Apple is poised to announce a new iMac lineup just in time for the holiday season, according to an inside report by Mark Gurman.
As part of his weekly “Power On” newsletter, Bloomberg’s tech reporter in residence stated that a Mac-centered product launch announcement could come as early as the end of October.
According to Gurman, it has been more than 900 days since the 24-inch iMac underwent a refresh, and fans are itching to upgrade from the current M1 Apple Silicon processor which made its iMac debut in April 2021.
Image Credit – Apple
The 24-inch iMac is way overdue for the M2 treatment, but since the M3 is now here in a few Macbook laptops, could Apple leapfrog the iMac for even better performance?
“I’m told that the company tabled the iMac Pro plan a while ago due to cost concerns,” Gurman wrote in Sunday’s weekly newsletter.
“Fortunately, a new iMac is finally on the way,” Gurman reports that the current inventory of the 24-inch iMac is in short supply, presumably ahead of the imminent announcement.
Image Credit – Apple
Moreover, as part of the upcoming Mac-Centric product announcement, Apple will likely also announce a 13-inch MacBook Pro, and a higher-end MacBook Pro as part of the Mac holiday lineup. Both models are also overdue for an update.
This would make some sense, Apple may have other plans for any expected M2 upgrade or, could stand pat with an M2 update and then use the original iMac Pro update that was part of the original roadmap to showcase the potential of a desktop M3 processor.
Image Credit – Apple
Gurman believes that Apple hasn’t officially canceled the iMac Pro, just delayed it.
To that end, he believes that Cupertino plans to release a larger, 32-inch iMac Pro in late 2024 or 2025, and it could have the M3 processor as part of Apple’s continual Apple Silicon roll-out. A 32-inch iMac Pro would be the largest all-in-one that Apple has ever made.
Gurman also states that next-generation MacBook Air models won’t launch with M3 chips until 2024. This is largely due to Apple’s launch of the MacBook Pro last January.
He does state, however, that the company does have 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros on deck, but that a second release in the same year would be unusual, therefore the 2024 window.
Gurman expects a Halloween announcement, probably by press release, announcing the new Macs just in time for the holiday shopping season.
Image Credit – US State Department
Apple’s A.I. Is Also Coming
In other Apple news, Gurman reports that Apple is working overtime to catch up with the AI-driven frenzy brought on by ChatGPT.
The company has largely sat on the sidelines, seeing companies like Google and Microsoft updating their online assistants with generative A.I. tools though Apple has been working silently behind the scenes on the technology for years.
“I can tell you in no uncertain terms that Apple executives were caught off guard by the industry’s sudden AI fever and have been scrambling since late last year to make up for lost time,” Gurman added.
With an internal test chat bot dubbed “AppleGPT,” the company has been refining the AI tools to see if its technology can compete with what is already dominating the field.
Gurman also states that Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea have been brought in to spearhead the incorporation of generative AI into iOS 18 and create a smarter version of Siri as early as next year.
Gurman has stated that Apple has committed more than $1 billion dollars a year in a crash effort to play catchup.
[source: Mark Gurman, Power On Newsletter]
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