
New Entry Level 21.5-inch iMac - zeratul
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2014/06/18Apple-Introduces-New-Entry-Level-21-5-inch-iMac.html
======
Pxtl
This is really closing the already-small-gap between Apple and their
competitors in the All-in-one space. I've been shopping for an All-in-one and
it's thoroughly unimpressive - to get something with Apple-level quality, you
really have to pay an Apple-level price... and at that point, you start
wondering why shop with a brand with a worse reputation than Apple? I mean, I
like Asus hardware, but I wouldn't want to pay Apple prices for Asus hardware.

~~~
gambiting
In my experience of looking for an all-in-one: if you want apple-quality but
from any other manufacturer, be prepared to actually spend more money than you
would on an iMac. Obviously with an iMac you are not getting a touchscreen
that is standard on every other AiO,but I can't say I would use such feature.

~~~
dublinben
Could you elaborate a little on why you're looking for an AiO computer? I've
always seen them as overpriced, underpowered computers for people who don't
really want a computer. I don't know why anyone on HN would be in the market
for one.

~~~
Pxtl
I want a computer in my kitchen breakfast nook. This is a space where I
entertain guests - a rat's nest of cables and a large desk are completely
inappropriate for that venue. This is a location where I'm willing to pay a
premium for aesthetics.

My man-cave basement machine is a proper desktop gaming rig.

~~~
subsection1h
One option is to duct tape an Intel NUC to the back of a monitor. ;-)

~~~
dublinben
Most net-top cases have VESA mounts for exactly that purpose. This is hardly
an unsolved problem.

------
dsr_
This has a 1920x1080 display.

I fail to understand why someone would buy this over a Mac Mini and an
external display: cheaper, more powerful, ability to change displays, only two
more cables (power and data for the display).

Anyone care to enlighten me?

~~~
cmelbye
Simplicity? My grandma doesn't want to buy an "external display", she would
truly have no idea where to even start to do that. And then after she's got
the Mac mini, the external display, and the cable to connect the display
(assuming she was able to find the right one,) someone then has to set it up
for her.

Compare that to an iMac. Go to the Apple store, drop $1k, take it home, plug
in the power cable, and she's on Facebook in minutes.

That's the friction that iMac removes. If the customer has to leave the
electronics store with multiple boxes from several different companies, and
has the ability to buy the "wrong thing" (DVI instead of HDMI, etc.), it's
probably a sign that the process can be simplified.

~~~
jiggy2011
That's quite a price premium to pay for 5 minutes extra work!

~~~
JohnBooty
Surely, if you examine your own life, you will find many instances where you
trade time for money.

Do you mend your own socks instead of throwing them out? Change your own oil
in your car? Sweep your own chimney? Grow your own food? Roast and brew all of
the coffee you drink? Come on.

~~~
jiggy2011
I do a few of those, but it's a matter of cost benefit. Growing all your own
food would probably cost more than buying in many cases. You have to be
extremely rich to value your time in the thousands per hour.

~~~
hatbert
You could start by estimating the time cost correctly. You're assuming that
the time required to select the right monitor is zero, that the time required
to understand the various connection standards is zero, etc., etc., etc. The
only cost you're counting is the act of unboxing and plugging it in.

Maybe you and I keep track of this stuff professionally or as a hobby, but
most "grandmothers" don't. Quick: What's the best lock-in amplifier for
rejecting mains interference. What? You don't know what dynamic reserve means?
Jeez, you're such a dummy.

Think about how you would go about buying a piece of technical equipment
outside your domain of expertise. That's what a "grandmother" is doing when
he/she is buying a monitor.

~~~
jiggy2011
Not really the same thing, you could walk into any electronics shop and they
will sell you a monitor that will work with a mac mini.

~~~
jeroen
Did you include that in your five minute estimate?

~~~
jiggy2011
Yes

------
danford
>1.4 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost Speeds up to 2.7
GHz, Intel HD 5000 graphics, 8GB of memory and a 500GB hard drive.

Eh.. I got similar specs in laptop form for about half the price on black
Friday last year.

I'd like to get something like this for a desktop but I'm afraid my Ubuntu
might have some issues on the hardware. I'll wait until I find it slightly
used for half the cost.

On a side note: Is absolutely everything Apple does "HN worthy"?

Can someone explain to me how this product is new or innovative or really
interesting?

~~~
noir_lord
It's "interesting" because it broadly aligns with the interests of the HN
users which is why it got voted to the top.

I'm also not an Apple user but I still read the stories about what they are up
to as I find them an interesting company to watch.

~~~
danford
>It's "interesting" because it broadly aligns with the interests of the HN
users

so it's interesting because people think it's interesting?

~~~
dchuk
Well, that's about how "interesting" works...

------
smackfu
Glad they are moving a little downmarket. My friend wanted a new computer, and
I figured an iMac would be perfect for her, because she just plans to sit it
on a desk. But then I looked at the prices... who wants to spend $1299 on a
desktop machine nowadays? And that's with no SSD, so a Macbook Air is probably
going to be faster for a lot of stuff in day-to-day to use.

------
mchanson
Apple probably cutting prices because upcoming back to school. They just did a
price cut on their Macbook Air line as well.

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
These are new models at new price points. It's Apple attempting to be "budget"

~~~
ansimionescu
I bought an iMac in 2012 for £860 (student discount, original price £1000) and
sold it one and a half years later for £600.

I also bought a 13" Sony Vaio S for around £1200 in 2011 and had to sell it 6
months later, because it was a total piece of shit. I got £650 for it.

So I'd argue that buying cheap plastic crap is in fact the non-budget option.

~~~
Pxtl
It's frustrating to see Sony fail like that - Sony was Apple back when Apple
was doomed. I keep waiting for a Win32/Android company to position themselves
as "Apple without the Apple OS". Sony has succeeded there with the Xperia
line, but their laptops don't reflect that.

~~~
rsynnott
According to the former president of Sony, Apple kind of agreed:
[http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/02/05/steve-jobs-
wanted-...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/02/05/steve-jobs-wanted-sonys-
vaio-computers-to-run-mac-os-x)

------
mgkimsal
having just bought the $1299 model last year, glad to see they're trying to
offer a cheaper model. Lowest used to be $1199 a few years back - another $100
to $1299 (essentially $1400 with tax) was a big hit to take. Yes, $200 is just
$200 - these new $1099 ones aren't _free_ , but... this may make the
difference between someone getting a new one vs not.

1.4ghz seems _awfully_ slow, but... I suspect for a lot of what many people do
- email, youtube, Facebook, a bit of iTunes music, this will be more than
fine. But maybe not. I'd rather people not have a horribly bad experience on
something too underpowered for the software. That said, they pushed out the
retina mbp a couple years ago(?) and that experience was not all that great
(imo) - laggy window drag, etc.

~~~
DCKing
I do all my development work (which involves a lot of heavy Scala stuff) on a
2012 MacBook Air, which is a wee bit slower than this one. The CPU really is
not a problem.

There's no SSD or 'Fusion Drive' in this one, which will make it bog down a
lot. It's a shame that Apple won't go for a $999 model with a 64GB SSD or
something. Should be enough for classrooms and anyone who wants a basic
computer.

~~~
scolson
SSD and Fusion are BTO options just like on the rest of the iMac line.

My bigger complaint is that the RAM is non-upgradable even as BTO. I really
couldn't imagine if I had to bring my computer back down to 8GB RAM from 16.

------
tekgo
Comparing this on the store page[1] this is a significant jump down from the
$1,299 iMac in CPU, graphics and hard drive space. Seems like the Mac is
taking a page from the iPhone line and selling last year's model as a cheaper
option.

[1] [http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/imac](http://store.apple.com/us/buy-
mac/imac)

------
tmikaeld
Too bad Hackintoshes are illegal, could get a lot more hardware for that kind
of money.

~~~
hackety
I have a hackintosh, and it's a nightmare.

Even though I copied a "gold build" from "TonyMacx86" (the "hackintosh
authority"), the machine freezes randomly every hour, sometimes a week. But it
_will_ freeze and I'll have to do a hard reset.

Also, many of Apples services won't work with a hackintosh. iMessage and
FaceTime, for example. To fix it, you'll need to call Apple and convince them
to whitelist your fake generated system ID, risking getting your apple ID
banned.

Something also happened during the installation so I have to have a Mavericks
USB drive attached at all times to boot the damn thing.

Oh, and don't forget you have to reconfigure the whole thing when you apply an
update.

Had I known these things I'd just have saved up a little more and bought the
real thing.

~~~
nicholassmith
This is one of the reasons why ponying up the extra money for a Mac system is
a good deal, you get a box, you open the box, you press the on button and
you're ready to go.

~~~
WorldWideWayne
This is also a good reason to not use a Mac at all and instead use an OS that
does not lock you into a single line of hardware.

~~~
nicholassmith
In my experience with other OS' (Windows 3.1 -> Windows 8, Ubuntu 4 -> Ubuntu
13, half a dozen other Linux varieties), I've never been able to open the box
and get to work within half an hour. There's always been _some_ niggle. It's a
bit trickier now that the dev tools are an optional download rather than a
CD/setup option, but in practise I'm usually good to start working with a
fresh Mac in about half an hour. With Linux there's a lot more tinkering to
get it just so, and with Windows there's generally a lot more to download and
configure to get it working comfortably.

------
ncw96
I don't understand this product. For the same price, you could get a model
with much better specs from the Apple Refurbished Store. Anyone who has ever
bought Apple Refurb knows that the products are essentially new.

[http://store.apple.com/us/product/FE086LL/A/refurbished-215-...](http://store.apple.com/us/product/FE086LL/A/refurbished-215-inch-
imac-27ghz-quad-core-Intel-Core-i5)

~~~
rsfinn
I agree with the bulk of your statement, which is why the last three Apple
computers I've bought with my own money have been refurbs.

However, people that walk into an Apple store to buy a computer don't want to
buy a "used" computer. (Or people placing bulk orders for enterprises or
educational institutions, either.)

------
pling
Can I replace the disk with an SSD easily?

Probably not! :(

~~~
projct
Comes with an SSD build-to-order option, or a fusion drive option, which is a
SSD + large HDD with the SSD as a block-level cache.[1]

If it's the same as last year's model[2], it isn't that hard if you are used
to working on laptops or mini-itx cases. Just have to be careful about dust,
have a few torx bit screwdrivers, and some adhesive strips which you can find
for $15-20.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_Drive#Design](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_Drive#Design)
[2]
[https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac+Intel+21.5-Inch+EMC+263...](https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac+Intel+21.5-Inch+EMC+2638+Teardown/17829)

~~~
pling
I already have 3 SSDs floating around that I know are good (Samsung 840 Pro).
I wouldn't want to kick out for another 256Gb SSD when I already have one. Not
only that, those fusion drives are terribly unreliable from experience.

Regardless of that, that process is HELL compared to another machine. The
thing I'm typing this on now (Lenovo T400) requires any old screwdriver you
have lying around and 2 mins.

1960s point to point wired televisions are easier to repair.

~~~
was_hellbanned
_I wouldn 't want to kick out for another 256Gb SSD when I already have one._

All current Macs[1] currently use PCIe SSD drives, which are not
interchangeable with SATA SSD drives. They are, however, around 10x faster
than SATA SSD drives, which is something people never seem to mention when
comparing 'specs'.

[1] with the exception of the 13-inch non-Retina MBP, which is presumably
being phased out.

~~~
pling
It doesn't make any difference for me. Getting crap into RAM the first time is
all I care about rather than sustained transfer.

~~~
was_hellbanned
10x faster is 10x faster, regardless of the size of the data you're moving.

There's a reason that Macbook Air reviews report that it's shocking fast and
snappy for such a (relatively) underpowered machine.

------
brudgers
My guess? This suggests the old paradigm Mac Mini's lifecycle may be winding
down because this targets Apple's core market in a manner consistent with the
rest of Apple's product lineup and the not-all-in-one Mini doesn't no matter
how much communities like this one love it.

------
kennyledet
It's 1080p, I think I'll pass this year. No reason to get this when I have a
late 2013 rMBP still kicking strong.

------
HugoDias
Oh boy, $1,099 for an iMac? Here in my country this piece of tech costs
nothing less than R$ 5.799 ($2576.99!!!!!)

------
judk
Ridiculous. 128GB SSD is far more useful than a 500GB spinning disk. We stream
media from cloud storage now.

