though.

• by martini333 on 8/4/20, 3:29 PM

  What on Earth are these bezels in 2020????

• by musicale on 8/5/20, 1:37 AM

  I can see why they didn't roll this out at WWDC!

  Great machine and no Apple Silicon as yet (which may be a huge advantage if you still need to run Boot Camp or x86 VMs.)

  I'm also excited about the nano-texture display. I've learned to live with reflective displays because I'm addicted to their high contrast and deep blacks, but nano-texture sounds like the best of both worlds.

  Nice that they upgraded the anemic FaceTime camera and pulled the plug on the low-speed hard disk (even if it was configured as a fusion drive.)

  Apple has generally had decent mics and speakers as well, so it's exciting that they are trying to make them even better. Anyone who has suffered through horrible zoom audio will appreciate the benefits of good mics (and not using zoom, which seems to make bad audio even worse.)

• by ianwalter on 8/4/20, 5:34 PM

  I'm sorry, I know it's a minor cosmetic thing, but those bezels make it look so dated that I can't really see it as new. Not that it matters since I will probably never buy an iMac again after experiencing the issues with dust getting beneath the glass of my last iMac 5k.

• by fmajid on 8/4/20, 5:53 PM

  Presumably you cannot install Mojave on these, only Catalina. I sacrificed a Mac to Catalina, then wiped it back to Mojave. Hopefully Big Sur will fix the flaming dumpster fire that is Catalina, but I am not hopeful and working on my Linux migration plan.

• by kraig911 on 8/4/20, 3:32 PM

  Honestly I want a 21 inch ipad with a stand....

• by goalieca on 8/4/20, 3:26 PM

  I'm sitting here on a 2012 imac with a fusion drive. This drive never seemed to give much performance but it absolutely tanked once it converted to APFS. The computer became unusable to the point that I had to buy an external SSD and use that as my main disk. Now i'm very disappointed that it doesn't support Big Sur despite being only 8 years old. I will wait for the apple silicon because i don't anticipate that intel will be supported for too long. Apple will make "core features" of their OS depend on something that isn't shipping in intel silicon sooner than later.

• by bluedino on 8/4/20, 3:43 PM

  Just when you think they've forgotten the iMac. Can't wait for Barefeats to post the benchmarks, and compare the top level 27" to the Pro. The 27" is interesting now because you can get 10Gbe.

  One gripe is the 27" iMac comes standard with only 8GB, while the 15" MacBook Pro has came with 16GB standard since 2014... I'm guessing most people are going to the aftermarket to throw 32-64GB in there anyway. Apple offers the 16GB upgrade (from 8GB) for $200, but you can buy 32GB of RAM for $150 and install it yourself.

• by dopamean on 8/4/20, 7:00 PM

  I'll never understand the pricing. $1000 extra to get 64gb of memory? Incredible. What circumstance leads a purchaser to look at that and say, "ok sounds great?"

• by city17 on 8/4/20, 4:38 PM

  Seems like they're going to save the new redesign of the iMacs for the first ARM releases.... at least I hope, otherwise it's really disappointing.

• by ChrisMarshallNY on 8/4/20, 4:31 PM

  Oooh...I'd hate to be the one that shelled out $5K for an iMac Pro. I guess that critter will be seeing a bump of its own, soon.

• by GeertB on 8/5/20, 4:14 AM

  After 3 weeks of waiting, I just got my new iMac. Paid $4399 before tax. Old specs, same price as new one with improved camera, 2 additional cores etc. :-( I can't use Zoom with the camera of the old model, without using a 3rd party tool, as the color balance is way off making everybody purple/red. Sad.

• by haunter on 8/4/20, 3:36 PM

  Likely this is the machine to buy if you want one of the last Intel Macs that can natively run x86 code

• by maz1b on 8/4/20, 7:13 PM

  As expected. They're not going to do a radical form factor redesign and update for Intel based chips, they're saving the all new iMac design for the ARM transition for the extra wow factor.

  Not sure if the value proposition is there though for a specced out iMac.

• by omarhaneef on 8/4/20, 7:16 PM

  The best thing about the introduction of a new line is that the previous line is cheaper.

• by karmelapple on 8/4/20, 5:32 PM

  > T2 ... makes transcoding HEVC video up to twice as fast as the previous generation

  So the T2's processing power is used to augment the main CPU and graphics card's power.

  This seems like a new development, but maybe it's been known for awhile?

• by dayaz36 on 8/5/20, 5:40 AM

  It doesn't matter what they release, they've already Osborne effected themselves as soon as they announced they're transitioning to ARM chips in a couple years

• by mschuster91 on 8/4/20, 9:49 PM

  > iMac Pro now comes standard with a 10-core Intel Xeon processor.

  How in hell is Apple squeezing a Xeon into an iMac without the thing either melting or being louder than a jet turbine?!

• by achow on 8/4/20, 5:44 PM

  >..new nano-texture glass option for an even more stunning Retina 5K display

  I hope next iPad also gets this textured glass, it would be so much better as a drawing writing pad.

• by vincnetas on 8/4/20, 4:27 PM

  "Up to 65 percent more plug-ins in Logic Pro X." ?

• by musicale on 8/5/20, 1:36 AM

  Apple needs to bring back Target Display mode, which allows the iMac to be usable as a monitor long after its internals have become obsolete.

• by reaperducer on 8/4/20, 6:54 PM

  Since these iMacs have the T2 chip, does that open the possibility of keyboards with fingerprint authentication, like on the laptops?

• by P4wl0w on 8/5/20, 7:24 AM

  It does not make any sense for me to buy new macs anymore - especially when I have to run the new macos, which will take SECONDS to open apps that open in MILLISECONDS when you switch off wifi or just use a good OS.

  Also I do not like their beta product experiments they tend to run on customers since years - I will wait for years before I trust their hard- and software to be useful for work or even personal things.

  If they want me to beta test they should give me money for it.

• by speedgoose on 8/4/20, 3:46 PM

  The iMac would be so much more interesting with a touchscreen and a pencil, like the overpriced Microsoft Surface Studio.

• by xhruso00 on 8/5/20, 2:16 AM

  Is the RAM self-upgradable with T2 chip?

• by Tepix on 8/4/20, 9:05 PM

  I can't believe they left the big fat bezel unchanged. It makes the machine look really outdated.

• by jmpman on 8/4/20, 6:18 PM

  Bring back target display mode!

• by minerjoe on 8/4/20, 6:02 PM

  Wonderful computer. How much you wanna bet that in < 5 years they drop support forcing almost everyone that purchased one to throw it out and get a new one?

• by antonhalim on 8/4/20, 8:31 PM

  I am surprised how little bezel is discussed here, Apple has been keeping the almost 2 inches bezel for a decade.

• by plg on 8/5/20, 12:24 AM

  How does it compare for practical speed to an iMac Pro circa 2018? Asking for a friend ;)

• by super_mario on 8/4/20, 10:53 PM

  Interesting machine. But no way would I buy this now. It will be obsolete in 2 years.

• by stickyricky on 8/5/20, 1:43 AM

  Its a shame the screen update didn't translate into smaller bezels.

• by theodric on 8/4/20, 6:54 PM

  Who would buy an x86 Mac now?

• by jakobov on 8/4/20, 4:28 PM

  it needs thicker bezels

• by doener on 8/4/20, 6:56 PM

  "SSDs across the line"

  Welcome to 2010, Apple.

• by tomcat27 on 8/4/20, 4:43 PM

  Better camera, that's the only thing I see useful to an average user.

• by gfiorav on 8/4/20, 7:06 PM

  My employer has decided to stop offering Macs for work machines. I think the dev era for Mac might be close to ending

• by Scarbutt on 8/4/20, 3:37 PM

  Apple today also announced that its 21.5-inch iMac will come standard with SSDs across the line for the first time.

  I wonder what took them so long.

• by lovetocode on 8/4/20, 7:02 PM

  I bought a 27” 5k iMac a few years ago and it just made me hate Apple more. I am irritated that they have a monopoly on iOS development.

• by jhatemyjob on 8/4/20, 6:41 PM

  ORRR you can just build your own PC and run macOS in a vm

• by wackget on 8/4/20, 4:42 PM

  Why is this advertisement written as if it's a news article?

  Starting it with `Cupertino, California -` as if it's breaking news and then launching into a complete sales pitch is just so slimy.

• by raghavtoshniwal on 8/4/20, 3:39 PM

  Really thought they would phase out fusion drives in the next update. Guess not, still available in the 21”.

• by tambourine_man on 8/4/20, 4:02 PM

  Nice. The iMac Pro is getting harder to justify. Specially with that sweet nano-texture glass coating.

  I wonder how they justify charging US$ 500 for the coating on the iMac and US$ 1.000 on the Pro Display XDR. 32" vs 27" don't seem enough.

• by dschuetz on 8/4/20, 4:56 PM

  I saw "Intel" and I laughed out loud. Wow. The nerve Apple has trying to sell Intel-Macs after announcing the change to ARM!

• by Mindwipe on 8/4/20, 3:25 PM

  Honestly a fairly mediocre upgrade considering the pricing.

  It's good that they've finally improved the webcam, but Apple clearly went out of their way to ensure people looking to get an Intel Mac because they need to dual boot weren't going to get anything too compelling.

  Edit: Downvotes be damned, it is mediocre. Not bad, because it is a spec bump, but there are lots of things about the iMac's architecture that are beginning to show their age and are unchanged here, despite becoming bottlenecks. The cooling system is a big one, and the storage controller support another.

• by rvz on 8/4/20, 3:17 PM

  So: A 2020 iMac now with 2018 Hardware. Not a NVMe SSD use in sight.

  Not exactly a "major update". Looks like the magic on this iMac is already wearing off and the magicians want their reality distortion spells back.