Apple unveils the new iMac with "Apple Intelligence" and "strikingly thin design"

I don't WANT a thin, sleek computer. I want more ports than the Pacific Ocean. I want a laptop I can bludgeon someone to death with. I want it to have such processing power, the fans are loud enough that I get noise complaints.

thinkpad gang 😎
"I'm a PC!"
- The woke left destroyed computers! :(
On the new iMac, all four USB-C ports support Thunderbolt 4 for superfast data transfers
It probably has more USB connectivity than 90% of computers. Since they're all Thunderbolt, you can probably connect a dock or USB hub and add a lot more USB devices.
i miss classic thinkpads
https://mntre.com/reform.html

I love thermal throttling under even mild workloads because my computer is designed only for aesthetics and the only cooling solution is "well the body is aluminum so thats like a heatsink i guess"

In Apple's defense, Apple Silicon processors are at least better about thermal efficiency.
On the other hand, tech companies should have learned from the Red Ring of Death and stayed away from this form over function thing.
- True, the new M chips do run a lot cooler, its at least an improvement over their intel macs which would throttle if you tried to do literally anything. This could be solved by 1mm more of thickness and a laptop fan but apple understands their fanbase and would never do that.
- Cost vs cooling efficiency isn't there yet. Maybe it gets better after a few more years of research, maybe it hits a dead end like thermoelectric pads, hard to say without insider knowledge.
The m series processors don’t really overheat
- They are more efficient for sure, but whether or not they overheat is a matter of how much passive cooling that box really has, e.g. the Macbook Airs still have some issues with throttling, I haven't looked at the specs but maybe they power limit the chips in the imacs at the cost of some performance in order to not hit TJ max, but if that's the case why not just buy a higher end mbp?

I can see why the OP only used the first third
The rest starts ok then veers off into nonsense
Me going to my high school reunion solely to tell the jocks "You were right about everything. You were trying to help me."
Although it's something the comic touched up on a bit, I'm surprised there isn't some businesses that's all about repurposing e-waste. Just install ubuntu or something and then sell them for cheap.
- There's plenty of marketplaces that sell only refurbished electronics. It's how I got my laptop.
- I'm surprised there isn't some businesses that's all about repurposing e-waste. Just install ubuntu or something and then sell them for cheap.
  there are some. Not enough, and probably way more outside the imperial core, but I've seen a few. I think it's getting better as time goes on and tech iteration slows down. 10 years ago it would've been something of a struggle to run modern web pages on a 5 year old laptop, let alone an office suite, much moreso than using a 2019/2020 laptop today.
  The bigger thing now I guess is the proliferation of people not even having a computer and just using their smartphone for everything. Smartphones are treated as an absolute essential, so people just suck it up and buy a new one when they can't get any more life out of the old one, rather than adapting their usage. Mandatory app updates and built-to-fail batteries and other components just seal the deal
- The closest thing is recycling the gold from circuitboards.

You can call Apple Silicon a lot of things but "not performant" isn't one of them. In laptops they've demolished Windows offerings for years (Lunar Lake is only just now trading blows with M3), and in desktops I don't think you're getting any better CPU performance at that price point (especially considering it comes with a 4k monitor).
The caveat is GPU and gaming performance, but people really shouldn't expect much from integrated graphics.

I don't have a particular chip on my shoulder about Apple but who tf are all these people who want "AI" bullshit on their devices

Rubes
it's literally just a bunch of tech dweebs making these decisions who only hang out with other tech dweebs so they have no idea what the average person wants
- Most people want longer battery lives and cheaper repairs, they've wanted those for years. Instead, we get AI which can reply to texts for us, that we still need to proof read anyway. Which is just a soulless amalgamation of the words of everyone we've never met
Wait, you don't want a Bazinga key dedicated to making shit up by burning rainforest?
I unironically talk to AIs a lot because it's easier than talking to actual people

Consider Ellen Willis:

If white radicals are serious about revolution, they are going to have to discard a lot of bullshit ideology created by and for educated white middle-class males. A good example of what has to go is the popular theory of consumerism. As expounded by many leftist thinkers, notably Marcuse, this theory maintains that consumers are psychically manipulated by the mass media to crave more and more consumer goods, and thus power an economy that depends on constantly expanding sales. …] When a woman spends a lot of money and time decorating her home or herself, or hunting down the latest in vacuum cleaners, it is not idle self-indulgence (let alone the result of psychic manipulation) but a healthy attempt to find outlets for her creative energies within her circumscribed role. [8]

just because I'm halfway through reading this and it stuck out to me

my computer is 10 years old in my defense

- I havent been able to focus enough to finished the redsails article, i would never have caught this, thank you
great quote, thanks. I think this is also compatible with Ads Don't Work That Way which argues that rather than psychically manipulating consumers to crave stuff, ads just build social consensus (you know that other people have seen the ad).
- Fits with this quote I thought was from Parenti but actually from Stanley J Baran apparently?
  "Mass media doesn’t tell you what to think, but it tells you what to think about."

my old boss would always insist on a Mac desktop for his work computer, so his computer spend was like 3 times mine and he would upgrade nearly twice as often.

I did video editing, GIS computational analysis, bespoke data processing/management, graphic design for printed resources, and interactive digital interfaces.

he checked his email and struggled to open PDFs. one time I needed him to sign a PDF when no one was around to do it for him. it took him 45 minutes of focused concentration and when he sent it back, it was somehow upside-down, backwards and on the wrong page.

I took a screenshot of it and showed it to people sometimes.

i prefer clunky durability, redundancy, and raw power

plus i like a large space to work in and swap out parts.

Holy shit right? Absolutely loved pfsc, still remember building up a bunch of new ones and then starting the story over again to catch up. I still have the book and have lent it to friends, and it's always been interesting to see what they think of it.
Also this unlocked a memory where one year in college for a party I made an "America Is Okay I Guess Sometimes" t-shirt. Relevant comic:
Actually kinda great to look back and see how I was already on the path to
by 2012 lmao

Waste aside these look ugly as shit

as someone who had multiple computer monitors with big CRTs, one of which was fully 2' deep and took up half of my desk, yes, the thickness of a computer has sometimes mattered a bit

Colors and design are pretty nice, I'll give em that

It just looks like an iPad on a stand, which looks like a giant iPhone.
I can get the "unified design language" thing, but like try to make something cool.

I go to a lot of bullshit fancy offices for work and now that I think about, I haven't seen a Mac in years. They all have PCs. Who even buys these anymore?

My company uses Macs. It's miserable. Even after 3.5 years I can't get used to this shit OS. At least the shell is mostly usable compared to Windows, but damn.
Our entire dev team uses macs and we're not the only mac shop
Eh I dunno graphics designers like them because the screens are pretty good, probably some music producers too.
Can't imagine somebody buying it for their home tho.
I dunno if it's still true, but they used to be basically required for corporate type graphic design work.
Software developers. Are the fancy offices that you visit for work mostly unskilled labor?

actually it very frequently matters how thin and small computers are, just not personal computers

I like Apple products but I basically use them until they are no longer supported.

I'm pretty shocked the iMac is still around, these things are ridiculously expensive compared to just getting a Mac Mini and a monitor separately.

You're overestimating the iMac's target market. These are the people who call Geek Squad to plug in their TV.

Woke?

If you get the red one you are more commie

I'm just happy that these (and presumably the rest of the M4 computers) come with 16GB of RAM as base so that they'll have a longer service life