Earlier this month, Apple officially let us know that new iMacs would be arriving this year, and a new report claims that there will be a pair of refreshed all-in-ones which will launch in Q3 – followed by an iMac aimed at professional users which will sport ‘server-grade’ components, but this won’t pitch up until later.
This particular rumor comes from DigiTimes, which cites the usual supply chain sources who are claiming that Apple will begin production of the new consumer-targeted iMacs next month.
Refreshed 21.5-inch and 27-inch models will be produced and are expected to go on sale in the third quarter of this year, as mentioned.
In the case of the higher-end iMac aimed at professionals – the sort of users who might typically be expected to pick up a Mac Pro, but have increasingly been eyeing Apple’s all-in-ones as a tempting choice as these machines have grown in power – that isn’t expected to be available until the end of the year.
DigiTimes didn’t mention anything about the spec for the consumer iMacs, but did say that the server-grade model will run with an Intel Xeon E3-1285 v6 processor, along with between 16GB to 64GB of ECC RAM, up to a 2TB NVMe SSD for storage.
- These are the 50 best Mac tips to be aware of right now
Salty waters
As usual, we need to throw in the usual caveats about pinches of salt and speculation, and while DigiTimes isn’t always regarded as the most reliable source, in this case these spec details are backed up by a previous rumor from Pike’s Universum.
DigiTimes also said that the high-end iMac – which is expected to go toe-to-toe with Microsoft’s Surface Studio – would have one of the latest discrete graphics cards on board, with Pike’s Universum previously having said that this would be an AMD solution.
Pike’s also said that Thunderbolt 3 support would be included (unsurprisingly), and that Apple was working on an 8K display to go with the refreshed Mac Pro (the latter won’t be arriving this year, and the earliest we’ll see it is 2018).
A third quarter launch for the main consumer-focused iMacs certainly sounds about right – most likely September – and hopefully we’ll hear some whispers of the planned spec for these models before too long.
Via: Neowin
