The New iMac

Apple’s desktop computer, the iMac, has been getting a bit stale compared to the other products in its lineup, since it’s been more than eight years since Apple actually revised the design, and even that was merely just slimming the edges for a sleeker side profile that didn’t really make it look much different head-on from that last major iMac redesign in 2009. Although Apple added a Retina 5K display in 2014, and has released spec bumps almost every year since, the design itself has remained unchanged.

So a rumour earlier this month that Apple was poised to announce a new design at WWDC 2020 definitely whet our appetites, but sadly this didn’t materialize. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s not still coming, but at this point it seems likely we won’t see a debut of a new iMac design until this fall — unless of course Apple chooses to quietly slip them out via press release over the summer instead.

As to what we can expect? While the reports may have gotten the launch date wrong, the other information still seems pretty plausible, and if true it looks like the iMac will move to a design more similar to the iPad Pro in style, with much slimmer bezels and squared-off edges. It’s also expected to abandon the Fusion Drive in favour of fully SSD storage, add Apple’s T2 coprocessor, and include AMD’s latest Navi GPUs.

What’s less certain in the midst of Apple’s new ARM transition is whether these will be the last iMacs to feature Intel CPUs or whether they’ll be the first to include Apple Silicon. With a major redesign in the works we’re actually expecting the latter.