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New iMac with M4

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Re: New iMac with M4

#81

Post by porphyra »

tkuraku wrote: post #29
bearjaws wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

27" is really the best screen size for productivity. Easily can find 1440p or 4k 27" monitors to pair, and they have come down a lot in price.

I think this 43" screen is amazing for coding. Lots of vertical and horizontal space! https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-ultrasharp-43-4k-usb-c-...

If only it had higher pixel density. If there was a 43" 6K or even 8K screen I'd buy it in a heartbeat. But with only 4K I have to use all sorts of weird tricks with raster fonts to make the text in my terminals sharp.

Also, too bad all the TV makers stopped making 8K screens in 55" and below.

Re: New iMac with M4

#82

Post by gjsman-1000 »

randmeerkat wrote: post #77
jsheard wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then again, the rest of the industry has figured out a way to make slottable RAM almost as fast and compact as soldered RAM with the new CAMM2/LPCAMM2 standards. The M4 has LPDDR5X-7500 120GB/sec memory and there are already LPCAMM2-7500 120GB/sec modules, with even faster ones on the way: https://www.anandtech.com/show/21390/micron-ships-crucialbra... Two of those modules working in parallel would hit "M Pro" speeds…

> Then again, the rest of the industry has figured out a way to make slottable RAM almost as fast and compact as soldered RAM… Just be patient, the EU will take a large stick and force Apple to allow users to replace their RAM soon too.

Very unlikely. Apple can argue that less than 1% of computers users ever upgrade their memory (which is true), and after all, did the EU intervene when GPUs dropped their slotted memory?

Re: New iMac with M4

#83

Post by bloopernova »

bearjaws wrote: post #5
bradfitz wrote: post #2

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

27" is really the best screen size for productivity. Easily can find 1440p or 4k 27" monitors to pair, and they have come down a lot in price.

It really is, 4K 27" monitors that can do >=120Hz are perfect for me personally.

I just wish that the base macbook pro models supported 3 external screens without resorting to a software-based video-over-usb DisplaySync (not DisplayPort) connection.

Re: New iMac with M4

#84

Post by incrudible »

jsheard wrote: post #47
stu2b50 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ram is on the package for more than portability. It’s necessary for fast enough transfer speeds for the iGPU.

Then again, the rest of the industry has figured out a way to make slottable RAM almost as fast and compact as soldered RAM with the new CAMM2/LPCAMM2 standards. The M4 has LPDDR5X-7500 120GB/sec memory and there are already LPCAMM2-7500 120GB/sec modules, with even faster ones on the way: https://www.anandtech.com/show/21390/micron-ships-crucialbra... Two of those modules working in parallel would hit "M Pro" speeds…

These are still well below what Apple offers at the high end and you can not buy systems like that right now. If you want high memory bandwidth on the CPU today, you will be charged a big markup on Epyc/Xeon/ThreadripperPro CPUs and motherboards, rather than the DRAM.

Re: New iMac with M4

#86

Post by jsheard »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #82
randmeerkat wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then again, the rest of the industry has figured out a way to make slottable RAM almost as fast and compact as soldered RAM… Just be patient, the EU will take a large stick and force Apple to allow users to replace their RAM soon too.

Very unlikely. Apple can argue that less than 1% of computers users ever upgrade their memory (which is true), and after all, did the EU intervene when GPUs dropped their slotted memory?

> did the EU intervene when GPUs dropped their slotted memory?

The difference there is that slotted GPU memory is demonstrably impactical, but the memory on the M4 isn't demonstrably better than the LPCAMM2 module above. It's literally the exact same spec. Not that I expect the EU to do anything either when they didn't act on Apples soldered-in SSDs, which definitely aren't any better than standardized M.2 drives.

Re: New iMac with M4

#87

Post by sigh_again »

39896880 wrote: post #18
bearjaws wrote: post #6

> the new iMac is up to 1.7x faster than iMac with M1 Now 4 generations in, they are still comparing performance to M1. I get that 15-20% improvements aren't too exciting but it feels old.

>Now 4 generations in, they are still comparing performance to M1. I get that 15-20% improvements aren't too exciting but it feels old. FTA: "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"

First off, "up to" is the most bullshit metric. I am also up to 10x more productive when I get coffee, but that's when comparing to days where I just play Satisfactory all day long.

Secondly, "compared to a random HP AIO PC with a 5 year old CPU" (since there are approximately zero chances that the most popular PC in a market that is heavily Apple dominated would be a 2023 Raptor Lake) is just, once again, Apple's piss poor comparisons.

Re: New iMac with M4

#88

Post by mmastrac »

perihelions wrote: post #73
mmastrac wrote: post #10

If 32GB is the max, why not just make that the one and only model and get rid of this weird segmentation. That's a ridiculously low minimum and only just barely adequate. 8GB was practically criminal. Or -- and I know this is crazy -- slottable RAM on a device that is designed for things other than portability. Wild, I know.

Presumably, their career economists found that this "weird" pricing scheme is actually optimal—that selling tiny RAM upgrades for $200 or $400 is empirically, measurably an effective way to sort their consumers by purchasing power, and optimally drain their wallets. It goes by many names, the "microeconomic pricing strategy where identical or largely similar goods or services are sold at different prices by the same…

> optimally drain their wallets

I mean, that's basically it. The difference between part costs of 8GB/16GB/32GB RAM chips is nearly a rounding error, and they're probably eating a bunch more costs stocking and adding assembly for different RAM SKUs.

Re: New iMac with M4

#89

Post by xethos »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #58
mmastrac wrote: post #10

If 32GB is the max, why not just make that the one and only model and get rid of this weird segmentation. That's a ridiculously low minimum and only just barely adequate. 8GB was practically criminal. Or -- and I know this is crazy -- slottable RAM on a device that is designed for things other than portability. Wild, I know.

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

Says the first owner of the machine. Macbooks, and Apple devices in general, have a strong reputation for high resale value. That high resale value is based on having them last quite a while. This falls apart in a few years as hardware requirements continue to balloon.

That was fine when Intel was sitting on their ass, raking in the cash, and nearly everything else (storage, especially external drives, RAM, and even batteries weren't too bad) is upgradeable. This is less great when you can no longer upgrade the component most likely to be the first bottleneck.

Apple pays people to be smarter than me about this, but I still think it's a stupid long-term play to damage one of your biggest selling points

Re: New iMac with M4

#90

Post by chriscjcj »

Mainsail wrote: post #7

Side note, is there anyone that uses a Magic Mouse? It looks uncomfortable to use for an extended period of time and curious if that's true.

I have one and I don't much care for it. But one thing it does better than other mice is scrolling left and right. It scrolls left and right as easily as it scrolls up and down. I edit audio files and work in DAWs a lot and it's really great for that. If I'm not performing those tasks, I generally don't use it.
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