Until the very last minute, most of us were expecting the announcement of a new iMac during Monday’s Worldwide Developer Conference keynote. It didn’t happen? Why? I’d bet that Apple didn’t want to detract from its “Apple Silicon” announcement.
The tech giant announced that, over the next two years, it will transition the Mac line to its “world-class custom silicon to deliver industry-leading performance and powerful new technologies.” It involves customized ARM technology, as well as Apple’s own System on a Chip.
A system on a chip, also known as an SoC, is essentially an integrated circuit or an IC that takes a single platform and integrates an entire electronic or computer system onto it. It’s an entire system on a single chip. The components that an SoC generally looks to incorporate within itself include a central processing unit, input and output ports, internal memory, as well as analog input and output blocks among other things. Depending on the kind of system that has been reduced to the size of a chip, it can perform a variety of functions including signal processing, wireless communication, artificial intelligence and more.
But back to the iMac. There’s no doubt that the next all-in-one desktop coming from Apple will be an Intel-based iMac. It’s expected to sport an exciting all-new design. Introducing such a product after the “Apple Silicon” announcement would have taken a bit of a shine off the company’s transition plans.
I expect to see the revamped Intel iMac (with a 27-inch or perhaps even bigger display) within six weeks. And, if the usually-reliable Apple analyst is correct, we’ll see iMacs and MacBook Pros with Apple Silicon before year’s end.
