Refreshed iMacs inbound

People don't "need" an AIO, but it's a very nice package. You can go with a Mac mini but by the time you've bought the LG Ultrafine 5K and the mouse and keyboard it's more expensive and worse.

Fair enough!

Personally I like small bezels, so this design is a no for me... But the ARM version with a display that looks like the Pro display XDR is definitely something that looks good imo
 
It would be nice if the new base model iMacs came with 16Gb/512Gb, instead of 8/256 but I doubt Apple will miss the opportunity to charge £400 for £50 worth of RAM and storage.
 
It would be nice if the new base model iMacs came with 16Gb/512Gb, instead of 8/256 but I doubt Apple will miss the opportunity to charge £400 for £50 worth of RAM and storage.

Maybe for the bigger one, I don't think the smaller base model will be anything other than 8/256. Happy to be proven wrong, but Apple generally loves to sell people 5-10x overpriced RAM, and 2-4x overpriced SSD.
 
but Apple generally loves to sell people 5-10x overpriced RAM, and 2-4x overpriced SSD.

Which gets my goat and has in the past swayed my decision away from buying Apple products. It's like being outright told "Here's our product, we've slightly underspecced it on the basics, just so it's not quite as good as it needs to be, but we're really going to stick it to you if you want a little more."

My S3 Apple watch needed a complete wipe in order to install the last software update and my backup iPhone 6s with 16gb is practically unusable because iOS keeps grabbing 9gb for 'Other'. It's all because Apple nickel and dimed on the basics even though these devices are still supported.
 
Which gets my goat and has in the past swayed my decision away from buying Apple products. It's like being outright told "Here's our product, we've slightly underspecced it on the basics, just so it's not quite as good as it needs to be, but we're really going to stick it to you if you want a little more."

My S3 Apple watch needed a complete wipe in order to install the last software update and my backup iPhone 6s with 16gb is practically unusable because iOS keeps grabbing 9gb for 'Other'. It's all because Apple nickel and dimed on the basics even though these devices are still supported.

The larger iMac has always had a user replaceable RAM (easily from the back), CPU (more difficult but easy once you open it up) and SSD (needs a £15 adapter, but relatively easy for PC building people). This is why it's been such a great device for its price, you could always buy the base model (to get that 5K screen) and skip the overpriced upgrades and do them yourself. I bought the base model in 2017 and upgraded it with 7700K, 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD all combined for less than Apple's 16GB/512SSD upgrade. I then sold off the existing CPU, RAM and SSD and managed to recover about half of the cost of the upgrades as well.

I just hope they don't screw it all up with Apple Silicon and solder everything to the board. SSD will definitely be soldered (SSD controller is now onchip), but they don't have to do it for RAM. But that will likely happen and we'll have to pay 5x for the RAM :D
 
I just hope they don't screw it all up with Apple Silicon and solder everything to the board. But that will likely happen :D

I'm 100% expecting an APU like the M1 chip with RAM and GPU integrated. The unified memory architecture is a big bonus to performance but obviously isn't upgradeable.
 
I'm 100% expecting an APU like the M1 chip with RAM and GPU integrated. The unified memory architecture is a big bonus to performance but obviously isn't upgradeable.

Memory is off-chip, on-package, relatively irrelevant in terms of performance compared to off-package. Unified architecture doesn't require memory to be on-package. They likely did it for cost/size reasons rather than performance. A14 for example uses off-package memory (PoP), performance is the same.

They'll have to move it off-package if they want to have more than 16GB, as no 16GB LPDDR4X package exists.
 
I just hope they don't screw it all up with Apple Silicon and solder everything to the board. SSD will definitely be soldered (SSD controller is now onchip), but they don't have to do it for RAM. But that will likely happen and we'll have to pay 5x for the RAM :D

The M1/X won't have upgradeable RAM, that's the thing. I can just about get away with the low SSD (the iMac is obviously not a gaming machine, so for my use it wouldn't need lots of storage) and if the worst came to it I'd plug in the 1TB SSD that I have in a USB enclosure. I think M1+ is only going to reduce user choice when it comes to upgrades since the only way to do so will be to replace the entire computer, though presumably with an iMac someone will figure out a way to rip out the innards and leave the screen intact.

EDIT - are you saying that iMacs will have their RAM separate to the SoC?
 
The M1/X won't have upgradeable RAM, that's the thing. I can just about get away with the low SSD (the iMac is obviously not a gaming machine, so for my use it wouldn't need lots of storage) and if the worst came to it I'd plug in the 1TB SSD that I have in a USB enclosure. I think M1+ is only going to reduce user choice when it comes to upgrades since the only way to do so will be to replace the entire computer, though presumably with an iMac someone will figure out a way to rip out the innards and leave the screen intact.

Recently Apple has been better at upgradability on desktops with iMacs and Mac Pro, but we won't know what happens. External storage is simple, Ram upgradability is more important because you might genuinely want to upgrade it down the road and have no options if it's soldered.


EDIT - are you saying that iMacs will have their RAM separate to the SoC?

All commercial computers in the world have their RAM separate to their SoC, existing M1 computers included. The chip fabrication process for DRAM is different to SoC/SRAM, it's literally not possible to build them on the same chips for any commercial product. Apple buys DRAM chips from the market, like everyone else and puts them on their boards, whether it's on the CPU PCB or on the motherboard PCB, it's never on the same chip.
 
All commercial computers in the world have their RAM separate to their SoC, existing M1 computers included.

What I meant was, RAM on the M1s is not currently upgradeable. What you buy at the start is what you're stuck with for the lifespan of the device. Assuming an iMac comes with an M-series SoC, how will the RAM be upgradeable?
 
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