[stoobs]

It's not your definition of a workstation, but for many businesses/locations, it is.

They're deployed by the hundreds, in one or two configurations, then are replaced after 3/5/7 years. They never get repurposed, they just get recycled/refurbished when they reach end of life or the value has been depreciated to zero.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

It feels strange to say this though, because a setup where external monitors can be hooked up into laptops is a better UX for everyone involved for a typical workstation. The company can amortize and maintain the the display’s lifecycle separately from the machines, the employees get dynamic mobility and can take their laptop into meetings and home. About the only use case outside of the already-mentioned reception desk is the one where you don’t want employees taking their laptop home AND everyone is on a Mac which is… a kind of niche market. It’s not like companies want these for their computing power - there are other, more cost effective form factors and designs for that.

I think the iMac is kind of a relic from a bygone age where it was more difficult to fit desktop computing power into a laptop form factor. Now that laptops have gotten pretty beefy, the difference in compute between them and something like this is small enough that it probably makes more sense to opt for the mobility most of the time.