Apple Could Launch New M3 iMac Later This Year

Apple’s next-gen M3 chip is expected to ship in new Mac models coming later this year, and the next iMac appears to be a very good candidate. In his latest Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman wrote that he expects the next iMac to be “one of the company’s first M3-based machines.”

The 24-inch iMac is the last Apple Silicon Mac to still use Apple’s M1 chip from 2020. “Apple has developed the next iMac on the same timeline as the M3 chip,” Gurman claimed, adding that this M3 chip will bring “a major boost to performance and power efficiency” thanks to a new 3-nanometer design.

If the refreshed iMac with an M3 chip isn’t expected to be released until the second half of 2023, Gurman also believes that we could see this new chip in other Macs coming later this year: a new 13-inch MacBook Air and a brand new 15-inch MacBook Air. The Mac Pro, however, is expected to use an “Ultra” version of Apple’s M2 chip with 24 CPU cores and 76 GPU cores.

Apple’s M2 chip made its debut in the redesigned 13-inch MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro released in the fall of 2022. “If Apple were to stick to last year’s schedule, an M3 chip alongside a new MacBook Air at WWDC 2023 would make sense. The company could then follow up with the M3 iMac later in the year and M3 Pro and M3 Max-based MacBook Pros in 2024,” Gurman wrote.

The iPad Pro is another Apple product that’s expected to be upgraded with an M3 chip, but Gurman believes this will won’t happen until the first half of 2024. These new iPad models are also expected to come with OLED screens, which will be a first for the iPad family.