New iMac with M4 • Hacker News Board

Re: New iMac with M4

#591

Post by jrmg » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 7:37 PM UTC

tjoff wrote: post #583

jjtheblunt wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple is only "green" in their presentations - in reality they care more about inifite sales only. needs citation. I say this as someone who worked several years in engineering at Apple, and they were extremely environmentally conscientious years before it was a thing.

The iMac are the perfect example though. The horror of putting a DVI/HDMI port on that thing seemed so horrendous that they'd rather let the whole thing go to waste. Reading OP it seems like this has been corrected? But generation of generation of devices didn't have any sensible reason to exist. Apple is also the king of integrated batteries. First with phones, then with laptops. I'm still baffled they got away with…

This would require additional hardware in every iMac sold.

Many people (I suspect the vast majority) would not reuse the iMacs as displays.

Would the total amount of extra hardware inside discarded iMacs (those not used as displays) be less than the amount of hardware saved by reuse of the others?

Re: New iMac with M4

#592

Post by zeusk » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 7:38 PM UTC

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #588

jjtheblunt wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple is only "green" in their presentations - in reality they care more about inifite sales only. needs citation. I say this as someone who worked several years in engineering at Apple, and they were extremely environmentally conscientious years before it was a thing.

>I say this as someone who worked several years in engineering at Apple, and they were extremely environmentally conscientious years before it was a thing. Then please tell us why they can't put a HDMI/DP input on the iMac to be usable as an external monitor when the internal computer dies or just to be used as a secondary monitor? Or why the SSD NAND on Macbooks needs to be soldered when a guy on youtube managed to…

Because as a customer you should probably buy a studio display and Mac mini if that's your use case.

Re: New iMac with M4

#593

Post by seam_carver » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 7:41 PM UTC

SurgeArrest wrote: post #530

Reading this on 2017 iMac 27" - is the first 5k iMac that couldn't be used as a monitor after the computer inside is irrelevant. I hope EU will push for some law that requires all AIO computers to work in monitor-only mode if internal hardware is no longer good enough or no longer supported by software updates. I love the 5k screen on this iMac but the CPU is too old for photo or video editing as software got so much…

Please don't landfill it. Recycle it responsibibly once it's lifetime is over by recycling it to Apple or taking it to a local electronics recycler like Best Buy.

Re: New iMac with M4

#594

Post by FirmwareBurner » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 7:42 PM UTC

zeusk wrote: post #592

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I say this as someone who worked several years in engineering at Apple, and they were extremely environmentally conscientious years before it was a thing. Then please tell us why they can't put a HDMI/DP input on the iMac to be usable as an external monitor when the internal computer dies or just to be used as a secondary monitor? Or why the SSD NAND on Macbooks needs to be soldered when a guy on youtube managed to…

Because as a customer you should probably buy a studio display and Mac mini if that's your use case.

"My use case" of ...*squints*... not throwing amazing and still functional monitors in the trash because the computer part in them is obsolete/dead and keep reusing them instead? How rude of me to reject Apple's marketing NPC programming and use common sense instead.

How about Apple just puts the 2 cent connector & PHY, and let the users who paid for the device decide how they want to use the product. Gaslighting people with the "you're holding/using it wrong" argument today is just .. I can't even express anymore without breaking HN rules.

Re: New iMac with M4

#595

Post by colonwqbang » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 7:44 PM UTC

dlevine wrote: post #348

I'm surprised they are still shipping these with 256GB of storage base. I had a Macbook with a ~500GB SSD in 2012 (I installed it), and a 500GB spinning disk in like 2008 (also user installed). A 500GB SSD can be had for <$50 these days, and a 1TB for <$100. Still plenty of profit for Apple, even if they bump up the base storage to 512GB and make 1TB a $200 upgrade...

A relatively generous interpretation is that they want to keep down the price of the entry model. They make their own silicon now, only three different sizes so it's not viable to differentiate on compute power. The easy way out is to put too little storage and memory in the base model and make customers pay through the nose for more storage and memory.

Re: New iMac with M4

#596

Post by hartator » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 7:44 PM UTC

euroderf wrote: post #490

WillPostForFood wrote: post #366

Right now, the Apple computer lineup is totally out of alignment for me. The iMac is too small and the laptops are too big. I'd like a minimum 27" display for the iMac, maybe 31". For a laptop, give me something more portable, like the old 2 pound, 12" MacBook.

AFAICT the 11" Mac Air failed in the market. It did not last long in the lineup.

MacBook 12" was super sweet though.

I bought 2 for professional engineering work. They were my main computers despite Intel CPUs being absyammal in term of performance.

Re: New iMac with M4

#597

Post by euroderf » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 7:46 PM UTC

t3rabytes wrote: post #590

euroderf wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAICT the 11" Mac Air failed in the market. It did not last long in the lineup.

It was available for 6 years (2011-2017), that's hardly a failure relative to other Apple products that have only made it through 2 cycles (the most recently iPhone Mini sub-family that lasted 2 years).

OK, my bad.

Re: New iMac with M4

#598

Post by mysteria » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 7:46 PM UTC

dlevine wrote: post #348

I'm surprised they are still shipping these with 256GB of storage base. I had a Macbook with a ~500GB SSD in 2012 (I installed it), and a 500GB spinning disk in like 2008 (also user installed). A 500GB SSD can be had for <$50 these days, and a 1TB for <$100. Still plenty of profit for Apple, even if they bump up the base storage to 512GB and make 1TB a $200 upgrade...

Do regular users use more than 250GB or so of local storage? Large media collections are likely stored on a NAS or external HDDs and the local disk is more for the OS, apps, and scratch space. Nowadays many files are on the cloud as well. Developers, video editors, and other people who actually handle large amounts of data locally will likely purchase an upgrade.

While they're Linux systems pretty much all my desktops and laptops only use 50-100GB of disk space, and I still issue 128GB SSDs with no complaints as everything's stored on the network. Considering how expensive storage is on Apple devices I don't want to be paying the premium for 1TB of NVME which I won't use.

Re: New iMac with M4

#599

Post by knolan » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 7:46 PM UTC

SurgeArrest wrote: post #530

Reading this on 2017 iMac 27" - is the first 5k iMac that couldn't be used as a monitor after the computer inside is irrelevant. I hope EU will push for some law that requires all AIO computers to work in monitor-only mode if internal hardware is no longer good enough or no longer supported by software updates. I love the 5k screen on this iMac but the CPU is too old for photo or video editing as software got so much…

I went from a 2560x1600 27” 2012 iMac to a 5K 2015 iMac. The 2015 model was the first not to offer target display mode, so it’s even worse than you say. For a while I ran the 2012 as a second display for the 2015.

The 2012 iMac is long gone, passed to a friend, but I still daily drive the 2015 5K. I’m interested in the new iMac but the 24” screen feels like a downgrade. The 27” studio display seems like a nice option but for similar money I get an extra computer in a smaller screen.

Naturally I could buy a cheap monitor but I don’t want to.

Re: New iMac with M4

#600

Post by conradev » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 7:47 PM UTC

jjtheblunt wrote: post #570

SurgeArrest wrote: post #530

Reading this on 2017 iMac 27" - is the first 5k iMac that couldn't be used as a monitor after the computer inside is irrelevant. I hope EU will push for some law that requires all AIO computers to work in monitor-only mode if internal hardware is no longer good enough or no longer supported by software updates. I love the 5k screen on this iMac but the CPU is too old for photo or video editing as software got so much…

> Apple is only "green" in their presentations - in reality they care more about inifite sales only. needs citation. I say this as someone who worked several years in engineering at Apple, and they were extremely environmentally conscientious years before it was a thing.

It's not that they actively do bad things, it's that they only dedicate real resources in the direction of self-interest. Tim Cook likes to point to their solar investments and accessibility as examples of "doing good" when in reality the former is a good long term financial bet and the latter is generally under-resourced (or "cheap" to them).

They'd use M.2 SSDs in their Macs instead of soldering flash chips to the board to allow for upgradeability, but that would seriously hurt the average profit margin on their devices and (maybe) take more time to engineer.

The areas where their self-interest and the environment overlap are truly awesome, like shipping iPhones without chargers (increased margins) and in smaller paper boxes (more efficient shipping), but I don't wear rose-colored glasses about it.

They'll also never let the iPad run macOS, because if people could own one device instead of two, that would be bad for their profits. They'll keep them cleanly differentiated for as long as they can.

(I also worked in engineering at Apple!)