After failing to make an appearance at the September 12 Apple event, new iMacs have finally been announced by Apple. Both the 21.5" and 27" versions have been updated to a new razor-thin form factor, and their guts have been upgraded with Intel Ivy Bridge processors, which brings USB 3.0 to the Apple desktop.
The new form factor is 80% thinner than the previous generation, and features a screen surface bonded directly to the underlying IPS LCD panel. The previous iMac design included a removable clear protective bezel over the LCD's surface; the new design puts less material between the user and the LCD, and Apple promises that it will result in a clearer screen and a better viewing experience. The new iMacs weigh less, too, shedding eight pounds of material from their porkier predecessors.
Screen resolutions are unchanged from the previous generation, with the 21.5" iMac coming in at 1920x1080 and the 27" model at 2560x1440. In a move bound to disappoint many, "retina"-resolution displays for the desktop computer are not on the list of features this time around. Producing a high-DPI display at the sizes necessary for the 21.5" and 27" displays in the iMac is difficult and expensive, but the biggest problem to overcome is finding a discrete video card with the horsepower to drive that many pixels and that also fits within the iMac's tight thermal budget. iMacs have long used mobile graphics chipsets for their reduced power consumption and heat outputâ€"even if not marketed as such, a comparison of PCI device identifiers has shown every iMac since 2007 has come with a mobility video card rather than a desktop versionâ€"and even the fastest mobile chipset on the planet would struggle with the number of pixels in a retina-DPI 21" or 27" display. Don't expect Apple to give up on Retina, thoughâ€"we will almost certainly see a retina-DPI iMac in the future.
Both iMacs will come with 1 TB hard disk drives as standard, along with up to 768 GB of solid state storage as an add-on. In addition to the either-or approach, Apple also letting you do both with a new option called "Apple Fusion Drive," which is a semi-hybrid setup with 128 GB of solid state disk backed by a 1TB or 3TB traditional hard disk. The preinstalled applications all start out on the flash and documents other applications start out on the spinnning disk; OS X watches what applications and files you open and seamlessly promotes the ones you use more often up to the flash so that they run much faster, and demotes unused items down to the slower but larger hard disk.
The base 21.5" iMac will have a 2.7 GHz quad-core Ivy Bridge i5, 8 GB of RAM, a 1TB hard disk drive, and a discrete GeForce GT 640M, and will start at $1299. It will ship in November. The 27" base model comes with a 2.9GHz quad-core Ivy Bridge i5, 8GB of RAM, 1TB of hard drive space, and a GeForce GTX 660M discrete video card, for $1799. It will be available a month after its littler brother, in December. Both models can be built-to-order with additional storage and more RAM (up to 32GB).
Additionally, Apple's tiniest Mac, the Mac Mini has been updated today. The smallest member of the Macintosh family still comes in three main variations, two with the standard version of OS X and a third featuring OS X server. The two standard versions include a 2.5GHz dual-core Intel Ivy Bridge i5 with 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive, or a 2.3GHz quad-core Ivy Bridge i5 with 4GB of RAM a 1TB of hard drive.
Both models can be customized with faster CPUs, more RAM, and additional storage. The third Mini, preloaded with OS X Server, includes a quad-core 2.3GHz Ivy Bridge i7 with 4GB of RAM and dual 1TB hard drives, and can also be built to order. Like the update iMac, the switch to Ivy Bridge means that all of the Minis now have USB 3.0 in addition to their Thunderbolt ports, and can take full advantage of the growing list of high-speed USB 3.0-compatible devices
Pricing remains unchanged from the previous generation, with the base model starting at $599, and the upgraded model with starting at $799. The server model will start at $999. They are all available for sale today.
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