Apple, Please Keep Doing This! – iMac 2019 Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
1,812 words · ~9 min read
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I'm gonna be upfront with you guys.
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When I saw that Apple had updated the iMac,
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I didn't really think about it twice.
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I mean, it's just a refresh
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and they didn't make a bunch of noise about it.
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But then I saw that it came with
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up to a core i9 eight core processor.
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At that point, I had all kinds of questions like,
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how the heck are they gonna cool one of these
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in a standard iMac?
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Does this make the iMac Pro basically pointless?
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And how quickly can we get one?
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Well, let's answer that last one first.
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It takes about a week.
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As for the rest of it, stay tuned
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because we are about to find out.
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The Hot Docs uses the Ergo Docs design,
0:42
which keeps you comfortable typing away
0:43
for long periods of time
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and features QMK firmware and hot swappable key switches.
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Check it out at the link below.
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Within its iconic trapezoidal box
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and sandwiched between three pieces of protective styrofoam,
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we find the beast with its glossy 27 inch 5K retina display
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front and center.
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I've got to praise Apple
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for their multiple layers of protection
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to ensure that your iMac reaches your desk
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without any scratches or scuffs.
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But I do think that there's room to improve
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on the amount of non-recyclable material
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that they use for packing.
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The same can also be said for the IO.
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It's mostly great, actually.
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We've got two Thunderbolt 3 ports
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and more than enough type A,
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and you can charge up to four USBs for the average desktop,
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especially when you consider that Wi-Fi is integrated
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and the magic keyboard and magic mouse
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need to be charged so infrequently
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that they can share a cable.
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But dang it, Apple.
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If we're gonna shower you with praise
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for including 10 gig Ethernet on the iMac Pro
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and the Mac mini,
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then you've got to expect the opposite
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when you don't do it.
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It's not even an option here,
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which is a real shame because you're stuck either,
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whether you're charging up to five level network speeds
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or shelling out several hundred dollars
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for a Thunderbolt to 10 gig Ethernet adapter.
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As for the rest of the design,
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Apple has taken the if it ain't broke, don't fix it approach,
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remaining fundamentally unchanged since 2009.
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In fairness, it somehow still looks pretty sexy,
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but the bezels and especially the chin bar
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are just massive for a modern machine.
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And we feel like even timeless designs,
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need to be refreshed once in a while.
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That said, the 2019 iMac does have one welcome remnant
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of that bygone era, user expansion.
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Apple's still rocking it
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with four easily accessible DDR4 SO-DIMM slots,
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which means unlike Anthony,
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when he purchased this machine for review,
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you can skip the Apple tax and install your own memory
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to not only save yourself a little cash,
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but to push your system RAM capacity
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to a staggering 128 gigs.
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That's double what Apple has available on their store
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for about the same price.
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So Apple, I don't want to beg.
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It's not dignified, but I will.
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Whatever the next iMac looks like,
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please don't take this away from us.
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Between this iMac and the Mac mini,
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you've shown us that there are still some people there
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who care.
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It's not too late to change.
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Enough about the future though.
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Let's take a look at the machine we have today.
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So we kitted ours with the top end Core i9-9900K,
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and we're going to take a look at what it's capable of.
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So we're going to take a look at the top end Core i9-9900K-F,
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and that F means that it omits the Intel HD graphics
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that typically come along for the ride in consumer chips
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in favor of slightly improved thermals.
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Unfortunately, while our unit also has dedicated graphics,
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we opted for the Radeon Pro RX 580X,
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figuring that if we needed a lot more horsepower,
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we could get more with our Radeon 7
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in an external enclosure.
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No onboard GPU means that Intel's quick setup
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and sync video encoding is out of the question here.
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It's a good thing that Apple is big on OpenCL.
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So onto our performance analysis then.
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We're going to focus mainly on the iMac's CPU performance
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with emphasis on how well Apple managed to cool
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our beastly eight-core hyper-threaded CPU
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if they managed it at all.
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And actually, it keeps our Core i9 going
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over even long workloads with core temperatures hovering
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around the low to mid-90 degree mark.
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Now to be clear, that's higher than what I'd be comfortable with,
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and that's especially true once there's some dust in the cooler
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a couple of years later,
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but it's actually better than I expected.
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And if, like us, you have concerns about the long-term health
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of any machine that's running hot enough to cook instant noodles,
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you can use a piece of free software called Max Fan Control
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to bump up your fan speed.
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So then at full, our temperatures looked a lot better
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and a lot more sane without our machine becoming unreasonably loud.
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But not all of the news here is good,
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or even necessarily bad.
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Some of it's just kind of weird.
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While our CPU frequency is constant,
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which would indicate that we're not throttling,
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let's just overlay the base clock on this graph and...
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Ooh.
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We're a little off there, aren't we?
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Let's zoom right in on the first minute of the temperature
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and CPU speed graphs
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and...
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That's weird, too.
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It's not even thermal throttling.
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So...
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It kind of smells like a power limit issue.
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Sure enough, then, if we look at the package power
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using Intel's power gadget,
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we're actually running at around 80 watts sustained
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instead of the 95 that they rate this chip for.
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Now, it's unclear whether this is a deliberate measure
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to protect constrained VRMs
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or if it's because of a firmware bug,
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but what we do know is how it impacts performance.
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So, in some of our tests,
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we got similar performance to our comparison 9900K,
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but heavier loads like Cinebench
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revealed the 6% difference
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that we would expect from lower clock speeds.
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So, it looks like Apple managed to tame the beast,
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but they only did it by removing some of its venom,
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which is...
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sort of cheating.
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We did find outliers the other way, though.
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This is really interesting.
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So, in this Blender render,
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we managed higher performance
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than our reference comparison CPU.
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This one took us a little while,
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but here's what happened.
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Remember that controversy over motherboard manufacturers
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basically factory overclocking Intel CPUs
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by removing some of Intel's recommended constraints?
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Well, around that time,
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we switched to running all of our benchmarks
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at Intel recommended turbo boost settings,
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which is something that we can't manually control on the iMac.
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So, then it looks like what Apple has done
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is played around with the turbo clock speed dials a little bit,
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provided that the chip does not exceed their power limit,
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which actually resulted in a continuous boost clock speed
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of 3.8 GHz in this test.
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As a sanity check,
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we ran our comparison 9900K with its limiter disabled
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and a beefy cooler,
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and it performed better still.
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So, now you know.
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Which leads us, then,
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to the price.
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It's actually pretty reasonable
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compared to building your own comparable desktop setup
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with the same features.
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This is something we've talked about before,
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and it's happening again.
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If you want that hardware,
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Macs are generally actually not that expensive.
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So, the question then becomes,
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should you buy one?
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At 2700 US dollars for the Core i9 version,
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you're looking at someone who needs
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the high per-thread performance of the Core i9-9900K,
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as well as excellent, if not the best multi-threaded performance,
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8 cores really is a nice sweet spot,
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and an excellent 5K display.
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So, we're looking at photographers,
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video editors,
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and other visual media professionals.
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Looks like they kind of nailed it.
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In fact, ironically,
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in some ways, they nailed it a little too hard,
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because it's actually a better machine
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for a lot of those users
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than the iMac Pro,
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and that computer is nearly twice the price.
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So, then, if you're one of those people
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who needs that magic blend of performance
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and dorm-friendly form factor,
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you really can't go wrong.
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Unless...
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paying for computers that don't perform
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quite as the specs indicate
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and come with a mouse that you can't use while you charge it
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just...
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straight up rubs you the wrong way.
9:08
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