Mark Gurman from Bloomberg came out with an unexpected report that details a broader future roadmap with eleven new Mac models (more details on some of those Macs to follow) that Apple plans to release over the course of a couple of years. Until now, it has remained uncertain when Apple will refresh the iMac, but Mark Gurman expects the update to come sooner rather than later, most likely in the fall season.
The iMac was last updated back in October 2024 with the M4 chip, up to four Thunderbolt 4 ports, a Center Stage camera, and a nano-texture display option (for the 4-port model). So it will mark just two years since the last update. Although the iMac will certainly come with a newer chip, the report didn’t indicate which chip Apple would use for the next iMac. Since the M1 iMac, Apple continues to use only the regular M-series chip for its all-in-one desktop, so if Apple were to update the iMac in the fall, and the M6 chip wouldn’t be ready for production yet, I’d expect the upgraded iMac to feature the M5 chip. Here are the other features I’d expect for this iMac:
- Same all-in-one design with a minimalist look where the display part is just 11.5 mm thin
- Same color options as the M4 generation. After all, Apple stuck with the same color options for the M1 and M3 iterations before updating the color palette with different hues with the M4 iteration.
- Same 24-inch Retina 4K display with LCD technology
- Same two variants of the iMac: lower-end model with two Thunderbolt ports and some sort of binned M5 chip and higher-end model with four Thunderbolt ports and the full-fledged M5 chip that’s used on the current base 14-inch MacBook Pro.
Down the road, Apple is also developing a future iMac model that will have an OLED display for the first time on an iMac, although we would have to wait a couple of years down the road to see Apple release that iMac.
Currently, the iMac starts at $1,499 in the U.S. after the price hikes went into effect in light of the memory chip crisis, so I’d expect the next iMac to start at the same price. If you’re looking to upgrade to a newer iMac, you may not have to wait that long, as a refresh is just around the corner.
