9to5Mac‘s report on a high-resolution iMac (Rumour: Apple Passes UltraHD With New iMac) has turned out to be true – but it didn’t tell the whole story.
Apple has, indeed, released a new 21.5″ iMac with 4096 x 2304 resolution. As well as a retina display, the all-in-one has upgraded processors and graphics, two Thunderbolt 2 ports and new storage options.
At the same time, Apple announced that its retina 5k displays (5120 x 2880) (Display Monitor Vol 21 No 41) are available on every 27″ iMac configuration.
The new retina displays cover more than 99% of the DCI-P3 gamut, Apple told us. We have asked the company how this is achieved, but had not had a response at press time.
The 27″ unit uses Intel Skylake (sixth-gen) processors and AMD graphics, with up to 3.7 TFLOPS of compute power. The 21.5″ iMac uses Broadwell (fifth-gen) processors and ‘enhanced’ Intel Iris Pro graphics. All iMacs now have two Thunderbolt 2 ports as standard, as well as 802.11ac WiFi.
For storage, the iMacs use a Fusion Drive – a combination of HDD and flash storage. This works with the OS X operating system to move the files and apps a user accesses most often to flash storage. Apple has lowered the cost of this technology with a new configuration, pairing a 1TB HDD with 24GB of flash storage. 2TB and 3TB HDD versions with 128GB flash are also available, as well as a 1TB all-flash unit.
Apple is selling both new iMacs now. The 21.5″ can be purchased starting at $1,100, $1,300 (1920 x 1080) or $1,500 (4096 x 2304). The three 27″ models start at $1,800, $2,000 and $2,300.
