Influence
The iMac has received considerable critical acclaim, including praise from technology columnist Walt Mossberg as the "Gold Standard of desktop computing";[7] Forbesmagazine described the original candy-colored line of iMac computers as being an "industry-altering success".[8] The first 24" Core 2 Duo iMac received CNET's "Must-have desktop" in their 2006 Top 10 Holiday Gift Picks.[9]
Apple is facing a class-action lawsuit for allegedly deceiving the public by promising millions of colors from the LCD screens of all Mac models while its 20 inch model only held 262,144 colors.[10] This issue arose due to the use of 6-bit per pixel Twisted nematic LCD screens, instead of higher quality technologies.
While not a criticism of the iMac per se, the iMac's integrated design has some inherent tradeoffs that have garnered criticism. In The Mythical Midrange Mac Minitower, Dan Frakes of Macworld suggests that with the iMac occupying the midrange of Apple's product line, Apple has nothing to offer consumers who want some ability to expand or upgrade their computers, but don't need (or can't afford) the Mac Pro.[11] For example, the iMac's integration of monitor and computer, while convenient, commits the owner to replacing both at the same time. For a time before the Mac mini's introduction, there were rumors of a "headless iMac"[12] but the G4 Mac mini as introduced was limited in CPU performance when compared to the iMac, which at the time featured a G5 processor.
Similarly, though the graphics chipset in some recent models is on a removable MXM, neither Apple nor third parties have offered retail iMac GPU upgrades, with the exception of those for the original iMac G3's "mezzanine" PCI slot. Models after the iMac G5 (excluding the August 7, 2007 iMac update) made it difficult for the end-user to replace the hard disk or optical drive, and Apple's warranty explicitly forbids upgrading the socketed CPU. While conceding the possibility of a minitower cannibalizing sales from the Mac Pro, Frakes argues there is enough frustration with iMac's limitations to make such a proposition worthwhile. This disparity has become more pronounced after the G4 era since the bottom-end Power Mac G5 (with one brief exception) and Mac Pro models have all been priced in the $1999–$2499 range, while base model Power Macs G4s and earlier were $1299–$1799.
