Live data from Hacker News

All-new iMac features the M1 chip

apple.com

331–340 of 551 posts

Re: All-new iMac features the M1 chip

#331

I'm self employed (engineer, not comp-sci or coder bro) and as my company's revenue grows I am more and more tempted to "treat myself" and integrate more Apple products (I have an original SE phone) for the ease of use and having "corporate" Unix products in the arsenal. I see new products like these and instantly get excited. It looks so cool! It's thin, the screen is nice, looks like a great product! Maybe I'll qui…

I think it's worth it. I'm at the point where I think any non apple laptop is a waste of money. I own a software consultancy and charge about $700 a day for my time. My MacBook regularly has uptimes of over a month. Sometimes I work in an office with people using Windows machines. Sometimes their bluetooth earphones won't connect. The mic doesn't work on Zoom sometimes. Doesn't wake from sleep. Things like that. That's what I'm happy to pay to for. My last 2 Macs have both lasted 5 years no problems and if you ever do have one you can pretty much go into any apple store and have it back in a week. That's the benefit to me. If the machines were 2x the price I'd still pay it.

Re: All-new iMac features the M1 chip

#332

Do you think we will be able to install Win10 at some point? (a la Bootcamp, mainly to play some Steam games). Did Apple comment on this?

They did state that Bootcamp won't be coming to the ARM Macs when the switch away from Intel was announced last year.

You might see something via virtualisation or emulation but my guess is it won't be official.

If Microsoft do anything my money would be on some kind of app with Windows running in the cloud.

Re: All-new iMac features the M1 chip

#334
post #132

Now that all the devices across the line have the M1 chips, it would be interesting to see on which other features will Apple differentiate the products across the line after the full switch happens. Artificially limiting the RAM options in air/pro13 vs pro14-16 laptops? What else could be different except maybe 1-2 ports? Same for iMac 24 vs 27 coming in the fall? IPhone pro v's iPad pro difference is the big screen…

Most likely 14-16 laptops (and iMac Pro if they decide to do that again) will have a larger chip (say "M1X") that supports more memory. The M1 only supports two LPDDR4X chips (physically on the package there's only space for two).

Is there a physical reason why those 2 LPDDR4X chips could not be in a 2x16gb configuration and are topped at 2x8gb currently?

Re: All-new iMac features the M1 chip

#335
I think iPads and iPhone designs are getting better whereas the iMac (and even other macs) are getting worse. The bright colored and thick bezels on this including a chin makes this look super ugly from the front. And since iPads and iPhones have thin bezels and iPad even has the m1 chip, there’s no reason for the chin on the iMac. They could have at least made the bezels black for less distraction. I genuinely prefer the old design. This looks like an iPhone 5 stretched out.

Re: All-new iMac features the M1 chip

#336

I bought the highest end iMac 27 with 64gb, etc etc, mid year last year for $5k. I knew this was coming. Still hurts. Where is the best place to sell a 1yr old Mac?

Did your iMac suddenly stop working or slow down because they announced a new model?

Re: All-new iMac features the M1 chip

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way they did memory on the M1, they can only use two LPDDR4X chips. DRAM is on package, so they can only physically fit two on their package and presumably they do not have pins that would go off package for more memory channels at all. Micron and Samsung make 12 Gb LPDDR4X chips, but Apple probably decided that having a 24 Gb option wouldn't be worth it, or would be an ugly number, or couldn't get enough supply,…

Good answer! Apple doesn’t seem to shy away from “odd” numbers, like 4.5K resolution model I would go with supply combined with having enough supply of the 8gb modules but not enough of the 12gb ones that it would create strange tiers, while they would lean towards a 24gb machine

They make the odd resolution because they've committed to a certain amount of dpi ('super retina' resolution) and are marketing it as such.

While it would be fun to be able to run a complete k8s cluster locally that's quite a niche usecase. There's not much software on the consumer side where having 32gb+ really makes a huge amount of difference. At least not the software Apple is showing in their presentations. Lots of people think they want a huge amount of memory, but macOS seems to be able to handle memory pressure (with transparant compression and swapping) quite well, even on machines with little memory.

Re: All-new iMac features the M1 chip

#338

Magsafe but no battery ? Am I missing something here?

The device is too thin for a AC plug. So I guess it was this or USB-C

Odd so someone tugs accidently on the power cable and the machine just shuts off? Magsafe seems like a great idea on a laptop. Not sure I see how it makes sense here.

Re: All-new iMac features the M1 chip

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t mind the Ethernet port, but I was wondering the same thing. Is there no longer any value in making the computer larger? I’d expect that there is something that was cut for the thinness, but maybe not?

The computer is so thin, the headphone jack had to be moved to the side. Now you have desktop computer with speaker cable hanging on the side going to your external powered speakers. How's that for elegant.

From an audiophile's point of view: The thing on the side is a headphone jack (digital out through the jack has been long gone AFAIK), not a line level output, you're not really supposed to connect your speakers (directly or through an amplifier) to that. It usually works, sort of, but it's far from ideal.

I'm not sure whether that could be Apple's line of reasoning, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Post reply on HN