Apple imac 24in
It comes in purple – nuff said
The original imac was revolutionary in 1998, but in recent years Apple’s all-in-one desktop has become stale. The innards kept pace with modern demands, but it’s been a decade since they did anything close to daring with the design.
With this latest revamp, Apple is being daring again – and on multiple fronts. The 2021 model arrives in an explosion of colour that recalls the lineup of the original imac G3 so memorably soundtracked by the Rolling Stones’ She’s a Rainbow.
And more importantly, the computer has been refreshed… inside and out. A floating screen with a chin on a sturdy hinge might be familiar, but the Apple logo is gone and – apart from the silver option – plain metal shades have been replaced by subtle yet luminescent hues of blue, green, pink, yellow, orange and purple.
Concerns about the white bezel being a distraction are soon dismissed, although the prominent webcam dot does irritate and you might have to prop it on a book since the screen height can’t be adjusted.
Side-on, it’s thin. Around the back, the colours are scorchingly vibrant. It echoes the ipad, and looks impressive next to the familiar 27in imac. This feels like a computer that wants to be in living spaces, not just offices… which is just as well, the way work life is going.
1 Every breadth you take
Apple calls this a 24in model but the display is 23.5in across the diagonal. Still, it’s superb, packing in more pixels than larger 4K screens: this is a 4.5K display, with 4480x2520 pixels at 218ppi. It’s bright and colour-accurate, thanks to P3 and True Tone tech.
2 Square way to heaven
In use, it looks wonderful. Even at around half brightness, photos, videos and games look the part; ramp it up to full and the colours get seriously rich. That said, despite Apple’s infatuation with curved corners, these four are ruthlessly square.
3 My sweet board
Input devices come in matching colours – the keys on our purple keyboard stood out nicely. It’s a shame Apple hasn’t used an inverted ‘T’ for the arrow keys, but Touch ID works perfectly, with a larger target for your digits than the tiny one on a Macbook.
4 When the chip comes in
This is the first imac since 2006 to eschew ‘Intel inside’, instead being driven by Apple’s own M1 chip. In performance terms, our 8-core review unit with 8GB of RAM blew away a 2018 Macbook Pro. Benchmarks put it on the same footing as the M1 Macbook Pro.
5 Appers’ delight
M1-optimised apps range from nippy to stupidly fast. Pixelmator Pro’s machine-learning smarts in particular continue to wow, but we had no issues running Photoshop, Logic, Korg Gadget and a bunch of games. Remember, that’s with only 8GB of RAM.