iMac 24” M1. Any problems with them? (Poll)

[MrMister111]

I've ended up doing a clean install as Monterey had started to crash every night and 12.1 didn't fix it...

I still think my iMac's a great computer - but it did work better on Big Sur 11.6

I have my fingers crossed that Monterey 12.6 will be as good - then having learnt my lesson I'll not be in any rush to update to whatever comes next!

A lot update straight away I agree when we shouldn’t really even though numerous beta tests. I’m as guilty, although iOS is normally quite good for updates maybe should wait a bit on MacOS!

That’s bad that you had crashing though, even after 12.1, at least it’s MacOS that, hopefully, can be fixed easier, be worse if it was hardware.

 

[coso]

Bar the touchID button needing pressing sometimes, I didn't have any bug on Monterey, updated on day 1.

 

[ZebedeeG]

A lot update straight away I agree when we shouldn’t really even though numerous beta tests. I’m as guilty, although iOS is normally quite good for updates maybe should wait a bit on MacOS!

That’s bad that you had crashing though, even after 12.1, at least it’s MacOS that, hopefully, can be fixed easier, be worse if it was hardware.

Yeah, I am kicking myself for updating my M1 iMac too soon. I was suckered in by the "Tab Groups" in Safari, which is something I find really useful.

If only I'd known that Safari would be updated on Big Sur too (My 2014 MacBook Air is still runs on BS), I may have left Monterey well alone for a good few months... D'oh! ?

I feel confident that the crashing was software as I has no issues prior to upgrading. But I do have AppleCare if it does turn out to be more serious, so I'm not losing any sleep about it.

It's feeling more stable after the clean install - but time will tell...

 

[ZebedeeG]

Bar the touchID button needing pressing sometimes, I didn't have any bug on Monterey, updated on day 1.

I think it's luck of the draw. There must be so many different combinations of hardware and what software people have installed on their computers that some have no issues whilst others have a nightmare...

I haven't yet had so much as a glitch on my old 2015 iMac running Monterey.

But reading what people were posting about the beta versions, I do think that Apple released the OS too early and have made lots of us unwilling beta testers!

 

[Allyance]

Absolutely no problems, just upgraded to Monterey 12.1. Display is perfect. Speakers better than expected. I was a professional sound contractor for 20+ years, and I owned and managed several retail audio stores, so no expectations for internal speakers. I have a great sounding home theater system and just upgraded my tv to a top of the line Samsung 4k. No need for the iMac to fill those needs.

 

[tchung5]

Only problem I have is the annoying coil whine. It can be heard clearly in a quiet room at over 1m. I'm very sensitive to high pitch whine. Others can barely hear it.

 

[petvas]

I have my 24" M1 iMac since June and am extremely happy with it. The system is very fast and I never ever experienced issues with it. Even with 30 apps running at the same time I didn't have memory pressure, or memory leaks. Even when running Final Cut Pro and exporting 4K HDR video..The display is very good, but of course it can be better, especially by adding ProMotion and a better color uniformity (which you really see in a completely dark room when displaying completely back content...).

 

[MrMister111]

I have my 24" M1 iMac since June and am extremely happy with it. The system is very fast and I never ever experienced issues with it. Even with 30 apps running at the same time I didn't have memory pressure, or memory leaks. Even when running Final Cut Pro and exporting 4K HDR video..The display is very good, but of course it can be better, especially by adding ProMotion and a better color uniformity (which you really see in a completely dark room when displaying completely back content...).

Do you have the 16 or 8Gb version? To have 30 apps running at one wow that’s really good. There has been reports of memory leaks, but I expected that to be MacOS but someone above said they swapped machine and got better?

I’ve read the screen is supposed to be really good.

Only problem I have is the annoying coil whine. It can be heard clearly in a quiet room at over 1m. I'm very sensitive to high pitch whine. Others can barely hear it.

I’m “hearing” a lot about this. Is it that bad for you that it distracts you? Hand you contacted Apple support? at least to even get it reported so Apple acknowledge it, the more reported the better if it’s an issue.

 

[Bodhitree]

Only problem I have is the annoying coil whine. It can be heard clearly in a quiet room at over 1m. I'm very sensitive to high pitch whine. Others can barely hear it.

I have pretty good hearing and have listened for this, but have been unable to detect it. It leads me to think that likely not every iMac suffers from this.

 

[MrMister111]

I have pretty good hearing and have listened for this, but have been unable to detect it. It leads me to think that likely not every iMac suffers from this.

May sound daft but have you put your ear right up to the iMac in a quiet room and checked? As you say some can’t hear but doing this they can.

This is just to prove as such that it is there but obviously great if you can’t hear, just to see if it has got it or not.

 

[petvas]

Do you have the 16 or 8Gb version? To have 30 apps running at one wow that’s really good. There has been reports of memory leaks, but I expected that to be MacOS but someone above said they swapped machine and got better?

I’ve read the screen is supposed to be really good.



I’m “hearing” a lot about this. Is it that bad for you that it distracts you? Hand you contacted Apple support? at least to even get it reported so Apple acknowledge it, the more reported the better if it’s an issue.

I have 16GB of RAM. I wouldn't get any less for my usage scenario. Yes, the display is very good apart from the color uniformity issue, which is really visible under extreme dark conditions. I am very happy with my iMac.

 

[MrMister111]

I have 16GB of RAM. I wouldn't get any less for my usage scenario. Yes, the display is very good apart from the color uniformity issue, which is really visible under extreme dark conditions. I am very happy with my iMac.

Yeh 16Gb definitely way to go I think, even for future proofing. Is this a common issue with them do you know? Does it bother you or is it only in extreme scenarios.

Thanks

 

[NeonIbis]

someone above said they swapped machine and got better?

That was me, but I'm not tech-y enough to really know what was going on. The memory leak was in Microsoft Word, which was using crazy amounts of RAM (multiple GB for a handful of 100k text files) and not releasing it until I quit the application. I didn't have the problem on the replacement iMac with the same OS and same version of Word, but I imagine there are countless variables.

 

[AppleShareholder]

The M1 Mac mini and the M1 iMacs were some of the worst purchases I've ever made in my life.
The performance of the M1 chip is grossly exaggerated by Apple fanboys. The UI is not buttery smooth like on Windows. I can feel the choppiness and stuttering like when I open a folder and there's a pause for 2 seconds. Using Windows all my life where everything is smooth and fast makes me ultra sensitive to the choppy performance on the Macs.

My Windows PC specs:

• i5-8400
• 8 GB DDR4 (Crucial. Forgot frequency)
• GTX 1050 TI 4 GB GDDR5 VRAM
• 500 GB Samsung EVO 850 SSD

My specs are pretty poor for modern-day PCs, but I was promised unparalleled CPU performance and a GPU performance trumping my 1050 ti. Real-world performance shows the opposite.
I believe Apple is developing their chips for good benchmarks, but these results aren't reflected in real-world performance.

The one thing I do like is the fingerprint scanner. It's really been helpful logging in to my profile or an account online.
Other than that, Windows does pretty much everything better than Macs.
This will be my last Mac purchase. I'll stick with it for 2 years to see if I change my mind, but I'm pretty confident that Windows is superior.

 

[MrMister111]

The M1 Mac mini and the M1 iMacs were some of the worst purchases I've ever made in my life.
The performance of the M1 chip is grossly exaggerated by Apple fanboys. The UI is not buttery smooth like on Windows. I can feel the choppiness and stuttering like when I open a folder and there's a pause for 2 seconds. Using Windows all my life where everything is smooth and fast makes me ultra sensitive to the choppy performance on the Macs.

My Windows PC specs:

• i5-8400
• 8 GB DDR4 (Crucial. Forgot frequency)
• GTX 1050 TI 4 GB GDDR5 VRAM
• 500 GB Samsung EVO 850 SSD

My specs are pretty poor for modern-day PCs, but I was promised unparalleled CPU performance and a GPU performance trumping my 1050 ti. Real-world performance shows the opposite.
I believe Apple is developing their chips for good benchmarks, but these results aren't reflected in real-world performance.

The one thing I do like is the fingerprint scanner. It's really been helpful logging in to my profile or an account online.
Other than that, Windows does pretty much everything better than Macs.
This will be my last Mac purchase. I'll stick with it for 2 years to see if I change my mind, but I'm pretty confident that Windows is superior.

Wow that’s really disappointing to hear. Is it really just Apple fanboys exaggerating though. What about reviewers etc, they all seem to agree that M1 and MacOS work well and give good results.

Did you buy the MM and iMac at same time? If not why buy another as they have the same performance really.

Surely there must be something going on if it takes 2s to open a every folder you have, can’t imagine no one should complain about this also if so.

Have you tried a factory reset and see how it performs?

 

[petvas]

The M1 Mac mini and the M1 iMacs were some of the worst purchases I've ever made in my life.
The performance of the M1 chip is grossly exaggerated by Apple fanboys. The UI is not buttery smooth like on Windows. I can feel the choppiness and stuttering like when I open a folder and there's a pause for 2 seconds. Using Windows all my life where everything is smooth and fast makes me ultra sensitive to the choppy performance on the Macs.

My Windows PC specs:

• i5-8400
• 8 GB DDR4 (Crucial. Forgot frequency)
• GTX 1050 TI 4 GB GDDR5 VRAM
• 500 GB Samsung EVO 850 SSD

My specs are pretty poor for modern-day PCs, but I was promised unparalleled CPU performance and a GPU performance trumping my 1050 ti. Real-world performance shows the opposite.
I believe Apple is developing their chips for good benchmarks, but these results aren't reflected in real-world performance.

The one thing I do like is the fingerprint scanner. It's really been helpful logging in to my profile or an account online.
Other than that, Windows does pretty much everything better than Macs.
This will be my last Mac purchase. I'll stick with it for 2 years to see if I change my mind, but I'm pretty confident that Windows is superior.

Ok, I'll bite. There is absolute no comparison between Intel based machines and M1 based computers. Single Core performance is great and the CPUs are energy efficient. Since I bought my M1 iMac I haven't heard the fans go off a single time. On my Intel iMac I used to hear the fans many times every day, just by running Software Update. Windows has never been smooth in any way. I use Windows every day on my work and I have been using Windows since Windows 3.0. There is nothing worse out there in terms of quality. If you had issues with your Macs then maybe you should have a good look at what you have been doing with them exactly. If you are running Rosetta based games for example, then of course you would experience low par performance. Everything on Apple Silicon works smooth and battery life on Apple silicon laptops is amazing. I don't know what you have been doing with M1 Macs, but this is certainly not the experience the vast majority of users has been making. Even Windows enthusiasts have admitted that Apple Silicon is much better than what Intel or AMD currently have to offer. Let's also not talk about the mess we call Windows.
Macs of course do have issues. They are not perfect, nothing is. The difference though to using Windows is light years better than what Microsoft offers..

 

[AppleShareholder]

Wow that’s really disappointing to hear. Is it really just Apple fanboys exaggerating though. What about reviewers etc, they all seem to agree that M1 and MacOS work well and give good results.

Did you buy the MM and iMac at same time? If not why buy another as they have the same performance really.

Surely there must be something going on if it takes 2s to open a every folder you have, can’t imagine no one should complain about this also if so.

Have you tried a factory reset and see how it performs?

I originally bought the Mac mini, as my plan was to replace the Mac mini every 5 years or so, keeping my monitor and accessories. I thought it would be the most cost-effective way.
Unfortunately, Apple made a few things difficult for 3rd party accessories:

• Eliminated HiDPI on sub-4K monitors, meaning that texts appeared blurry and tiny
• Removed smooth scrolling on 3rd party mouse - Scrolling was just so laggy and stuttery
  • I installed a 3rd party app to enable smooth scrolling, but even that didn't completely fix it

I returned the Mac mini and bought an iMac, as I was told to use only Apple-branded accessories for better compatibility.

I feel like if you were on Macs all your life, you wouldn't notice how sluggish MacOS is, but anyone who's been on Windows for a long time will definitely notice the sluggishness. Windows is fast and snappy.

I believe the reviewers are mostly Apple fanboys who will find any excuse to praise Apple.

 

[AppleShareholder]

Ok, I'll bite. There is absolute no comparison between Intel based machines and M1 based computers. Single Core performance is great and the CPUs are energy efficient. Since I bought my M1 iMac I haven't heard the fans go off a single time. On my Intel iMac I used to hear the fans many times every day, just by running Software Update. Windows has never been smooth in any way. I use Windows every day on my work and I have been using Windows since Windows 3.0. There is nothing worse out there in terms of quality. If you had issues with your Macs then maybe you should have a good look at what you have been doing with them exactly. If you are running Rosetta based games for example, then of course you would experience low par performance. Everything on Apple Silicon works smooth and battery life on Apple silicon laptops is amazing. I don't know what you have been doing with M1 Macs, but this is certainly not the experience the vast majority of users has been making. Even Windows enthusiasts have admitted that Apple Silicon is much better than what Intel or AMD currently have to offer. Let's also not talk about the mess we call Windows.
Macs of course do have issues. They are not perfect, nothing is. The difference though to using Windows is light years better than what Microsoft offers..

Try converting a video to a different format on a Mac. My iMac sounded like it was going to explode.

I noticed that whenever anyone claims that Macs are faster than Windows, they're comparing a clean, top-of-line Macs to some 10+year-old Pentium processor with a garbage GeForce 6500 running thousands of spyware that your employer pre-installed. I admit, my work laptop is a Windows PC and it does get loud and is slow sometimes, but that's because my employer installed boatloads of software to spy on me.
If you compare like-for-like (Similar budget, clean install), the Windows PC will always smoke the Mac.
My personal PC for the past 5 years has been a low-end Windows PC, and it was super quiet and much faster than my M1 iMac even under heavy gaming. This iMac lags and stutters while watching 1080p videos on YouTube.
There are times I felt like I had to restart my iMac because the UI was getting choppier the more it was on. I have literally never had to worry about on-time on my Windows PC. I left it on for the past 2 years with only restarts during updates, and the system was still flying.


I also believe that Apple's processors are good for benchmarks but terrible for real-world performance (But that's not something I can prove. It's just something I believe based off the sluggish performance on this iMac).

This guy explains it well concerning the performance difference between PCs and Macs (Start at 3:08).

There are good things on the Mac. I like the display, the UI looks nice, and the fingerprint reader is convenient.
Windows 11 looks outdated, but when we're talking about performance, there's no question Windows is the better OS.

 

[MrMister111]

I originally bought the Mac mini, as my plan was to replace the Mac mini every 5 years or so, keeping my monitor and accessories. I thought it would be the most cost-effective way.
Unfortunately, Apple made a few things difficult for 3rd party accessories:

• Eliminated HiDPI on sub-4K monitors, meaning that texts appeared blurry and tiny
• Removed smooth scrolling on 3rd party mouse - Scrolling was just so laggy and stuttery
  • I installed a 3rd party app to enable smooth scrolling, but even that didn't completely fix it

I returned the Mac mini and bought an iMac, as I was told to use only Apple-branded accessories for better compatibility.

I feel like if you were on Macs all your life, you wouldn't notice how sluggish MacOS is, but anyone who's been on Windows for a long time will definitely notice the sluggishness. Windows is fast and snappy.

I believe the reviewers are mostly Apple fanboys who will find any excuse to praise Apple.

I’m no expert, but buying an M1 iMac after the MM which is virtually exact same hardware and software, wouldn’t have changed anything. Not sure why using a monitor and accessories would change this.

Geekbench and Cinebench, I know are pure benchmarks, but M1 holds up well on them compared to other chips.

Users, as mentioned not just Apple, have also commented that it good and much faster.

Apple is not perfect, ridiculous to not have at least SD slot on iMac amongst other ports, 2 ports on basic iMac is bad as well.

Other things you mention should have been checked before you bought though, can them make an informed decision.

I think a lot of people, me included, don’t just use MacOS but also windows and can see/feel the difference. As I say Apple in some ways is annoying in decisions for dongles etc

 

[AppleShareholder]

I’m no expert, but buying an M1 iMac after the MM which is virtually exact same hardware and software, wouldn’t have changed anything. Not sure why using a monitor and accessories would change this.

Geekbench and Cinebench, I know are pure benchmarks, but M1 holds up well on them compared to other chips.

Users, as mentioned not just Apple, have also commented that it good and much faster.

Apple is not perfect, ridiculous to not have at least SD slot on iMac amongst other ports, 2 ports on basic iMac is bad as well.

Other things you mention should have been checked before you bought though, can them make an informed decision.

I think a lot of people, me included, don’t just use MacOS but also windows and can see/feel the difference. As I say Apple in some ways is annoying in decisions for dongles etc

Actually, it did change everything. The texts on the iMac are legible now. The Magic Mouse makes scrolling much smoother (Still not Windows-level, though).

I feel that most people praising the M1 performance have only used Macs their entire lives or their only experience with windows is a budget work laptop that comes pre-installed with hundreds of spyware from your employer. Assuming same budget and a clean install, a windows PC will always smoke the Mac. Any honest reviewer would admit it, but we have too many Apple fanatics today who review Apple products with kiddie gloves.

I like this guy, since he's very unbiased and just tells it like it is. Start watching from 3:08. You can clearly see the lag on the Mac compared to the smoothness on the Windows PC. That's exactly what I'm facing on my M1 iMac.

 

[coso]

I owned a lot of Macs and NEVER had that kind of lag. Certainly not on my M1 iMac that I use for graphic design. But I don't care about speed, I simply despise Windows. Give me Apple peripherals and macOS on a pc hardware and I'll be perfectly fine. My first Mac was actually an hackintosh back in 2009

 

[AppleShareholder]

I owned a lot of Macs and NEVER had that kind of lag. Certainly not on my M1 iMac that I use for graphic design. But I don't care about speed, I simply despise Windows. Give me Apple peripherals and macOS on a pc hardware and I'll be perfectly fine. My first Mac was actually an hackintosh back in 2009

Proof is in the pudding.
Lots of Apple fanboys rig the tests or don't test their Macs thoroughly to try to get a positive message out. It's pretty despicable what YouTube reviewers do to not piss off Apple fanboy subscribers.

Windows has a pretty ugly UI, but the OS is intelligently-designed and, imo, far more user-friendly.

 

[dimme]

I have a few computers which I use... I have two MacBook pros from 2013 one which I use regularly and one is a dual boot with windows 10. A old 2012 13" Mac book pro which runs Ubuntu. A dell laptop for windows testing. 2012 Mac mini running Mac OS but used as a file server (24TB) and media hub. 2009 Mac mini running Mac server use a a vpn server for the network. Intel NUC running Ubuntu server (development work) and a few raspberry Pis because they are fun. My main machine is a 2021 M1 iMac. No issues and runs smooth very happy. I use many OS but I prefer Mac OS
Once in a while for fun on the weekends I like to fly flight simulators, I have beed doing so for fun since the commodore 64 days. I am amazed how well and fast XPlane 11 runs on this iMac at high settings and to top it off the iMac hardly draws any power from the wall. Some intel boxes I have run at home or at work really suck down the power. I think where Apple is going with their arm chips is where everyone will be down the road. The next revolution in computing may be energy efficiently

 

[AppleShareholder]

I have a few computers which I use... I have two MacBook pros from 2013 one which I use regularly and one is a dual boot with windows 10. A old 2012 13" Mac book pro which runs Ubuntu. A dell laptop for windows testing. 2012 Mac mini running Mac OS but used as a file server (24TB) and media hub. 2009 Mac mini running Mac server use a a vpn server for the network. Intel NUC running Ubuntu server (development work) and a few raspberry Pis because they are fun. My main machine is a 2021 M1 iMac. No issues and runs smooth very happy. I use many OS but I prefer Mac OS
Once in a while for fun on the weekends I like to fly flight simulators, I have beed doing so for fun since the commodore 64 days. I am amazed how well and fast XPlane 11 runs on this iMac at high settings and to top it off the iMac hardly draws any power from the wall. Some intel boxes I have run at home or at work really suck down the power. I think where Apple is going with their arm chips is where everyone will be down the road. The next revolution in computing may be energy efficiently

Whatever you get from the Mac, you can get better from windows at the same price.
I tried converting a video to webm format and my iMac sounded like it was about to explode.

My windows PC is just an i5-8400 with GTX 1050 ti and there was not even a peep when I did any kind of video editing/compression/conversion. All I had to do was replace the stock intel cooler with a cooler master and it was dead silent even under heavy load.

 

[400]

Yeh 16Gb definitely way to go I think, even for future proofing. Is this a common issue with them do you know? Does it bother you or is it only in extreme scenarios.

Thanks

I just messing with stacking 60 RAW files in various ways in Affinity Photo (around 20mb each) and opened the activity monitor and the memory pressure hardly moved from its nice n low point on the graph. Didn't hear a peep out the fans either. Not sure that is pushing it any but above 10 or so on the 2013 and it would get there..... eventually. Not sure it would cope with 60.

Edit. Not sure I have mentioned this in there, I seem to have cured many OS ills from the set up by re installing with the great new feature in Monterey and not using migration assistant setting it back up(it means I have to re install a lot, passwords dug out and all that). It runs a lot better now (but still would change it as soon as I can).