Now that Apple has officially unveiled the M2 processor and included it in the new MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro, let’s hope that a 24-inch iMac with an M2 processor is coming soon.
With the Mac Studio too expensive (and, honestly, overkill) for most folks and the 27-inch iMac discontinued (for now), the two remaining consumer desktops, the Mac mini and 24-inch iMac, are behind in processing power when compared to all of the Mac laptop line-up.
Based on what Apple revealed at this week’s Worldwide Developer Conference, here’s how the M2 stacks up against the M1:
° Both the M1 and M2 are built on a 5nm architecture. However, the latter gets an additional 4 billion more transistors.
° The core count for the CPU on both the M1 and M2 boast an 8-core CPU comprised of 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores.
° However, the GPU on the M2 packs a 10-core GPU while the M1 has an 8-core CPU.
° The M2 supports up to 24GB of LPDDR5 memory. The M1 only supports up to 16GB of unified memory.
Apple claims the M2 will have an 18% faster CPU, a 35% faster GPU, 50% more memory bandwidth, and a 40% faster Neural Engine than the M1. It also incorporates ProRes media encoding, which will speed up workflows for some creative professionals.
The 24-inch M1 iMac was released in May 2021, so it’s been over a year since it debuted. A spec upgrade would be welcome and would almost certainly help boost sales of the best-selling all-in-one.
