It looks like the 24-inch iMac with the M1 processor is going to stick around a bit longer. In his latest Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that the iMac may not see an upgrade until late 2023.
Gurman wrote that he had “seen nothing to indicate that there will be a new iMac before the M3 chip generation”, which would mean that the 24-inch iMac skips the M2 generation altogether. The M3 chip will be fabricated using the 3-nanometer process, which could deliver performance improvements beyond the 20% we saw between the M1 and M2, which are both 5nm chips.
Gurman says the M3 models “won’t arrive until the end of this year at the earliest or next year.” Apple released the redesigned 24-inch iMac at an event in the spring of 2021, so a 2024 release would last three years between models.
While Mac users have learned a lot about the technology behind Apple’s M-series chips and how they perform, there’s still a lot to learn about Apple’s release cadence with the chips. An interval of 32 or 36 months would be the longest time between updates. For example, the M1 MacBook Air lasted about 20 months before the M2 model arrived, but the M1 Mac mini had a lifespan of almost 26 months. However, Apple and its production partners are still feeling the effects of the supply issues that have arisen due to the pandemic, so it remains to be seen whether the pace of consumer-level chip release develops a more predictable pattern.
Gurman’s report doesn’t mention any changes to the design or other features of the 24-inch iMac. In earlier reports, Guman mentioned Apple’s plans for a larger iMac Pro to complement the 24-inch model, which could be released this year.
