
Apple updates its iMac line - Luc
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/03/imac-gets-a-2x-performance-boost/
======
fiblye
Bought my iMac 7 years ago with 8GB as the default memory option and a 1TB
fusion drive.

And here we are, nearly a decade later. Still 8 GB in the newest models. Still
1 TB fusion drives. GPUs haven't even seemed to take a jump over last year's
models.

~~~
ceejayoz
Plenty of folks use an iMac as the primary family machine - email, homework,
some Netflix, kids' basic games. 8 GB is entirely sufficient for that. Hell,
four probably is.

If you're doing Photoshop plus a half dozen VMs, you buy it with more RAM.

~~~
o10449366
Chrome + Slack alone took up ~3 GB of RAM on my 4 GB machine and forced me to
upgrade.

~~~
pier25
I use Slack in the browser instead. No more Electron crap.

~~~
ariabuckles
I turned slack into a chrome “shortcut” (which seems to be a PWA minus the
service worker), which lets it run in chrome instead of a separate electron
instance, but also have a separate app window.

Ive also found having slack be ~another chrome tab, instead of a copy of
chrome via electron, to be really nice

------
todd8
It's just frustrating, I switched the household over to Apple devices when OSX
came out, and now there really aren't any systems from Apple that look
interesting to me.

I've been programming since before the (Unix) dawn of time, and Apple devices
have been good development machines for me since OSX was released 18 years
ago. I'm comfortable on Linux, but the Apple iOS devices and computers are all
over my home and integrate well with my development machines. Furthermore, the
family does well with MacOS, and they don't need IT help with their email,
iPhone, music, homework, printing, etc. like they used to under Windows.

I'd love to see Apple make a system that supported _upgradeable_ memory, SSDs,
High capacity hard drives, graphics, and separate larger monitors, but that
doesn't look like that will ever happen. By locking down the hardware to just
certain configurations, the very successful stores can handle problems
(hardware, software, and user related) at locations all over the world.

Even if Apple can't make the machines more upgradeable because of customer
support issues, the new machines don't seem to be well designed for me. They
have become too thin and too sleek and overpriced because of features I don't
want (over sharp display, touchbar) and issues caused by the pursuit of
sleekness and style (crap keyboards, thermal limits).

Lenovo (Thinkpads) offers thin, light, somewhat upgradeable, good looking
laptops that are light to carry and easier to grip with great keyboards. I
wish Apple could start with something like one of those and equip it with an
Apple touchpad and MacOS.

I've been waiting and waiting for Apple to improve its line up (I'm writing
this on a Mac Pro from 2013 with a nice 34 inch ultra-wide monitor). It looks
like I'll never replace it. I know there are alternatives, my home/office are
littered with computers, Thinkpads running Linux, Microsoft laptops, Dell
Servers running FreeBSD, and homemade PCs running Windows (for gaming); but
I'm going to miss using MacOS as my daily-driver.

~~~
turtlebits
Since you're using a desktop, what's wrong with the 2018 Mac Mini? Upgradable
RAM, storage and GPU can be added externally. Dual 4k support out of the box
or a single 5k should be enough for your single monitor?

~~~
runjake
Because the cost of all that external junk adds up and you create what is
essentially a dongle town on your desktop. It defeats the whole purpose of a
Mini.

I know because I tried to do this with a 2018 Mac Mini. Aside from the very
lackluster GPU performance, it's a pretty speedy machine.

I had a fairly generous budget for a new computer. 32GB of RAM was about $200
from Crucial. The external SSD storage options were pretty crappy. Any sort of
TB3 option was a few hundred dollars to start. I ended up settling with a USB3
2TB HDD. I then had to copy my Photo and iTunes libraries over to it and re-
point the apps to the right spots.

For the external GPU, you're looking at about $500 at a minimum. And then you
have to find a place for that to sit, and it's essentially the size of a small
ITX PC case.

I ended up returning the Mini and just breaking down and building a vanilla
hackintosh. A 8700K/32GB/1TB SSD/RX 580 ITX box with quality parts that's all
in one small case (Fractal Design Define Nano S) in the same desk footprint as
just the external GPU enclosure, and it's not a thermally-constrained
dongletown.

Would I recommend it to anyone? No. But after an initially scary couple of
hours, I have for all intents and purposes a normally-functioning macOS box
that is noticeably quicker than the Mini for the cost of just the base Mini --
sans all the other junk I had to buy. The macOS install is vanilla, with SIP
enabled, and no janky kexts in the OS install - NOTHING custom in the OS
install. The bare minimum shoved in the EFI partition.

Everything works (sleep, audio, iMessage, etc). It was marginally more trouble
than getting Windows 10 installed. Less trouble than getting Ubuntu installed.

God, it's glorious.

~~~
jen20
This sounds interesting - do you have a description of the hardware you used
to hand?

~~~
runjake
[https://pcpartpicker.com/user/jake541/saved/#view=ZnVr6h](https://pcpartpicker.com/user/jake541/saved/#view=ZnVr6h)

As of today, the prices are higher than what I paid. If you're going to buy,
monitor /r/buildapcsales on Reddit and buy your parts when they go on sale. I
bought my stuff over a period of a couple weeks and saved substantial money.

Samsung SSD prices fluctuate by 10s of dollars. Other SSD manufacturers such
as Intel and WD offer steep discounts at times. The RX 580 GPUs go on
significant sales pretty often.

At some point, I need to finish my guide and publish to Github. I largely
followed corpnewt's Vanilla Guide for Mojave [1], and followed the Coffee Lake
train. It's important to follow each step closely.

Again, I do not recommend a hackintosh, but for me it worked out really well.

1\. [https://hackintosh.gitbook.io/-r-hackintosh-vanilla-
desktop-...](https://hackintosh.gitbook.io/-r-hackintosh-vanilla-desktop-
guide/)

~~~
skoskie
Just want to say thanks for sharing all this.

------
icedchai
The iMac is a great machine. I have a late 2014 iMac 5K 27" and it's still
going strong with 32 gigs of RAM and 512G SSD. It had the max CPU for the time
(4.0 ghz i7.) Apple Care expired end of 2017, so unless the thing dies or OS
upgrades become unsupported, I don't have a reason to upgrade it.

~~~
jillesvangurp
Same here. My 3TB fusion drive died at some point but it lives on with just
the 128GB ssd that came with that. Also, I connected an external 2 TB Samsung
SSD to it which ended up being a nice performance upgrade as fusion drives are
slow. Apple should just kill the fusion drive option; bad idea. You are better
off with a proper ssd and external storage.

I maxed out the specs at the time, which in retrospect was a good choice since
it has lasted me for five years. The screen is awesome and with a quad core i7
and 32GB there's not a lot it can't do comfortably even today.

Games are the exception as this is not a gaming machine. Yet, I regularly use
x-plane on it as well and I get decent performance given that it is running on
a laptop grade GPU that is five years old. It's actually more sensitive to CPU
performance and the 4Ghz core i7 is still pretty nice. CPUs have gotten faster
but not a lot in the last five years. Certainly they have not doubled in
performance twice. Rip Moore's law, I guess.

I don't run x-plane at native resolution because I gain a few FPS by using a
slightly lower resolution but it is actually usable at native resolution if
you can live with lower graphic settings. If you are into this, I maxed out
most graphics settings like maximum objects, texture resolution, etc. but have
reduced reflections to the minimum (kills performance with not a lot of visual
impact) and reduced anti-aliasing settings and shadows as well. Tuning x-plane
is a bit of dark art but generally it can look great on even modest hardware.
I also use a lot (several hundreds of GB) of high resolution Ortho4XP scenery
and and other custom scenery. Typically seeing between 20/30 FPS. So, looking
pretty good and it uses the 32 GB. The AMD m295x with 4GB has been pretty
good.

It's a bit disappointing that five years later the state of the art Imac is
essentially the same with a slightly newer CPU and GPU. Sure it will be faster
but a 2x performance boost will only be true for software that maxes out all 8
cores. Still, nothing wrong with the vega and i9 combo. I'd take that provided
there are no thermal issues. I had the same kind of disappointment when I
replaced my 2012 MBP with a new one a bit over a year ago. My java build ended
up roughly 30% faster only (maxing out all cores). I suspect my comparatively
ancient iMac might be faster.

------
tambourine_man
Still selling brand new machines with 5400 rpm HDs. In 2019.

It undermines the brand. Any Mac a customer buys should have good enough
performance. 5400 spinning disk hasn’t been fast enough for a decade.

~~~
CoolGuySteve
It’s a fusion drive so most “normal people” likely won’t notice unless they
have a huge photo library.

My guess is they want 1TB so they can upsell you to 3 or 4TB, which would be
prohibitively expensive with SSDs right now.

Edit: I was wrong, the lowest tier iMacs actually have a 1TB regular drive.
That’s crazy considering the lowest tier Mac is almost always the most
popular.

~~~
resters
I made the mistake of buying an iMac last year with a fusion drive. I assumed
that since it was an Apple product it would have relatively good performance.
It is unbelievably slow and negates the high performance characteristics of
the rest of the system.

I have tremendous buyer's remorse and rarely use the machine. Whenever I do
use it, the feeling I get is "how could Apple do this to its brand?". The
machine cost over $3K and is slower than a $400 Intel NUC for all practical
purposes.

The lack of upgradability adds insult to injury. Apple would be better off
putting in solid state storage that is a few generations old, as it would
still be orders of magnitude faster than the mechanical drive.

~~~
scarface74
So you couldn’t just by an SSD external drive and boot off of that?

~~~
joncrane
So now you have to carry an external HDD around with you and plug it in every
time you want it to boot up?

~~~
Kudos
We're talking about iMacs. In case it's not clear, that's a desktop system not
a portable one.

~~~
joncrane
Ah. I got mixed up. Thanks.

------
BossingAround
Huh... The title of their press release seems to me somewhat clickbait-y...
Why not 'iMac got a hardware refresh; now with 2x performance'? When I read
this, I thought, 'oh wow, Apple really outdid itself with their SW
optimisations'.

Overall, I'm kinda disappointed that the 21' and 27' macs get different CPU
gens. Why? Why not just have the latest gen in both of them? Is it price, or
is it more about artificial performance impediment?

~~~
bluedino
have you never seen an apple press release? Every product is 2x as fast as the
old one, based on a cherry picked benchmark

~~~
xuki
In this case it's not just marketing speech: the new top end CPU is i9-9900k,
it's ALMOST 2x faster than the previous top end CPU (i7-7700k) for multi-core
benchmark.

[https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/2548](https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/2548)

[https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/1779](https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/1779)

~~~
0xffff2
Of course it's almost 2x faster; it has 2x the cores. Meanwhile the single-
core score is almost the same for both. I've never seen anyone try to put
together a good breakdown on how various common workflows stack up, but I
would bet that most benefit very little from the extra 4 cores.

------
UseStrict
I hope this is indicative of Apple starting to get it, no one wants to buy a
machine that is 3-4 years behind the curve. I could live with having a fast
hardware refresh cycle and a slower design one.

~~~
matwood
Agreed. Updates 2 days in a row is a bit of a new thing for Apple. It is a
good change if they are setting a precedence for doing more frequent spec
bumps outside of events. We will not know for sure until 6-9-12 months from
now.

~~~
MBCook
They have an event soon and seem to be getting other announcements out of the
way.

------
subpixel
re: RAM, I bought a 2015 iMac with a 1TB drive on Craiglist last month,
thinking it might be the perfect machine to edit and store/serve family photos
(mac --> Google Photos and mac --> BackBlaze).

It never in a million years would have occurred to me that 1) 8GB on a 2015
machine would be utterly, pathetically underpowered for even browsing the web,
or 2) that an iMac would be sold in 2015 that would not let you upgrade the
RAM.

I quickly re-sold it to another person who I bet also hadn't imagined these
things.

~~~
S_A_P
I bought one of those from best buy and quickly hit the wall with the 5400 rpm
drive. I bought the iMac repair kit from ifixit and put a 1tb ssd in its
place. It screams now. I have literally never had a drive swap make such a
HUGE performance improvement.

~~~
noonespecial
Can confirm. 2012 Imac with 1TB rust disk was truly feeling its age. Swapped
to small SSD I had laying around just to see what would happen and just
SuperDuper-ed the old OS. Could not believe the difference. You just have to
see it happen to get it. Best upgrade ever.

~~~
gshubert17
Agreed. I had a 2009 iMac with 640GB (7200 rpm) disk and 4 GB ram. I swapped
to a smaller (250 GB) SSD and upgraded to 8 GB ram and it's like a new machine
for me--a great upgrade.

------
mythz
I’ve always had a fondness for the iMac which I’ve been using as my main
Desktop since the last PowerPC version, IMO they’ve always been a mark of the
best all-in-one of the day, lots of people like to focus on the internals but
it ignores the noise and clutter free desktop and top build quality I’ve
enjoyed for over a decade.

I’ve upgraded 4 times since and am currently enjoying the iMac 5k, this
floating screen is beautiful on the inside and out, the 5k is gorgeous and its
form factor is near perfect, still just a single power cord disappearing out
from behind it and wireless for everything else.

I’ve got the high-end version with Max CPU and SSD so I’ll skip this version
but will in all likelihood get the next unless someone ships a better all-in-
one, which never happens.

------
sahin-boydas
Did you guys see this?

"iMac Pro now available with 256 GB RAM option … for an extra $5200"

sort of pricey.

[https://9to5mac.com/2019/03/19/256-gb-ram-imac-
pro/](https://9to5mac.com/2019/03/19/256-gb-ram-imac-pro/)

~~~
aboutruby
Looks like it costs $3,381 off-the-shelf:
[https://www.avadirect.com/256GB-4-x-64GB-Quad-Rank-
DDR4-2666...](https://www.avadirect.com/256GB-4-x-64GB-Quad-Rank-DDR4-2666MHz-
CL19-ECC-Load-Reduced-Memory/Product/11428748)

------
owenwil
It seems to me this product is on life support and Apple is simply doing
performance bumps to avoid big capex expenses on designing/tooling for
something new? It ships with a 5,400 RPM disk, an outdated display technology,
omits T2 chipset, doesn't include Face ID, nor any of their other innovations
over the last year. It's actually egregious to stuff old hardware in a
workable form factor and hock it, while ignoring that they're not backporting
_any_ of their other innovations back to these devices.

And that's not to mention: buying a $3500 screen glued to a computer is
massively risky.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Well the Mac Mini got a recent refresh with decent processors, the new Mac Pro
is reputedly just around the corner and there is a rumour they are going to
release a new display soon. My guess is you are right, it's on life support.

------
tosh
I find it curious that Apple is starting to communicate major product updates
decoupled from an event. Just good old press releases.

Maybe they already have too many announcements to fit into the narrative of
the handful of events per year.

~~~
bertil
This is not the first time that they have significant updates days before a
major announcement.

I suspect that Apply keeps a lot of options for things to talk about until the
last days. They wait for every key aspect of the announcement to be confirmed
(which can be days earlier). That allows them to focus on the expected change
if they are ready, or, if there is a last-minute issue, they can talk about
spec upgrades to fill the hour, or rather to __ramp up __the announcement
(e.g. “With all that memory, HD videos are going to look _gorgeous_. And you
know where you can find HD videos? Boom! New VOD service!”). It’s consistent
with descriptions of how Steve Jobs would scrape large segments of his
keynotes at the last minute.

------
JoshTriplett
I just wish there was a way to run OSX on a high-performance server, or a
cloud virtual machine, for continuous-integration purposes. The iMac Pro
doesn't cut it, and is a pain to host anywhere. I'd like to test-build
applications for OSX alongside CI builds for Linux and Windows, and there's no
sensible, legal, scalable solution for that.

~~~
bradknowles
Searching for "macos hosting", here are the first seven links I found:

XCLOUD - macOS Cloud Hosting - [https://xcloud.me](https://xcloud.me) XCLOUD
is an enterprise-class IaaS for macOS. It is perfect for developers and
companies that need to run one or hundreds of dedicated macOS VMs in the
Cloud. In fact, each XCLOUD instance is a dedicated virtual machine running
macOS version of your choice .

MacStadium | Apple Mac Infrastructure & Private Clouds -
[https://www.macstadium.com](https://www.macstadium.com) MacStadium is the
only provider of enterprise-class Apple Mac infrastructure. Whether you need
to deploy a private cloud for large-scale CI/CD or just need a single Mac mini
to test your iOS app, MacStadium has a solution for all of your Mac
development needs.

MacHighway | Mac Web Hosting | Website Builder & VPS Hosting -
[https://www.machighway.com](https://www.machighway.com) MacHighway's
renewable energy initiative means that not only do we reduce our environmental
impact, but you do, too - simply by choosing us as your hosting provider. We
purchase enough wind energy credits from Renewable Choice Energy to cover what
our servers, network center, and offices use.

macOS Server Hosting - Colocation America -
[https://www.colocationamerica.com/dedicated-servers/mac-
os-x...](https://www.colocationamerica.com/dedicated-servers/mac-os-x.htm)
Colocation America has a dedicated server for all the Mac heads out there that
are looking to run the latest Mac Operating System (OS) server hosting with
their favorite operating system. Reap the benefits of Apple's latest macOS
with its airtight security features and its world renowned user-friendly
interface.

CloudXMac - Mac VPS macOS VPS Cloud -
[https://cloudxmac.com](https://cloudxmac.com) High-quality macOS VPS with
incredible support from multiple locations around the world.You can connect to
the macOS VPS from any devices to use iMessage, develop iOS and Xcode
applications, run any MAC software and more!

HostMyApple: Mac VPS cloud Hosting of macOS -
[https://www.hostmyapple.com/macvps.html](https://www.hostmyapple.com/macvps.html)
With up to 8GB of RAM and the option to expand storage HostMyApple offers
powerful and affordable Mac VPS hosting. With no hardware to purchase, running
your own macOS server is an easy choice for anyone looking to host their own
website, share files, run mail services or develop iOS applications, all with
the power of macOS Mojave.

macOS in the cloud. - Mac mini Hosting & Colocation -
[https://www.macminivault.com/try/](https://www.macminivault.com/try/) macOS
in the cloud. We specialize in hosting Macs in data centers. Our two data
centers (Milwaukee and Phoenix) host thousands of Macs. We have high density
cabinets for both the Mac mini and Mac Pro.

~~~
JoshTriplett
I'm aware of such services; however, I said "high-performance server". Where
do I get a 72-thread server I can build OSX software on? Nowhere.

More importantly, who has a scalable cloud where I can spin up as many such
servers of varying sizes as I need?

~~~
1123581321
You haven’t investigated these services. MacStadium will help you do this if
for some reason their virtual Mac cloud product doesn’t work for you.

~~~
JoshTriplett
I did investigate all of those services before I replied. I see that
MacStadium will manage Mac Pro systems, but those don't have nearly the
processing power I'd want. As I said, where can I get a 36-core 72-thread Mac?
Nowhere, at least not legally.

~~~
1123581321
Why doesn’t their private cloud service give you that? It doesn’t seem
reasonable to insist you get all your computing power from one physical
machine if another solution is available.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Because I can't do make -j72 (or the Ninja equivalent) across multiple
machines.

There are multiple reasons to want a single large machine rather than
distributed systems. I can get that for a Linux or Windows machine, quite
easily, from hundreds of vendors.

~~~
1123581321
You’re right. I thought they could abstract away the network parallelization
but they can’t.

------
aczerepinski
I _really_ wish I could buy a headless Mac with similar performance (including
a real video card) and price. The mini doesn't quite meet my needs and the pro
at $3k+ is way too expensive. These specs look good (although I would greatly
prefer SSD) but I really don't want an extra monitor on my desk.

~~~
nudded
The mini + eGPU seems like it would be a candidate then?

~~~
aczerepinski
I suppose so. I don't know much about eGPUs. I see the cheapest one available
on the Apple store is $700 which includes a Radeon Pro 580 (appears to be the
same card offered on the top of line iMac from today?). With SSDs on the Mini
being as expensive as they are ($800 to upgrade to 1TB), I'd probably want an
external HD as well, so minimum 3 boxes on my desk and more chords to deal
with.

It would meet my needs and I might reluctantly get one.

------
raviojha
Hey Apple! While you're on this upgrade sprint, I wish out of the blue, an
iPhone SE 2 is also announced.

~~~
aboutruby
The more time passes, the more it looks like they released an SE by mistake,
still be best phone ever made IMHO but doesn't fit the strategy of upselling
as much as possible.

~~~
DanTheManPR
Reading your comment on my iPhone SE. It really is the best ultra-portable
smartphone ever released :)

I'm a bit puzzled as to why they don't just keep selling it, maybe with an
upgraded SOC but no other new components. I don't think it would cannibalize
sales of their mainline phones, and it would give lower income people a path
to buy into their ecosystem. They're taking that approach with the iPad line.
Maybe it didn't sell as well as I thought it did.

------
ppetty
Maybe the best feature:

> 8GB (two 4GB) of 2666MHz DDR4 memory; four SO-DIMM slots, _user accessible_

~~~
Cthulhu_
I haven't needed to touch my memory in forever; why is this still apparently
weighed so heavily? Or is that one of those things where you try to go around
the Apple tax of more memory by installing your own?

~~~
PedroBatista
Because when RAM was dirt cheap, you would pay triple the price if ordered
from Apple. It's ridiculous.

------
jcadam
Still have an old first-gen i5 powered 27" iMac. I pulled it out of the closet
a year ago and replaced the dead OEM hard drive with an SSD and set it up in a
corner of the living room as a GP/web machine. The optical drive is dead and a
couple of the USB ports don't work, but it's still useful (nice screen,
still). It's the last mac in the house, though, and I'll never buy another
one.

------
ojhughes
I'm still running a 2012 iMac with fusion drive and it still feels slicker to
me than a high spec Windows machine.

~~~
okmokmz
What would you consider a "high spec" Windows machine?

~~~
ojhughes
Dell XPS laptop from 2018.

~~~
slantyyz
That's not a high spec Windows machine, that's just a high spec Windows
laptop.

~~~
ojhughes
High spec is subjective.. it’s high spec compared to a 2012 iMac

~~~
slantyyz
Well, it depends. Which particular 2018 XPS are you referring to?

Some Passmark CPU comparisons:

2012 iMac with the i7 3770 - 9282

XPS 13 i7-8550U - 8305

XPS 15 i7-8750H -12477 (Note that XPS 15s tend to be thermally throttled also)

Desktop i7 9700K - 17257

Desktop i9 9900X - 22883

Desktop Ryzen 2920X - 21920

A high spec laptop doesn't compare with a high spec desktop CPU, especially if
it's a U class CPU like the ones used by the XPS 13 (which seems to be way
more popular than the XPS 15).

If you have an i7 2012 iMac, it still holds its own to any top end ultrabook
(U) class CPU.

------
jandrese
The Vega 48 GPU seems disappointing for a machine that expensive.

~~~
lasagnaphil
Agree, I would want at least a Vega 64 for that amount of money (Or even a
Radeon VII!). But then Apple has to think about cooling inside the small
chassis, so they might not have a choice. (They managed to fix a Vega 64X in
the iMac Pro, but the Pro lineup has different thermal management than the
normal one)

~~~
jandrese
It seems crazy to me that Apple compromised the cooling solution of their
desktop machine to save 5mm of thickness. Does anyone outside of Apple's
marketing department care about the thickness of their desktop machine as long
as it is below an inch or two?

~~~
_s
We're not the target audience. For programmers, developers etc, Apple has the
Mac Pro.

~~~
stadeschuldt
The Mac Pro has not been updated since Dec 2013.

------
Geee
It seems that the price point of i9+32GB+1TB SSD+Vega 48 is about the same
price ($5000) as the baseline iMac Pro. Imac Pro comes with Xeon processor and
Vega 56 though. Is the iMac Pro better at this price point?

~~~
IloveHN84
For that price tag, I can build a full server with more pimped specs and that
can do much more. 5000$ are too much

~~~
Geee
There aren't really options if you want the form factor, silent operation and
MacOS.

Also, I won't be upgrading my main work computer in at least 5 years. I'm now
on 2011 iMac which is still a great computer, but unfortunately can't be
updated to the latest MacOS any more.

------
scarface74
An interview with the iMac product manager. Mostly a fluff piece but Jason
Snell did ask about the continued use of non SSD hard drives. (Link will bring
up a web page if you don’t have Overcast.)

[https://overcast.fm/+Fcm8vPRGM](https://overcast.fm/+Fcm8vPRGM)

------
vgoh1
Proof that Apple has anorexia: 5mm thin on the outer edge of the all-in-one
computer and monitor. Thinner than a lot of monitor-only's everywhere else.
What is the purpose? Who would not trade a thicker stationary monitor for
better upgrade-ability and/or a cheaper price? Look behind your monitor - odds
are, it's just a bunch of empty space behind it on your desk. I would love to
be a little bird on the wall in the Apple strategy meetings where they decided
that iMacs need to be that thin. I still have an old iMac G3 kicking around
from 1999. It's over a foot deep, just takes up the empty space behind the
screen on the desk - no big deal.

~~~
infotogivenm
As a counterpoint: Aesthetics matter to a non-trivial percentage of computer
users. I love the iMac’s design and it was a pretty big selling point to me
and differentiated the model from the other available desktops. I use an arm-
style mount and couldnt be happier with the overall lack of wires and thin
aesthetics.

------
zachruss92
My 2017 MacBook pro is definitely my last Apple laptop because it's just too
expensive and unreliable (for reasons well discussed on HN). I have definitely
considered getting a Mac Mini, but the new iMacs are definitely interesting.
One thing I'd be concerned about is cooling. I know the iMac Pros are not
ideal from a cooling perspective - I can't imagine an 8 core processor @ 5GHz
plus a Radeon Pro GPU runs cool. I'll wait for the user-upgradable Mac Pro
before I make a decision.

~~~
pickle-wizard
I've been saying for 10 years, that I am going to switch from a Mac to a
ThinkPad running Linux. Yet I keep buying Macs. My latest was a MacBook Air.
It really wasn't that much more than the ThinkPad I was looking at.

~~~
asark
Their steps backward in MacBook functionality (keyboard, ports, touchbar which
is at best a wash) and the price hikes over the last ~4yrs have me thinking
about going back to Linux. But I need a laptop, and don't want to feel like I
_have_ to have a mouse to use it and not be miserable. And good battery life,
and power management so reliable I never have to think about it (close the
lid, pick it up, walk off). They're _so far_ ahead of everyone else it's hard
to justify switching even when they keep screwing up and raising prices for
_years_. It's more a testament to how bad every other hardware+software combo
is, at this point, than how good they are.

------
bluedino
The CPU increases are welcome, but I was hoping for the rumored 6K displays.

No space grey, no T2 chip, no Touchbar.

Somehow they still sell the 1080 21" model for $1099.

~~~
tsmarsh
No touch bar is a win IMHO. I'm not against it per se, but a soft `esc` was a
mistake.

~~~
eckza
vim lifer here, I'm dreading the day my 2015 rMBP dies.

~~~
lexicality
You should probably stop using the tiny escape key long before that happens.
Either swap out caps for esc (my pref), start using ^[ or do one of these
tricks:
[https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key](https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key)

~~~
dbalatero
I don't know if you've tried this, but consider using caps lock for ctrl (the
other tiny harder to reach key) and jk for esc. The home row reachability of
jk is actually really nice and having ctrl remapped seals the deal for me.

------
mtw
If only they offered with a Nvidia GPU

------
turboturbo
If you’re in the market for this model, do yourself a favour and don’t buy the
base configuration with the unusably slow 5400 rpm HDD. I bought the previous
model with that hard drive and the startup performance is appalling

------
skilled
The "upgrade" to 512GB SSD is not so bad, but to upgrade to 32GB RAM it's
$600? Yikes...

Looks like Apple is starting to put a premium on OSX rather than going
quality-first for its hardware.

~~~
scarface74
RAM upgrades from Apple have been ridiculously overpriced for decades.

------
speg
Why can't you upgrade to the new CPU on the 21.5" models?

~~~
bluedino
Probably the same reason you can't on the MacBook Air

~~~
dmitriid
So... No real reason?

------
locusm
If you're intending to Bootcamp your iMac, remember that Windows will only use
the slow AF spinning rust portion of the fusion drive. The SSD is worth it in
this case.

------
robotsquidward
Disappointed we have another year of the same iMac design, especially with
serious Mac Pro rumors swirling.

Guess I'll wait for the laptops this year to see HOW Apple gets my money lol.

~~~
yreg
I don't get the craving for a new design, the form-factor is pretty great as
it is. Surely they'll eventually update it as well, but I'm a lot more
interested in the internals/display/IO than the chassis.

~~~
drukenemo
humm I'd love to see thinner bezels and also face ID on the iMac.

------
dmitriid
The price for upgrading remains as ridiculous as ever (especially if you're
not in the US).

RAM:

8 GB -> 16 GB is 2200 SEK (239 USD)

8 GB -> 32 GB is 6600 SEK (717 USD)

You can get 32GB as low as 1689 SEK (183 USD) on Newegg.

~~~
kmlx
isn't the RAM soldered in on iMacs?

~~~
ineedasername
I don't think so at least as of mid-2017, I just searched and found videos on
how to do the upgrade. Basically turn the thing over, open a latch, and swap
out the ram.

------
pier25
I'm curious how the thermals will be with the i7 and i9 chips.

The 2017 5K iMac had cooling problems with the infamous i7 7700K.

------
jtotheh
it's easy to add an external SSD to an iMac, install the OS on it and
configure it to boot off of it. I have gotten great performance out of an old
iMac by doing this.

------
randcraw
And if you buy two of these, you get a 4X performance boost!

------
villgax
I'm going Razer for higher-end upgradeable laptops & custom builds for
anything which isn't going to be portable.

------
amedvednikov
5400RPM HDD in 2019

------
paul7986
“Apply,”.... is now making Macs wonder what “Apple,” thinks of this?

------
educationdata
When will they produce an Ultra-wide (21:9) screen iMac?

~~~
kowdermeister
Once they figured out how to make it sound like a new revolutionary thing :)

------
xhruso00
Cool HW, however fusion drive in 2019? Apple wake up!

------
PedroBatista
"iMac gets a 2x performance boost"

[Citation needed]

~~~
dagw
The link you just copy/pasted is literally the citation

~~~
PedroBatista
It's 2x faster because Apple says so. OK.

~~~
dagw
The general rule on HN is to use the same headline as the article you're
linking to and not to editorialize in your title. So when you're linking to an
Apple press release then of course it's Apple saying it.

------
thomasjudge
One word: hackintosh.

~~~
pier25
I started fiddling with hackintoshes in 2010 and since then I've built maybe a
dozen ones for me or my friends.

I now own a 5K iMac. My time is worth more than the difference in price
between a hackintosh and a real mac.

Of course if you are in it for hardware freedom instead of cost then a
hackintosh is your only option, but it's very difficult to get a perfect build
and updating the OS is always a Russian roulette game.

------
pdq
@dang typo: This has been up for 5 hours with the title "Apply" instead of
"Apple"?

~~~
dang
Typing fail—sorry!

The submitted title was "iMac gets a 2x performance boost" but I changed that
about 15 minutes before you posted, because we try to avoid press-release
language on HN.

------
huffmsa
> _...ideal for pros with graphics-intensive workloads..._

Did a bot write this? No one uses "pros" in writing like this to refer to
professionals.

~~~
huffmsa
Really, this release was either written by a bot or a non-native English
speaker.

> _From consumers to pros alike, users will notice their iMac is faster for
> everyday tasks all the way up to the most demanding pro workloads._

This is not a natural sentence.

