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Like a lot of people, I’ve always loved Apple’s all-in-one computers.
They sprang from the mind of Steve Jobs, who hated the idea of customers assembling machines themselves from a grab-bag of disparate parts.
My first all-in-one was a yellowing Mac Plus, which I inherited from my dad and eventually augmented with a whopping 80MB disk drive (so OK, yeah, at that point, not a true all-in-one, but close!).
After a short detour using a wicked-fast Macintosh IIfx and a couple of other pizza-box computers, I returned to the fold with an early blueberry iMac. Then an education-focused eMac, for reasons that now escape me. Probably ‘cos it was cheap.
Then we owned at least seven — and likely more — flat-screen iMacs, starting with a boxy white plastic one with a magnetic remote control, continuing on up to at least a couple of the 27-inch, 5K Retina models.
More recently, I’ve been using a fab and very thin M1 iMac that’s now starting to get a bit creaky.
A big selling point of the M1 iMac was how light and easy it was to move, which originally struck me as not a big selling point because it’s a desktop. Who’s gonna move it?
But I have actually moved it several times and now appreciate its portability. It made rearranging our den/home office/etc. a lot less daunting, which sounds silly but really was an unanticipated side benefit.
I also thought the 24-inch screen would be too small after using 27-inch screens for so long, but tbh, I’ve barely noticed.
The current iMacs haven’t been updated for a while, but the tea leaves say a refresh is coming, maybe as soon as this fall — and Cult of Mac writer Ed Hardy just published a well-written post about what to expect (Hint: mad fast 2nm M6 chips).
Also in today’s newsletter:
I don’t know about you, but I already find the dizzying array of color choices for many Apple Watch faces paralyzing. And now Apple’s adding more!
Wow, SpaceAI’s Grok Bot beta sounds pretty amazing, especially the task shadowing part. I really need something like this to triage my 250,000 unread emails. Do I trust Elon Musk, though, or have any desire to give him my money? No need to answer that.
🔥 DEAL OF THE DAY: For the two readers with a Vision Pro headset, Annapro’s much-loved, should-have-been-in-the-box headstrap is on sale. #affiliate
I initially wondered if the extension of Apple’s annual back-to-school promotion was some kind of scary, canary-in-the-RAMpocalypse-coal-mine kind of warning, but the explanation seems relatively benign.
The launch of the first IBM PC led to one of Steve Jobs’ cleverest marketing ideas, but it was also the beginning of the end — almost — for Apple.
We got some funny suggestions for what Apple should call the folding iPhone. See yesterday’s poll results and comments below.
— Leander Kahney, EIC.
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One more thing ...
Vision for Apple was: What incredible benefits can we give to the customer? Where can we take the customer? Not starting with “let's sit down with the engineers, and figure out what awesome technology we have and how we're gonna market that.”
Today’s poll
Who's a fan of all-in-one computers like the iMac?
Results from yesterday’s poll
Best reader comments
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