Apple is gearing up to announce its first Mac models with the M4 series of chips, and one of them is expected to be the 24-inch iMac. That machine was first introduced in April 2021. It initially packed the M1 chip, and it was updated with the M3 chip last October. So what can we expect from the M4 iMac? It looks like it’s going to be a rather simple chip upgrade overall.
Possible Specs
As you may know, Apple sells two variants of the 24-inch iMac – one with two USB-C ports (both Thunderbolt-enabled) and one with four USB-C ports (two are Thunderbolt-enabled and two are just USB-C with up to 10 Gb/s transfer speeds).
Currently, that model comes with the binned M3 chip with an 8-core CPU and 8-core GPU. So it’s possible we’ll see the same treatment again where that model may come with the binned M4 chip (9-core CPU and 10-core GPU). It’s possible that we’ll see the following specs to still differentiate it from the 4-port model:
- two Thunderbolt / USB-C ports
- Magic Keyboard (Touch ID will be an optional upgrade)
- optional Gigabit Ethernet on the power brick
For the model with 4 USB-C ports, currently that machine comes with the unbinned M3 chip with an 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU. So it’s likely that that machine will come with a full-fledged M4 chip (10-core CPU and 10-core GPU). Since the M4 chip now has four Thunderbolt controllers, Apple may finally be able to enable Thunderbolt on each of the USB-C ports, so these are the specs on what we can still expect for that machine:
- four Thunderbolt / USB-C ports
- Magic Keyboard with Touch ID standard
- standard Gigabit Ethernet on the power brick
Magic Accessories
Speaking of the Magic Keyboard, it’s been heavily rumored that Apple will finally switch from Lightning to USB-C on the Magic Keyboard, Mouse, and Trackpad per EU’s policy, similar to when the iPhone 15 models switched to USB-C, and based on code references in iOS 18.1, we’ll certainly see those bundled with the iMac. As a bonus, those accessories will be color-matched based on the color of the iMac. On a side note, I also hope that the Mac Pro will ship with those accessories with the USB-C port for the sake of consistency.
Pricing and Conclusion
For the pricing of those models, we may see the same starting price as before at $1,299; however, since the M4 iMacs will start with 16GB of unified memory as standard, we may see a price bump of up to $200. For what it’s worth, it’ll definitely be worth the premium as we can always expect sales on the standard models that come with 16GB of memory.
Stay tuned for Monday when Apple will start announcing new Macs then! Follow us on X for the latest news!
