Apple today unveiled an all-new iMac featuring a much more compact and thin design, enabled by the M1 chip. The new iMac offers powerful performance in a design that’s just 11.5 millimetres thin, with a striking side profile that practically disappears.
iMac features a 24-inch 4.5K Retina display with 11.3 million pixels, 500 nits of brightness, and over a billion colours, delivering a brilliant and vivid viewing experience.
The new iMac also includes a 1080p FaceTime HD camera, studio-quality mics, and a six-speaker sound system — the best camera and audio ever in a Mac. Also, Touch ID comes to iMac for the first time, making it easier than ever to securely log in, make purchases with Apple Pay, or switch user profiles with the touch of a finger.
The new iMac joins the family of Mac models powered by M1, including MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini, marking another step forward in Apple’s transition to Apple silicon.
“M1 is a gigantic leap forward for the Mac, and today we’re excited to introduce the all-new iMac, the first Mac designed around the breakthrough M1 chip,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.
“With its striking design in seven stunning colours, its immersive 4.5K Retina display, the best camera, mics, and speakers ever in a Mac, and Touch ID, combined with the amazing performance of M1 and the power of macOS Big Sur, the new iMac takes everything people love about iMac to an entirely new level.”
The new iMac features a thinner and more compact design. Enabled by the system-on-chip architecture and amazing power efficiency of M1, the logic board and thermals are dramatically consolidated and reduced in size compared to the previous generation’s, allowing the side profile of iMac to practically disappear. The much more compact design reduces the volume of iMac by 50 percent, allowing it to take up less space and fit easily in even more places.
With an array of colours — green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, blue, and silver — the new iMac design personalizes and elevates any space unlike any other computer. iMac features softer colours and thinner borders on the front to allow users to focus on their content, while the back pops in bold, saturated colour.
To complete the simplified design, iMac comes with a new power connector that attaches magnetically and a beautifully woven 2-meter-long colour-matched cable.
24-Inch 4.5K Retina Display
The new iMac features an expansive 24-inch 4.5K Retina display with narrower borders and 11.3 million pixels. With a P3 wide colour gamut and over a billion colours, plus 500 nits of brightness, images are vivid and more brilliant.
This new display also features True Tone technology, which automatically adjusts the colour temperature as the environment changes for a more natural viewing experience. In addition, the 4.5K Retina display on the new iMac has an industry-leading anti-reflective coating for greater comfort and readability.
M1 Comes to iMac
With the power and performance of M1 and macOS Big Sur, the new iMac instantly wakes from sleep, everyday tasks feel faster and more fluid, and apps launch with amazing speed. In Safari, users can browse even faster and run hundreds of tabs at once, and in Photos, users can fly through edits to their images.
With Apple Arcade, they can enjoy exclusive games while on the large iMac display, and users can also run a variety of iPhone and iPad apps right on their iMac without breaking their workflow. macOS also delivers powerful iCloud and Continuity features that enable users to work seamlessly across their iMac, iPhone, and other Apple devices.
The new iMac offers the ultimate macOS Big Sur experience. Its refined design brings a new level of power and beauty to the Mac, and allows users to experience the spacious 24-inch 4.5K Retina display to the fullest. macOS Big Sur puts more controls at users’ fingertips and is packed with enhancements to key apps including Safari, Messages, and Maps.
The powerful 8-core CPU in M1 features the fastest CPU core in low-power silicon. And the 8-core GPU features the fastest integrated graphics in a personal computer. When combined with its high efficiency, unified memory architecture, and the 16-core Apple Neural Engine, the new iMac delivers powerful performance when compared to standard models of the 21.5-inch iMac, including:
- 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,5 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
Best Camera, Mics, and Speakers Ever in a Mac
iMac features a 1080p FaceTime HD camera — the best ever in a Mac — which delivers high-quality video and great performance in low light. iMac also takes advantage of the image signal processor in the M1 chip and the Neural Engine, enhancing camera image quality with better noise reduction, greater dynamic range, and improved auto exposure and white balance. So whether connecting with family or on a video call while working from home, users will always look their best.
To complement the camera, the new iMac features a studio-quality three-microphone array for clearer calls and voice recordings, the best ever in a Mac. The mics are positioned to reduce feedback from the rest of the system, while directional beamforming allows them to better ignore background noise and focus on a user’s voice. As a result, conversations are more natural and recordings are crystal clear.
The new iMac also features the best sound system ever in a Mac. It has two pairs of force-cancelling woofers placed side by side for an impressive bass response, while reducing unintended vibrations. Each pair is balanced with a high-performance tweeter. The result is a six-speaker sound system that produces a massive sound stage with strong, articulate bass and crystal-clear mids and highs.
All of these speaker innovations, coupled with advanced algorithms, enable iMac to support spatial audio when playing video with Dolby Atmos.
Touch ID Comes to iMac
Customers can choose from three models of Magic Keyboard with gorgeous aluminium enclosures that are colour-matched to iMac. And for the first time, Touch ID comes to iMac.
Implemented wirelessly on Magic Keyboard, it uses a dedicated security component on the keyboard that communicates directly with Secure Enclave in M1, creating an encrypted channel to protect users’ fingerprint data from end to end. Whether unlocking their Mac or making a purchase with Apple Pay, users enjoy a fast, easy, and secure experience.
Additionally, Touch ID works with Fast User Switching, so customers can change to a different user profile with just the press of a finger. Customers can also choose Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and Numeric Keypad, as well as the colour-matched Magic Mouse and the industry-best Magic Trackpad.
iMac Connectivity
Every iMac features two Thunderbolt ports for superfast data transfers, giving customers high-performance options to connect to more devices, including support for up to a 6K display, like Apple Pro Display XDR, and Wi-Fi 6 delivers faster wireless performance.
The 8-core iMac configuration offers two additional USB-C ports and also features a 1Gbps Ethernet port in the power adapter, allowing for a less cluttered desktop.
Pricing and Availability
The new 24-inch iMac is available to order beginning Friday, April 30, on apple.com and in the Apple Store app. It will begin arriving to customers and be available in select Apple Store locations and through Apple Authorized Resellers beginning in the second half of May.
iMac with 7-core GPU starts at £1,299 and £1,249 for education, and is available in green, pink, blue, and silver. It features an 8-core CPU, 8GB of unified memory, 256GB SSD, two Thunderbolt ports, Magic Keyboard, and Magic Mouse.
iMac with 8-core GPU starts at £1,499 and £1,399 for education, and is available in green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, blue, and silver. It features an 8-core CPU, 8GB of unified memory, 256GB SSD, two Thunderbolt ports, two additional USB 3 ports, Magic Keyboard with Touch ID, Magic Mouse, and Ethernet.
Additional technical specifications, configure-to-order options, and accessories are available at apple.com/mac.
