There are a ton of older iMacs on the used market, and if you have one, it's a fair complaint that you can no longer re-purpose it for whatever else you like. Ideally if I got a mac mini I'd just hook it up to the screen I already have, rather than spending another $2k on the only other option the brand sells.

Just because the device is too slow for you does not make the device useless in totality. What are you going to ask for next? HDMI-in port on the iPad and MacBook so you can use it as a display when the internals are outdated?

> Just because the device is too slow for you does not make the device useless in totality.

Exactly, and it would be even less useless in totality if the screen was still feasible to use on its own.

> HDMI-in port on the iPad and MacBook so you can use it as a display when the internals are outdated?

Now that you mention it, I would like to use my old iPad as a second screen, since it's a mobile form factor already and is otherwise nearly useless for no intrinsic reason. But for the iMac, which is obviously a stationary large screen in an appealing enclosure, it would be a returning feature with a standard TB 4/5 port and cable, like it was originally with TB1.

I’ve been asking for this on laptops since 2003.

"My use case" of ...*squints*... not throwing amazing and still functional monitors in the trash because the computer part in them is obsolete/dead and keep reusing them instead? How rude of me to reject Apple's marketing NPC programming and use common sense instead.

How about Apple just puts the 2 cent connector & PHY, and let the users who paid for the device decide how they want to use the product. Gaslighting people with the "you're holding/using it wrong" argument today is just .. I can't even express anymore without breaking HN rules.

and yet you continue to moan about your NPC problem when the right product for you already exists?

>Gaslighting people with the "you're holding/using it wrong" argument today is just .. I can't even express anymore without breaking HN rules.

Yet people who complain about this "gaslighting" from Apple continue to buy Apple products.