Wish List: What I'd Like To See In A New iMac

Apple says a new iMac is coming later this year.

- Roman Loyola

When Apple met with select members of the media to talk about the Mac Pro (go. macworld.com/mcpr), Apple VPs also mentioned that the company plans to update the iMac this year.

The gap between updates for the iMac isn’t as long as the Mac Pro, but it’s been a while. The current iMac was released in October of 2015, well past the yearly updates Apple used to issue. So the iMac is due.

Pike’s Universum (pikeralpha.wordpress.com), which has an eagle eye for finding references to future Apple products in Apple’s operating system code, reported on some specs that could be used for the new iMac—though the site says that the information should be “handled with care/skepticism.” I’ll point out Pike’s findings in each section I discuss, along with my commentary.

THE LATEST CPUS

Pike’s Universum says that the high-end iMac could have an Intel E3-1285 v6 processor.This is a Xeon processor that’s not on Intel’s E3 v6 Family list (go.macworld.com/e3v6), so you can either dismiss it as not true, or it could be a processor not yet developed. Intel does have older Xeon processors with the E3-1285 part number,so it does seem feasible.

Intel released the E3-1200 v6 processor family in late March (go.macworld.com/e31200v6), so if there’s any credence to Pike’s report, it checks a box on my iMac wish list: that Apple use current CPUs, not ones that are a generation behind.