Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Will Apple release new iMac in March?
- Thread starter ndolebay
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I hope it changes very little, and I really hope Apple stays away from trying to implement a gimmicky touch screen into the iMac.
Agreed. As a 2015 iMac 5K owner with the 395X, I'd much rather wait for Vega than settle for Polaris. Honestly, if Apple had launched Vega today, I'd have pushed on till 2018 with what I have.
Has Intel released a direct Skylake (much less Kaby Lake) replacement for the reference design used in the 21.5"? I seem to recall reading they had not yet.
Last edited:
You are setting yourself up for disappointment. The only Vega card AMD has talked about (the 12 TFLOP monster Vega 10) is not going to thermally fit in the iMac. Maybe once they make a midrange Vega chip (i.e. Vega 11) we could see it in an iMac, but who knows when that will happen.
Actually the 21" is using broadwell, and Intel released a suitable skylake replacement last year.
I have to believe that in addition to fighting the 1080, AMD is going to have Vega's aimed at the 1070 and 1060 and those should be iMac-compatible.
Yeah, the Skylake-R. Okay.
So maybe with nothing ready for the 27" late last year they're holding back on the 21.5", too. Or we'll have Kaby Lake embedded CPUs by the end of the year and then they can update both iMac families together.
Last edited:
I think the Skylake i5-6585R/6685R, released 2Q 2016, would qualify as the correct replacement, but Intel still hasn't posted a recommend consumer price for those and there has some speculation that there are yield issues.
Personally I was rooting for Kaby Lake + dGPUs. If the 15" MBPs are now dGPU across the board it seemed reasonable that same might become true for the iMacs.
I thought the same thing but I read a guy had to put over 50 hours from start to finish on his hackintosh and it still was not as seem less as a store bought machine.
I'd rather just wait than throw all that time and not have a semi decent result.
Not to mention you can't even update a Hackintosh right away otherwise you risk destroying it. Hackintosh seems like it's for people who are really desperate.
I've been considering a Hackintosh as well and decided on the same. You can have Hackintoshes that work fairly easily out of the box. However to do that you are essentially left with the same choices of hardware that are currently in use with Apple with the exception of NVIDIA video cards (but even those are the older GTX 9XX series). You have to manually hack in support the the 7700k or the 270 motherboards because they aren't supported by Apple yet.
A Hackintosh isn't a great platform for the latest and greatest hardware, and its also not a great platform for stability (can't just apply updates). Additionally if you add the cost of a nice display like the 5K or NVME, it isn't any cheaper either.
So it essentially good for tinkerers that want to learn and play with MacOS and hardware, and those trying to build a cheaper Mac. For a cheaper Mac I'd rather just get a used one...
Yesterday I didn't think so, but today my feeling is yes. If they wanted they could have put out a spec bump this morning, but it's not ready, so you gotta wonder why.
I personally think they're planning some kind of fundamental overhaul to their whole desktop lineup. I think it will be just iMac and Mac going forward, and they could announce both at the same time, maybe WWDC in June, but more likely in late Fall when they traditionally show off new hardware.
My only concern with an iMac redesign is they could ditch the user-upgradable memory, and bump the price just for the hell of it. Or make it even thinner and harder to cool. But I have a feeling we'll see some exciting products this year, hopefully it will be worth the wait, because damn we have been waiting a while already.
Apple has been making some products thicker as of late (new iPad, Apple Watch 2) so I don't expect to see the iMac get any thinner as there is just no need or benefit to doing so. If anything, it may get thicker to allow for higher end GPUs if Apple plans to bring Augmented Reality to the Mac platform (and not just iPhone).
As for soldered RAM, the memory used on the iMac 21.5" is not available in a socketed version. Same with the MacBook and MacBook Pro. The 27" has the space to allow socketable RAM and since Apple aims it at the Enterprise as much as the Consumer, they're going to keep it socketed.
Last edited:
I'm out!
I've ordered a 27" iMac as I need one now, so will continue to enjoy the speculation and rumours, but reality is the current machine will last for years and is more than powerful for what i need. Plus if I keep waiting I'll never buy anything
I've ordered a 27" iMac as I need one now, so will continue to enjoy the speculation and rumours, but reality is the current machine will last for years and is more than powerful for what i need. Plus if I keep waiting I'll never buy anything
A redesign, yes. Not a major one. A nip & tuck here and there & of course a higher retail price...
I touched on the redesign thing yesterday. As much as other companies have tried to copy or outdo the iMac design, I don't think anybody has come close. On here we tend to be hyper-critical about things which your average user doesn't care as much about. I don't think the design has really aged and certainly looks fresh and modern every time I see one.
The only thing that might push a redesign is if the rumours of an iMac Pro are true and they've had to adjust the form factor for reasons of cooling more powerful components or need more room? But even then, I don't think its going to be revolutionary, its going to be more evolutionary.
The only thing that might push a redesign is if the rumours of an iMac Pro are true and they've had to adjust the form factor for reasons of cooling more powerful components or need more room? But even then, I don't think its going to be revolutionary, its going to be more evolutionary.
I've been wondering the same about a redesign, I just hope if they do that they don't change the design to much it's great as it is and the iMac is an iconic design. I've got a 2012 iMac and would upgrade if there is a big jump coming. If it's not been updated in a couple of years it would lead most people to think that Apple are working on something.
I had a dream last night that the new iMac came out with a "major design". It had a much wider screen, it was all black, it had a red stripes across the front, and the brand name of whoever made the audio. *shudders*. After seeing that I'd rather there be only a minor redesign.
*shudders*. After seeing that I'd rather there be only a minor redesign.
The longer the pause, the more I hope for a fall '17 release with Coffee Lake processors.
The longer I live, the more I realize nothing that enthusing comes from Apple... expect Kaby Lake in May or June and the Coffee Lakes come out in August or September, only to linger as the next iMac arrives in mid-2018 just days before the Cannon Lakes appear on the market....which will be in the next iMacs just days after Ice Lake comes on the market.
The longer I live, the more I realize nothing that enthusing comes from Apple... expect Kaby Lake in May or June and the Coffee Lakes come out in August or September, only to linger as the next iMac arrives in mid-2018 just days before the Cannon Lakes appear on the market....which will be in the next iMacs just days after Ice Lake comes on the market.
To everybody who has told me to shut up last year in march that I feared no new iMac for the next year. And said I should just trust Apple and wait..
It's march, a year later, and dreams don't come true. so sigh, ..
It's march, a year later, and dreams don't come true. so sigh, ..
I too was forecasting the same thing. Wish I had put a bet on this at the bookmakers.
You're basing your entire opinion on hackintoshes because of one individual guy?
Seriously, you're ignoring a huge community of people who successfully run hackintoshes with minimal issues because one guy can't get his config working... That's just daft.
If you're saying that you can't run bleeding edge components that's possibly true, but you can certainly run great components, at minimal better that any current desktop offering from Apple, in hackintoshes. I'm not lying, check out the builds for yourself, https://www.tonymacx86.com.
There's plenty of reasons to dislike the idea of building a hackintosh, but cost and power are not them. I know people who have had much success with their builds and a few who haven't but the thing all of them had in common is that they actually tried building one and didn't spew nonsense about them with 0 experience.