After years of waiting, Apple has finally given the world a dramatic new iMac redesign, aimed at the company’s long-standing goal of “making the computer disappear.” That, of course, only applies to the the thin new design, because these things are eye-popping. Naturally, the latest version of the 24-inch all-in-one desktop is built around the company’s new proprietary M1 chips.
The screen sports a 4.5K Retina Display, coupled with a 1080p camera — a first for the Mac line, and a sign the company is taking both audio and video more seriously as these products are serving as a kind of life line for the work from home crowd. True Tone is, naturally, on board for better color balance, and sound have been improved with six-speaker setup. The display features 11.3 million pixels, a P3 color gamut and 500 nits of brightness. Like the most recent iMac models, it features an anti-reflective coating to reduce screen glare.
The new devices are significantly thinner — with overall volume reduced by half, according to the company. The rear is also flat, instead of curved. In addition to allowing for a much thinner design, the new chip allows for far faster performance than previous models — a huge performance bump we’ve seen in our own testing of the most recent generation of Macs. All told, the company says it’s up to 85% faster than the last model, coupled with a GPU that’s up to twice as fast and 3x the machine learning.
Here’s some numbers direct from the company:
- Up to 85 percent faster CPU performance, so users can export their favorite video project in iMovie faster than ever, easily work with massive 100-megapixel photos in Lightroom, and compile new apps in Xcode in a fraction of the time.
- Up to 2x faster GPU performance for certain apps like Affinity Photo and Photoshop, and up to 50 percent faster than the most powerful discrete graphics in the fastest 21.5-inch iMac, allowing users to render edits in real time or add complex filters to their photos in a snap.
- The ability to edit up to five streams of 4K footage, or one stream of 8K footage, without dropping a frame in Final Cut Pro.
- Up to 3x faster machine learning in apps that leverage the 16-core Neural Engine in M1
Around back are up to four USB-C ports, including two Thunderbolts, for faster speed (say “goodbye to USB-A) and a new magnetic power adapter that also delivers 1Gbps Ethernet, which, at very least, should declutter the back of the device a bit. The system comes in seven colors. It starts at $1,299. That includes a 7-core GPU, 8-core CPU, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. That’s available in green, pink, blue and silver. At $1,499, you get the 8-core GPU, two additional ports and the addition of the yellow and orange colors.
There are some new accessories for the system, as well, including a colorful new Magic Keyboard that sports built-in TouchID. The new iMac goes up for pre-order April 30 and starts shipping in the second half of May.
