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Comment by microtherion | Hacker News Reader

And yet, Apple just released its thinnest iMac ever last week.

That appears to be a product of merging iPad technology with the Mac ecosystem. The display is basically a giant iPad Pro, isn’t it? They borrowed some thin from one product and applied it to another. The M1 allows it, they just needed to add a larger screen, remove some sensors, and flash a different OS.

Obviously dramatic over simplification but it doesn’t seem to be the usual kind of thin for the sake of thin design - this iMac seems objectively better than its predecessors and its thickness (or lack thereof) doesn’t seem like a problem or unnecessary constraint.

essentially yes, and even then with the current level of thickness, they coudlnt fit the power supply (or an ethernet port) inside the imac itself.

It’s going to be a stationary desktop item, so it is expected that the wires will be tucked away elsewhere.

Again, they don’t have to solve the mobile/tablet issues on this product, it’s never going to be a portable device.

Moving two items out of the main enclosures in this instance also makes the device significantly more repairable.

If it were designed like the ipad, the components would live behind the screen in a similar way. I think this is what a lot of people were expecting. They could have done that, but they chose to make it just a little bit thinner and put all the components into a big chin below the screen.

They made a trade-off to make it look uglier/bulkier/worse from the front when actually using the machine, just so that if you happen to glimpse it from the side it's a little thinner. There's not even the argument of portability to support the pursuit of thinness here as with most of their other devices. So I would argue the opposite, this new iMac is just about the pinnacle of thinness for the sake of thin design.

(You could of course argue that it's not ugly, that's totally subjective, but they clearly went out of their way to make it as thin as possible).

I think that’s fine. No one is going to buy a 24 inch IPad and then unmount it from the stand and go sit on the couch (and stare at a giant screen).

They will always be two different use cases, desktop/mobile.

Thin = less material, less cost, and more environmentally friendly per unit

No, assuming the same volume of internal components, a thicker design would have less surface area hence less material overall. Could fit in a smaller box, too.

Really wish the bezels were thinner on it and at least black. White bezels with a thick chin at bottom looks atrocious imo.

You can always buy a competitive product running on M1. /s

Well you could get a Mac mini or run one of the laptops with the external display of your choice, so yeah?

Black is for the pro

Mostly due to M1 though

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