The iMac is Dead. Good. 

LMAO at the base RAM staying unchanged for ELEVEN YEARS

I remember being so frustrated before the studio display because there were no good retina monitors. And then they announced the studio display was a 5K iMac without the iMac for the same price and so I’m still frustrated because I’m not buying that.

As someone who is still hanging on to their 2017 maxed out 27” iMac you summed it up perfectly. I don’t want to give up my 5k screen and ram to go with the M3 machine and I don’t want to pay more for a 2 box solution. I’ll just wait a little longer I think, the 2017 still working great for FCP.

ok i don’t think the iMac is dead. I think apple just said that statement because they want people to stop holding out and just buy the damn 24” iMac

Fingers REALLY crossed for a Studio Display upgrade wave soon, they really dropped the ball on supporting the Mac Studio crowd by not providing a better display offering by now.

The iPhone: “You’re holding me too close.” Apple not making a 34” iMac: “Sit closer.”

For me, the green argument looses credibility due to the integrated SOC and inability to upgrade or repair the device easily. If the user needs more power, then the only option is to buy a new device. My daughter still uses my old 2011 iMac. It’s got a couple of SSD’s in it, 16gb of RAM, I’ve upgraded the GPU to a WX7100 8gb and it has Ventura installed. I also have newer wifi and BT modules ready to install. The 27” 1440p display is still perfectly good and the benefit of the iMac having built in webcam, mic, speakers is awesome. If that iMac wasn’t upgradable it would have ended up in landfill years ago. I know I’m not the target audience, and far from a regular user, but for these reasons the “green” argument has never been something I could agree with.

I love your videos. Attention to details, deep knowledge of the subject you’re talking about. Pure Gold. You are the only one who mentioned production issues of M3 chip. The rest of youtubers completely ignore it. Thanks man, really appreciate it.

27” is not big enough for me. I’m happy to live with my 43” 4K display, which I love. If Apple still can’t do precise rescaling of their OS for different size displays, they need to be held accountable for their failings.

I'm really surprised you didn't suggest adding target display mode back to the 24 inch iMac! I'd buy one in a heartbeat if that happened. Would also love you to cover the alternatives that exist for trying to do that today - airplay from mac to mac, airplay mac to mac over usb-c (yes that's a thing!) and 3rd party options like Luna display to see what's best. I think that would be an excellent snazzy video that no one else has covered.

One of the most underrated features of the iMac/Studio Display is that they have glossy panels. Pretty much every monitor is matte to diffuse light but most of us have control over our lighting conditions in an office setting. Apple has excellent anti-reflective coatings on their displays that allow them to stay glossy and not super reflective. It is crazy to me that no one else makes a great glossy panel.

As someone that uses a 23.8 in QHD Display for my MacBook Air, watching this makes me wish competitors would try making more 24 in 4k displays. Some of us aren't fortunate enough to have a workspace large enough to support a 27 in display or larger.

Interesting to hear you returned your Pro Display XDR, I didn't know that. I went through 4 units this year because of a variety of quality issues that really shocked me, having been using Apple products for 20 years with almost zero issues. My XDRs had the vignette, but also dirty screen effect, dead pixels, wonky glass, even glue sticking out of the sides of the glass on a couple of them. Really odd for one of their most expensive items. I came from a maxed out 2013 27" iMac which is still in use with OpenCore, but have settled for a stop gap of a 30" ACD (with a Mac Mini M2 Pro) until something that isn't a 2014 iMac screen comes along.

As an owner of a 27" Retina iMac since 2015, I'm frustrated by the current options. Just been to an Apple Store this morning, and the current iMac is too small. I know I'd get used to it, but never go backwards in life. That's my motto. However, the Studio Display is stunning in the flesh. You have to see it in person. So damn pricey though. As a sidenote, I was surprised by the big difference in screen size between the 14" and 16" MacBook pro. The 14" looks tiny when next to it. You have to go to a store - all the videos in the world won't give you the perspective you need when choosing.

10:42 There’s a fifth HiDPI monitor option: the 32” Dell 6K at 223 PPI. It also serves as a thunderbolt dock, is half the price of the Pro Display XDR, and even comes with a stand! I have both the Dell 6K and XDR (and $1000 stand). You can’t beat the value on the Dell.

I would say exactly the opposite: IMacs are the most environmentally friendly Apple devices because their life cycle is the longest. Macbooks and iPhones are bought new much more often. Apple refuses to offer a larger iMac because they hoped to sell Studio Display and Mac Studio, which bring more profit than a large iMac. But customers are apparently not going along with this, so Apple has now published this almost angry statement about the iMac.

I'm frustrated at how expensive the Studio Display is, but as a daily driver it's such a nice package. I've found myself defending the display in many areas however the soft camera is absolutely inexcusable. I've been using continuity cam with my iPhone and a belkin mount... it MIGHT be able to justify the price if the camera was just that good out of the box

You make a lot of good points about screen size and resolution, device longevity, and apples green push. Whats interesting to me is how all of the issues that you bring up as to why the iMac is going to die are all controlled by apple. Apple could change the display scaling from integer scaling to something else, that would fix macos on 27inch 4k monitors. Apple could make their devices upgradable or repairable, making a larger iMac last longer and thus greener. Apple could make the experience of using a mac both good and more cost effective and less impactful on the environment while giving people the devices they want. They could... if thats what Apple wanted to do

I think two things can be true: Apple would defend the Studio Display by saying that people begged for "the iMac display without the iMac" for years & it is a low volume product necessitating a higher price. HOWEVER, people were asking for that display nearly a decade ago, and display tech has rapidly advanced, plus a large part of the price is Apple's continued insistence on never just doing the simple, easy thing and unnecessarily complicating the thing.

I paired my Mac Studio M1 Max with an LG 32" 4k DCI-P3 panel. Thought it would look like shit, but really liked it. I'm using 6k/2 resolution and haven't had a problem with pixel artifacts. Everything looks super sharp and I can fit so many apps on my window.

One note about the DisplayPort 2.1 thing: What I've read from basically all publications so far is that it’s only Thunderbolt 5 and USB4 v2 which has this capability to reverse one data receiving lane to a transmitting lane for an asymmetrical 3 Tx + 1Rx setup to deliver up to 3x more bandwidth for displays than Thunderbolt 3/4, which was the headline many publications went for for their articles (120Gb/s vs. 40Gb/s). Furthermore what complicates this even further is that Apple also has 3 10Gb/s USB 3.2 Gen 2x1 ports on the back, and for those ports' speeds to not get throttled when all of them are being used, Apple uses DSC on the Studio Display to limit the bandwidth the display itself uses to only 10Gb/s (the required bandwidth for uncompressed 10-bit 5K60 is 31.85Gb/s and DSC achieves a 3:1 compression ratio). So, Thunderbolt 4 is already used up to its maximum limit by the Studio Display when the 3 ports on the back use 30Gb/s of bidirectional bandwidth and the display itself uses 10Gb/s of unidirectional bandwidth, leaving only half of the capacity of one of its receiving lanes unused (on its symmetrical 2 Tx + 2Rx lane setup with 20Gb/s speed on each lane). And even if Thunderbolt 4 could reverse one of its lanes for transmitting data to displays, Apple wouldn’t want to do that as that would leave them with only 20Gb/s of bidirectional data for the I/O of the Studio Display, meaning only 2 of the 3 10Gb/s ports could get used at full speed at the same time. Assuming all of this is true, they actually DO need Thunderbolt 5 to be able to make a 10-bit 5K 120Hz display if they want to keep the 3 10Gb/s ports on the back.

This was an excellent video. It was very informative. Yes, larger iMac Pros will be the farthest "Green" product in the company's lineup. Just one bad component and the entire assembly will no longer be optimal, even though each of those separate components are still in pristine conditions. Times have changed. Great insight Snazzy!

so wait, what displays (other than the expensive 5k displays you showed) do you recommend for a mac mini (or macbook for that matter)? 4k 27" seems no good or did I misunderstand?

I remember when 256MB of ram was respectable, 1GB was for serious gamers or professionals, anything above 2GB was a lot, and 4GB or more was ENORMOUS. This was in the 2000s.

After doing months of research on what to replace my ageing 27 inch iMac with, I eventually went for a Mac Studio, with an LG Ultrafine 27inch 5K display. Works really well. I replaced that awful stand with an Ergotron vesa arm. The display housing feels a bit cheap and plasticky, but the panel itself is excellent, and that is what really matters, right?

This is why I built my own 5K monitor with an old iMac and display driver board from Aliexpress :). The panel is almost identical to the Studio Display, and you get that beautiful aluminium Apple design. You can also get the speakers working with some extra work (though it won't be anywhere near as good as the Studio Display). Also you won't have a webcam if that matters to you. Overall it's so nice though! Would be interested to see you take a look at something like this in a future video.

By far the best Mac channel on YT. I love the attention to details and not just reading the Marketing material. So many videos are so surface level like “smaller bezels”, “new color”, “new faster chip”

The 90's was a very exciting time for those boring beige macs. I remember the decade like it was yesterday. When my best friend upgraded to the latest Power PC in 96 or 97 with 56k there was nothing else like it. They were very stylish and innovative at the time. Fast forward 25 years and I'm going to milk my 2020 iMac 27 for all its worth. IMO it's the perfect PC for the casual user. Great display, speakers, and timeless design. No chance I'd trade it for a 24" iMac even with an M3.

I think at some point they will lower the price of the current studio display to 1000 to 1200 and then replace it with a higher end model with mini led 120 hz hdr for 1700 to 2000

I still love using my iMac Pro, the speaker are super nice and better than the Studio Display, but now Apple put me in a difficult situation and force me to consider a new Display + Mac combo, which create a lot of cluster to my desk :(

I'll never do laptops. I tend to spill my wine over keyboards. Was a long time iMac user, but now all in on Mac Mini.

Question: Could the display scaling issue be resolved with a change to the OS?

I think the iMac needs to adopt the iPhone colors. People obviously like the iPhone colors, and it's even cooler when everything matches. I know the pastel colors were easier to sell to homebodies, rather than the mobile colors of the iPhone/iPads/MacBooks. But that's such a narrow audience.

I used and I'm still using 27" iMacs, even writing this on one now (still works like a charm). 24" is a no go for me - yeah, I was using 24" monitors... 10 years ago, when we me moved to 27" and never looked back. I was waiting not only for 27" but also for target display. I don't care if they care - no 27", nothing to buy. And Apple displays... why would I buy them when I have so many other options, 4k, with things as exotic as DisplayPort, HDR and higher than 60Hz refresh rate?

I’ve still got a 2013 iMac in my living room. i5-4570R, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD (the latter two I upgraded myself), with macOS Monterey. Still going strong to this day. I would like an M3 iMac but going for the same specs is stupidly expensive.

Studio Display clears all. 600 nits, 5K, great speakers, amazing build quality, impeccable design, TB4 cable included, good webcam included, seamless integration. All those bells and whistles make it worth $1599, pretty objectively as well.

So it would be better to get a 1440p monitor than a 4k display if you need a display for your Mini?

There are two apple products that I couldn’t afford when they were new (well I couldn’t afford any apple product back then 😅) and I feel I missed out. One of them was the 5K iMac and the second the 12” MacBook. I briefly considered getting a 5K iMac last year, but it’s time has passed, and I thought about using it as a monitor for my M2 MacBook Pro, but turns out you can’t do that. These machines looked so cool! I liked their styling a lot more than the current iMac.

It's crazy that from 2017 to 2023 they went from a 27" 5k diagonal Retina 5k display to a 24" diagnol Regina 4.5k display

Great video. I think there is room for a Mac-friendly brand (maybe BenQ PD line?) to create reasonably priced 218 PPI monitors. At least LG has a 27" 5K 1560-zone mini LED FALD panel in the works for 2024.

Got the M3 from the 2015 5K 27in and my biggest concern was getting used to it... I got used to it within a few hours honestly, and I love this machine ( I do music and video editing ) and it works so damn smoothly. The days of the iMac being the machine are gone because, we have so many more options within the mac lineup that are good but, I think it will still be the center of it all, this or the mac mini.

So what is a good replacement that is cheaper than the 5K Studio Display? I am still on a 27 inch intel iMac but want to buy a new Mac but i want (at least) 27 inch screen to go with it. I love to hear some suggestions

You know, I am still rocking a pair of the old Thunderbolt Displays. Even with an adapter the simplicity is just hard to beat. The 1440 is a bit small but they are attractive and single cable function is really hard to be unhappy with.

The LG ultra fine series is a pretty great substitute for the studio display and you can get a 27 inch 4k unit for $599. I realize you're missing some resolution, but it does have hdr and runs at the the same refresh cycle. You can pay some more to get the additional pixels but with hdr and a higher refresh rate for a bit less than a studio display

Apple basically punish their customers 8 gb ram in base model. Why don’t they increase price to for base 16GB ram. Many times custom built laptops is weeks to month wait time and guarantee full over priced $200 over charge for 8 GB extra.

Can iPhone and iPad output 4K@60Hz natively? Depending on iPad model it supports up to 4K, 5K or 6K but is there any scaling issue?

I think the way to go these days is a laptop + dock that can connect you to your monitor and peripherals.

Wow the title is a bit of a shocker (“good”? I disagree!) but so happy to see you back Quinn! I’ve been clicking on your channel every day for the past week hoping you posted even though I didn’t get any notifications 😂 I hope you post more often because I really enjoy your content!

Excellent, thoughtful take as always. The iMac is beautiful and I *want* to want one... but honestly have no use for it personally (though we do like them at work for their simplicity and clean look). In some ways, I feel like the laptops have become what the iMac, and even to some extent the original Mac, have always dreamed of being: a perfect all-in-one with essentially no compromises. Except for screen size... but, as I think we're seeing with the death of speakers with headphones and ear buds (outside of audiophiles like Quinn, perhaps), I wonder if we will see the death of screens coming. Long ago, I dreamed that projectors would take over: super compact, easy to move, can post a gigantic image. But they basically failed. Now we await the dawn of augmented reality and I wonder if this will realize that dream...

Quin, thank you. As always a great take on the latest, so in lue of an all new 27 inch model that isn't coming what year iMac pro would you recommend or buy a mini and a monitor?

The tough pill to swallow with the imac, or AIOs in general these days is the lack of ability to just use it as a monitor after the components are long out of date. It's the reason I didn't pick up an m1 imac despite being in the perfect position to use one.

Mac Mini all the way for me, I have had the MacMini M1 8GB 512GB connected to a LG 49 Inch 5K Ultrawide connected with a 8K Thunderbolt to DP to get the full 5K resolution and for the last 3 years it has been amazing still runs like the first day I purchased it for everything from general office work to basic video editing, for its cost and size it’s an impressive piece of equipment.👌

What an excellent video. Some of the simply highest and most engaging content on RU-vid. Easily superior to LTT. I would love you to present documentary style videos like this with old apple products with interesting stories and the like. Like a RU-vid premium series. You are seriously the best presenter on RU-vid. I especially love your take on the narrative dissonance behind including these ludicrous, and insulting base configurations. The retina macbook pro presented over a decade ago introduced the 8/256 base model configuration. The environmental impact from these face slapping 8gb machines will be substantial. No amount of recyclable unibody mac mini enclosure is going to circumvent the fact that these machines will become unusable far earlier just because of corporate greed. An absolute stain on apples "green" efforts.

If the LG 5K ultrafine was still readily available that would be the nearest equivalent for $1k. I know the reviews were mixed but I have 2 of them and they’re great

Still rocking my two Thunderbolt and Cinema Displays. Since good 5k is so expensive, and 4k so taxing on the mac, these 2k monitors with beautiful colors seems to be the best option for me today. And they have thunderbolt docking built in. It's also frustrating that there is barely any glossy alternatives on the market these days.

yeah they absolutely need to make the "every man's studio display" but for the time being other companies can take the reign. there are so many good displays, but none as good as apple's knowledge and software trickers.

Quinn always dropping fire videos, dude should be more popular

Your channel is finally showing up in my recommended sidebar again! Not sure what happened but had to search for you manually for a few months

I sometimes use a M1 iMac at work and just this week I took a look at the display settings and was surprised to see that the default resolution is not 2.25K, it's a slightly lower resolution.

FYI: Apple literally does not care about the environment.

In terms of visual balance, two 24” side-by-side monitors look more aesthetically pleasing than one 27” or 32” screen.

I was an iMac user for about 20 years starting with my first Mac in 2003, a desk lamp iMac G3 and finishing with a 27” 2010 model that I used and abused for over ten years. I know have a 2020 M1 MBP and a 2018 intel Mac mini with an LG 5K2K ultrawide and I definitely miss the “it just works” factor.

If they were smart, they'd also offer a stand-alone monitor with identical features of the new 24" iMac, including the web cam. For optional use with a Windows PC, and include: Display Port, HDMI & USB-C/USB 4.0 ports.

it's important to note that prices for screen resolutions are also dictated by the sizes of the LCD before they're cut into panels

I'm still confused as to what to do now if I was waiting for the now never-to-arrive 27" upgraded iMac.

I’m so glad I went with the M2 MAC Studio and converted an old 2015 27” iMac that was dead into a monitor using a board I bought off eBay for around 175.00. It is even identified as a 5K iMac and looks identical to the old working iMac. I can’t recommend it enough!

What’s a good monitor that can be paired with a Mac that’s affordable and allows for integer scaling ?

I have a M1 Mac mini hooked to a 27 inch 1440p Gigabyte monitor running at 144Hz, seems fine to me, is this a bad setup? Gotta say it’s very confusing what monitor to use with a Mac desktop

Your script writing skills are superb. I was engaged the whole time even when I didn’t understand some technical terms. Good job! I have an M1 Pro laptop that still performs better in some ways than the new iMac M3 which have been eyeing. After watching this video I guess my best bet is to upgrade my monitor and wait for an M3 Mac mini.

Agree with a lot of your points, but disagree about the scaling on 4k displays. At 27", the 4k looks just fine. I daily the 5k Studio Display, and it's just a bit sharper than a 4k at the same size. Hardly unusable, even for designers.

When Apple introduced Mac Studio, it was clear to me that they couldn’t achieve thermals and performance, they could make thermal throttle as before but maybe in their tests performance was slower that the model is supposed to be replacing, the solution, make a fatter iMac than the last model? Impossible, so Mac Studio and studio display came as a solution for this, maybe in the future it can return if they find a way to solve thermals with a big display, or if Mac Studio performs better than expected in sales, they may conclude that there is no place for a big iMac.

I still use target display mode on a 27“ iMac from 2009 with my M2 MacBook pro (which works perfectly despite Apple stating everywhere it does not). The design of that iMac is perfect and the screen held up great as well.

Just replaced my 14 year old 27 inch iMac with a cheap 2020 Mac Mini M1 and a used Thunderbolt Display. It is even better than the old iMac. I don't need a 4k monitor. And now if anything goes wrong, it won't cost a fortune to replace the components.

I’ve been waiting for years for a new 27” replacement for my 2012 iMac. It’s been an excellent computer and such a shame they are not replacing that size model

As a photo / video editor / gamer but as someone who also has poor eyesight, it's too bad that there's no real any in-between for stuff on Mac. As you said they're always going for that ~217 PPI. And while my ~160 PPI Dell P2715Q 4K screen is good enough for me, it's a 27" screen. I certainly would find going any smaller quite frustrating and I was curious how things on Mac scaled as well but it looks like it has to be a hard 2:1 ratio like you said. I'm in a conundrum of needing high resolution for work and games yet also large enough to where I can comfortable see and scale it and so it seems like Mac 5K would be the only option.

So this is literally my struggle right now. I have an aging 27 inch iMac, and want to replace it, but a reasonable replacement with the apple studio display comes out above €4000, almost double what I paid last time. It's a combination of decisions that all factor into pushing prices up to astronomical levels: the lack of a large screen iMac, the absurdly overpriced studio display, the removal of the upgradable RAM option, the steadily more insane RAM and SSD upgrade prices and increasingly unsuitable base configs, the locking of higher RAM amounts to higher CPU configs, and so on. €4000 is a lot of money for a computer that I won't be using professionally, but then I also want a computer suitable for hobby development projects, and that apparently is what it costs to get that from apple. This whole situation feels like such an unforced error from apple's part, because with as many people as were buying 5K iMacs they should have had a clear upgrade path for those people, but they don't.

The studio display has 2x more storage than my iPad from a couple years ago😭😭😭😭😭😭

You always have by far the best takes on how apple functions in the general business landscape. Seriously the best content on apple by a mile, great to have somebody like you when there usually are just two sides yelling at each other 😂

I'm also one who's clinging on to my 2017 5k iMac, even used OCLP to update to Sonoma. Sadly, I think Quinn is right if there's going to be a 32" iMac, it will be super expensive and high end and will make the combined price of a mac mini plus studio display look like a bargain.

I have the mac with 24Gb of ram, but I see people in my work using the 8gb one without any major issues, yes maybe not for video editing or intensive work, but for office and browsing the 8gb one works fantastic, (not saying that the pricing is fine thou) .

Anybody know of a true replacement monitor that is as good as my iMac 5K display? I have a Benro and upper end Viewsonics on my other computers. I am going to hang on to my IMac Pro till the M3 Ultra Studio machines are out. I have really degraded the internal SSD with as much memory swapping I have done. I have 32 gb of physical ram. I work with ProRes and with 45 megapixel photos. I really resent the sealed case on my iMac Pro. I try to use my external raid 0 as much as possible to prevent swapping. Great video.

It's a tricky situation considering they sell bigger displays but you have to buy Mac mini/studio/pro. And if they did sell a bigger iMac then it would cannibalize those products. I do wish you could get a bigger iMac and let it connect to other devices like an Xbox so it would remove clutter

Thank you for this nuanced critique! It's kind of funny that you mentioned 32" monitors since I'm using one right now! I have a feeling that 8K monitors will be the next... widely adopted screen format once the price to benefit ratio is more realistic to more people, just like 4K has become. And I have every reason to believe that Apple will eventually come out with an 8K monitor with their usual marketing, but whether will it have it where it counts is another question.

What do you think of the various 1440p OLED monitors on the market for MacOS like the Alienware QD OLED monitors and the 16:9 LG/Asus monitors?

So is this scaling issue also the reason why only some apps (like ms office) look kinda blurry on an external non-retina display but others don’t …??

I have a 21" mid 2011 iMac that's been my daily driver since it was new. The mechanical disk hasn't failed once and until very recently, OS X Mountain Lion was enough for me. I've since upgraded it to High Sierra, and I still use it. It's pretty timeless, when people see it they can't tell its 12 years old. High Sierra also is nowhere near being obsolete, having many modern day capabilities. I plan on using this (yes, I'm writing this comment on it) until it can't suffice anymore.

Is there any chance for a Super retina display xdr on iPads?

My 4K display is set to "Larger Text" (look like 1080p)... Is it not pixel perfect scaling ? And as you said : everything is a grid, so it's better for watching 1080p and 4K videos !

I think the system they have now probably matches what buyers want, which is everything and all of the above, so to speak. I mean they have modularity in that you can get a display and the computer you want or need, and you can upgrade the computer whenever. Some people will get a mini, some a studio, some will get a macbook. People say they want an all in one, but maybe there aren't enough buyers because everyone actually wants something slightly different.

Why the hell is Apple still selling base model iMacs with 8 GB of RAM in the year 2023 on a computer that costs $1,300. There is literally no excuse for that...

I’m still using my 27 inch iMac 2017 most of the times, despite having a M1 Macbook Pro. The screen will never stop to mesmerise me, and as a designer I will be willing to sacrifice performance for the size, sharpness and colour accuracy of the 5K iMac display.

They were selling iMacs with 5400 rpm spinning drives just a few years ago. If you wanted an SSD you’d have to special order and wait. Non of the in store stock had an ssd.

I got the Pro Display XDR when it came out. Best decision. I look at it every day and it is just gorgeos. If it would die today, I'd have a new one tomorrow without thinking twice. Best workflow upgrade I ever did.

I need sources. What is the source for tha graph at 7:11? You're supposed to tell us the sources.

Wait… so the m2 MacBook Air 15” is actually using non integer display scaling? Is it going to be janky? I just ordered one with 16gb ram.

I really need to replace my 2015 5k iMac. What should I get? Or should I wait? I can’t edit 4K videos on it. My iPad Pro is faster than my iMac now.

You always have great videos, man! This one is no exception.

Is it possible to post the source links for the scaling chart shown @ 10:45?

I disagee with the segment about the environmental impact of the iMac. Its no more wasteful than the laptops. In fact it shared a lot of laptop components. The laptop just has the advantage of being able to carry it with you but that doesnt affect the wasteful nature being the same as their currently top selling laptop segment

I would love more 5k monitor options personally. 4k being a multiple of 1080p sucks for screen real estate since I'm used to 1440p otherwise which 5k would be an even multiple of.