Apple has just announced a brand-new-as-in-spec bumped Apple TV with an A12 Bionic chipset, up to Dolby Vision HDR in 60fps HFR, and a brand-new-as-in-really-new Apple TV Remote to go with it! Is it powerful enough and priced right to compete? And with what? I'm watching Apple's April "Spring Forward" event and bringing you my live analysis and reactions!
[Narrator Female] For comparison let's take a look at the previous iMac. The logic board and thermals were huge because of the power hungry processor.
Hot damn. I spoke too soon. Coleen Caicos, Justin Long, first round 30 seconds in I guess, put that in your internet bubble pipe, Intel and smoke it.
[Narrator Male] Today we're thrilled to introduce a Mac that has been built from the ground up around M1. And here it is.
I'm Rene Richie and I'm reacting live to the all new Apple Silicon iMac. Hit subscribe so you don't miss the full review and then let's get into it. Sponsored by Curiosity Stream with Nebula.
[Narrator Female] And it's incredible from every angle. It's bursting with color from both the front and the back
[Rene] The Skittle package just exploded all over the iMac
[Narrator Female] And it practically disappears when you view it from the side.
Really is very iPad like from the side. And almost shades of the Pixar iMac too, which is really nice to see again.
[Narrator Female] We wanted it to feel light and optimistic while instantly brightening up any space.
And that is Apple's current design language. They went there. You know that back to the future, retro future chic design language. They went with the iPad redesign.
From the front, iMac is clean and simple with a single sheet of glass covering the entire surface. The softer colors and light gray borders ground the iMac in your environment and allow you to focus on your content
So they are pastel from the front. They're vibrant on the back, pastel on the front with white borders.
[Narrator Female] The back is designed to really celebrate color with bold, richly saturated shades
So sort of like the Air Pods max. They're designed to match both the more pastel colors of the iPad Air and the more bold colors of the iPhone 12. They're sort of those two-toned finishes.
[Narrator Female] With every generation iMac has moved closer to our vision to make the computer disappear. And while we've had the same great design for several years we haven't had the technology to take the next big step. Until now.
And Apple is being really kind here is that Intel is not capable of producing chip sets that could exist within this size thermal envelope. They were just way too hot, way too hungry. And Apple had to make that sort of bubbled back design and try to fit in as much as they could, but M1 has no such constraints.
[Narrator Female] For comparison let's take a look at the previous iMac. The logic board and thermals were huge because of the power hungry processor.
Hot damn, I spoke too soon. Coleen Caicos, Justin Long, first round 30 seconds in I guess put that in your internet bubble pipe Intel. And smoke it.
[Narrator Female] And because M1 is far more power efficient the bulky thermal system is replaced by just two small fans.
So it should be similar to the MacBook and the-Sorry the MacBook pro and the Mac mini. Which is you won't probably even notice that the fans are there but when you do persistent workloads. Workloads that lasts longer than 20 minutes. And those fans do have to kick in to prevent the M1 from throttling down from reducing frequencies to reduce heat. You know it's saturated everything else. This will just kick that fan in, that active thermal management system.
So on the new iMac we made the display an expansive 24 inches.
So because they Thanos snapped those bezels, the design, the size is actually similar to the 21.5 inch current iMac, but it's got a 24 inch display in there.
[Narrator Female] And it has nearly 11.3 million pixels in its 4.5K Retina display.
So you get a whole extra half K.
[Narrator Male] iMac now has a 1080p FaceTime HD camera which doubles the resolution for much higher quality video
Way better than what's on Apple's MacBooks.
The camera's paired with M1, which has Apple's latest image signal processor, or ISP.
Because it's got the image signal processor from the M1 which is identical to the image signal processor in the iPhone 12. It can do all the computational photography, all the smart HDR version three features so that it can really maximize the light.
This is also the best mic system ever in a Mac.
So studio quality it is.
All of these speaker innovations, coupled with advanced algorithms enable iMac to support spatial audio when playing video with Dolby Atmos.
Ever since Apple started working seriously on the home pod what was it, you know, seven years ago and built up that giant sound lab they've really been pushing the envelope on their speaker technology, not just with the home pod or with things like the Air Pods, but increasingly like the 16 inch MacBook pro has absolutely terrific speakers. And it looks like we're getting something similar on the iMac.
It's the best sound system ever in a Mac.
Best camera in a Mac, best Mic's on a Mac, best sound system on a Mac. I just cannot wait for all the rest of the Mac. I need that 16 inch MacBook pro so badly Apple.
Now add in the power and performance of M1 and MapQuest Bexar. This experience is simply unrivaled.
So this seems like it is still based on M1, the same M1. We haven't heard anything different about core counts, for example. The idea of an M1 X would be that it would go from two efficiency cores and six performance cores, and the eight graphics cores to something like, you know, 12, two efficiency, 10 performance, 12 graphics cores maybe like the higher end versions would go to 16. High, high end version would go to 32. But if this is still based on M1, it's good, but it's definitely entry-level Mac.
[Narrator Female] And in Final Cut Pro you can edit up to five streams of 4K footage or one stream of 8K footage without dropping a frame.
And that does leave us wondering if there will be a 27 inch iMac a future event like WWDC in June, that will go to that next level. And that's when I anticipate Apple doing sort of the rollout for the next level of M1 X processes whatever they call them that do have those additional cores for those heavier workloads.
[Narrator Female] It has up to four USB-C ports including two Thunderbolt ports for super fast data transfer.
Oh so it's two USB, two USB type C and two USB-Three ports with Thunderbolt built into it. So not quite four fully functional ports. I guess we'll see how that works out to the layout on the chip if they still have two Thunderbolt controllers, or if they are doing something fancier with more controllers.
[Narrator Female] And we created a new power connector that attaches magnetically. So it's quick and easy to connect. It has a two meter color match woven cable that leads to a small power adapter. And for ethernet, check out this cool innovation. It connects to the adapter and runs through the power cable to keep your desktop less cluttered.
They have color matched aluminum keyboards, of course.
[Narrator Female] There's a magic keyboard with new emoji, spotlight, dictation, and do not disturb keys. And a lock key to instantly lock iMac.
Magic keyboards, they're sort of bringing it up to date with iOS ones, including the emoji keys.
[Narrator Female] Next there's a magic keyboard with an exciting new feature.
Ah yes, touch ID on the Mac desktop. This is fantastic.
[Narrator Female] Wireless fingerprint data transmission is made possible by a secure processor in the keyboard. It communicates directly with a secure enclave in M1 creating an encrypted channel to protect your fingerprint data from end to end.
And you know, this is secure because Apple's been doing remote unlocked for your iPhone. You've been able to use your iPhone or your Apple watch to unlock the iMac for years already. The only difference here is you have to have some sort of security built into the keyboard. I'm gonna see what Apple did there whether they used a secure element like from an Apple watch.
And there's a magic keyboard with touch ID and a numeric keypad too. Magic mouse loved by iMac users now features color matched aluminum.
I have never liked a single Apple mouse, I'm sorry.
[Narrator Female] And magic track pad still by far the industry's best has a refined shape to match the new keyboard.
I never use them though, I always use track pads. I love all of Apple's track pads, including the desktop ones.
[Narrator Female] It starts at just 1299 in four colors. And at 1499, iMac comes in seven colors with these additional features.