This August the iMac will be 25 years old! Way back on August 15, 1998, Apple introduced the G3 iMac. Could we see an M3 iMac this summer to celebrate the anniversary? It’s possible.
In last weekend’s newsletter Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman revealed that, according to his sources, Apple is “at an advanced stage of development called engineering validation testing,” which means Apple is already conducting production tests on a new iMac.
This doesn’t mean the new iMac will be shipping imminently. Gurman says the new iMac is not expected to go into mass production for at least three months, and that it “won’t ship until the second half of the year at the earliest.”
This new iMac is expected to feature the same screen size as the current model (24 inches) and to come in the same selection of colors as the M1 iMac that Apple introduced in April 2021. However, there will be “behind-the-scenes changes,” according to Gurman. Internal changes include the relocation and redesign of some internal components and a change to the manufacturing process used for attaching the iMac’s stand.
The biggest change on the inside will, of course, be the new chip. Currently, the iMac is powered by the M1, which has already been superseded by the M2. But reports suggest that Apple will bypass the M2 for the iMac, moving straight to the M3. It’s not expected that the iMac will be the first M3-powered Mac, though—Gurman thinks that accolade will go to the 15-inch MacBook Air which may launch sooner than the M3 iMac.
Gurman thinks the M3 system-on-chip could make an appearance at WWDC 2023, a year after the M2 was unveiled at the same event. “The company could then follow up with the M3 iMac later in the year,” Gurman writes.