In this Video I demonstrate using the iMac as a display for a macbook air using target disk mode rather than target display mode. The difference being that t. 16in MacBook Pro versus 27in iMac. We'll start with the more powerful, and more expensive, 27in iMac and 16in MacBook Pro. The 27in iMac was updated in August 2020, so it's relatively new. The first 32-inch Retina 6K display ever. Up to 1600 nits of brightness. An astonishing 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and superwide viewing angle. Over a billion colors presented with exceptional accuracy. And dynamic range that transforms the professional workflow. Introducing Apple Pro Display XDR, the world’s best pro display.
For example, a MacBook Pro could use a 27-inch iMac as the display and play its audio on the iMac as well. After connecting the computers and turning on Target Display Mode, the external display Mac acts like any other external display. IMac Pro (27-inch) Pro Display XDR Mac mini Mac accessories Share. 27‑inch iMac with Retina 5K display, Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse 2, Power cord, Lightning to USB Cable, Polishing Cloth. I am a Mac Evangelist so am fully in the Apple Ecosystem. Bought the 512 SSD version with i5 chip for $90 off and then another $60 off.
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When you think about getting a new computer today, almost without a doubt your eyes are set on a Mac. Apple’s desktops and laptops (and tablets and phones) have always been good, but also have reached new heights lately, with the inclusion of gorgeous Retina screens and blazing-fast Intel Core i9 processors.
So when it comes to buying a new Apple machine, you have a tough choice to make: should it be an iMac or MacBook Pro? Even though both of them differ wildly on price, power, design, and intended use cases, it’s not immediately obvious which one you need more. Luckily, this guide offers a step-by-step breakdown for you to make the right decision.
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When To Choose MacBook Pro or iMac
Let’s start by saying that there are no losers in the MacBook Pro vs iMac standoff. They are both capable machines and you likely wouldn’t regret choosing either one. But some differences still remain and are worthy of a closer look.
Naturally, the first thing you might notice is that iMac vs MacBook Pro is essentially primarily a desktop vs laptop question. But also much more than that. You could easily get some portability when you buy iMac if you also get an iPad. Alternatively, some screen real estate is an easy upgrade for a MacBook Pro if you purchase an external monitor.
Even within the iMac category, there are 21 and 27-inch models, with lots of possible modifications in each one. Likewise, MacBook Pros currently have 13 and 16-inch models, which you can upgrade to astronomical prices if you wish to do so. Time to compare all this variability side by side.
Design
To choose MacBook Pro vs iMac, ask yourself how do you actually use your computer most of the time. Do you sit at the same desk at home or at the office? Do you have to switch between meeting rooms all day long and frequently travel overseas? This answer might already inform your decision, since iMac and MacBook Pro were originally designed with different use cases in mind.
Visually, iMac or MacBook Pro is a matter of preference. Both machines are stunning, made of high-grade aluminum, with sleek minimalist silhouettes — true examples of industrial design at its peak.
Ergonomically, however, neither get their full marks. Typing day in and day out hunched over a laptop is not recommended, so if you use your MacBook at home or work for long periods of time, you should consider getting a proper stand and an external keyboard. Interestingly enough, iMacs are not completely ergonomic either and, due to lack of vertical adjustment, can’t be placed at eye level without being propped with a stand or a stack of books.
Processing power and RAM
Since both iMacs and MacBook Pros get virtually the same chips (adjusted for size), the latest being the ninth generation of Intel Core i9, they are on equal footing when it comes to comparing their potential power output.
Currently, 27-inch iMacs offer 6-core i9s with Turbo Boost and anywhere from 3 to 3.7 GHz computing frequency. Surprisingly, 16-inch MacBooks are not too far behind, offering either the same 6-core processor with 2.6GHz, or an 8-core one with 2.3 or 2.4 GHz. To put this in perspective, the Geekbench test measures the performance of a 3.6 GHZ iMac as 1246, and 2.4 GHz MacBook Pro as 1122. Pretty close.
What might, however, dissuade you from getting a maxed out MacBook Pro is the way it handles heat. There have been reports with the latest top-of-the-line models going into Turbo Boost mode too often and heating up, which could lead to their decreased lifespan and just be plain annoying. Low and mid-tier models seem to be fine.
As for RAM, new iMacs and MacBooks come with either 8 or 16 GB of 2666 MHz DDR4 memory, and are both configurable up to 64 GB at extra cost.
Screens and graphics
If there’s anything that Apple computers have always been unanimously praised for that would be the quality of their screens. Innovations in resolution (Retina, Liquid Retina), brightness, and color accuracy (P3 wide color gamut, True Tone) are nothing short of outstanding. It’s hard to compare MacBooks to iMacs here — they are both winners. And if you need some more screen real estate for your MacBook, you can always get an external monitor.
Those interested in graphics processors, MacBook Pros come with AMD Radeon Pro 5500M with either 4 or 8 GB. iMacs get a leg up here with Radeon Pro 580X or Radeon Pro Vega 48, both with 8 GB of memory. That said, users who don’t directly work in graphically intense fields won’t notice any difference.
For gaming, it might be better to look into iMac vs iMac Pro, or even build your own PC, once you find out how much iMac Pro costs.
Storage
You might think that when it comes to storage, iMac would take the prize. But you would be wrong. By default, iMacs come with 2 TB Fusion Drives. What is iMac’s Fusion Drive? A mix of HDD and SSD storage. And upgrades to pure SSD are costly, maxing out at 2 TB.
MacBook Pros, on the other hand, are equipped with 1 TB of SSD by default, which you can upgrade up to a whopping 8 TB (costs $2,200 though). Still much better.
Available ports and accessories
By now, you’ve probably heard the dongle story — various examples of how many extra adapters you need to buy for your MacBook Pro to have access to widely used connectors, since the laptop only features four USB-Cs. Some people will then be delighted to find out that iMacs still have four USB-As, two USB-Cs, a Gigabit Ethernet port, and an SD card slot.
One more thing to consider is keyboard dependability. While the new 16-inch MacBook features revamped scissor keys, older 13 or 15-inch models still have butterfly keyboards, which are prone to breakage. Since all MacBooks come in unibody design, keyboard repairs can be really costly, and iMacs might seem more future-proof in that sense.
Price
While it might seem that iMacs would cost more than MacBooks — they are truly large and powerful machines — the opposite is actually true. Looking at the default builds offered by Apple, the most expensive 27-inch iMac ($2,299) costs less than the entry-level 16-inch MacBook Pro ($2,399). After all, you do pay for all that portability.
How to make your MacBook last longer
If you do decide to get a MacBook to be able to work from anywhere you want, your top concern for its longevity should be making sure its battery will serve you for as long as possible. Indeed, there’s a way to get 20% more battery life out of your MacBook right now.
Endurance is a must-have utility for all MacBook owners. Living in your menu bar, it seamlessly monitors flash plugins, hides background apps, slows down your processor when not in use, checks taxing apps, and much more. You have the option to customize when exactly does Endurance kick in to maximize its benefits for your situation.
How to monitor the state of your Mac
Even if you have a new iMac or MacBook Pro, knowing its vital performance indicators can help you detect weak spots or problems early on and, hopefully, resolve them while you’re still under Apple’s warranty. Conversely, knowing what your old Mac is struggling with can point you towards something you should fix in your new setup (e.g. add more RAM or get a better graphics card).
iStat Menus is the ultimate Mac monitoring solution you need. Not only does it give you detailed graphs on your CPU and GPU performance, it also shows your RAM load, sensor temperature, disk state, network health, and more. All visually laid out for you just a click away in your menu bar.
How to make your Mac run faster
It’s no secret that with use your Mac will become slower and less responsive. Cache from apps, user and system logs, broken login items, rarely used large files — all will accumulate and tax your system. To get your Mac back to its brand new state, you need a proven automated solution.
CleanMyMac X is one of the most popular optimization utilities in the world. In just one click, it rids your Mac of every useless file clogging up your system, checks your Mac for malware, and runs maintenance scripts to generally speed things up. In addition, CleanMyMac X offers comprehensive privacy scans, the best-in-class uninstaller, a visualized comparison of bulky files and folders, and much more in a safe, secure, and intuitive environment.
Comparing design, power, memory, storage, screens, accessories, and other computer components, by now you probably know whether it’s a MacBook Pro or iMac that you’re planning to buy. Regardless of your choice, make sure to prolong its useful life with Endurance, monitor its performance with iStat Menus, and keep the whole setup optimized with CleanMyMac X.
Best of all, Endurance, iStat Menus, and CleanMyMac X are all available to you at no cost during a seven-day trial of Setapp, a platform with more than 170 essential Mac apps for any task at hand, from staying concentrated (Be Focused) to professionally editing photos and videos (CameraBag Pro). Try Setapp free and experiment with new possibilities — sky’s the limit!
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Believing is seeing.
The first 32-inch Retina 6K display ever. Up to 1600 nits of brightness. An astonishing 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and superwide viewing angle. Over a billion colors presented with exceptional accuracy. And dynamic range that transforms the professional workflow. Introducing Apple Pro Display XDR, the world’s best pro display.
XDR. Dynamic range to the extreme.
The contrast your eyes see between brightness and darkness is very challenging to reproduce in a display, leading to the development of High Dynamic Range (HDR). With breakthrough backlighting technology, Pro Display XDR takes brightness, contrast, and color to a new level. Far beyond HDR, it’s Extreme Dynamic Range (XDR).
A brighter idea.
Typical desktop displays have sustained brightness around 350 nits. Some pro displays exceed this, but most can only sustain it for short periods of time. Pro Display XDR produces an industry-leading 1000 nits of full-screen sustained brightness and 1600 nits at its peak.1 It gives you the power to maintain extreme brightness without ever dimming. Along with efficient backlight control, this delivers outstanding contrast between the brightest brights and the blackest blacks. The result is an incredible 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and stunningly real XDR imagery.
1600 nitspeak brightness
Show your truest colors.
Pro Display XDR always gives you the truest representation of your work. A P3 wide color gamut provides a color palette capable of creating the most vibrant imagery. With true 10-bit color, Pro Display XDR can produce more than a billion colors with extreme accuracy. State-of-the-art calibration and a sophisticated algorithm ensure that you get the highest-quality color possible.
P3wide color gamut
LED in a whole new light.
True-to-life imagery requires having extremely bright areas of the screen right next to extremely dark areas. Without precise backlight control, this can cause an unintended glow called blooming. Pro Display XDR is able to dramatically reduce blooming using advanced LED technology, light shaping, and intelligent image processing.
Innovation in every layer.
Every aspect of the light imaging system in Pro Display XDR is crucial to the overall quality of what you see onscreen. Each element builds on top of the last to create a display with unbelievable brightness and contrast.
576 blue LEDs work together.
Typical LCDs are edge-lit by a strip of white LEDs. The 2D backlighting system in Pro Display XDR is unlike any other. It uses a superbright array of 576 blue LEDs that allows for unmatched light control compared with white LEDs. Twelve controllers rapidly modulate each LED so that areas of the screen can be incredibly bright while other areas are incredibly dark. All of this produces an extraordinary contrast that’s the foundation for XDR.
Light is mixed and shaped.
For even greater control of light, each LED is treated with a reflective layer, a highly customized lens, and a geometrically optimized reflector that are all unique to Pro Display XDR. Through a pioneering design, light is reflected, mixed, and shaped between two layers to minimize blooming and provide uniform lighting.
Color is transformed.
Converting blue light to white is a difficult process that requires extremely precise color conversion. It’s why most display makers use white LEDs. Pro Display XDR accomplishes this conversion with an expertly designed color transformation sheet made of hundreds of layers that control the light spectrum passing through them.
Brightness is taken to the edge.
Pro Display XDR extends exceptional image quality to the very edge. To ensure that LEDs along the sides of the display mix well with adjacent ones, a micro-lens array boosts light along the edges. This creates uniform color and brightness across the entire screen.
One chip makes it all possible.
With a massive amount of processing power, the timing controller (TCON) chip utilizes an algorithm specifically created to analyze and reproduce images. It controls LEDs at over 10 times the refresh rate of the LCD itself, reducing latency and blooming. It’s capable of multiple refresh rates for amazingly smooth playback. Managing both the LED array and LCD pixels, the TCON precisely directs light and color to bring your work to life with stunning accuracy.
Superwide viewing angle.
When multiple people review work together on a single screen, it’s critical that everyone sees the same thing. While most pro desktop displays claim a wide viewing angle, in reality, color and image quality become distorted when seen off-axis. With industry-leading polarizer technology, Pro Display XDR achieves a superwide viewing angle that maintains exceptional color and contrast.
Up to25xbetter off-axis contrast
than a typical LCD
than a typical LCD
Nano-texture glass.
Light scattered to further reduce glare.
Less glare.
And even less glare.
And even less glare.
Every Pro Display XDR screen is engineered for extremely low reflectivity. And if you’re in an especially uncontrolled lighting environment, there’s an innovative matte option with nano-texture glass. Typical matte displays have a coating added to their surface that scatters light. However, these coatings lower contrast while producing unwanted haze and sparkle. The nano-texture on Pro Display XDR is actually etched into the glass at the nanometer level. The result is a screen with beautiful image quality that maintains contrast while scattering light to reduce glare to the barest minimum.
Goes with the workflow.
Professionals require a lot from their displays. But each person has different needs. Resolution, reference modes, reliable calibration. Pro Display XDR has everything you need in a modern workflow, bringing a new level of efficiency to every production. It wasn’t just made for the pro workflow. It redefines it.
5K
Retina 6K. Expand your view.
Higher resolution means more than just a better-quality image. With a Retina 6K display, Pro Display XDR gives you nearly 40 percent more screen real estate than a 5K display. While most displays max out at around 150 pixels per inch (ppi), our Retina display has 218 ppi, providing astoundingly sharp and detailed imagery. It’s a massive creative canvas that easily fits 4K content, your tools, and much more all in one screen.
Many creatives. One vision.
Pro video workflows involve a range of professionals with unique setups. What’s always been missing is the ability to see the same image across an entire production. Pro Display XDR allows pros at every point in the process to experience exactly the same groundbreaking picture quality.
On location.
From the start of a shoot, Pro Display XDR reveals the content you’re capturing with incredible accuracy.
Post-production.
Image reproduction remains consistent across every point of your workflow, ensuring that everyone is always on the same page.
Reference modes.
It’s easy to adjust Pro Display XDR to match the requirements of HDR, HD, SD video, digital cinema, and broader uses such as photography, web development, design, and print. Just select a mode, and the display reconfigures itself to match a specified color space, white point, gamma, and brightness. And coming soon, you’ll have the ability to create custom reference modes.
True Tone.
The lighting around you can affect the way you see onscreen colors. True Tone on Pro Display XDR uses a breakthrough dual ambient light sensor design — with a sensor on the front and another on the back — to better gauge your overall lighting environment. This facilitates more exact adjustments to the color and intensity of your display, so you can have accurate viewing in all lighting conditions.
Expertly calibrated.
Pro Display XDR is optimized to more than meet the standards of creative professionals. Every display goes through our state-of-the-art color calibration. Each of the display’s 576 LEDs is also individually calibrated and has its light profile stored. An algorithm then uses this information to determine the exact light intensity at which each LED should be modulated to produce the best possible image.
A beautiful picture is only part of the story.
Pro Display XDR is stunning every way you look at it. Its screen stretches edge to edge with just a 9 mm border, so your work takes center stage. The aluminum enclosure is just an inch thick and features an innovative lattice pattern that reduces weight and increases airflow.
More air than metal.
The lattice pattern machined into the aluminum has many advantages. It more than doubles the surface area exposed to air, facilitating additional airflow and acting as a heat sink. This allows for fast and quiet cooling, enabling Pro Display XDR to sustain an extreme level of brightness indefinitely. Inlet and exhaust vents work through this pattern to draw in cool air and eject hot air away from the system, limiting the potential for hot air to be reingested.
Imac As A Display For Mac Pro Shortcut
Elevate your work. And rotate it, too.
Every aspect of Pro Display XDR was designed with pros in mind. Pro Stand is no exception. Height, tilt, rotation — it’s completely adjustable. It’s stable without taking up much space. And its ability to rotate to landscape or portrait makes it perfect for any type of work.
Fine-tuned fine‑tuning.
Pro Stand makes every adjustment of your display feel seamless. Precision tilting and 120 mm of height adjustment help Pro Display XDR adapt to any viewing condition. The angle of the display stays true even as you adjust the height. With Pro Stand, you get a display that feels weightless, moves effortlessly where you want it, and stays exactly where you leave it.
Imac 2019 Vs Imac Pro
Every side is its good side.
Pro Stand gives you the ability to move between landscape and portrait whenever you want. All you have to do is unlock the slider and turn the display. Whether you’re a developer, a photographer, or a composer, you can see more of your work without endless scrolling.
Detach. Move. Attach.
Having the freedom to move between being on set and working in the studio can make a big difference. The magnetic connector on Pro Stand makes it easy to attach and detach from its polar-opposite magnet on the back of Pro Display XDR. These magnets guide the connection while latches automatically engage and securely lock the stand to the display. Detaching it is as simple as unlocking the slider.
Available VESA Mount Adapter.
Many pros have unique mounting setups for their displays. The VESA Mount Adapter attaches to the display in a matter of seconds for quick and easy mounting.
Powerful partnerships.
Pair Pro Display XDR with Mac Pro to create the ultimate professional workstation. Or connect it to your MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt 3.2
Difference Between Imac And Imac Pro
Use AR to see Pro Display XDR in your workspace.
Imac As A Display For Macbook Pro
Open this page on your iPhone or iPad to view Pro Display XDR in AR.