Apple’s 32-Inch iMac Could Revive the Idea of Having a Home Computer

Apple has a 32-inch iMac in the works, and it could be the perfect way to return to a single home computer shared by the whole family.

More and more people use a phone as their main computer, and if we have a Mac or a PC at all, it’s probably a laptop. And yet there is still space for a big-screen “family” computer, even if you don’t have a family. And as we shall see, in many ways, it actually makes more sense to share one big machine than to buy a bunch of computers that won’t be used that often.

“A 32-inch iMac could easily find a niche as a family workhorse and entertainment center. While phones and tablets can do a lot, sometimes you just need the full-sized keyboard and functionality of a PC. Integrating it with Apple services for photos and other media can be a great way to watch shows in common areas like the kitchen or family room, to share family pictures, or to do some heavy-duty creating with sound mixing or visual art apps,” Troy Portillo, director of operations at online learning platform Studypool told Lifewire via email.

iMac for Smart Home Automation

Years ago, if a household had a computer, it had a single desktop Mac or PC shared by everybody in the home. Today, for many people, the phone is the primary device for communication, browsing, buying, work calls, and even some writing—emails especially. But the small screen isn’t great for everything, and that’s when we usually move to a laptop, even if we only ever use that laptop to do Excel at the dining table, watch movies on the sofa, or Zoom and FaceTime with coworkers and family.

“This is a product that could also fill a gap in the market—many family homes are packed with smartphones and tablets, but they lack a truly powerful home computer for more intensive tasks such as video editing or complex gaming,” UK-based electronics retailer and e-waste specialist Steven Athwal told Lifewire via email.

At the same time, we might have a big TV in the living room and some kind of home hub device for music or automation.

My proposal is that a big iMac could replace all of these—although this approach has one major drawback, as we shall see in a moment.

iMac for Entertainment

A 32-inch screen is big. Big enough to be a TV, a games machine, a FaceTime portal, and plenty more. And Macs have great built-in speakers. Put a big iMac into a living room, and you have most of your home entertainment needs taken care of. Macs can also act as an AirPlay destination to stream music and video from your iPhone to the large screen.

And what about FaceTime? Instead of doing video calls on a tiny phone screen or on a laptop where the camera is angled to look straight up your nose, a big screen is way better. You can even use your iPhone camera as a webcam for a Mac just by propping it up near the computer.

A 32-inch iMac might not be a 50-inch TV, but I’d argue that if you wanted a huge TV dominating the living room, you’d already have one. Instead, you can put a smaller, but still big-enough, do-it-all machine somewhere in the home. Plus, you could use the computer as a home automation hub, and—if the rumors of Apple adding widgets to a future standalone Studio Display are true—it could be a great data dashboard for reminders, news, updates, tracking the progress of your pizza order, etc.

And then there are the computing tasks.

E-Waste

The benefits of having a stationary, always-connected computer are legion. One great use is to store your photo library, synced, up-to-date, and safely on your computer, not just in the cloud. And every user in your home, whether it’s just a spouse or partner, or a whole clan of kids and cousins, can have their own login, their own personal space.

By combining all of these devices and functions into one machine, you gain a lot. But—and here’s the downside—all-in-one computers aren’t the best idea in the long term.

The big problem is that displays last much longer than the computers that drive them. The screen will continue to look fantastic in ten years and work just as well as it does today. Computers, on the other hand, become obsolete much quicker. While you can limp along with a decade-old Mac, it will be slow and won’t use the latest operating system or the latest apps.

If you have an all-in-one iMac, you will have to ditch that perfectly-good screen just to upgrade the computer, which is a big waste. On the other hand, if this is only a secondary device, you might not need the latest, fastest machine. Either way, it’s better than a legion of laptops.