Alongside announcing macOS High Sierra at WWDC 2017, Apple unveiled its new iMac lineup featuring better displays and faster CPUs.
The new 4K and 5K iMacs can now reach a brightness of 500 nits, which is up to 43 percent higher than before and support for up to one billion colors. It now also supports 10-bit dithering.
The new iMacs will be making use of Intel’s latest Kaby Lake CPUs for better performance and native HEVC decode. The base 21.5-inch iMac uses Intel’s latest dedicated GPU which features up to 80 percent better performance. The 4K 21.5-inch iMac features a Radeon 555 and 560 GPUs with up to 4GB vRAM that is up to 3x times faster. As for the 5K 27-inch iMac, it will feature Radeon Pro 570, 575, and 580 models with up to 8GB VRAM. The maxed out 27-inch iMac will be able to offer up to 5.5 teraflops of processing power.
The 21.5-inch iMac will now be available with up to 32GB memory configurations, while the 27-inch iMac will go up to 64GB. The Fusion Drive will be available on all 27-inch variants, with SSD speeds being doubled as well.
The new 2017 iMacs will also feature two USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports that will allow professional users to connect an external monitor while also using an external GPU if they wish to.
Apple is aiming its new powerful iMac lineup at professionals and hopes it will be powerful enough for VR consumption as well as demoed by the company during the stage.
As if the powerful internals was not already enough, Apple is also reducing the price of certain iMac variants. The 21.5-inch iMac starts at $1,099, with the 21.5-inch 4K iMac now coming in at $1,299. The 27-inch 5K iMac is now priced at $1,799. The new iMacs start shipping from today.
