We’ve heard rumors before of a new iMac arriving with an M3 chip, but according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, such a computer could launch as soon as late spring.
As a reliable Apple tipster, Gurman tends to be on the money with his information. And in this case, he’s revised a previous report touting a refreshed iMac could arrive in the fall to coming “between late spring and summer.” Which, to us, means June — likely at WWDC 2023. However, Gurman said the iMac won’t go into production for at least three months, meaning it'll apparently be available for consumers in the second half of the year; probably August time.
Given the Apple M2 chip was launched in June 2022, it wouldn’t be too far-fetched for a next-generation chip to arrive some 12 months later. And as the 24-inch iMac is still using the M1 chip, it would be an available candidate for an Apple Silicon upgrade.
The M3 is likely to continue with Apple’s efforts to get more power out of its silicon while also retaining impressive efficiency, which is one of the reasons the MacBook Air M2 is a joy to use. There’s scope for Cupertino’s engineers to adopt a 3-nanometer process, via chip maker TSMC, in order to fit more transistors on a silicon slice and thus get more power.
As for the iMac itself, Gurman reckons it’ll stick with a 24-inch display and that its design changes will mostly be under the hood. We hope this isn't the case; despite the slimness and pleasing color options, the current iMac has a somewhat unsightly display bezel and could do with a few more ports.
Speaking of desktop Macs, Gurman also noted that a new Mac Pro is expected in the summer, this time shunning Intel chips in favor of Apple Silicon. This is arguably overdue as the Mac Pro is the only Mac machine that’s not been given Apple’s own in-house designed chips.
Gurman says the Mac Pro will come with the M2 Ultra, which we expect will blow the M1 Ultra out of the water, with up to 24 CPU cores and 76 graphics cores, and memory expected to top out at a massive 192GB.
There’s not much in the way of information about the Mac Pro’s design, which could take the cheesegrater look of the current model and run with it. But we’d be hopeful for a completely new design built around the M-series chips.
With WWDC a few months away, we’d expect to hear more about these rumored Macs then. But either way, it looks like 2023 will be a busy year for the Mac, especially as we’ve already seen the new 14-inch MacBook Pro and 16-inch MacBook Pro.
