Apple has updated its iMac range for 2017 with Intel Kaby Lake processors and unveiled the iMac Pro. Here’s everything you need to know including release dates, prices and specs.
Now that Intel has launched its Kaby Lake processors, it’s no surprise that Apple has updated its hardware range with the new chips and much more. Here we look at the iMac 2017 range including release date, prices and specs.
“With major updates to iMac, and a refresh of our MacBook and MacBook Pro lines, the Mac is stronger than ever, ” said John Ternus, Apple’s vice president of Hardware Engineering.
Instead of launching new iMac models towards the end of the year around September or October, the firm refreshed the range at WWDC on 5 June .
Apple made them available straight away so you can order one now from the Apple store online and in physical stores from 7 June .
An iMac Pro was also unveiled but it has a release date of December 2017 .
There are multiple models to choose from as you’d expect with various specs and sizes. Here are the starting prices for the iMac 2017 range.
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Apple has updated the whole iMac 2017 range with new displays which it says are the best ever. They include 500 nits of brightness, 10-bit dithering and one billion colours.
They also, as mentioned, have Intel’s latest processor so you get a 7th-generation Kaby Lake CPU as standard. These chips have higher base and turbo frequencies for improved performance. You’ll get up to Core i7, of course.
iMacs for 2017 also get up to 50 percent faster SSDs which can be up to 2TB and other features such as two USB-C ports that support Thunderbolt 3.
The 27in iMac models get Fusion drives as standard and up to 64GB of RAM.
For the smallest iMac, you’ll now get up to 32GB of RAM and a nice bump on the graphics side of things. Intel Iris Graphics 640 means 80 percent better performance compared to the previous generation.
As well as the above, the 4K iMac get a graphics boost to either an AMD Radeon 555 or Radeon 560 providing up to 4GB of VRAM. Apple says this means three times the performance of the previous generation.
The larger iMac with that 5K display will come with a choice of AMD Radeon Pro 570,575 or 580 graphics cards with up to 8GB of VRAM. You’ll be able to take advantage of up to 5.5 Teraflops of power.
You’ll have to wait until the end of the year for it but Apple has given us a sneak previous of the first iMac Pro which it calls ‘the most powerful Mac ever made’. The device comes in Space Grey and has a 5K display as standard.
As standard, the iMac Pro will have an 8-core Xeon processor but will also be available in 10- and 18-core options.
The iMac Pro will have 128GB of ECC memory, up to 4TB 3Gbps SSD, 4x Thunderbolt ports and 10Gb Ethernet. Other specs include a 1080p FaceTime camera, Bluetooth 4.2,11ac Wi-Fi, four beamforming mics, louder audio and an SDXC card slot.
Furthermore is Radeon Vega graphics with up to 22 Teraflops of power and the ability to drive up to 44 million pixels.Apple promises things like real-time 3D rendering, high framerate VR, faster code compiling, real-time 4K video, machine learning development and more.
The cheapest model, $4,999, will come with an 8-core Xeon CPU, Radeon Vega graphics, 32GB ECC memory and a 1TB SSD.
For more new iMac rumours see our sister site Macworld.
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