Apple hosted its first consumer product Event earlier this evening, and as expected, served up some refreshed hardware to highlight the power of its new M1 silicon. We have already seen the M1 added to the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and Mac Mini, but now it has made its way to the iMac, with the desktop also receiving a substantial redesign in the process.
Most notable is the thin and svelte design, with the new iMac now boasting an 11.5mm thin body. Added to this is a 24″ variant that features a 4.5K Retina display which yields a 4480×2520 resolution and 500 nits of brightness.
Added to this is an array of colour options to be made available alongside the usual silver – green, yellow, orange, pink, purple and blue. The new iMac will also have colour matched accessories to go along with the new design such as Magic Keyboards, TrackPads and Mice.
While the new design is indeed striking, the most important element is what is going on inside. On this front, the addition of the M1 SoC results in up to 85 percent faster CPU performance and up to two times faster GPU performance for certain apps compared to the previous generation of 21.5″ desktop, according to Apple.
Other performance related functionality includes the ability to edit up to five streams of 4K footage, or one stream of 8K footage, without dropping a frame in Final Cut Pro, as well as up to three times faster machine learning in apps that utilise the 16-core Neural Engine in the M1.
Looking at the rest of the new iMac, it features a six speaker array that results in a better spatial audio experience for watching content, with a 1080p FaceTime HD camera added to the mix for videoconferencing. There’s also a studio-quality three-microphone array for clearer calls and voice recordings too.
Given how recent the announcement is, there is no word on local availability and pricing for the new colourful iMacs. That said, orders in the States open on 30th April, with the desktop shipping in May. Pricing thereof starts at $1 299 (~R18 599) for the 7-core GPU model and $1 499 (~R21 462) for the 8-core variant.
