Apple Uncrates New $1,099 Education-Only iMac

Without fanfare, Apple this week rolled out a new iMac, a machine targeted at a market the company likes to say is “in its DNA”: Education.

The new machine features Apple’s latest iMac design, with leaner specs that drop its price below that of the entry-level consumer iMac. It boasts the same 21.5-inch display, but its innards are quite different: A 3.3GHz dual-core Intel i3 processor, instead of a 2.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i5, four gigabytes of RAM instead of 8GB, and a hard drive with 500GB of storage instead of one terabyte.

At $1,099, the new education-only iMac is $100 more than its predecessor. But it remains $150 cheaper than an entry-level consumer iMac purchased with an educational discount.

So, a reasonable lower-price option for educators on tight budgets, though on its face the new edu iMac might not seem the best value. Sure, you save $150, but you also end up with a dual-core i3 instead of quad-core i5, and half the RAM and hard-drive storage of the entry-level iMac. Of course, if you’re budget-constrained and looking to trick out a computer lab with a row of new iMacs, it’s not specs that you’re looking at so much as volume discounts.