I fail to understand why someone would buy this over a Mac Mini and an external display: cheaper, more powerful, ability to change displays, only two more cables (power and data for the display).
Simplicity? My grandma doesn't want to buy an "external display", she would truly have no idea where to even start to do that. And then after she's got the Mac mini, the external display, and the cable to connect the display (assuming she was able to find the right one,) someone then has to set it up for her.
Compare that to an iMac. Go to the Apple store, drop $1k, take it home, plug in the power cable, and she's on Facebook in minutes.
That's the friction that iMac removes. If the customer has to leave the electronics store with multiple boxes from several different companies, and has the ability to buy the "wrong thing" (DVI instead of HDMI, etc.), it's probably a sign that the process can be simplified.
Let's be honest here, your grandma won't buy anything without help from someone. The leap from the iMac to a monitor+mini is not very far, with the help that will certainly be given.
Having been that "help" for many years for parents and grandparents, I can guarantee you that having a setup with as few components and cables as possible that break is more for my sanity than for their comfort. As folks get a little bit older and less nimble, random cables get pulled and drinks get spilled on keyboards.
You can book an appointment at the Genius Bar and they'll run you through how to set it up. I'm sure even the proverbial grandmother would feel confident enough to set up an iMac after that. Maybe not a Mini, though.
It's not the five minutes of extra work; it's the cognitive overhead of knowing how to do this stuff. Talk to someone who knows nothing about computers, sometime. You'll find all kinds of misconceptions and worries. "What if I plug it in wrong and break it?" tops the list, usually.
Believe it or not, some people don't want the clutter of extra cables and another box on the desktop to get tangled up in the other stuff. They'll pay the extra to have a clean setup on their desk.
Apple knows some people treat PCs like furniture. That may make you grind your teeth, but at least you have the option.
Surely, if you examine your own life, you will find many instances where you trade time for money.
Do you mend your own socks instead of throwing them out? Change your own oil in your car? Sweep your own chimney? Grow your own food? Roast and brew all of the coffee you drink? Come on.
Wholeheartedly agree, and have noticed my self-perceived break even point on the trade off between time and money moves toward sacrificing money the older I get. My father in law has a memorable quote that sticks with me: "is your time not worth more than that?"
Unless it's something I enjoy doing or my ironic sense of thrift kicks into high gear, I'll sacrifice the money when reasonable.
I do a few of those, but it's a matter of cost benefit. Growing all your own food would probably cost more than buying in many cases. You have to be extremely rich to value your time in the thousands per hour.
> You have to be extremely rich to value your
> time in the thousands per hour.
You and I can simply add a monitor in a few minutes, but it's not five-minute job if it's not a process you're familiar with. There are a lot of questions.
- What monitor do I even buy?
- What's a good monitor brand?
- Do I have to buy an Apple-branded monitor? If not, do I have to look for "Mac compatible" or something on the box?
- I have to buy cables?
- What cables do I need? (The customer will probably need an adapter, at least, as most monitors do not include a Mini-DP connector/adapter)
- Can I just use my TV?
And so on and so forth. It's a lot more than just the physical act of plugging a monitor in.
Again, it's so easy for us, but you if you work in the tech industry you really need to think outside of your own head sometimes. Imagine if car manufacturers expected us to manually adjust the fuel/air mix in the engine because it's just a "five minute job."
You could start by estimating the time cost correctly. You're assuming that the time required to select the right monitor is zero, that the time required to understand the various connection standards is zero, etc., etc., etc. The only cost you're counting is the act of unboxing and plugging it in.
Maybe you and I keep track of this stuff professionally or as a hobby, but most "grandmothers" don't. Quick: What's the best lock-in amplifier for rejecting mains interference. What? You don't know what dynamic reserve means? Jeez, you're such a dummy.
Think about how you would go about buying a piece of technical equipment outside your domain of expertise. That's what a "grandmother" is doing when he/she is buying a monitor.
I once paid $100 to a car mechanic for a job that took him about 5 minutes. The reason I did it was that I didn't know how to do it myself, so I paid whatever it took to get the job done. "Grandma" here is similar.
Always buy refurbished directly from Apple. You get a full year of AppleCare warranty attached to the purchase and can buy more years of AppleCare after that.
I've had nothing but good experiences with this - bought several refurb Macs from Apple and each one has been indistinguishable from a new machine. I always extend my warranty as well.
The only downside is that Apple will charge sales tax, which can be substantial on a $1,000 or $2,000 item. Last time I bought a MBP it was actually cheaper to get a new one from Amazon because they were discounting it. (That was before Amazon started charging sales tax in my state, obviously - otherwise it would have been a wash)
http://www.refurb.me/ is monitoring service for the official Apple refurb store. Because it's hard to know when the product that you want to buy will become available. RefurbMe will alert you by email or SMS to go buy it on the Apple Store.
Perhaps for iOS devices, but the desktop stuff can run for a long time on older hardware.
I'm personally using a refurbed Early 2008 iMac that runs Mavericks just fine. It needed more RAM and hard drive space, but that was nothing that I couldn't have purchased when I bought the machine.
I strongly dislike when people use the "my grandma" argument. So what you're saying is either you're also as technically challenged or you're just an ass for not helping her and letting her go with the less optimal purchase because it's easier to set up.
Dropping $1k to browse Facebook does not make sense, and it never will, I'm sorry.
Because some people like to have a single machine, like my mother who INSISTED on buying an iMac, because she absolutely loved the idea of having to plug only a single cable in, and not having the computer as a separate box, just a monitor on her desk. That's not a choice I would make,but she liked it,so why not?
You forgot to account for speakers - more cables there. In general, the advantage to an all-in-one device is aesthetics. If you want something in your living room? All-in-one is the way to go. If you go with a wireless keyboard and mouse, you're tethered by a single solitary power cable.
It's once place where I'm generally disappointed in Apple's competitors (I loathe Apple but I freely admit they win because they're the best). Non-Apple all-in-one devices either ugly and anemic or fail to compete with Apple on price (if Apple beats you on price, you lose). The big thing I think competitors need to learn from Apple is to stop being such size-queens. Save some money on monitor size and focus on getting the other details right.
Same goes for laptops - the average Windows laptop the same size as the the largest Macbook. Apple is one of the only companies even building in the 11" form-factor.
> You forgot to account for speakers - more cables there.
I'd love it if my current monitor came with the iMac's speakers. I don't know if it was the speakers or the enclosure necessarily, but the iMac at my last office job sounded great.
On the technical front, this one has a Haswell CPU (more efficient and has a HD5000), 8GB RAM, an IPS screen, and bundled keyboard and mouse. Also you can still plug an external monitor to "change" the display.
On the functional side, thanks to the L shaped foot with the huge cable guiding hole, iMacs "hover" over the desk and thus have almost zero footprint. It's extremely practical to be able to push documents around or move your legs and not have dangling cables or boxes occupying above- or below-desk space.
Well, at this point in time, the Mac mini is pretty old tech. It was last updated in 2012 and has an Ivy Bridge CPU and Intel HD 4000 graphics and 802.11n. The iMac is the next gen, so it has a Haswell CPU, Intel HD 5000 graphics, and 802.11ac.
Also, I think buying your own external display that is the same quality as the iMac one would be more expensive than people think... but then , most people don't need that good a display.
The Haswell CPU in the iMac is still slower then the Ivy Bridge CPU in the Mac mini. The IPC boost from Ivy Bridge to Haswell isn't enough to make up the difference in clock rate. HD5000 is a decent upgrade though.
That depends heavily on the workload. For optimized floating-point code, Haswell is a beast (16 double precision flops per core per cycle, vs 8 for Ivybridge).
My grandpa wondered about $200 dungerees. Going into the Apple store and walking out with a box is an experience people will pay for. So is looking at one's desk and remembering that experience via gazing at an artifact or suggesting that experience in conversation.
There's more to it than that of course, just as with $200 pants - they're often nicer to wear rather than good enough. So long as they fit. But they aren't usually cut for all body shapes. It's ok to say 'Not for me' and move on by which I mean that assuming this is an alternative to a Mini has already ruled out all those people who don't consider Mini's in the first place.
Assuming that you are knowledgeable about computers and not just looking for the most simple solution, its aesthetics and simplicity. Well engineered up to the very last detail, beautiful, great software, very good hardware.
There is no real competition in this space (unfortunately), so people pay a premium. If you care about how your room feels, let me tell you: it feels a lot better with an iMac instead of some ugly 3rd party monitor.
I didn't care about that as much, but now for me it is absolutely worth it.
Also, its a computer for people that don't like to invest huge amounts of time finding the "right" pc - I've started to appreciate that as well.
"If you care about how your room feels, let me tell you: it feels a lot better with an iMac instead of some ugly 3rd party monitor..."
Agreed. You'll see a lot of iMacs at design-conscious shops like art galleries and boutiques, and in architects' homes. These applications/people have different objective functions than many HN readers.
It's "becoming" the norm? That was happening 6-8 years ago. Now 1080p has been the norm for something like two upgrade cycles, and anyone who currently cares about resolution beyond that is looking at 1440p or more.
There was certainly a transition from 5:4 to widescreen displays in the 2000s, with nearly everyone but Apple opting for 16:9. I don't recall any mass adoption of 16:10 followed by a mass migration to 16:9 in the last decade, which is what you're stating happened.
If Apple is moving from 16:10 to 16:9, then that would indeed be a very recent development. If this is the case, it would be kind of sad to me (I prefer a bit more vertical space), but understandable given the economics of the panel business.
> I don't recall any mass adoption of 16:10 followed by a mass migration to 16:9 in the last decade, which is what you're stating happened.
I don't quite agree with what you're stating I'm stating. (I realize that this has gone on way longer than the original reply warranted, but...)
User teh_klev said that they were sad that 1080p "was becoming" the norm on medium sized panels, and that 1920x1200 wasn't becoming the norm, instead.
I replied that the transition to 1080p had already occurred, some time ago. I don't believe that either teh_klev or I implied that there was mass adoption of 1920x1200 (16:10), only that teh_klev would have preferred that there have been such a mass adoption, and I was suggesting that that preference (which I share, though I didn't mention it[1]) became moot last decade.
[1] though it turns out that if the screen is large enough and the resolution high enough, I no longer care about the precise aspect ratio...
Oh aye, I know the transition has happened for a while. I also realise why this happened (due to the 1080p/16:9 format being the standard in content delivery and consumer displays such as flat screen tellys). This makes it a marketing no brainer for box builders such as Dell and Apple to standardise on 16:9, the format and "1080p" branding is recognisable to consumers.
However, for those of us doing "serious" work where we need those extra 120 lines, finding a decent >=21" panel (or even 17" one in a laptop) is getting expensive/more difficult to find.
I think the extra 180 pixels of vertical resolution is what he's worried about. I am too, that little bit helps a lot, even with the dock hidden and off to the side of the screen.
It's more expensive to get a Mac Mini with equivalent performance, monitor, camera, speakers, keyboard, ram and mouse/trackpad, etc.
The gap is the closest I've seen yet—the mini used to be very underpowered and this is the lowest clock speed I've seen on an iMac in a long time. But the iMac is still the better value, especially if you want a top-quality machine. That said, I don't see how many people would want the $1100 model instead of the $1300 model now that there's such a gap between the two.
It's definitely an interesting option for schools with a need for larger computers that also have space for labs. For schools with smaller budgets and space constraints, it's hard to compete with Chromebooks for price and portability. It really comes down to the intended use: students working on graphics, game design, video, etc. will benefit greatly from iMacs; students learning typing and/or basic programming do well on Chromebooks.
The used to offer a few low-end options to schools that were not available in the regular Apple store. This iMac is probably just opening that up to the general public.
Geeks tend to forget that there is more to a computer than raw numbers.
Design, noise, materials, software (try getting that inspiron with apps like garageband, imove, pages and numbers for less than $1099), support (walk into the apple store and someone's there to help) and general ecosystem (time machine, app store, UNIX foundation (no real viruses)).
You're right of course. Honestly, I wouldn't buy any of them myself (the iMac included). But getting a better user experience does count for something. I'm just lamenting that it looks like the return of the Apple tax, which was thankfully going away with things like the MBA and the rMBP which really were better than similarly priced offerings.
I fail to understand why someone would buy this over a Mac Mini and an external display: cheaper, more powerful, ability to change displays, only two more cables (power and data for the display).
Anyone care to enlighten me?