Apple is rumoured to be on the verge of releasing a new iMac that takes its styling cues from the Apple Pro Display.
The iMac hasn’t been refreshed in over a year and it still has thick, back bezels around the screen, which are beginning to look dated. Even the bezels on the iMac Pro are much thicker than they are on the Pro Display.
The current iMac still has thick bezels around the screen
Renowned Apple leaker, Sonny Dickson, now claims that Apple will this month refresh the iMac with thinner bezels found on the Pro Display XDR.
The current Pro Display XDR has a 32in, 6K screen with bezels that measure just a few millimeters thick, rather than a few centimeters on the current iMac. That allows users to tile the displays next to one another, with only a tiny physical barrier between the two screens.
However, the Pro Display XDR currently starts from $4,999, although there’s no suggestion that Apple will copy the exact spec of its pro-grade display, merely reduce the bezels on iPad models, which currently ship with much smaller displays of 21.5in and 27in.
Dickson details other specific changes for the new iMac, such as the inclusion of the Apple T2 security chip, an AMD Navi graphics chip and “no more Fusion drive”, which is the hybrid Apple hard disk and SSD. That means Apple is moving to SSD storage alone, which could boost the price of the iMac if Apple wishes to maintain current storage capacities.
It’s highly likely the price of the new iMac will have to be upwards of $1,500 if Apple plans to maintain 1TB of SSD storage.
Mac on ARM chips
It’s not clear at this stage whether iMacs will be included in Apple’s plans to move its computers over to ARM-based processors, which is also expected to be announced at this month’s WWDC conference on June 22.
It’s reported that Apple will give developers at least six months’ notice of the move, giving them time to rebuild applications for ARM instead of Intel processors, before the first ARM-based MacBooks are released in 2021.
WWDC 2020 will be a virtual event, with Apple forced to adapt the annual developer convention because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Source: Paper.li