Amid rumors and hints of a forthcoming update for the iMac, supplies of Apple's current 27-inch iMac continue to dwindle with mid- and high-end stock configurations now seeing shipping estimates pushed back into September.
The 27-inch iMac has seen tight supplies and extended shipping estimates for months now, but the situation has been gradually worsening to the point where new buyers can now expect to wait nearly two months to receive their machines.
Rumors of an imminent iMac update date back to March when reliable leaker CoinX indicated that one was coming "soon." A few weeks later, word of a new 23-inch iMac coming in the second half of the year surfaced, while Bloomberg's Mark Gurman noted that a "substantial" iMac refresh potentially including a redesign would be coming later in the year.
As WWDC approached, occasional leaker Sonny Dickson claimed that a redesigned iMac with "iPad Pro design language" would be arriving at the conference, but it failed to materialize, leaving considerable uncertainty about when we should expect an update to arrive.
Lurking in the background is Apple's transition to Apple Silicon in its Mac lineup, as noted analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has said that a redesigned 24-inch iMac will be one of the first machines to make the move, and Apple announced that the first Apple Silicon-based Macs will be released before the end of the year.
Kuo also said that the current Intel-based iMac will get one more update in the third quarter of this year, which would be between now and the end of September, and we have in fact seen a recent Geekbench benchmark for an apparent unreleased iMac equipped with unreleased Intel Comet Lake-S and AMD graphics processors.
So when will we see the next iMac update? It's hard to say at this point. We've heard no specific rumors of an update coming in the very near future, but with Apple rumored to be releasing an Apple Silicon-based iMac before the end of the year, it would seem this last Intel version should come sooner rather than later. Even a refresh right now would leave a relatively short update cycle unless the Apple Silicon-based iMac coming at the end of the year is intended to be sold alongside Intel-based models during a transition period.
