{"id":213037,"date":"2026-02-13T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/13\/why-the-base-1299-imac-is-now-a-worse-value-for-what-youre-paying-for-appleosophy\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T09:05:29","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T14:05:29","slug":"why-the-base-1299-imac-is-now-a-worse-value-for-what-youre-paying-for-appleosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/13\/why-the-base-1299-imac-is-now-a-worse-value-for-what-youre-paying-for-appleosophy\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the base $1,299 iMac is now a \u201cworse\u201d value for what you\u2019re paying for \u2013 Appleosophy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/appleosophy.com\/2026\/02\/13\/why-the-base-1299-imac-is-now-a-worse-value-for-what-youre-paying-for\/\">Why the base $1,299 iMac is now a \u201cworse\u201d value for what you\u2019re paying for \u2013 Appleosophy<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/appleosophy.com\/2026\/02\/13\/why-the-base-1299-imac-is-now-a-worse-value-for-what-youre-paying-for\/\">https:\/\/appleosophy.com\/2026\/02\/13\/why-the-base-1299-imac-is-now-a-worse-value-for-what-youre-paying-for\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-02-13 09:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"appleosophy.com\">appleosophy.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Back on April 20, 2021, Apple unveiled the <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">24-inch iMac<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that was completely redesigned from the ground up for Apple Silicon. Featuring an ultra-thin design that\u2019s 11.5 millimeters thin on the side, along with light gray bezels, the iMac comes in seven vibrant colors that pay homage to the original iMac. To this day, the iMac continues to start at $1,299, which is a good deal for an all-in-one desktop computer, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When Apple introduced the redesigned 24-inch iMac back then, it touted Touch ID as one of the new features for the iMac, and similar to Touch ID on MacBooks, Apple implemented Touch ID on the Magic Keyboard. However, the base $1,299 does not include the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID; instead, it comes with the base <\/span>Magic Keyboard (with Lock Key)<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> by default.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you go to the iMac\u2019s <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">buy page<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and configure the base iMac model that has two Thunderbolt ports (by the way, Apple recently <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">revamped<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the ordering process for a Mac to match that of other Apple products), you\u2019ll be presented with two configuration options for the Magic Keyboard:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Magic Keyboard (with Lock Key)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and Numeric Keypad<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Previously, for the base M1 and M3 iMacs, you could configure them to the (compact) <\/span>Magic Keyboard with Touch ID<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (but without the Numeric Keypad) or either of the options above. But now, since Apple <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">removed<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the option for the compact Magic Keyboard with Touch ID, the only option if you still prefer Touch ID would be to select the <\/span>Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and Numeric Keypad<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, which would be a $80 upgrade for the base iMac model.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">During the iMac\u2019s introduction, Apple touted that the Ethernet port was relocated to the power adapter instead of directly on the iMac to \u201ckeep your desktop less cluttered\u201d. However, the base iMac model does not include Ethernet either, so if you prefer to have Ethernet built-in (without using some Ethernet-to-USB-C adapter to take up one of the ports), that upgrade would set you back $30.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-135351 pk-lazyload\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" data-pk-sizes=\"auto\" data-ls-sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.appleosophy.com\/2026\/02\/videoframe_1928608.png\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.appleosophy.com\/2026\/02\/videoframe_1928608.png 1920w, https:\/\/cdn.appleosophy.com\/2026\/02\/videoframe_1928608-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/cdn.appleosophy.com\/2026\/02\/videoframe_1928608-768x432.png 768w, https:\/\/cdn.appleosophy.com\/2026\/02\/videoframe_1928608-1536x864.png 1536w, https:\/\/cdn.appleosophy.com\/2026\/02\/videoframe_1928608-380x214.png 380w, https:\/\/cdn.appleosophy.com\/2026\/02\/videoframe_1928608-550x309.png 550w, https:\/\/cdn.appleosophy.com\/2026\/02\/videoframe_1928608-800x450.png 800w, https:\/\/cdn.appleosophy.com\/2026\/02\/videoframe_1928608-1160x653.png 1160w, https:\/\/cdn.appleosophy.com\/2026\/02\/videoframe_1928608-600x338.png 600w\"\/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So as&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/appleosophy.com\/2026\/02\/13\/why-the-base-1299-imac-is-now-a-worse-value-for-what-youre-paying-for\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why the base $1,299 iMac is now a \u201cworse\u201d value for what you\u2019re paying for&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":213038,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.appleosophy.com\/2024\/10\/Apple-iMac-M4-hero-scaled.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[52],"class_list":["post-213037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-macintosh","tag-imac"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213037"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213037"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":213039,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213037\/revisions\/213039"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}