I want to see them shrink the bezels a heck ton, and all the same thickness like the iPad Pro 2018. That would look super cool
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iMac Design Changes: 2017 or 2018?
- Thread starter Andres Cantu
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Bezels and chin are how they (sort of) stick desktop components behind the screen - there's still not quite enough room to cool them properly, thus the throttling. The iMac Pro allows hotter desktop/ workstation components (keeping bezels and chin), but loses the RAM door as well as the big chunk of space that formerly belonged to spinning drives. No bezels or chin would mean the components from the 15" MacBook Pro instead of desktop stuff (or losing the speakers, but Apple loves multimedia and won't do that).
Some iMacs have historically used laptop parts - the iMac as high-performance desktop is relatively new (a decade or so) - so be careful what you wish for... I could easily see Apple killing the bezels and the chin, but using the CPUs from the next upgrade of the MBP 15" in the 27", with some mix of 13" and 15" parts in the 21". The iMacs would still be a bit faster, because they wouldn't be quite as thermally constrained as a laptop, and they could use higher-end mobile Radeons, which laptop-based iMacs often did. This would mean that the major upgrade would be a new design...
A 6-core MBP 15" is slightly faster than any current quad-core iMac on most tasks, and it's a safe assumption that the next generation will be a bit faster still, so an iMac with top-end laptop parts could be a disappointing 5-10% speed upgrade instead of a downgrade (no 2014 extra-slow Mac Mini), assuming that they use a GPU that can keep up with the current one, which wouldn't be hard...
On the other hand, a bezel-and-chin iMac could be 50% or more faster than any current iMac, possibly at the cost of the RAM door and definitely at the cost of the spinning drives. You get a two-generation processor upgrade, which means eight cores instead of four at the top end without losing per-core speed. The 9900K is a lot harder to cool than a 7700K, so it will need some relative of the iMac Pro cooling system. It's possible that the extra cooling could fit in the drive space, preserving access to the SODIMMs - remembering that the iMac Pro uses full-size ECC DIMMs and would have required a much larger door. Apple may deliberately kill the door for the sake of charging a higher Apple Tax, though.
Some iMacs have historically used laptop parts - the iMac as high-performance desktop is relatively new (a decade or so) - so be careful what you wish for... I could easily see Apple killing the bezels and the chin, but using the CPUs from the next upgrade of the MBP 15" in the 27", with some mix of 13" and 15" parts in the 21". The iMacs would still be a bit faster, because they wouldn't be quite as thermally constrained as a laptop, and they could use higher-end mobile Radeons, which laptop-based iMacs often did. This would mean that the major upgrade would be a new design...
A 6-core MBP 15" is slightly faster than any current quad-core iMac on most tasks, and it's a safe assumption that the next generation will be a bit faster still, so an iMac with top-end laptop parts could be a disappointing 5-10% speed upgrade instead of a downgrade (no 2014 extra-slow Mac Mini), assuming that they use a GPU that can keep up with the current one, which wouldn't be hard...
On the other hand, a bezel-and-chin iMac could be 50% or more faster than any current iMac, possibly at the cost of the RAM door and definitely at the cost of the spinning drives. You get a two-generation processor upgrade, which means eight cores instead of four at the top end without losing per-core speed. The 9900K is a lot harder to cool than a 7700K, so it will need some relative of the iMac Pro cooling system. It's possible that the extra cooling could fit in the drive space, preserving access to the SODIMMs - remembering that the iMac Pro uses full-size ECC DIMMs and would have required a much larger door. Apple may deliberately kill the door for the sake of charging a higher Apple Tax, though.
Not at all. As you can see the only things in the bezels is the camera and the screen's connector and holding clips/tape. Apple engineered the iPhone X and the latest iPad Pro, I'm sure if they want they can move those a little further inside. The only thing they would really have to give up is the thin borders (not making it any thicker by the way, just not tapering all the way to the end.) This would also have no noticeable effect on thermals.