Looks a civilised set-up - the U series CPU is a 15w part - and there's no dGPU - so that Dell appears to be for the people who want that big screen (it's still only 1080P, not even 1440P) but aren't doing too much strenuous with it. Not a lot to cool so the enclosure doesn't have to be overly huge. You can't really ask Apple to cool a 5k panel with mini LED backlights and put the CPU and GPU horsepower in there too.
What if Apple decided make an ultra-slim iMac Air design with tiny bezels (as commonly requested by a vocal minority here) they could drive a 4k 23" panel with the Ice Lake i7-1068G7 found in the 13" Macbook Pro with 4 Thunderbolt ports.
The one thing stopping them might be a decision that a 4k (or even 4.6k) may be too many pixels to drive for the Iris Plus graphics. The next obvious solution would then be to transplant the
i7-10750H from this year's presumptive MacBook Pro 16" and use the AMD Pro 5300M/5500M graphics to provide
just enough performance to push that many pixels.
With the cooling regime required for miniLED displays I would suspect Apple would have had an extra look at the feasibility of building a next gen iMac Pro, with the existing iMac Pro case being handed down to the 27" iMac but using the existing 27" panel.
So can we then expect a 2020 iMac to have 4 Thunderbolt ports, FaceTime HD camera, and Comet Lake S CPUs but locked away RAM? Apple would have to double standard RAM to 16Gb and also offer 512Gb SSD as a baseline so people buying a base SKU would not feel ripped off at being unable to upgrade later? Or is it a 2021 model and Rocket Lake S with RDNA2 on the horizon instead?
In that case was the 'ready to drop, but delayed' message in March implying the basic storage/RAM bump is being dictated by either marketing as well as supply chain?
Any future iMac Pro would be thicker for sure if a mini LED backlight is on the cards and that's where a full case redesign will probably be necessary. In that eventuality Apple can totally see out the rest of the year with the iMac Pro 2017 on sale - just look out for deals from third party retailers.
Having said that, what if Apple decided it's a bad idea for miniLED iMac Pro to stick everything behind a miniLED screen? And what if a 23" panel could be used in a 4.6K mini LED XDR Pro with Thunderbolt 3 port so ANY Mac can connect to it?
Before we wheel out the inevitable xMac claims, I've suggested before that a headless high base spec Mac might work thus:
• 32Gb RAM (users can replace if they want 128Gb at their own expense or BTO)
• 1Tb SSD (using that custom Apple connector)
• BGA Comet Lake H CPU and soldered AMD RDNA GPU - motherboard replacement should be easy and the cooling solution can be designed specifically for this setup with the expectation that users will be caning it more than the average Mac - it also stops 'enthusiasts' from shoehorning their own K series Comet Lake S CPUs into it.
• 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports
In other words, it's a headless MacBook Pro 16" but with RAM you can replace within a solution that is accessible for cleaning. You are selling easy replaceability of parts for Apple - motherboard, RAM, SSD - not the ability for buyers to buy a base skeleton model and customise it with non Apple parts or economically hang a Samsung X5 SSD off for booting.
Remember Comet Lake H is available up to
8 cores, 16 threads at 3.1GHz if used in 65w cTDP-up mode. If Apple were so minded they could make all of these xMacs i9 only. There is an
i9-10885H with 8 cores, 16 threads at 2.4Ghz they could use as a base SKU.
This kind of segmentation would mean an xMac couldn't then pose a benchmark threat to the Mac Pro or iMac Pro but might cater for that small segment of users who want headless power without having to buy the Mac Pro. Perhaps music production guys who might not want audible fans from their computer anywhere near the screen they are using?
