A couple of months ago, I wrote about how I’ve been pining for an iMac Ultra as a rebirth of the iMac Pro. But since then, I haven’t given it much thought. The most recent report came at the end of last year, and it was about a Mac never intended for public release. But now, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman had this juicy single line in a new report about the new Macs:
For further in the future, Apple is working on a new iMac with an OLED screen, matching the technology coming to the high-end MacBook and, later, MacBook Air models.
That one line has led me down a path of possibilities that make me want to believe that Apple has an iMac Ultra kicking around Apple Park’s labs. And there may be no better time for such a Mac.
Making it add up
The current iMac has an LED display that’s quite nice. OLED displays are better, though. An iMac with an OLED would be a great upgrade, but it’s been reported that Apple needs to put extra effort into developing a 24-inch OLED display that meets its standards of 218 pixels per inch density and 600 nits of brightness. That leads me to believe that such a display is a costly one.
It stands to reason that a consumer-level iMac with an OLED would be more expensive than the current LED-based iMac. So maybe Apple will keep the current LED model with the base M-series chip and introduce an iMac Ultra not just with an OLED display, but also with, say, the M7 Pro chip that’s expected to debut next year, extra RAM, and a larger SSD.
Heck, it could even have a touchscreen, creating a tie to the high-end touchscreen MacBook Pro that is supposed to ship later this year. It would be pricey, but Apple’s Ultra products are supposed to be pricey.
Who would buy the iMac Ultra? There’s the content creation market, obviously. We use an M4 iMac to produce the Macworld Podcast, and the all-in-one design works well for the studio space. But I’d like a little more processing power, since we recently decided to produce the podcast in video instead of audio-only. A more powerful iMac Ultra with an OLED display would be perfect.
More importantly, the iMac Ultra could be another workstation that catches the eye of AI developers. While the Mac mini is the current Mac of choice, an iMac Ultra might even be a better space-saving Mac with its all-in-one design.
Apple used to make an iMac Pro, but it was discontinued five years ago. With technology that’s in development and soon to be available, it seems like the proper time for a high-end iMac comeback. Based on reports, Apple seems to agree.
