Early this week, Apple quietly launched two brand new updates of its iMac product line, in an unusually quiet fashion. The quiet nature of the announcement is understandable, considering that Apple’s “Hey Siri” (or should we say “iPad Pro”) keynote event is still reasonably fresh in the mind of consumers. With that in mind, talks of a refresh, with particular reference to Apple’s smallest iMac, the 21.5 inch non-Retina, have been making the rounds, furthermore, if common sense is anything to go by, this upgrade wasn’t entirely unexpected.
Apple has been systematically upgrading its products a lot faster than it used to, since a few short years ago, with a series of technologies and features often migrating from iOS to OS X products. We could even go as far as saying that iOS devices have become almost a testing ground for technologies to be implemented on Macs, which include the Retina display, and the Taptic engine, which brought forward Force Touch trackpads, and 3D Touch, the latter of which, is now domain of the iPhone 6S, although, we are sure, not for long.
With regards to the new and improved iMacs, now coming, in Apple’s own words, in “Colossal” and “Ginormous”, the upgrade, as we mentioned earlier, is not entirely unexpected, as well as the specs, now on par with what we can expect from an almost 2016 line-up.
With Retina 4K comes greater resolution, for the smaller iMac, which now sports 4096x2304 pixel resolution, which dwarves the 21.5 inch iMac non-Retina, 1920x1080 pixels resolution. A little trivia on the 4K resolution featured in the new 21.5 inch iMac is that, unlike previous upgrade cycles in which 4K upgrades, and 5K upgrades multiply the original standard LCD resolution by 4 times, in this case the 4K features on the new entry-level iMac is a little less than expected, primarily to keep the pixel density in line with the 27 inch model, at 218/219 pixels per inch.
Skylake is the big star of the show, when it comes to processing power, and while the new 21.5 inch iMac still features a 5th gen i5 Broadwell chip, reportedly due to Intel not yet ready to ship Skylake with integrated graphics for the Mac, the new 27 inch model, now run on the brand new, and increasingly popular 6th gen Intel Skylake i7 architecture.
Both “Colossal” and “Ginormous” models come in the same ultra-thin edge design, but with the added bonus of improved internal cooling, which is great for intensive tasks.
The graphic processing in the entry level iMac is handled by Intel Iris Pro Graphics 6200, which is the same GPU featured in the higher-end non-Retina version of the 21.5 iMac.
The new 27 inch iMac Retina’s GPU features an AMD Radeon M395 graphics chip, with 2GB of GDDR5 RAM, with the option of upgrading to a M395X, which comes with double the RAM.
New Accessories
Recently, we have talked about Apple possibly redesigning its lineup of accessories for Macs, with reference to a new Magic Keyboard, Mouse and Trackpad. Simultaneous to the new iMac announcement, come the three new upgrades.
The Magic Keyboard’s new design is thinner, due to the rechargeable battery which replaced the need for a round “rear stand”, a design trick to justify the space required by the AA batteries compartment.
The Magic Mouse 2 also features a rechargeable battery, and improved wireless connectivity via Bluetooth.
We had no doubt that the Apple Magic TrackPad 2 would eventually feature Force Touch. The new iteration of Apple’s iconic trackpad is also wireless and featuring the same rechargeable battery as the Magic Mouse 2 and Magic Keyboard 2.
All three accessories can be brought up to a full charge in about 2 hours, by plugging them directly into a Mac, and a full charge can last about a month or more, depending on usage.