That's a little like asking why someone would buy a $3000 sofa from Pottery Barn when they could pick up something comfortable to sit on for a third the price at Costco.

The iMac is positioned as a one piece family or reception desk computer with a specific integrated design aesthetic. People who have more specific technology or value concerns are given other options.

probably niche, but we have an m4 iMac mounted to a built in desk in our kitchen. my family of 4 all have MacBooks, but the iMac gets heavy usage by all of us. kids will sit and do homework there, wife adds things to her grocery list, keeps her personal mailbox clean, does basic household web tasks. I use it to do household tech chore work, pay bills, etc when everybody is hanging around the kitchen. We all use our computers too, but the convenience factor of it's already on, powered, connected and ready to go is a draw and leads us to magnetize to it when we need it. I love it the most as I think it keeps us present with each other vs going off to a private space to do those sorts of things. Yeah we could just as easily drag our laptops into the kitchen but then you end up finding a comfy spot on the couch or for the kids in their rooms.

I have been back and forth with my wife about replacing the old intel based iMac she still uses. Because she does use FaceTime on it every day, she has been rejecting the idea of getting Mac mini + a monitor because I couldn't find a monitor with a comparable built-in camera. And to be fair, I might be able to hide the Mac mini, so it's just the monitor on her desk, but a webcam tucked on top of it, with the extra cabling does break a clean desk look. I haven't checked monitors with built-in cameras lately, so any recommendations would be much appreciated!

That 32" monitor will have a crappy pixel density. It's incredibly hard to find good external monitors that are not made by Apple, definitely not for $800. Apple will give you a display with a high pixel density and glass front.

It is a design piece. No wires besides the single power chord. Yet webcam and speakers working.

Since this is exactly what I am searching for, maybe someone here can help:

Does anyone know of a good looking display, just a slab on a stand like imacs or Studio displays?

I want something good looking for the Linux PC in my living room but almost all monitors out there are just plain ugly and bulky. Ideally 27-32" but at this point i dont really care anymore...

Thanks!

A single object to hand your kid for their dorm that will move every 8 months is much nicer than a bunch of parts and wires.

People need (!) this type of devices in representative settings, eg the reception of a boutique hotel.

Gotta say they do look amazing in hotel check ins, shop desks, retail etc.

I agree. In the case of the older 27" iMacs-- you couldn't really get a 5K screen of that quality for any reasonable cost. It made it actually useful.

1. Social signalling

2. Aesthetic

3. Pretty colors

4. Nostalgia

> You can buy a very nice 32" monitor and better input devices for less than that.

But they aren't Apple.

> You can buy a very nice 32" monitor and better input devices for less than that.

As with many things, you pay for the atheistics.

I'm not sure of anything that fits the bill. Are you?

I think you will find that 4K is generally sufficient at 32". Text is sharp enough, and a high refresh rate is probably more important at that point. There is also the issue that not even a 5090 can push enough fps at 4K in demanding games.

I've been using a new program called RetinaRelay[0] to use my 5k iMac as a second display for my M1 Macbook using an ethernet (or Thunderbolt for even better performance). Works brilliantly. It's definitely higher latency than a normal monitor (my ethernet connection is 45ms vs 5ms for a monitor) but it's not noticeable for coding and miles better than remote desktop or similar.

[0] https://www.retinarelay.com/

Apple have never released a 32" version of the iMac; even the iMac Pro was only available as a 27" model.

To me, it doesn't make sense, I would go a Mac Studio with multiple screens instead a big 32, but some people love working with one monitor.

Completely agree.

iPad docking station too

I’m still angry that they deprecated target display mode. For a company that talks so much about recycling it’s really messed up they don’t support it. Such an amazing way to give life to old but incredible monitors - you’d have to spend $1000+ to get anything remotely resembling the quality of that display. You can’t even use ones that previously supported it on current Mac’s.

Local AI already is really useful. This has been true since Qwen Flash Next and Qwen 3.8 27B rolled out. The struggle with exactly 64GB of unified RAM is that you end up having to stream the engram table from SSD because you will need almost all of your 64GB to run QFN. A 27B dense model still runs a little slow, even on an M1 Max Mac. However if you have even an older gaming GPU with 12-16GB of RAM and enough system RAM you can run this model (QFN) at a very respectable token rate and intelligence level. It is a Sonnet 5 class model you can run at home. There are new quantization techniques that make these models very good at agentic tasks.

And now if you stretch you can run DeepSeek Flash 4.1.

And if you were willing to roll up your sleeves you could build your own AI lab at home and run this model and models like GLM Flash 5.3 and DeepSeek Flash V4.1 at lower quants. The budget GPUs (like V100) are kind of not budget now, but still <5K to acquire 128GB of fast VRAM that can compete with a 5090 and actually has a lot more interesting options available IMO.

It seems so wasteful to spend premium on the hardware for local ai to be shoved into macbook form though. You'd probably save a lot building a compute node you shove under your desk that you connect to with some more comfortable but cheap thin client, maybe a refurbished low spec macbook pro (inb4 I say air or neo and people say they cannot work on inferior screens).

Then again the people working on stuff involving this much local model compute demands probably make enough where they don't care about the couple grand they'd save building their own node. I guess apple will get the bag from being the nicest prebuilt out there in this case.

That's only part of the issue - prefill is horrible prior to M5 class chips.

So it depends on what you're doing. Using it for a fun oracle without feeding it too much context per turn? Sure, an older Max chip is great.

As a coding agent doing meaningful work on a sizable project? Compared to a cheap as chips cloud option, it will take an order of magnitude more time to complete.

Puh i don't know, there might be plenty of new/better chips coming out for AI next year or in 2 years.

Isn't it also rumored that the M7 is reworked for AI?

And Xiaomi announced their AI Cube with 1.2t of bandwidth. Just because Nvidia is protecting its business by giving consumers either compute or bandwidth and Apple being something in between, doesn't mean we can't get both a lot better balanced.

Running Gemma 4 26B A4B and Qwen 3.8 27B on a M4 Pro with 24 GB - Qwen 3.8 runs fine but is slow and taxes the machine a bit, Gemma 4 on the other hand, is a better experience.

I'm running qwen 3.8 flash next with strata (q3 quant) on laptop with 5090 and 128G RAM and OMP harness. At 90t/s speed it is pretty much good enough already.

Apple killed M6 Pro, M6 Ultra and M6 Max to focus on AI chip, so yeah that'd be a more sensible option.

Will local AI eventually pull the proverbial rug out from under the big providers and the huge sums invested in building out data centers?

>The generation doesn't mater as much to me as the memory bandwidth

I don't know man?

The generation kind of does matter. I'm not gonna lie, matrix multiplication units speed things up considerably. That hardware confers a material change in capability.

Maybe from M5 up, it doesn't matter? But you're definitely going to notice the difference between M1 and M5 for instance.

Man you Apple Fans really live under a rock.

Mini PC with Occulink, EGPU dock, 750w power supply and a refurbished 3090 is 2500. It can run Gemma4:31b at 1000+ tok/sec prefill, ~40 tok/sec generation (which is slow, but a fully connected model is way better for all tasks)

if you want more specialized partial activation models like Qwen, you can get 100+ tok/sec generation.

This beats anything that Apple has by a long shot. And you can also do multi GPU setups if you want slightly slower model loading with usb4/thunderbolt ports.

TLDR; local ai has already been useful for quite some time if you arent brainwashed into believing that Macs are the best for running local inference.

> I'd rather have a M1 Max 64GB over a M5 Pro 64GB.

I am one of those: bought the M1 Max with 64gb thinking in running VMs, afterward bought a lighter Air with less memory and ended up using the M1 Max as a kind of luxury for LLMs and multicore computing.

Considering the insane memory price surge it's going to take years (or an eternity) before most people will consider upspecing their machines to run local over paying $20 per month to have the honor to loan a slice of Altman's hardware.

The only hope we have is the AI bubble bursting, but that will undoubtedly come with its own set of macroeconomic surprises.

Still on my M1 Max 64GB from release date. Love it. I don't do local AI but this laptop runs so cool and fast I have no reason to upgrade. They really knocked it out of the park on the design.

It feels just as fast as day 1 and I've never had any speed issues. Say what you want about Apple and their pricing and ecosystem but I've been using their hardware for over 20 years now and it's always been top notch.

If you buy their support/AppleCare, your support and warranty is excellent too. They don't skimp. I've seen them go so far past the extra mile it's unreal.

..really useful on a Mac. FTFY

The modern iMac is the dream desktop that I'm sure Jobs would have loved to live to see, but Apple's laptops have gotten so good there's practically no reason to buy a computer from them that you can't take on the go.

It only makes sense for niche use cases, like your grandpa who is happy to have a single spot in his home for the computer, or a reception desk at a business, etc.

Too relatable.

Though I have had good results buying 1-2 generation old refurbished Macs as my secondary machines or for family members who don’t need cutting edge everything.

It’s even more valuable now that Apple silicon of every generation is more than enough to run every non-power user use case short of newer video games.

All while complaining about the OLED price.

Wait until the ProRes version comes out before you sleep on it permanently.

it will cost a kidney + Apple would remove the keyboard and sell it back to you for 499$.

The one place where size and thickness don't matter is when it's a non-portable device.

I'm surprised they haven't yet gone the route of making a hyper thin screen and hiding the actual cpu somewhere else (something akin tot he puck for the Apple Vision display). Hell you could probably do a proprietary wireless signal and have the display be completely detached. (Or existing wifi6 or something?)

The edges of the thin monitor could be actual transparent glass.

Thinness has been frivolous aesthetics since Steve Jobs times. A thicker laptop will always mean better thermals, more silence, more battery, repairability, more ports.

it is a piece of furniture though, so aesthetics matter

You can get it with a VESA mount instead of the base.

>meaningless aesthetic choice that serves no function whatsoever

"And we’re just getting started."

It is an Apple machine, yes.

They seem to want those who would’ve bought a high spec iMac (or briefly, an iMac Pro) to instead buy a midrange-or-above Mini or a Studio instead. With the M-series, the iMac returned to its roots as the “family computer” or “grandma email box” kind of machine.

It’s too bad. A high end iMac still holds a lot of appeal, especially for those seeking clean desk setups. I’m using an MBP hooked up to dual monitors through a dock right now and it’s fine, but I do miss how clean my desk was back when it was a VESA mounted iMac Pro and companion monitor.

It's 24" 4k display with perfect 2x scaling. Good luck finding something similar. 24" != 24" HiDPI perfect 2x scaling.

I feel like in 2026 maybe they realized that "pro" users (engineers, designers) mostly just want laptops + external monitors anyway. The Apple Silicon CPUs are so f'ing good, the % of people who need an uber-desktop is smaller than ever.

24" is a good size for casual users which is the main market. You can have two roomy-ish GUI apps (two web pages, etc) side by side.

Because then they can't sell you their overpriced 27" screen.

32GB max memory is ludicrous today. We've regressed as a technological society.

How is it that after 10 years of Apple releases, people are still complaining about it "missing" feature X? Not having every checkbox ticked is Apple's way of having shiny new releases all year round.

the laptop has up to 128G as an option, but also pushes towards 10k for a laptop, insane

The M6 Pro and Max variants with higher memory support have been dropped in favor of accelerating M7.

This has been reported for many months. Sorry if you missed the news, but if you need a much higher memory variant the M5 Pro/Max are what’s available this cycle.

For me it's the other way round. I wish they would offer a space-gray or black option like they have on their laptops

Or at least give us the option for a black display surround. The white bezel around the display is such an eyesore...

The design, especially with those colors is gorgeous, yes.

they put some on macbook neos ... But one thing for sure, Apple reserve those flashy colors for entry levels models (Ipad 10/11th gen, Macbook Neo).

> £700/£800 buys you a 24" display

That's about $1000, and it buys you a 32" 4K OLED panel with a high refresh rate, better than anything the Mac has. That's the kind of monitor you would pair with a gaming rig though, and probably overkill for the kind of office use the Mac is intended for.

There may be some technical reasons for it, but I'm not convinced. The chin is a core part of the imac design language. Without the chin it would just be a display and not recognizably different from any other display. The chin is part of the design that that makes it recognizably an imac.

The chin is where Apple puts the logic board and speakers for the iMac. Yes, they could move that behind the display, but I'm guessing that'd make the display thicker (which they wouldn't want) and make the thermals harder. It's certainly something they could engineer, after all the iPad has its logic board behind the display. But it's not like the chin serves no purpose and it probably helps with the thermals and sustained performance and probably makes it easier to engineer everything for what is probably one of their lower volume sellers (compared to iPhones, iPads, MacBooks).

Makes the angle very easy to adjust.

I used to put post-its on mine too.

No.

I love the magic mouse, had one going since 2016 and it is still great. Not a fan of their keyboards but the swipe + scrolling exp. on the magic mouse is great IMO.

It's still the standard Apple mouse, no? Why wouldn't they include it in the promo photos?

It’s intentional product segmentation. Just like Intel not shipping ECC for client SKUs when DDR5 design makes it really necessary.

Perfect for the target audience!

My wife used to mock me for being adamant about 120hz+ monitors, until the day I had her try my 200hz monitor for an entire day.

Her eyes were much less tired at the end of the day.

The M5 Ultra with 256GB went from a early Dec estimated delivery to Feb now. I wonder what the 512GB lead time will be.

27 is fine, fixed a lot of the issues in 26.

macOS 27 is pretty good. They walked back a lot of the poor changes from 26

They are very popular amongst the elderly. Well specifically those of us setting the elderly up with a computer.

Mechanically straightforward since it’s all in one. Pretty much just the power cable, keyboard and mouse. Pretty unbreakable ux wise, reliably sleeps with little power draw and wakes up quickly without them questioning if it’s broken. Reasonably unobtrusive updates so they don’t go turning them off. Etc.

Popular with people who want to give a kid a computer between elementary and high school age, does everything a kid needs. With the bonus of not having to worry about your kid wasting time playing games.

Yup. My 80-year-old father is replacing his Intel iMac with one of these tomorrow. (photo editing, 3D design for printing)

We thought long and hard about a Mac Mini — and not happy about going from 27" to 24" — but a Studio Display doubles the price and he's not willing to take another chance on third-party stuff.

That’s the crazy thing, not everything has to be for you.