Apple posts new M4 iMac announcement video, confirms more products coming

AppleInsider

A new iMac announcement video ushers in Apple's newest desktop computer-- but also confirms that two more products will drop this week.

Image Credit: Apple

The video clocks in at just over 10 minutes long and features all the polish of a full-featured Apple Event. However, this time, the video is headed up by Apple's Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, John Ternus, rather than CEO Tim Cook.

As expected, the video spends a substantial amount of time talking about Apple Intelligence, Apple's suite of AI-powered features designed to streamline users' experiences with Apple products. Fitting, as Apple Intelligence has just arrived on Mac with the new macOS Sequoia 15.1 update.

The rest of the video talks about the new 24-inch iMac, which Apple has made available for preorder on Monday. The earliest shipping date for the M4 iMac appears to be November 8, though it is possible these dates will slip if there is enough interest.

The video finishes with Ternus stating that there will be another Mac announcement on Tuesday.



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ApplePoor

Perhaps another "just a chip" marginal update will be presented tomorrow. No wonder there is no big event. These "updates" could have been done with a few sentence E-Mail.

anonymouse

The video finishes with Ternus stating that there will be another Mac announcement on Tuesday. 

I believe he also said at the beginning of the video that there would be 3 "product" announcements this week, so Tuesday, and ... Wednesday?

Toortog

What a way to start the big Apple week of announcements with a chip update to a boring iMac.   Hey release a 30+" iMac and then you'll have something to talk about.  So Apple you going to make everyone wait all week for the new form factor Mac Mini, it the only thing expected to come that isn't just a chip update.  

netrox

iMac base models are now 16GB RAM obviously due to AI requiring more RAM and it's about time. 

Can't wait to hear about Mac mini and notebooks. 

pazi

For the 2.1x increase of M4 vs M1, they compared an M4 with 32 Gb RAM to an M1 with 16 Gb RAM. Sad.

Fidonet127

netrox said:

iMac base models are now 16GB RAM obviously due to AI requiring more RAM and it's about time. 

Can't wait to hear about Mac mini and notebooks. 

You can run Apple Intelligence on 8gb M1 Mac’s. Yes it is better to have more ram. Only Xcode text prediction requires 16gb ram. 

Marvin

ApplePoor said:

Perhaps another "just a chip" marginal update will be presented tomorrow. No wonder there is no big event. These "updates" could have been done with a few sentence E-Mail.

They did a streaming video last year too even for the larger Pro/Max release.

Hopefully we will see M4 Pro/Max this week too but it could just be the base model MBP and the mini.

Bumping the entry RAM to 16GB is a nice change and effectively cuts $200 off every Mac and will have a knock-on effect for refurbs. Having the option for 32GB in the lowest chip models makes them more appealing for pro workflows.

It's a bit unusual for them to split the announcements. Maybe they are setting some precedents for future updates so that teams can update the products separately through the year. Tim Cook wasn't in this video and indications are that he will retire within 6-7 years so they will have to prepare for the next generation and how they prefer to handle new products and announcements.

Fidonet127

Only 2TB max though for internal storage 

StrangeDays

ApplePoor said:

Perhaps another "just a chip" marginal update will be presented tomorrow. No wonder there is no big event. These "updates" could have been done with a few sentence E-Mail.

Have you asked for a refund for your wasted time?

StrangeDays

Fidonet127 said:

Only 2TB max though for internal storage 

Only lol. I’m still operating on a fraction of that on mine, and still happily. 

Fidonet127

StrangeDays said:

Fidonet127 said:

Only 2TB max though for internal storage 

Only lol. I’m still operating on a fraction of that on mine, and still happily. 

If Apple would allow Audiobooks to operated off external drives, I'd be more than happy to keep what I got. 

d_2

pazi said:

For the 2.1x increase of M4 vs M1, they compared an M4 with 32 Gb RAM to an M1 with 16 Gb RAM. Sad.

Also … the M3 iMac was “up to 2x faster” than the M1 iMac … something is off 

jetpilot

Toortog said:

What a way to start the big Apple week of announcements with a chip update to a boring iMac.   Hey release a 30+" iMac and then you'll have something to talk about.  So Apple you going to make everyone wait all week for the new form factor Mac Mini, it the only thing expected to come that isn't just a chip update.  

Apple has already said that they have no plans to release a larger iMac and that if you want a larger display then you can buy a Mac Studio with a Studio Display. Or you can just keep whining about a product that's never going to happen.

And it's ridiculous that people are crying (still) about spec bumps...as if this is anything new. What do you expect? Some massive annual redesign? Most years they're just going to release spec bumps up to the latest chips. It's always been that way and it always will. Most people don't replace their MacBooks and desktop Macs annually but when someone does replace their Mac they want the latest chips so it has the longest useful life.

mattinoz

Does Sree the Apple iMac product manager have Siri voice prompts turned on?

there must be a massive fleet of intel iMacs still in use given the time spent selling AS to those machines. 

charlesn

pazi said:

For the 2.1x increase of M4 vs M1, they compared an M4 with 32 Gb RAM to an M1 with 16 Gb RAM. Sad.

I wouldn't say "sad," but I was also surprised at the fine print asterisks to the test. Four years after the M1 chip debuted, I would have expected that a doubling of speed would have been easy for the M4 chip to achieve. But the fine print limits that speed increase to "demanding creative workflows" when using 32GB of memory--which will add $400 to the price of your M4 machine. Of course, the Adobe apps used in that kind of workflow environment benefit greatly speedwise from more memory (and Apple used Adobe apps for the test), so it's hard to say how much of that speed increase is due to M4 and how much is the 32GB of memory. A better indicator of the M4 benefit is probably the speed increase for everyday tasks, which is said to be 70% over M1. 

HOWEVER... as another commenter pointed out above, the biggest question about the M4 speed claims is that Apple marketing also claimed that the M3 iMac with only 16GB of memory max, was also "up to 2 times faster" than an M1 iMac in "overall performance" -- however THAT gets measured. Since that's essentially no different from the speed claim for the M4 with 32GB using memory hungry applications, these competing claims of "2 times faster" would suggest that the M4 might be slower than the M3 if both had 16GB of memory. I'm not sure how that could be possible, but I smell an M4 "Speedgate" scandal brewing, lol.