The new iMac was perhaps one of the most exciting announcements of the Apple silicon era. The desktop computer got a redesign that made it significantly thinner, while also introducing new color options that paid homage to the original iMac’s many colors. That computer was released with an M1 chip in 2021, and it hasn’t been refreshed in the M2 era. Now, Apple is finally updating with a long-overdue hardware upgrade.
Apple has just released a refresh of the iMac in its latest hardware event, together with the new M3 chips and the MacBook Pro computers that are powered by those chips. If you look at the new iMacs, you won’t really notice anything different. That’s because Apple hasn’t really changed anything externally about the computers. That’s not a bad thing, though, since there’s nothing wrong with the current iMac design. It’s still an all-in-one desktop computer that is thinner than most PC monitors, with all the ports hidden behind the back of the computer.
What has changed, however, are the internals. The M1 chip that was previously there has been swapped out for the just-released M3, making the jump straight from M1 to M3. This means that you’re in for a massive improvement performance-wise — Apple says that the new M3 is up to two times faster than the M1, while the GPU is several times faster and supports features such as hardware-accelerated mesh shading and ray tracing. Notably, there’s no option for an iMac with an M3 Pro or M3 Mac.
There still aren’t many mainstream games available on macOS, but the hardware improvements will be helpful for video and photo editing, web browsing, software development, and anything else you might want to do on an iMac. You can also run some Windows software through virtualization software like Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion.
The iMac with an 8-core GPU starts at $1,299, while upgrading to the 10-core GPU will bring the price up to $1,499. It’s available in the same seven vibrant colors the original M1-based model was available in, so if you were a fan of those colors, you’re now able to get them in a much faster version. It’s available for pre-order now, and it should arrive by November 7th.
Source: Apple
