New iMac with M4 • Hacker News Board

Re: New iMac with M4

#181

Post by goosedragons » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 4:14 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #128

epolanski wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just reminded me of how stupid the plug beneath the MM was...You never needed to charge it, till you needed it and couldn't use the mouse.

There are so many legitimate reasons to hate the magic mouse. Ergonimics, the polling rate, the way the glass gets greasy, the scratchy hard plastic on the bottom. Truly, inferior to the Logitech MX Master in all ways except looks. (which is subjective). But it takes literally a few seconds to get a days worth of charge out of the mouse, Apple clearly don't want you to leave it plugged in to use as a wired mouse: why…

The only reason they don't let you charge it is because it's a recycled design of the MM1 which used disposable batteries. The Magic Keyboard and Trackpad which came out the exact same day both let you use it plugged in and charging, even wired! The Magic Mouse shell was just not designed with a cord in mind at all.

I have personally been in meeting where my boss forgot to charge her magic mouse and we had to wait two minutes for her to open the stuff we needed to discuss. It happens.

Re: New iMac with M4

#182

Post by klodolph » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 4:14 PM UTC

jfoster wrote: post #76

I could never justify getting an iMac. All the downsides of a laptop & desktop in one; not upgradeable and not portable. Leaves me wondering how many of these Apple actually sell. A Mac Mini with a separate screen feels like it makes far more sense.

I bought an iMac a while back. I left it connected to a bunch of music studio equipment. It does its job as the center of a home recording studio—gigabit ethernet and plenty of USB ports. I am not considering replacing it yet, even though it stopped receiving updates from Apple. It can’t run Logic 11 (it’s stuck on 10).

Re: New iMac with M4

#183

Post by turnsout » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 4:14 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #144

As someone who mucks around with running LLMs and other large models on my computer the 32GB maximum RAM is a show-stopper for me. I'm on a M2 with 64GB at the moment and I'm already regretting not going for 96 or even 128. I want to be able to run a large model AND other apps at the same time.

I'll be curious to see if the Mini has an M4 Pro option, and if so, what the RAM ceiling will be!

Re: New iMac with M4

#184

Post by mhh__ » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 4:14 PM UTC

jfoster wrote: post #76

I could never justify getting an iMac. All the downsides of a laptop & desktop in one; not upgradeable and not portable. Leaves me wondering how many of these Apple actually sell. A Mac Mini with a separate screen feels like it makes far more sense.

But just think of the satisfaction you'll have at your computer being tiny in the dimension you can't actually perceive when using it!

Re: New iMac with M4

#185

Post by foldr » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 4:14 PM UTC

Wytwwww wrote: post #147

Hamuko wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprised that they didn't offer it with 8 GB, since they do have a 8 GB version of the M4 in the (cheaper) iPad Pro.

These days 8 GB is absurdly low for a ~$1300 PC. Hopefully they might have finally realized that selling crippled products (just to force its users to pay the predatory price for memory upgrades) is hurting UX and their reputation. I mean they claim: > Compared to the most popular 24-inch all-in-one PC with the latest Intel Core 7 processor, the new iMac is up to 4.5x faster.1 But is that really true if your "ultrafa…

> your "ultrafast" Mac grinds to a halt when you have a couple of Electron apps and a browser open at the same time?

The 8GB models could easily handle this kind of load.

Re: New iMac with M4

#186

Post by graypegg » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 4:15 PM UTC

graeme wrote: post #138

jfoster wrote: post #76

I could never justify getting an iMac. All the downsides of a laptop & desktop in one; not upgradeable and not portable. Leaves me wondering how many of these Apple actually sell. A Mac Mini with a separate screen feels like it makes far more sense.

The iMacs very much aren't their main seller. A couple of key demographics use it though: * Families with a shared computer in a common room. Super simple to setup, no fiddling, low price. In the video Apple showcased this use case. My parents have an M3 imac and it works great. They had their last iMac for ten years. * Businesses buy these for reception areas and customers see the Apple logo on the back. Easy soluti…

+1 for the business front desk. This is by far where I see them the most. They're very easy to deploy, and most of the software you're going to need it to be running works in a browser. A windows all-in-one PC is another option... but the chance of something going wrong/being annoying in the interim between "plunk it on the desk" and "open salesforce in chrome" is definitely higher.

Re: New iMac with M4

#187

Post by bsimpson » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 4:15 PM UTC

minimaxir wrote: post #14

bradfitz wrote: post #2

I still miss the 27" iMacs. They were such a great form factor.

Now that my 27" iMac from 2020 is starting to get old and Apple will likely deprecate support for all Intel Macs soon, I really wish there was an easy way to use it as an external monitor for a MacBook. Every implementation of streaming to an iMac is hacky at best.

I looked into this briefly when they announced that the iMac Pro is the oldest device that still gets the newest software.

It's logically two displays crammed together, which apparently makes Linux support difficult. Someone posted on HN a link to a Chinese company whose sole purpose seems to be making boards that let you drive an iMac Pro display with a traditional display cable. It's left as an exercise to the reader how mad your company would be if you tried that on your corp device.

Re: New iMac with M4

#188

Post by traceroute66 » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 4:15 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #144

As someone who mucks around with running LLMs and other large models on my computer the 32GB maximum RAM is a show-stopper for me. I'm on a M2 with 64GB at the moment and I'm already regretting not going for 96 or even 128. I want to be able to run a large model AND other apps at the same time.

> As someone who mucks around with running LLMs and other large models on my computer the 32GB maximum RAM is a show-stopper for me.

To be fair, I don't think people mucking around with large LLMs is the primary target market for the iMacs.

The sort of people who muck around with LLMs almost certainly already have a monitor, keyboard and mouse. And so are more likely to pick up a Mac Studio which will no doubt be coming soon with M4 Ultra.

Re: New iMac with M4

#189

Post by Wytwwww » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 4:15 PM UTC

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #68

ChadNauseam wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never felt memory limited on my 16gb macbook pro, on which I code, run rust-analyzer (major memory hog), video edit, etc. Most people definitely don’t need 32GB

Agreed. I was XCode'ing on an 8gb M1 back during the lockdown, it was great. It's nice to see more RAM and Apple was being very stingy about it, but the real-world is totally overblown.

If you use your PC to only run a single application at any time then yes, 8GB might be usable. If you need to have an Electron app opened, a few browser tabs and XCode (let alone some less efficient IDE)? Your compute will grind to a halt...

Re: New iMac with M4

#190

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 4:16 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #144

As someone who mucks around with running LLMs and other large models on my computer the 32GB maximum RAM is a show-stopper for me. I'm on a M2 with 64GB at the moment and I'm already regretting not going for 96 or even 128. I want to be able to run a large model AND other apps at the same time.

[deleted]