Winning design; superb 4.5K screen; huge webcam improvement; idiot-proof
No height adjustment; Touch ID should be standard; max volume not loud enough
The new iMacs are fast, friendly and approachable, and they come in lots of colours. I’ve called mine Donald. Why? Because its yellow hue is not really yellow, it's full-on bling gold. It’s like working in front of Trump Tower.
The design team at Apple might not be exactly chipper to hear that, personally, I’m not convinced about the colour of my iMac, but they should be delighted that I’ve given it a name. Would you do that to any other PC? I think not. I’ve only been using it a few days, yet I’ve already grown very attached to it.
After the rapturous reception previous M1-chipped devices have enjoyed, it’s no surprise this first iMac with Apple’s lauded M1 processor, a 4.5K display and super-sleek looks could be the ultimate family PC. Priced from £1,249, which sits it between the cost of a new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro (both also sporting M1, of course), you get an out-of-the-box, slick and capable computer that an idiot could set up and get running in minutes.
Well, idiots who don’t want to think about how to set up a PC, for one. Yes the new Mac mini has M1, too, but you’re going to need all the peripherals including a display. So for a few hundred quid more you get an all-in-one home computer that is as easy to get started as an iPad.
Apple is marketing the new colourful iMacs as ideal to be in the living room, or den, not confined to the study or spare bedroom. The thinking is that while the jaunty hues make them seem more of a lifestyle device, combine this with the plug-and-play nature and a smaller form factor (it’s less than half the volume of the 21.5-inch iMac, while the overall footprint is down by 30 per cent) and all of a sudden people are going to deem it acceptable to plonk one down on their kitchen countertops.
Well, it may be okay for large North American floor plans, but it’s still a bit sizeable for most UK kitchens. Still, Apple is right it would not look particularly out of place in the house if you did choose to free it from the confines of a dedicated work room.
When Apple first revealed the new iMac’s styling in April, it was immediately apparent it had a design hit on its hands. Apple also knew what it was doing with the launch video. Multiple dancing 11.5mm-thin iMacs in green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, blue and silver pirouetted across the screen in a far from subtle reference to the original “Colours” ad for the old G3 iMac.
This, of course, was the iMac that made Jony Ive a household name. The friendly, accessible design and simplicity of use made this the Mac you actually wanted in your home. As the mission for the new iMac is pretty much the same, why not copy that ad?
But Apple has another reason to reference this old campaign. Jony Ive was involved in the design of this new iMac, despite having left Apple back in 2019. Hardware design is a long process, so perhaps it’s not surprising that Ive’s fingerprints are all over this new desktop. But, interestingly, Apple would not confirm or deny if he worked on the 2021 iMac after he left the company – just that he had worked on it.
Apple has used a softer tone on the front of iMac with a bolder shade on the back. This means Donald has a nice pastel yellow on the front, thankfully, while the full Fort Knox-effect is reserved for those looking at his stand or rear.
The colour-matched Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad again echo the G3 iMac design, but they are fun. Other little joys are the magnetic power cable at the rear and the headphone jack at the side (a necessity thanks to the slender proportions), which I wish Apple had done all along.
Some had knocked the new design for having a ‘chin’ at the bottom of the screen and thin white bezel around the display. I can’t see what the fuss is about. The casing is so thin it would be churlish to demand that there be no space to put important things like speakers and fans, not that you can hear the two fans as the iMac is so quiet thanks to that M1 chip. The bezel is thin enough to forget about.
In fact, that 24-inch 4.5K Retina display, despite not being mini LED as on the new iPad Pro, is superb. Sharp, bright and vivid. So much so that it even meant I had to use my reading glasses less while working on it.
Squeezing superior sound into impossibly thin devices is something that Apple has become adept at since the first iPad Pro. Here the audio bods have seemingly had a ball, with a six-speaker sound system including two pairs of force-canceling woofers resulting in detailed and expressive playback, be it from music on Spotify or movies on Netflix (spatial audio kicks in when playing video with Dolby Atmos, too). It’s not quite loud enough, mind you – something to consider if you are going to use this in a noisy playroom or den.
Many would cite the M1’s grunt as the best thing about the iMac. Yes it means you get impressively fast load times, a slick operation across the board and even good games performance, but for me it’s the new camera and mic setup that makes this a great home computer.
The specs are as follows: a 1080p FaceTime camera with double the resolution, a larger sensor for better low-light performance, while that M1 chip improves image quality further by correcting video on the fly, analysing and enhancing at the pixel level at over a trillion operations per second, so Apple claims. Noise reduction is brought into play, along with tone mapping for more detail in bright highlights and dark shadows.
All this works. Just looks at the contrast screenshots here (you're going to have to forgive the lockdown hair), one from a MacBook Pro with a 720p FaceTime HD camera, and then the new iMac 1080p version. The difference is stark. Look at the extra detail in colour and shadow. The three- mic array is also a huge improvement, with noticeably considerably better audio quality as beamforming helps those mics ignore background noise and instead focus on your voice.
This setup is perfect for Zooms in lockdown, just as we are coming out of it. Though we’re all going to doing many more video calls from now on, of course. Apple sold this upgrade as a response to the times we are living in, but I’d bet this bump in spec was planned way before the pandemic hit. Had Apple known, they might have gone for an even better camera.
Perhaps it’s best they didn’t though. One gripe is that the new camera shows up too much detail for my liking. I’ve got used to a certain amount of forgiveness from a rubbish webcam. Now my skin blotches, red face and craggy skin are there in high-definition for all to see.
The iMac ain’t perfect. There are a few issues. It’s not height-adjustable, so some will perch their new computer on a pile of books to get the desired level (something Ive might recoil at the thought of). The base model has fewer ports and doesn’t include Touch ID on the keyboard, which is a great addition to the iMac, but one that should have been standard, surely? The less said about the Magic Mouse the better. And the RAM is not upgradable, even if the 8GB of unified memory (which can be bumped up to 16GB) is more than enough for nearly any family.
The new iMacs are unashamedly aimed at people already in the Apple ecosystem. Yes, they are more expensive than other one-box PCs out there, but the iMac buyer won’t care. They’ll want it to, sigh, “just work”. Which this does, and then some. It works on its own and seamlessly with all the other iOS devices you will have lying around, handing off notes and emails without a blip so you can start one thing on your iPhone or iPad then move effortlessly to the iMac.
The design, though, is a genuine feather in Apple’s cap. It looks gorgeous. Apple wanted to make a computer that could sneak into home spaces where you wouldn’t normally place a computer. With the new iMac, I'd say it has succeeded.
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
