Over the past week, we’ve finally been getting more information on the upcoming 2021 iMacs,
and just yesterday, we got a MASSIVE design leak that I never thought would happen in
a million years, but I guess Apple is just going ALL OUT recently.
So in this video, I’m gonna be talking about when we should expect the new iMacs, what
we should expect the redesign to look like, and of course, the expected specs and features,
so let’s get right into it.
First off, I want to begin with the progression of leaks that are focused on the redesign,
because as most of you know, It’s literally been almost 10 years since the last design
change, and people have been asking for Apple to update the design for years now, since
it’s starting to look pretty dated with those massive black bezels.
But thankfully, I’m 100% sure that we will get a redesign this year based on leaks and
rumors, so let’s get into those.
The very first rumors surrounding a redesigned iMac came way back in March of last year from
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, claiming that a new iMac is coming as early as later in 2020.
And then a month after that, The China Times claimed that a 23-inch iMac may be launching
in the second half of 2020.
And if you didn’t already know, Apple currently only offers 21.5 and 27 inch iMac models,
so a 23-inch iMac points to a full redesign.
Then, just a day later, Mark Gurman added to the rumor, saying that a 23-inch substantially
redesigned iMac sounds about right, and it should be coming as soon as later that year.
Then in June, Sonny Dickinson claimed that a new iMac was gonna be launched at Apple’s
annual WWDC event with an iPad Pro design language, basically looking like Apple’s
Pro Display XDR, which makes sense!
But shortly after that, Jon Prosser tweeted out that any possible hardware has been scrapped
for WWDC, and he turned out to be right!
At WWDC, no iMac was launched, but Ming-Chi Kuo did come out and say that a 24-inch iMac
with a new design was going to launch in the 4th quarter of 2020, which is slightly different
from the 23-inch size rumors we heard earlier.
And then in July, Sonny Dickinson updated his rumors, saying that they expect there
to be two sizes of the redesigned iMac, with both of them having much thinner bezels.
But at the end of July, all hope was crushed for a redesigned iMac by McGuire Wood on twitter,
saying that the redesign is being saved for Apple’s own silicon, so the design of the
next iMac would be unchanged.
And then the next day, Jon Prosser confirmed that a new iMac was coming in August, without
a redesign, and he even broke the news a few hours before the actual launch happened, and
of course, no redesign happened.
At that point, we started getting rumors of the first ARM-based imac coming in the 1st
quarter of 2021, which made a lot more sense.
And then in October, The China Times dropped a leak bomb, saying that we should get a new
redesigned iMac in the first half of 2021, but the major piece of news is that it would
come with an Apple-designed dedicated GPU, which is a huge deal, and I’ll be talking
about this in just a minute.
Then in November, we finally got some concepts created of the redesigned iMac, basically
looking like a large iPad on a stand, which honestly looks really nice and clean.
I don’t know if you guys remember this or not, but I made a video back in September
claiming that I figured out the design of the next iMac, basically saying that it would
look just like the Pro Display XDR from Apple, except for a few small details.
I said that the back would be completely flat, and with flat sides that won’t be as thick
as the Pro Display, because the back is not gonna have the same lattice pattern cutouts
as the Pro Display.
The main reason for it to be thinner is because the internals of the iMac will be greatly
reduced due to the switch to Apple Silicon, which means everything from the Logic Board
and the power supply to the chip, heatsink and fan would be smaller, including the removal
of user-replaceable RAM.
So due to all of that, Apple can make it nice and thin, and I also said that the stand would
look similar to the one on the Pro Display XDR, being more squared off, but without being
easily removable.
And as for the front, I said it would look just like the Pro Display XDR, but with a
smaller chin and a smaller Apple Logo.
Now I really hope that I’m gonna be right, and it’s actually looking good for me because
in January, Mark Gurman said that the new iMac will have a completely flat back, with
display bezels that look just like the Pro Display XDR.
The only difference is that he believes the chin area will be removed, so I might actually
be wrong in thinking that Apple will keep it around but make it much slimmer.
And now, let’s get into the absolute most recent leaks that we’ve been seeing, starting
with Mark Gurman saying that the redesigned iMacs won’t actually launch until the end
of this year, which is a bit disappointing since previous rumors pointed to the first
half of 2021.
And then the next day, Jon Prosser tweeted that we should not be seeing the iMac coming
in March, adding to Mark’s rumors.
And then finally, just yesterday, Jon dropped a MASSIVE leak bomb.
He claims that the 2021 iMac will come in five colors, basically the same exact ones
from the iPad Air 4, which is absolutely mind-blowing because the last time Apple did that, it was
with the original iMac.
This was totally unexpected, but thankfully, the renders made by conceptcreator look exactly
like what I claimed the back of the next iMac would look like, being incredibly clean.
And the stand is also spot on with my expectations, coming out as a flat square instead of the
current wedge-shaped stand.
The only difference is that his renders of the front don’t have a chin, so I’m probably
wrong about that, and I also think there’s a chance that the display will have slightly
rounded edges instead of having square corners.
So there you guys go, that’s most likely what the next iMac will look like, but now,
I want to get into the features and specs that we should expect.
Back in July, 9to5mac discovered code in MacOS Big Sur beta which pointed to the possibility
of Face ID coming to the Mac, which is a huge deal!
This would actually be perfect for the iMac because the only other option is Touch ID,
and putting it into the keyboard doesn’t make any sense at all because it would make
it less secure by sending the signal from the keyboard to the iMac, so I don’t see
a Touch ID keyboard coming, basically ever.
Instead, Face ID is the best option, and thankfully, Mark Gurman from Bloomberg said that Apple
is in fact working on that feature, but it unfortunately won’t be coming in this year’s
redesign.
That’s definitely a bit sad since it’s the perfect time to add Face ID, but I still
believe that Apple will be upgrading the webcam to have 1080P video quality this year.
And now I want to get into the important stuff, and that’s the specs. I believe that the
2021 iMacs will most likely be getting the M1X chip, which is gonna be coming with the
14 and 16” MacBook Pros sometime this summer, packing 12 processing cores and 16 graphics
cores.
However, I do think there’s a chance that they could have an upgrade option of something
like an M1Z chip, with a 16-core processor instead of 12, and potentially a 20-core GPU.
Now that is just pure speculation on my part since I believe that the highest-end iMac
should be more powerful than the 16” MacBook Pro to help it seem like a better deal.
And if you’re wondering why anyone would pay for the larger 30 to 32” iMac, there’s
a chance that they’ll offer I believe that this model will be coming with a dedicated
Apple GPU, just like the rumors from the China times were pointing to back in October.
And I personally think that the dedicated GPU option will only be available on the larger
iMac to help Apple upsell the more expensive model.
This is basically gonna be a huge deal because the main worry about Apple Silicon is that
the integrated graphics isn’t powerful enough, and a dedicated custom Apple GPU would fix
that, especially since it’ll work alongside the integrated graphics cores.
Now apart from that, I expect the internals of the iMac to be more spread out, with a
thinner one fan and heatsink design, and I think that the user-replaceable RAM will be
going away to help keep the iMac thin.
And despite being thin, I expect it to stay super cool and quiet because of how efficient
Apple Silicon chips are, like the example we showed of the power draw from Intel Macs
compared to Apple M1 Macs.
I also expect these iMacs to finally get displays with HDR support, most likely by using the
same technology as the Pro Display XDR, but probably not as high-end since that display
is super expensive.
And in terms of the pricetag, I expect Apple to more or less keep the base prices the same
as they currently are since they’re saving so much money by using their own silicon,
and they’ll also be relying on RAM, storage and potential graphics upgrades to make extra
profits.
And I think that anyone wanting to buy an iMac should absolutely wait for these redesigned
models to launch because the performance is gonna be absolutely next level, destroying
every single Mac out there, even some of the super expensive Mac Pro models in real-world
tasks.
So there you guys go, hopefully you enjoyed this video on the 2021 iMac redesign, and
if you disagree with any of my thoughts and speculations, go ahead and comment below and
click that circle above to subscribe for more videos like this one. Thanks for watching
and we’ll see you in the next one!