Apple iMac refresh due Real Soon Now

Online benchmark result sites have revealed the imminent arrival of new Macs before. Witness the appearance of the new MacBook Pro in Primate Labs' Geekbench site in May - a month before Apple announced the machine. While this week's WWDC keynote made no mention of new iMacs, don't forget that a new all-in-one machine also …

[Michael Jennings]

No real surprise.

It seems fairly obvious that there are two development paths for the iMac underway at Apple. There is a straightforward refresh which will involve Ivy Bridge CPUs, faster RAM, Kepler graphics etc - a straightforward refresh along the lines of the non-Retina Macbook Pro refreshes that were announced on Monday. And there is a new "retina" iMac in the works, too, which will be thinner, have no optical drive etc, plus of course a much higher resolution display. When Apple hints that they have something exciting in the world for iMac fans coming next year, this is what they are referring to. On the other hand, the straightforward refresh will be along in a month or two. Almost certainly, we will see a Mac mini refresh at the same time.

Apple never refreshes its laptops and desktops at the same time: it's presumably easier that way.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: No real surprise.

IIRC Cook spoke about something going on for Mac PRo users late next year. I do not believe he mentioned the iMac

[Bush_rat]

Im Waiting!

I've got $1,800 in Jb Hi Fi gift cards to spend on an iMac, and NOT seeing them refresh at WWDC was a real frickin disappointment! They expire christmas 2013, HURRAY THE FRICK UP!

[Chris D Rogers]

Retina on iMac!!!!!

All this crap about Retina is getting to me - the iMac already has a near Retina display in the 27in model - also, whilst its possible to increase the pixel count, a 2X increase or 4X increase seems out of the question.

The ISP panel uses - LG I believe - is already quite a hi resolution display with hardly any manufacturers pushing out really super hidef LCD panels presently.

If we can move away from the Apple 'Retina' hype - all bloody marketing on large panel displays, we may have a better idea.

In my opinion, Apple would be better advised to incorporate Kinect-type and Leap Motion technology into a bigger format - 30in display - rather than incrementally update a panel to alleged 'RETINA' quality and charge an arm and a leg in doing so - for what its worth the LG panel Apple presently use in now in a few PC monitors offered by Korean vendors, you can buy them for US$300 on eBay, this suggests the actual panel is now costing Apple no more than US$150 - I don't think I want a US$1,000 panel in my iMac and large price increase to boot.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Re: Retina on iMac!!!!!

But it'll be magical. And revolutionary.

Apple under the Timster are losing momentum. Cook seems to be someone who worries about how stuff is put together and doesn't do big picture.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Retina on iMac!!!!!

Retina is just a marketing term that makes things easier to understand for some people.

In reality it is just a term for an above average DPI count. But then ask people on the stree what DPI is and how many people will get that right?

Numbers and abbreviations fly over most people's heads, but use a concept and use a proper word and people may understand you.

[jubtastic1]

Will it be a chinless wonder?

Every iteration shaves some metal off the chin, It's going to end up looking exactly like a thicker thunderbolt display, which I suppose looks a lot like a TV, convergence? I hope not.

[Andalou]

Re: Will it be a chinless wonder?

But instead of shaving off the chin the screen should encroach the jaw-line. More vertical pixels - it's a computer not a television... oh, what's the point...

[Dave Robinson]

Reg gone American?

So that will be "Really Soon" then?

Before you know it, we'll be dropping apostrophes and using "like" at least three times in every sentence. Not that you'll be able to differentiate one sentence from another, of course, because there won't be any punctuation.

Or maybe I'm just being picky :-)

[Silverburn]

Digital TV hookup? Bzzzt. Nope.

Retinal display? Bzzzt.

30" screen? Nah

Ivy Bridge? oooh very likely

Speed bump CPU and new GPU? Also very likely

Bigger SSD? Yep

Release with ML? Yep

It won't be anything spectacular, so lets not get carried away?

[Tim Parker]

32-bit OSX ?

I wonder if something is a little bit of with the diagnostic in their test software, it has the following below the benchmarks

Geekbench 2.3.1 Tryout for Mac OSX x86 (32-bit)