iMac (next generation)

About iMac (next generation)

Apple has announced no new iMac. There is no name, no chip, no date and no price, and no Apple product page to point at. As of 15 August 2026, the machine Apple sells is the 24 inch iMac with the M4 chip, announced in October 2024.

What makes this page worth reading is not a rumoured chip. It is that the iMac was skipped entirely in 2025, so anything Apple ships next would be the first update in roughly two years, and reporting in July 2026 does point at one arriving before the year is out. That reporting is not an announcement, and it does not agree with itself on which chip goes in.

Has Apple announced a new iMac?

No. There is no press release, no product page, no price and no date.

Apple's Mac pages on 15 August 2026 still list the 24 inch iMac with M4 as the current model. Nothing on Apple's own site refers to a successor.

Everything circulating about the chip, the display and the timing of the next iMac comes from supply chain reporting and analyst notes. None of it appears on this page as fact.

What reporting says, and where it disagrees

Two MacRumors reports in July 2026 are the substance of what is out there, and they are worth separating because they do not say the same thing.

The first, on 22 July, reported that Apple has finished work on an updated iMac for release later in 2026, that it keeps the 24 inch LCD screen with no major design change, and that a further iMac with an OLED display is planned for some point after that. That report explicitly did not say whether the chip would be the existing M5 or the newer M6.

The second, a Mac roadmap published on 27 July, put the iMac in autumn 2026 alongside a 14 inch MacBook Pro and said it would probably take the M6. Probably is the operative word, and it is doing the work that the first report declined to do.

So: two reports, five days apart, from the same outlet, and the chip is still open. Treat any page that names the chip with confidence as having chosen one report over the other rather than as knowing something.

Where the iMac sits in the Mac range

The iMac is the Mac for people who want one object on a desk and want to stop thinking about it.

Everything is in the screen: computer, display, camera, microphones and speakers, with a keyboard and mouse in the box in a matching colour. That is the whole proposition. You do not choose a monitor, you do not run cables, and you do not upgrade anything later.

It sits below the Mac Studio and beside the Mac mini in Apple's desktop range, and it is aimed at homes, reception desks, classrooms and any office where the machine will be looked at as well as used. The colours are not a gimmick in that context. They are the reason a lot of these get bought.

What it is not is a machine for heavy sustained work. Apple sells the Mac Studio and the MacBook Pro for that, and the gap between them and the iMac is deliberate.

The 24 inch iMac with M4, which is the machine on sale today

Apple states that the current iMac has the M4 chip and a 24 inch Retina display at 4.5K resolution with 500 nits of brightness.

Apple lists up to 32GB of unified memory, up to four Thunderbolt 4 ports, Gigabit Ethernet and a headphone jack, and a 12MP Center Stage camera with Desk View. Apple lists seven colours: blue, purple, pink, orange, yellow, green and silver.

Apple sells more than one configuration, with different processor core counts and a different number of ports, so there is no single specification for the line and no single price. Check Apple's store page for the exact configuration and current price before buying, because the entry model and the higher one differ in ways that matter.

Those figures belong to the M4 iMac. They are the baseline a successor would be measured against, not a description of one.

What to weigh against its nearest rival

The iMac's real rival is a Mac mini and a separate monitor. That combination usually costs less for the same processing power, lets you choose a bigger or better screen, and lets you replace the computer and the display on different schedules. It also means two boxes, a cable, and a decision about which monitor to buy.

The honest way to settle it is to ask whether you want to make that decision at all. Plenty of buyers do not, and the premium the iMac charges is the price of not having to. That is a legitimate thing to pay for.

Against Windows all-in-ones the comparison usually comes down to the display and the software you need. If a piece of software you depend on runs only on Windows, the argument is over before it starts.

The other comparison worth making is against yourself in two years. Nothing inside an iMac can be upgraded after purchase, so the memory and storage you choose on the day are the memory and storage you keep. Buy more than you think you need rather than less.

Who should buy something else

Anyone who needs a Mac this month should buy the M4 iMac that exists. Reporting points at a refresh in autumn 2026, but a reported plan is not a date, and Apple has already skipped this product for a full year once.

Anyone who can wait until the autumn probably should. If the reporting holds, buying an M4 iMac in the weeks before a replacement lands is the one clearly bad piece of timing available here.

Anyone who wants a large or a colour accurate display should buy a Mac mini or a Mac Studio and choose the monitor separately. The iMac's screen is fixed at 24 inches and you cannot change that decision later.

Anyone doing sustained heavy work, such as long video exports or large compiles, should look at the Mac Studio. The iMac is not built for hours at full load.

Anyone who needs the machine to move should buy a MacBook Air. An iMac is a desk object and moving one is a two handed job.

Anyone waiting specifically for an OLED iMac should be aware that reporting places it well beyond the next model, not in it.

What would change this page

An Apple press release, or an Apple product page. Nothing less than that.

Not a leaked panel order. Not a roadmap. Not a reporter with a good record. Until Apple publishes the machine, this page carries no chip, no display specification, no price and no date for a successor, and those gaps are the accurate report rather than an oversight.

This page was checked against Apple's own iMac pages on 15 August 2026. If you are reading it well after that date, treat every dated statement here as needing a recheck, and check first whether the autumn 2026 machine that reporting expected actually arrived.