Apple Releases New M1-Based 24-inch iMac in Spring Colors

Forgot about EoP, of course it could be that, and the hardware is, as David says, completely proprietary. But I’ve lately become interested in PoE injectors and splitters because they may solve some power location problems I have, so I’ll be interested to see what’s in there when someone takes it apart.

Ethernet cable usually comes out of the wall. Snaking it up to my desktop and into the back of my computer means cluttering my desk with another cable. Connecting it to the power brick means there’s one less cable on my desktop.

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I sold my 13" i7 32GB RAM 2TB SSD MBP for a M116GB 2TB model and I can say that the M1 completely blows away the INTEL model in every way. I was running 10GB+ of swap on the INTEL model and after I cloned it to the M1 the swap increased to 12.5GB on average. But the performance just smokes the INTEL model. My MBP gets maybe 4x the battery life, I’ve never heard the fan (mine is in a thick hard shell case) and it barely gets warm near the Touch Bar and is never hot. Just for context, I usually have 200+ web browser tabs open and maybe 10-20 programs running at any time. I’m not editing 4k or 8k video but I do some serious multitasking with a very common set of mulitmedia applications. It does fall short from time to time when I hit a hard memory limit, but far less than the 32GB INTEL model

And why MagSafe on a desktop? Personally, I’d prefer power never coming loose on a Mac without any battery.

I was wondering about that too, then I realized that the computer body was too thin to have a plug. (Same issue with the ethernet cable). Using a magnet to attach the power and ethernet lets you put the “electrical/mechanical” stuff on the outside of the case.

It’s not MagSafe per se, it’s a workaround to keep the case as thin as possible.

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A year or so ago I was getting tired of my mid-2012 iMac and was going to replace it, when Apple announced its move to Apple Silicon. You can bet I’ll jump on this as soon as it’s available.

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Could you share the process you used to go from your old MBP to the M1 version? Which process, in particular, did you use to clone your system?

I do see more swapping on my M1 Mini—no doubt about that. Is it cheating when the combined performance is still better? Probably not, but even so there’s definitely an uptick in disk activity.

When I moved from an old 2012 MacBook Air to my M1-based MacBook Air, I used Target Disk Mode to connect the old Mac to the new one and let Setup Assistant move everything over during initial setup. Worked fine.

Additional swapping makes sense, given then relatively low RAM amounts on the M1-based Macs, but as you say, if the unified memory is so much faster and the storage is also fast, who cares how Apple gets to the result?

Agreed, up to a point. I would be very concerned about prematurely hitting the SSD’s write limit as a result of swapping to it.

I strongly disagree with those who say you don’t need as much RAM due to having a really fast SSD as a swap device. Apple may be OK with this, but they stand to benefit from customers needing a new computer every 2-3 years due to the soldered-down SSD reaching the end of its life. The rest of us won’t be so happy about it.

My current Mac (a 2018 mini) has 16 GB of RAM. I fully expect to upgrade it to its maximum (64 GB) before it reaches the end of its life. I refuse to accept an M1 Mac that can’t support a similar configuration.

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I’m going to be very interested to see what happens with the SSD lifespan. It’s one of the reasons I’m happy I got AppleCare+ for my M1-based MacBook Air. I have a hard time believing Apple would knowingly create Macs that would hit EOL so quickly—the company is normally very good at maintaining support for older devices.

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I think that’s a very valid point. We don’t yet know how much thrashing this will subject to the SSD cells and how well they take that over extended time. Especially folks wanting to keep using a Mac for 5-8 years, as many here do. I would expect Apple has looked into that, but I doubt they would be too public about it. And of course as @Shamino says, they have a vested interest in people swapping Macs well before 5-8 years.

What bugs me about it a bit also is that we would be talking about adding 8GB or 16GB RAM to a config on Macs that usually end up costing at least $1k. Even good RAM is very inexpensive to Apple (despite what BTO could make you think). So this idea that people are getting a non-upgradable machine that might not last for as long as it could because Apple had to save $3 on a $1-2k device doesn’t exactly make me feel great. Obviously every $ in the BOM counts and they know that very well, but OTOH we should also consider Apple’s reputation for making long-lasting fancy kit and charging for it accordingly. I hope we will eventually learn the SSDs take all the swapping graciously allowing for M1 Macs to age well and not just that Apple skimped a bit too hard creating unnecessary e-waste.

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The Magic Keyboard with Touch ID is even more notable since it’s the first time Apple has separated the Touch ID sensor (in the upper-right corner) from the Mac, iPhone, or iPad that it unlocks. Apple claims that the wireless communication with the Secure Enclave in the M1 chip is secure, and I’m sure the engineers put a great deal of work into it.

Surely a great feat of engineering, and really nice for use with a Mac mini, but why on earth didn’t they put Face ID in the new iMac?

From what I’ve read on the internet (for example here SSD Lifespan: How Long do SSDs Really Last?) I don’t think you have to worry. It seems getting a larger SSD than you actually need can help increase the lifespan because the controller has more memory cells to spread the write load over.

Apple appears to be backing away from FaceID in favor of TouchID now.

Note that the camera in the iMac is 1080p. Resolution as a still camera is roughly 2MP. The iPhone X and original iPad Pro had 7MP front cameras and some depth sensing. So, I think FaceID would require a substantial upgrade of the video system.

On the other hand, TouchID with an independent keyboard requires making sure that the communications link between the keyboard and Secure Enclave in the computer can’t be decrypted or modified.

So, each solution provided different challenges. I’m sure there are some interesting memos within Apple rationalizing the decision.

Firstly, I think the new iMacs look great. Aesthetically that is.

My reservations are mainly related to their cost, and how Apple are nickel and dime-ing us over everything worthwhile and necessary. For $1299 I personally think the memory and SSD should be twice what they are, and ethernet should be included.

And only two ports? That is just ridiculous for a desktop system. Hopefully Anker or some other company have some clever and attractive thunderbolt-connected hubs in the works that add more ports (some of them display-capable, ie thunderbolt), Gigabit (at least) ethernet, an SD card slot, and provision for an internal SSD, and are designed to mount firmly onto the chassis somehow. This would be an essential pre-requisite to be available before I would buy one of these systems, but I do resent the need to add something like this to make the systems what I feel a computer at this price level should be provided with out of the box.

I did a price-comparison for a friend to a Mac mini, and pretty much you can get one with TWO 27" UHD displays for the same price, as long as you already have a keyboard and mouse from an older system. You need to add a webcam and speakers (if that is important to you - it would be to me) but you are getting a two display setup for almost the same price, with 27" displays rather than 24". It wouldn’t be as neat, and there are definitely drawbacks in the comparison, but it does put the price of the new iMac into some context.

I know that Apple are very focused on the bottom line as a business, and these M1 based systems will just improve their financial performance dramatically, but I worry that they are doing this at the direct cost of customer value. If the new systems started at $999 or even $1099 with their limited spec I would be less concerned, but personally I feel they are under-specced and over-priced. And I say that as someone who buys into the whole Apple value-proposition.

Remember the first rule of Apple pricing: the price will always be more than you think it should be.

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Yes, absolutely. My reservations were about the value of the overall package (and ungenerous spec of the provided features) rather than the cost per se.

How does the ethernet MAC addresses work with ethernet on the power adapter? If the iMac is swapped with a different iMac, without changing the power adapter, does the IP address stay the same?

I must say that I don’t even know how that works with USB-c ethernet adapters.

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It’s safe to assume the Ethernet controller is not in the power adapter, but in the iMac and in that sense it should behave like any other Mac. When the SoC/motherboard/iMac is swapped, the MAC address changes.

If the controller were in the power adapter, Apple would have to drag PCI all the way out to the power adapter (likely through TB). That’s a far costlier solution (offering no real benefit) compared to just having Ethernet signaling run out to the adapter with essentially nothing else in there other than a jack so people can connect standard RJ-45.

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Same thing.