Nathan Edwards Reviews the iMac M4 for The Verge

From Nathan Edwards’s 6/10 review of the M4 iMac for The Verge:

I also do not love that the stand has no height adjustment, and you can’t swap it for a more ergonomic option without buying an entirely different computer. Apple sells a version of the iMac with a VESA mount, but it doesn’t come with a stand at all, and most height-adjustable VESA mounts are not as pretty as the iMac. The Studio Display has a height-adjustable stand option, so we know Apple can make one it’s willing to put out into the world. It just hasn’t done so here. But whatever. I have hardcover books. It’s fine.

It wasn’t Edwards, but Nilay Patel, who reviewed the Studio Display for The Verge, but in that review the $1,600 cost — which called out the $400 surcharge for the optional adjustable stand — was one of the three bullet items under “The Bad”. So it’s not hard to guess that if the M4 iMac had an optional adjustable stand, it would still be listed a con, because surely that option, from Apple, would cost at least $300.

(I’ve used a Studio Display with the pricey options for nano-texture and adjustable height ever since it came out, and consider both options well worth the cost.)

But the weird thing about Edwards’s review is that the whole thing is predicated on his not seeing the appeal of an all-in-one computer. I feel the same way, personally. My primary computer is a MacBook Pro that I connect, lid-closed, to the aforementioned-in-parenthetical-aside Studio Display most of the time. If I were to buy a dedicated desktop Mac I’d get either a Mac Mini or Mac Studio and connect that to a Studio Display. But the iMac is obviously intended for people who want an all-in-one.

It makes for a very strange, dare I say pointless, review. It’s like a bicycle review from someone who admits that they only ever walk or drive a car and don’t see why anyone else doesn’t walk or drive everywhere. In theory, someone who doesn’t care for genre X can write a review of something from genre X, and their dislike of the genre might provide a unique perspective. (David Foster Wallace wrote a masterpiece of the genre with the title essay in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again regarding a weeklong Caribbean cruise.) But the review still needs to gauge the product accordingly, for what it is. Does anyone make a better all-in-one PC than the iMac? If so, who? If not, why is this a 6/10?

★ Friday, 29 November 2024