New iMac Pro With Retina Display Reported To Come Out Before the Year Ends; Apple Focuses On Device's Power Efficiency

Tags: Apple; imac; imac pro; retina; retina display

BY Tony McElroy Sep 15, 2014 11:29 PM EDT

MacBook Pros with Retina display has proven itself to be a hit on the market. In fact, Apple has gone as far as nearly doing away with models that don’t sport HD resolution display. With the MacBook Air still on the waiting list, what is yet to be resolved is related to a much anticipated increase to the CPU performance, which is supposed to help with the battery of a power-consuming display.

Apple’s next step should be the release of an iMac with retina display. According to DigiTimes, the 27-inch iMac is actually in the works now, and should be coming out sooner as expected. They believe that Apple is about to update the iMac and Thunderbolt display with a 5K screen by the end of 2014.

Apple is currently selling 2 iMac models: the 21.5” model comes with a 1920 x 1080resolution, and the bigger 27” diagonal display with a 2560 x 1440 resolution. The smaller iMac cost around $1099 (€850.59), while the larger one goes as high as $1999 (€1547.16). The difference between the two lies in their CPU power, storage capacity and graphic card.

Technical limitations may be the reason for a delayed update. The DisplayPort 1.2 standard supports maximum Cinema 4K resolutions of 4096 by 2160. Therefore, a high-res display with a 5K pixel count would not be feasible until Apple releases a new DisplayPort standard.

On the other hand, Dell has a new 5K display that boosts a 5120 by 2880 resolution and they will put that in stores by year end. iDownload blog cites AnandTech research and says that Dell may have actually combine two 2560 by 2880 panels to get 5120 pixels horizontally.

Apple applied Retina on most of their devices. Aside from their 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro models, the iPhone has a retina display since the iPhone 4 as well as the iPad and iPod touch.

A Retina panel requires a powerful graphics card and a better battery. However, that is not an issue for the iMac because Apple can stick inside better graphics and the computer runs on AC power, not a battery.