The Cupertino giant is refreshing almost its entire lineup of Mac hardware with new iMacs and MacBooks, sporting the latest processors from Intel and updated graphics for VR compatibility.
At its WWDC Developer conference this year, Apple announced a refresh of its AIO iMac series and MacBook line of notebooks to go with the newly announced High Sierra version of macOS.
The new iMacs mostly just feature refreshed and improved hardware specs, bringing Intel’s 7th generation ‘Kaby Lake’ processors and updated screen that offer 43% more brightness and up to one billion colours. The all-in-one devices will also feature up to 32GB and 64GB of RAM for the 21.5- and 27-inch devices, respectively, alongside up to 2TB of SSD storage that is 50% faster compared to the previous generation. On the I/O side, things mostly stay the same but Apple has increased the number of available Thunderbolt 3 ports to 2.
Apple has also taken heed of users’ repeated requests for increased graphical processing power with the inclusion of a range of options from Intel Iris Pro Graphics 640 with 64MB of eDRAM to a range of options from Radeon’s dedicated GPUs between 555 to the 580 with 4-8GB of RAM depending on your chosen configuration. As a result of this increased graphical fidelity, the higher-end iMacs will also be able to support VR experiences.
On the notebook side of things, things are a little less exciting as the Cupertino giant has simply refreshed its line of notebook to the current generation of Intel’s Kaby Lake processors, while the MacBook Air gets a modest speed bump.
The new iMacs will run you from anywhere between $1099 for the base configuration of the 21.5 inch model up to a starting price of $1799 for the 5K 27-inch iMac. The MacBooks retain their starting price compared to the last generation (starting at $1299) , though the entry level Touch Mar MacBook get a slight price drop, starting at $1799.
