Yesterday, Apple officially launched the updated iMac models with the M3 chip. They also brought a few spec improvements in line with the other updated Mac models, including WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 support. However, what remained unclear until yesterday was whether the M3 iMacs support high-impedance headphones as there was no reference to that feature on their product page or even their specs page.
However, Apple confirmed that has been the case when the company updated its support page yesterday. The ability to use high-impedance headphones on a Mac was introduced when Apple debuted the redesigned the higher-end MacBook Pros with Apple Silicon back in October 2021, and that feature has made its way across all of the updated Mac models. To recap, this feature is supported on:
- iMac models introduced in 2023 or later
- MacBook Air models introduced in 2022 or later
- MacBook Pro models introduced in 2021 or later
- Mac mini models introduced in 2023 or later
- Mac Studio models introduced in 2022 or later
- Mac Pro models introduced in 2023 or later
Despite the removal of the headphone jack in both the modern iPhone and iPad models, it’s still nice that the headphone jack stays in the entire Mac lineup for specific use cases, especially to use them for zero-latency or lossless audio listening.