First things first: the new, M1-power iMacs are visually incredible. The colours are bold. I like it a lot. I want the yellow one (above) — look at it. It’s great.
I’ve seen a lot of people say they don’t like the front of these machines. They say the white bezels are distracting and the chins are ugly. Whether or not the chins are ugly, as far as Apple is concerned, they are an iconic part of the brand.
I have an iMac Pro, which I stare at every day. I have never been bothered by the chin. I’ve also never been bothered by the size of the bezels.
My television (an old 1080p Sony Bravia) has a silver bezel on the bottom. It is ugly as sin, and serves no purpose. But I have never noticed it while watching television.
In short, I don’t think the bezels or chin are as important as everybody else. I do think the bezels and chin on this new iMac look cool, but I will not be ordering one myself.
Secondly, the new 24″ screen is a 4.5k screen. This is interesting because the 24″ LG monitor Apple sells in their stores is only 4k. At 24″, LG’s 4k monitor is too low-DPI to meet Apple’s qualifications for Retina.
The differences in resolution mean that buyer’s of Apple’s 24″ iMac do not have a matching second screen they could purchase, should they want one. I doubt this matters to most people in the market for the entry-level iMac, but it’s curious.
Apple’s external display situation remains a hot mess. They offer a mismatched 24″ LG screen, an ugly 27″ LG screenwith inconsistent build quality and no glass above the LCD panel, and a $6,300 (CAD) 32″ “pro display” with an “optional” $1,300 stand. To make matters worse, this $7,600 setup was outshone this week by the new 13″ iPad Pro, which offers a much better backlighting system with 2,596 local dimming zones. The pro display offers 576.
If none of that meant anything to you, let me be frank: Apple’s pro display for their Mac is outshone by their tablet range. As a friend of mine said the other day, you’d be better off taping four iPad Pros together and treating them as one extended display for your Mac than you would buying Apple’s Pro Display XDR.
I’ve been complaining about this display problem since 2019, and I don’t want to complain about it for much longer. If somebody who works at Apple somehow ends up reading this, here’s a note for you: it would be easy for you to fix this. Tear the computer out of the iMac and sell me just the screen. I (and I am sure many others) will give you up to $2,000 for this product. This is easy money for you. Please take it.
Thirdly: it looks like the M1’s story is mostly complete. Apple has released an M1-powered iPad Pro, MacBook Air, Mac mini, 24″ iMac, and 13″ MacBook Pro. We have never seen a computer chip across this large a range of products.That alone is revolutionary. But whatever chip powers the high-end laptops and desktops will not be the same as this M1. Undoubtedly, it will offer more computer power and better graphics.
The M1 is an incredible chip. The new MacBook Air, which I’m writing this post on now, feels as fast to me in use as the iMac Pro on my desk — yet it’s the low-powered chip. How much headroom is there above this? How far can Apple push their architecture? Will Apple have in-house GPUs that can rival what they typically purchase from AMD? How much RAM will these new machines have? How much will these machines cost?
But most importantly: Whatever comes next, will Apple please, for the love of everything good in this world, rip the computer out of the iMac and just sell me the display.