Apple’s new iMac could arrive very soon – but may be a disappointment for some

iMac
(Image credit: Future)

Apple’s new iMac for 2020 could arrive very shortly in August, according to the latest chatter on the grapevine – although another rumor suggested the machine might even debut this week, but it appears this speculation is off the mark.

The iMac 2020 should be revealed soon enough though, going by the rumor mill, although the disappointment for some might be that this Intel-powered refresh apparently won’t feature the major redesign which has previously been talked about.

9to5 Mac first reported on these fresh rumors regarding the iMac, citing a tweet from leaker @Soybeys  – which has since been deleted – claiming Apple might just reveal the new Intel-powered iMac this week.

A second leaker, @Jioriku, tweeted that: “The iMac redesign IS NOT coming for this 10th generation Intel refresh. They are saving it for their own silicon.”

Jon Prosser, a prolific source of Apple leaks, then stepped onto the stage and offered the following tweet.

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Prosser clarified that @Soybeys was ‘close’, but as mentioned, he believes that Apple will launch the new iMac in August, also asserting that there won’t be any redesign.

Ultimately, this is all just still speculation, of course, and even Prosser admitted elsewhere on Twitter that “it would be cool to see @Soybeys get it right tho.” Although given that @Soybeys deleted their tweet, they appear to have lost confidence in their prediction. Still, you never know…

Same design

What all these sources are agreed on is that design-wise, there won’t be any major changes with this iMac that sticks with an Intel CPU, and the big moves regarding the new display and chassis will be reserved for when the iMac gets Apple’s new ARM processor.

Of course, that makes sense – it’ll mean the ARM-based iMac is a major revamp, not just in terms of the hardware inside, but the whole package, and therefore it’ll be more likely to tempt folks to invest in the new machine.

What is this big purported design change, exactly? Well, going by what we’ve heard previously, the speculation was that the iMac 2020 which sticks with an Intel processor – as leaked on Geekbench – could adopt a 23-inch screen with Pro Display-like bezels (meaning that it fits into the same size chassis as the current 21.5-inch model).

The Fusion Drive is also expected to be ditched with this refresh, according to the rumor mill, with Apple switching to use SSDs exclusively across all iMac variants, and that could still hold true, even if the chassis design change has apparently been abandoned for the iMac 2020 with Intel inside.

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).