New iMac with M4 • Hacker News Board

Re: New iMac with M4

#691

Post by ferbivore » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 9:52 PM UTC

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #611

conradev wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> (maybe) take more time to engineer Apple, the richest company in the world, who spends millions in money and engineering hours on stuff like making sure the packaging having the right neutral smell, and the box sliding out with the right amount of friction when you open it, and on security teams/mercenaries able to pull family members of workers from warzones, and you're telling me they have to nickel and dime thei…

It's to reduce unit costs, not engineering costs. They integrated an NVMe controller into the SoC and they can now just buy NAND chips instead of full SSDs.

Soldering them to the board is just an asshole thing to do though, especially since these machines can't boot off of USB if the NAND dies. Surely some elastomer BGA sockets wouldn't cost that much. There's no sane explanation other than they're doing it so you have to buy a new Mac to get more storage.

Re: New iMac with M4

#692

Post by talldayo » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 9:52 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.

If you need a citation to understand, then nothing will get through to you. Apple glued in their batteries before "it was a thing" and implemented parts pairing DRM "before it was a thing" too. Whatever era you worked at Apple during, the company is changed now and has been changed for over a decade. Their modern rhetoric proves they detest the Reduce, reuse, recycle hierarchy that defines how "green" is and has been defined. You can prove that Apple is anti-green through basic examination of their modern business model:

- They deliberately limit the functionality of devices unsupported by their first-party services (eg. App Store and Safari) which prevents reduction of new hardware required. Third-parties are prevented from offering serious and lasting alternatives.

- They've systematically prevented repair of both their laptop and phone hardware, obviating the "reuse" part of the cycle. In their current scheme, independent repair shops are deliberately and unnecessarily cut off from the parts they need to repair Apple hardware at-cost.

- Their stance towards recycling is asinine and insidious. Since store owners can't recycle partially-broken hardware as donor boards and users can't extend the use of their devices once iOS stops supporting them, Apple graciously offers to take your valuable hardware for free and destroy it for parts or materials for their own benefit. Users aren't expected to want any better and instead are supposed to thank Apple for pocketing their broken hardware to pay for Carbon Credits and Mother Nature spotlights.

Apple's "serious" dedication to the environment is a joke, and the cracks have been showing for a while. They prioritize obstinate and unnecessary proprietary features instead of differentiating themselves through natural competition on their merits. If it wasn't for regulatory concern Apple would continue abusing the environment and people like you would keep defending Apple regardless.

This is bad. I expect better.

Re: New iMac with M4

#693

Post by gtvwill » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 9:52 PM UTC

Kirby64 wrote: post #653

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can tell they're full of shit because they can't stop tooting the green horn. It's self evident. If they made their devices repairable, easily resellable, etc. then they wouldn't have to greenwash.

I’ll bite: what about their devices is not easily resellable? Sure seems easy to factory reset basically anything Apple, and their resale values hold up a lot better than most devices.

I factory reset a 2012 Mac book pro that was needed for a client to use to check emails and use the web browser. Device was instantly blocked by Apple from accessing most websites because the factory version of the OS was deemed insecure by Apple. This included blocking the updater from being able to update the device via the web to a safe version of the OS that was available. What was supposed to be a 1 hour service became about 4 hours of me reading online trying to work out wtf was going on. Then I had to spend time navigating my way around the nightmare of distro hopping it up OS updates manually til it got to the most recent "safe" supported os version.

Device works completely fine and lives behind a well secured network (battery was stuffed but it lives plugged in). Apple took it upon themselves to dictate to the user that it was no longer fit for operation. Apples solution was "replace the device and send the old one to landfil.

Apple literally greenwash their entire business model. But they are one of the most wasteful companies around.

Meanwhile I'm still reformatting 8, 12 and 15 year old windows pcs with Linux and putting them back into service for email checking and basic web browsing without a single hiccup. Saving more and more from landfil, they get used once in a blue moon but it's literally all the owners want. They don't mind waiting a bit for stuff to turn on, hell plenty of them are over 60, they've spend their life being patient and a few mins to make a cuppa while something turns on is a blessing to them.

Re: New iMac with M4

#694

Post by alpaca128 » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 9:54 PM UTC

Hamuko wrote: post #152

Wytwwww wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The 13-inch iPad Pro is a ~$1300 PC that Apple will gladly sell with 8 GB of RAM.

As far as I know even the newest iPad Pro is limited to 5GB per app, so if you use it for things like drawing in Procreate the 16GB upgrade does literally nothing.

Re: New iMac with M4

#695

Post by zeusk » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 9:55 PM UTC

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #594

zeusk wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peo…

and yet you continue to moan about your NPC problem when the right product for you already exists?

Re: New iMac with M4

#696

Post by talldayo » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 9:55 PM UTC

GeekyBear wrote: post #378

baron816 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now if only they could figure out how to allow charging the Magic Mouse while it’s being used. I guess that technology is still years away.

Given that the lightning version picks up a nine hour charge in the time it takes to take a bathroom break or go get a cup of coffee, this is more of an excuse to make fun of the design than it is a real world show stopper. > The Apple Mouse 2 also comes with a Quick Charge feature that provides nine hours of use with a two-minute charge. https://www.jackery.com/blogs/knowledge/how-to-charge-apple-...

Wow, that's longer than it takes me to find a working Lightning cable most days.

Re: New iMac with M4

#697

Post by rty32 » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 9:56 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.

Citation: MacBook Pro with 8GB memory, starting at $1,599, on sale right now.

Re: New iMac with M4

#698

Post by pier25 » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 9:56 PM UTC

da02 wrote: post #586

pier25 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah those 5K panels are fantastic. When I switched to a MBP M2 I got an Asus ProArt 32'' 4K and really like it. Comes precalibrated out of the box.

Were you able to see a difference between the 5k panel and the ProArt?

Not in terms of colors but the 5K panel (I assume from LG) was more uniform in the blacks and suffered from almost no IPS glow. Not a big deal. The Asus is great for the price paid.

Obviously big difference in DPI too, but 4K still looks great at 32''.

For reference, I'm using the PA329CV. I don't know if all ProArt monitors use the same quality of panel.

Re: New iMac with M4

#699

Post by v1ne » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 9:56 PM UTC

conradev wrote: post #600

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.

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…

Using an M2 SSD instead of soldering the chip on board has more implications: PCB gets physically larger, and takes more power or has less performance talking to the SSD. Heat transfer is also worse. I completely understand why they go for a soldered SSD chip.

One way of true environmentally-friendly innovation could have been to find a way to attach the SSD chip so that a user could safely replace it, though, with little additional space.

Re: New iMac with M4

#700

Post by snakeyjake » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 9:57 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.

> Leaves me wondering how many of these Apple actually sell.

The target audience for this machine is my local yoga studio (which has two), my local comic book shop (which has two), and my local spa (which has one).

They run a web browser, some kind of inventory or booking app in the browser, and Spotify. That's it.

Last year I went to Bali and the Gili Islands on vacation and both of the places I stayed checked me in on an M1 iMac. In that instance they were both also running the WhatsApp app.

They're going to sell millions.