Apple delivered the 4K iMac many fans have been waiting for this week, but it’s not quite the all-in-one powerhouse some were expecting. Look past its beautiful design and you’ll find a lot of drawbacks you probably wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) expect to get with a $1,500 computer.
The upside is, this gives another great topic for a slanging match.
So join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we go head to head over one question: Is the 4K iMac a total ripoff?
Killian Bell (Writer, Cult of Android): So, Luke, I’ve been thinking about this new 4K iMac. When the rumors promised us it was coming, I got a little excited about the prospect of an Ultra HD display inside a beastly little all-in-one. I don’t need a new desktop, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to afford it — but I couldn’t help but ponder the possibility of getting one anyway.
That was until I saw its price tag and specifications. Now I feel like anyone who buys the 4K iMac is slightly insane, and I’m disappointed that Apple would sell a machine with so many drawbacks at such a crazy price. Let me explain.
The biggest issue I have is that Apple decided it would be fair to give customers paying $1,499 for a new computer a 5,400 rpm hard drive as standard. Sure, it has 1TB of storage, but it’s going to be a massive bottleneck in an otherwise powerful machine. What is this? 1999?
To upgrade to a solid-state hard drive, which is what you should get with a $1,500 computer, it’s an extra $200 for 256GB of storage, or $500 for 512GB. Apple offers the Fusion Drive, too, which is cheaper — but it has even cut corners with that, reducing the size of the solid-state component in the 1TB option ($100) from 128GB to just 24GB.
Photo: Apple
Then there’s the graphics. Intel’s integrated graphics have certainly come a long way, but there are going to be limitations with the Iris Pro Graphics 6000 in the 4K iMac — particularly with all those pixels to power. Forget playing the latest games at high settings. You can’t even add a dedicated graphics chip if you want to, because Apple doesn’t provide that option.
Now, I know the iMac is a beautiful machine, and I know part of the appeal about Apple computers is that they “just work” out of the box. But do you realize that with $1,500, you could build an insanely powerful PC with a faster processor, dedicated graphics, faster storage, more RAM, and add a 4K monitor and still have change left over?
Sure, it won’t look as pretty — though you can get pretty PC cases nowadays — but it will be better at almost everything you throw at it. You could even install OS X on it if you really can’t do without it — that’s exactly what I did when I built my “Hackintosh.”
I understand this means building your own machine, and to some people that’s kind of scary. But it’s actually much simpler than it looks, and you get a whole lot more for your money. To me, the 4K iMac just seems far too overpriced for what it is.
Care to defend it, fanboy?
Photo: Apple
Luke Dormehl (Writer, Cult of Mac): Here’s the problem, Killian. You’re not normal. Now I’m not saying you’re a special unique snowflake, or in any way impugning your irrational love of Samsung, but simply pointing out that, when it comes to computers, you don’t represent the general public. The 4K Retina iMac is, essentially, a high-resolution Mac designed for the masses. It’s not cheap, but you get a much larger display than you do with, say, a 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro.
At the same time, you don’t have to worry about a computer that takes over the room in the same way the 27-inch 5K iMac does. It’s a starter high-end Mac — and it’s good for what it is. Not everyone is going to want to build their own machine. My dad recently retired and, as someone who was pretty much computer illiterate, he now owns a Mac. You can take it out of the box, set it up in less than 15 minutes and know that it’s going to work. Apple support is great, and there’s no concern whatsoever that the latest update is going to break his machine. He doesn’t need to spend hours reading obscure Internet forums to find out if El Capitan needs X tweak or Y driver just to do what most people expect a computer to do as standard. In a way, we’re arguing at cross-purposes here, because you’re approaching this from the view of a power user on a budget.
The 4K iMac isn’t the greatest computer Apple has ever made, but it’s gorgeous, reliable, and doesn’t really carry too many downsides. The price is definitely a factor, but I’d argue that you get what you pay for, and I’d be surprised if you can claim after years of writing about Apple that you’re shocked at it not being the cheapest option around.
Killian: You certainly make good points, Luke, but I’m not backing down — so let’s turn this over to the readers now. I know I’m asking for trouble by throwing these opinions on Cult of Mac, but I want to know what you think. Could you really be happy with a $1,500 computer that has a 5,400 rpm hard drive?
One other thing: You may have noticed we changed the format of Friday Night Fights this week, so that the conversation doesn’t go back and forth between Luke and I too much. Is it better this way, or do you prefer the more conversational format we were using before?
Friday Night Fights is a series of weekly death matches between two no-mercy brawlers who will fight to the death — or at least agree to disagree — about which is better: Apple or Google, iOS or Android?
Killian Bell is a freelance writer based in the U.K. He has an interest in all things tech and also covers Android over at CultofAndroid.com. You can follow him on Twitter via @killianbell.
39 responses to “Is Apple’s new 4K iMac a total ripoff?”
If you are a Mac fan, you know that you can get a PC for half the price with the same or better features. This is nothing new.
The 27″ for the price is a much better Mac for the $300 upgrade price.
Agreed, last I read, there is only one other 5k display on the market. Dell’s 5k display is $2500 itself.
27″ has more screen AND an honest to goodness GPU with it’s own memory.
As well as the ability to upgrade ram. It’s really a no brainer.
This means the 27″ iMac is a BARGAIN!
I much prefer the conversation format
Where can I go to buy one of these all in one Android PC’s?
I am an Apple fanboy, I admit it. I’ve had a Mac of some sort or another since 1990.Yet, I still think putting a 5400RPM drive and integrated graphics into a $1500 system is a bit of a ripoff. I’d expect better from Apple.
I agree. I’d really like to have the 21.5″ iMac, but I’m more than likely to go ahead and get the 27″ due to value. 5400rpm HD is pretty pathetic. 7200rpm should be minimum starting point. We’ll have to see what iFixit’s tear down will allow to be upgraded by the consumer.
… precisely, nothing at all since everything is soldered to the motherboard. The repairability is 1 out of 10 and it’s a nightmare to disassemble.
Correction: you would have expected better from Apple when Steve Jobs was running the show.
See?
it is a pretty poor Mac a performance stand point. But then so are the recent Macbook laptops as compared to the Macbook Pros.
The iMac still has all the fundamental design flaws which have prevented me from buying an iMac for years now. The placement of the sd card, usb and headphone jack on the back of the Mac is irritating. The performance aspects are especially vexing considering the price. Not just the video card and storage, but a mere quad core? This is a desktop, not a laptop. There is no reason to limit the HDD to 5400rpm or the cpu to a single quad core.
I am sure it will be a bang up student machine. But aren’t students all getting laptops these days?
To be fair, Apple has been using a 5200rpm drive in the 21″ Macs for years. What you’re really paying for here is the 4k screen.
I have my eye on the new skylake 27″ iMac. I will be coming from a customized Mac mini that I whipped up.
Betteridge’s Law of Headlines says the answer is “no”.
If you don’t want a 21.5″4K iMac, don’t buy one.
The thing about Macs also is their ability to hold value for a long long time. In general I’ve found that if you decide to sell your Apple product after a few years, it can still fetch a chunk of change – I recently sold an iPad 1 for a decent price. Also, though I’m a power user at work, at home I don’t need all that muscle all the time – I’m happy with 5 year old hand-me-down iMac that runs El Capitan just fine. Everything include MS Office for Mac runs well.
Does anyone realise that this new iMac price tag is really a bargain? Yes they are cheap as hell. You are paying the price of the monitor and the computer that comes with it is for free. Do you realise how much a stand alone 21.4 inch 4k monitor costs? At the moment apple launched this computer last year no good 4k monitor was cheaper than 1500 dollars. they are significantly cheaper now. but the cheapest samsung worth 600 bucks, which leaves you with only 900 bucks in order to construct you hackingtosh.
While I agree that the 5k version is a great deal, and the 4k version is not the ripoff that the anti-Apple goons make it out to be, I have to call you out on the statement that “At the moment apple launched this computer last year no good 4k monitor was cheaper than 1500 dollars.” – that’s incorrect. Dell has had quality 4k displays, in both 24″ and 27″, for quite some time now. I bought one last year for $450 (with a $50 discount but still…). Using it now to type this in via a 15″ Macbook Pro.
Those cheap 4k displays have terrible color compared to Apple’s iMac. Compare apples to, uhm, Apples and you’ll see that you can’t find a comparable 4k monitor at that price even today.
Dell ships many of their 4k displays only after being color calibrated. That said, one look at the new iMac 5k and the display is clearly superior to anything else out there, especially for the price.
Not to “pick nits” but the 4K iMac includes the Intel Iris Pro 6200 not the 6000.
Anyway, last year when Apple introduced the 5K iMac it was heralded as a breakthrough not only in technology but in price. That was because it was immediately compared to the only other high quality 27″ 5K display on the market at that time, the $2500 USD Dell. But, for the same price as the Dell standalone monitor Apple included a whole computer.
Today Dell sells that same monitor for $2200 USD but the 27″ iMac now starts at $1800 USD and it still includes a whole computer!
This year Apple introduces us to the new 21.5″ 4K iMac starting at $1500 but what many don’t quite notice is that Apple’s 4K display is 4096-by-2304 pixel resolution not the standard 3840 x 2160 pixel resolution of other 4K displays. That’s a difference of over 1.14 million pixels.
Now I’ve searched and could not find a single source that could tell me what a 21.5″ 4096-by-2304 pixel resolution display costs on its own, never mind one that is the quality of the one Apple is including here, but I imagine that it is the price of that display and Apple’s desire to hit the $1500 price point that accounts for the decisions made regarding the other components.
I imagine that next year when the entire line of 21.5 iMacs goes 4K there will be fewer complaints about the price. Mind you I don’t expect dedicated graphics, I think that will be reserved for the 5K iMac, but the 5400 RPM drive will be moved down to the new base model with a starting price point of $1100.
Personally, I think what Apple has released here is quite astounding!
There is no excuse any more for using an 5,400 rpm hard drive even on a budget option, let alone a $1,500 machine. The integrated graphics I can give it a pass on because the cost of dedicated graphics would add more substantially to the price which the higher tier machines already cater for, and not everybody needs dedicated graphics.
I’ve been looking at buying an iMac for the past year myself but Apple going with AMD graphics has put me off again. Hopefully they will use a decent NVIDIA graphics card in their -next- refresh.
I think the next version of the iMac will be all SSD and get rid of the bulge. (And potentially the chin.) I think a 5400 rpm drive isn’t a great option. But at the same time, it’s the entry level point for the 21 inch Retina Mac. Apple tends to go with 5400 rpm drives because of lower failure rates (I think) vs. 7200 rpm ones. But one needs to keep in mind that a 1TB drive is going to be denser than the 5400 rpm drives you might be used to. So you might not actually be for sure getting the lack of speed you assume.
Either way this model is probably the last version of this form and next year’s will be the big redesign that they’ll show off
It is pretty clear that Apple doesn’t hasn’t had anything interesting to offer in the desktop area for a few years now. Hackintosh is the way to go for desktops. On the other hand, Apple laptops are top notch. I have the impression Apple doesn’t care about desktops anymore.
Looks like loads of people cared about this argument…
5400 RPM hard drives for anything other than storage, in 2015, are nothing short of >>>AWFUL<<<. Even the latest Intel processors and fast RAM can't make up for such a crippling resource bottleneck.
Anyone considering one of these should insist on the SSD upgrade (and definitely not the Fusion Drive), no matter how much it adds to the final price. At that point you're probably better off with the 27" 5k iMac anyway.
I have wondered about the default options of various models. For instance, last Christmas I bought a new 27″ Mac, paying the price of the upgrade model – for the basic model and a fusion drive. It was a no-brainer, but it wasn’t the upgrade Apple defaults to.
Apple products are never rip-offs. The 4K iMac is well worth its price. It will last easily 10+ years – longer than any PC.
Those who believe Apple products are rip-offs simply are not discerning, are not as educated, are tightwads, and are those who don’t have a good enough job. Even poor people who love great products will save to buy an Apple product such as the iPhone.
Also it is insane that there is no option for internal storage higher than 3TB…with no possibilities to add second drive to mini anymore, and no drive bays in the Mac Pro, Apple has become way too expensive to replace my 2010 Mac Pro with 26TB storage (4 x 6TB + 1 x 2TB)…
Apple likes to keep performance down in lower priced machines. As has been stated above, the price reflects the 4K monitor. This decision will likely result in a huge glut of sales at the next level iMac, with the 5K and a fusion drive which is much faster. You may not like it, but from a business standpoint, it’s a good decision. As to gaming on Apple Hardware, Killian, really? Apple has never been a gaming platform, it isn’t who they are after. Hard core gamers, that is. They want the masses, not the fringe.
Sure you can buy a PC for less money, but then what do you get? WINDOWS. You know, that super-buggy POS with all kinds of security holes.
Owning a Mac is more about the user experience than the hardware. It’s for people who are tired of all the issues in Windows, and want a more stable experience with a far better UI.
I put my money where my mouth is. – I love the iMac. And what is even more important: My wife loves her iMac. So I have just bought the 21,5″ 4K model for my wife. And the speed of the hard drive had absolutely no importance in my considerations.
In 2009 we abandoned the PC and Windows world completely. We got iPhones and an iMac. – For the first 20 years of my (second) marriage my wife had hated PC’s both at home and at work. Years and years of crashes, installation of “important security updates”, searching for drivers and so on. New Windows systems. Sigh.
For the first few days/weeks it was very stange working with the iMac and this very different operating system and the keyboard where some buttons were completely missing.
At first it was “my” computer, she used. Then it became “our” computer. And for a long time now, it has been “her” computer. Finally, last autumn I had to my my own iMac. Just the regular one with the best of the graphics cards.
Now we have just ordered the silver/white iPhone 6s for my wife and the grey/black one for me. She gets the brown bookbook case, I get the black.
My wife’s iMac has always made som noise from the fan. Nothing to disturb a PC user, but a disaster for a noise-sensitive person. The iMac I just got makes no noise at all.
So when the 4K iMac became available here in Denmark we immediately ordered one for my wife. We both use our iMacs a lot, but since we are “consumers”, not “creators” we do not use the harddisk much. It has our old CD’s in iTunes and all our photos and films. Our “creator-data” are all stored in iCloud Drive. So they are also available on our iPhones and our iPads.
We know that we could have bought “something” or “everything” cheaper, but it would not be iMacs. The software we know how to use. The automatic upgrades of software. The totally hassle-free installation process. The Time Machine and it’s super-easy restore process. The ability to send music to the stereo system through Airport Express. The way my wife can use AirPlay to send TV shows directly to the big TV screen through Apple TV. The pleasure to see that the next version of the operating system does not kill your computer. It makes the computer quicker!
We also like that the Wacom Tablet simply connects and works perfect. And that my Plantronics BackBeat Pro headet automatically is connected to my iPad AND my iMac at the same time. And it switches automatically to the machine which play sounds at the moment.
My wife and I are just over 60 years old. And we are sick and tired of trying to be “computer engineers” and “software engineers” to get a cheap or a “better” solution.
For us the best solution is a problem free solution. And this is what we get from the Apple Products and the Apple Eco-System. – Also, we really use the Eco-System. In my/our/her iTunes resides 1405 apps at the moment. Many are not used any more, but several hundred are distributed between our iPhones and iPads. It is not games. It is something we consider useful in some way.
No computer problems, no Android problems and a smiling wife who actually now gets a part in all the smart things you can do with the Apple products. The wife can now use the new iPhone to record 4K film and actually see it on her computer. And the new iMac will make no noise. I think that the tTB with 24 GB Fusion Drive is just about right for the way my wife use the computer. – This is reason enough for me to pay a little bit extra than the computer engineer explain is necessary.
My wife’s iPad mini is rather new. She read books on it. A couple of days ago when she lay in bed the iPad suddenly started talking to her! It was one of her friends who called on the telephone. But since the iPad was active, the call was redirected to the iPad. – My wife did not know this feature and got WERY surprised. But she adapted. Tonight she used the iPad Mini to call out for pizza. No need to raise from the couch to get the iPhone, you see. She gets it, and she uses it.
That is why price is not terribly important.
That might be the longest strawman argument I’ve ever read.
– The person who wants to build their own PC and the person who wants an iMac made by Apple don’t even live on the same street.
– Much of the appeal of the iMac is its style, build quality, and lack of fuss. If those aren’t qualities you value,you can certainly makes argument that you, yourself, are not the target customer.
– Like many Apple foes, you focus on meaningless stats in a vacuum, and not real world performance. Don’t tell me about rpm; tell me about actual seek time and throughout and how that will affect my video playback, etc.
“But it’s from Apple” is getting a little worn. Overpriced products (re: above article), useless products (iWatch? C’mon), and buggy software.
They need to change their motto to “well, it’s still better than a PC”
About the 21.5″ iMac: I think Apple had to cut some corners because the new improved retina display (with enhanced colors) might cost a large part of the price of the iMac. Regarding the lack of discrete GPU – that probably has to do with overheating beside the additional cost. And most importantly, it’s true that the 5400RPM HD isn’t a good idea to have, however if you add only $100 you’ll get a much faster fusion drive with the same capacity. The fact that it “only” has a 24GB SSD component is no cause for worrying, because the similar Seagate SSHD has only an 8GB SSD component and is much faster, too than an ordinary HD, in addition to the iMac’s fusion drive’s SSD being based on ultra-fast PCI-e with NVMe vs. SATA 3 for the Seagate SSHD. Also, for the vast majority of work, it will act as a pure SSD so everything will fly. The most often used parts of the OS and most often opened applications and files are stored on the SSD part based on the person’s usage patterns. So when you boot into OS X, or open your usual files or apps, it will be directly from the SSD, bypassing the HD and hardly using it. If you change the stuff you work with, then it will adjust accordingly. IMO 24GB is enough for the majority of things. I agree, though, that the 27″ iMac is a better bargain if you have the place on your desk, and a few extra hundred dollars.
Here is an idea for buying a 27″ iMac, which I am considering buying myself: buy the low or mid range 27″ iMac with the base 8GB of RAM and with the 256GB SSD upgrade, then buy on the OWC website their 32GB RAM for this late 2015 model: 1867DDR3S32S for $264 at this time, and finally buy MyDigitalSSD 512GB external USB 3.0 SSD for $200 (on Amazon) – this is where I’ll put my time machine backup and still have plenty left for large folders/files (especially those that I don’t use frequently) and that I’ll exclude from the internal smaller SSD – so there will be enough space left there, too. The decision between the low or mid range 27″ is mostly due to the GPU M380 vs. M390. If I am correct, the M390 is much faster than the M380, and in addition, in the mid range iMac the 256GB SSD upgrade costs $100 vs. the low end iMac, where it costs $200. Due to this discount, you save $100, and since the base mid range costs only $200 more than the low model, the difference in price including the SSD is only $100 – very little, so it definitely seems a better bargain to choose the mid range (for a total of only $100 more).
The sad part is that this use of low end parts is totally unnecessary. Apple has the highest profit margins in the business, and claims that its main objective is always customer satisfaction. What? So stop putting mobile processors in desktop machines, and stop putting 1999 hard drives in 2015 computers. Or, at least give us a supported upgrade path…
I’m willing to bet that El Capitan has enough disk caching improvements to cover 80% of users use cases that make the rotation speed of the hard drive less important. And for crying about the 24GB of Fusion drive space, has anyone considered that you can essentially fit the entire os plus any swap space easily on this amount of storage and significantly speed up the computer? I want to see benchmarks instead of spec sheet cry babies before I dismiss the 21.5″ iMac.
And for power users on a budget, you know you can simply buy (or reuse) a 256GB SSD drive in a thunderbolt enclosure and make your own fusion drive with the internal drive for about $150 right?
The 5400rpm drive IS a rip-off but then again that screen is gorgeous and for someone like me who is time poor but has the money to buy one it is the screen that sold it for me for editing my 50MP Canon images and seeing the resolution that I cannot fully see on the 2012 version. Im storing my images on a separate 4GB SSD drive (50MP are huge files) and Ive not noticed any issues thus far.