words cannot express my excitement to check out the new
24-inch m1 imac
why because honestly guys i've been
doing a lot of soul searching and deep down i just really don't
think i'm that into pc anymore i mean
who wants all those choices for
motherboards and displays and
graphics cards when i could just have one choice
the color actually there's a little more to it than that there's three main tiers
of the m1 imac hold on gotta just gotta open the
box oh just trying to get the you open the
thing and it moves the thing you know what let's talk about the
performance differences between the tiers a little bit later because first
i just want to get hands on with this thing it
how is really thin
you know what it kind of reminds me of in terms of proportions
a gigantic ipad
but with a huge chin on it i
wow i am like blown away
by how light this thing is meanwhile over on the pc side the concept of a
thin client is like a little nook or
something that you bolt to the back of the vase amount on your monitor but then
apple goes well i mean why don't you just put the whole computer in a
gigantic chin bar this is the top tier model so it comes with some things
that the base ones and even the mid tier one don't starting with
four type c ports on the back now every model
gets two Thunderbolt slash usb4 ones
but only the mid tier and upper tier ones get an additional two usb
3 ports other than that we've got the same 500 nit peak brightness four and a
half k display the same 1080p webcam which i am
extremely excited about i mean we're getting a
apple's mobile processing on it and b
finally decent freaking hardware for a change and
the same microphone array that apple claims gives this thing
best in class performance both from an audio input perspective and actually
ah yes there's our i mean sort of like a downward firing
sound bar there's all the internal speakers along the bottom you get the
same headphone jack power button and all that good stuff but where they
differ is in the accessories and actually in
the internal starting of course with the magic
keyboard if you go with the base model you do not get touch id on the top right of your
magic keyboard from my part i think that's honestly
already a deal breaker for me for the base model patch id is freaking awesome always has
been kind of always will be from my perspective usbc to
lightning charging cable we can put that away for now presumably there will be
enough charge to get started we ah yes good old magic mouse who needs
to be able to use it while you're charging it if it can be used for
hours after only a few minutes of charge that's
the kind of interruption to my work day that i need in my life
they have made a conscious decision not to fix it
this puppy right here this is the optional
upgraded power brick that has apple's new magsafe connector
so just go ahead and i mean does it just
grab on look at that wow it really grabs
doesn't it and gigabit Ethernet and i was really
curious how they were doing the data right because obviously this can't just be
you know 12 volt and ground right so there has to be data lines in here and
it turns out that they've got a really clever little
kind of um triangle shaped guide
on two sides of the center of the magsafe connector
which means it can only go in two ways so you've got what is essentially a
reversible connector that's got 12 conductors which would be
enough for usb 3. i wonder if it's just
lightning but is that i know lightning is not quite standard usb 2 because i'm
trying to think if that's even fast enough for gigabit
imagine being apple and just being able to like invent your own standards for
things for those of you wondering about the graphic that i've got on here by the way
this is from dbrand who sent over this ipad and sponsored this video
and they have this is going to be a
big launch for them i can already tell because this thing looks fantastic
this is the black colorway for it but you can see that the overall
pattern is going to have a common theme and that's that it has this kind of
folded steel look like damascus steel
which also happens to bear a lot of similarities to the top prestige skin
in call of duty they've got their hollow green one which i've seen already they i
think they have a couple of other ones coming and man on pretty much anything this is
going to look absolutely sick as always with dbrand skins
they are perfection fitted they've got great guides online that you can use to
make sure that your application is absolutely perfect
and their configurator is fantastic it allows you to see exactly whatever your
device will look like with whatever combination of skins and on whatever combination of surfaces
you prefer so go check them out we're going to have them at the link in the video description again they
said they really didn't like the look of the black one on this i think it looks great
so maybe i'm just tasteless but maybe check out some of their other skins for
your imac if this doesn't do it for you but we're not quite done with the differences yet there's two more that
apple tells you about one is that the mid and higher tier are
available in three additional colors so you get it in yellow orange or purple
in addition to blue green pink and silver and they both come with an eight core
GPU rather than a seven core GPU the last difference that i'm aware of
anyway is that the mid and upper tier one both come with two
cooling fans instead of one so it is possible that that second
cooling fan is only necessary because of the eighth GPU core but it's also possible
that there could be slight performance differences between the base and mid and upper tier we don't know we
haven't tested it yet this is the first time i'm opening it i guess if i spent the extra i might as
well get a plug an Ethernet cable in right i
um i'm gonna sound a little spoiled here
but i have to confess i had kind of forgotten how small 24 inches is
it does not feel like a
um thirteen hundred dollar starting at
computer size anymore that's interesting now i mean i can see why they
have a product in this size class you know dental offices or you know whatever
like they need computers too but yeah that is not a big display anymore
look at that got my verification code on my apple watch it just
works okay there's the map of
not where i am i'm actually over here somewhere but don't worry about it
that's what she said if people can't find their mouse cursor they just go
like this and then it gets big and then they can find it sorry it's just going through apple's
new secure data storage facility in china they like
built it in collaboration with a chinese government run entity
instead of hey siri sure why not hey siri open the documents
folder wow that was so much faster than just clicking on it one really nice thing about the apple
ecosystem is that default encryption look at that do
you want to use file vault to encrypt the disk on your mac heck yeah i do and we can set up touch
id is so amazing just bring back touch id
on the iphone just make the apple logo on the back a touch sense everyone wants it oh dark mode
nice neat
okay i'm just gonna have to do the first thing that i do which is turn off true
tone because don't understand why it exists now let's
talk about the difference going from this one to the high tier model because on
their website they've kind of got good better best it is pre-upgraded from 256 gigs of
storage to 512. and then you can just take the mid-tier one and upgrade to 512 gigs of
storage if you want and then it will be exactly the same thing so really there's only two tiers and
just like any m1 based machine so mac mini macbook
air macbook pro you're going to be limited to a maximum
of 2 terabytes of storage and 16 gigs of RAM which again back to
you know dental offices and the kind of places that you'd be able to fit a machine like this
is honestly probably fine because you're running safari right you're on a mac
you're not running chrome or anything boy that really is a clever idea for
cable management having the network cable just like run somewhere else and then
they go and ruin it by not putting the usbc on the bottom of the stand or
something like that god that'd be awesome but then you wouldn't be able to put it
on a monitor ARM which we all know many of these are destined to end up on
so all that's left now then is to prompt you guys to make sure
you're subscribed to Linus tech tips because the one and only Anthony young will be
putting this thing through its paces subscribe to ShortCircuit