iMac Turns 25 Today: When to Expect the Next Model to Launch

Today marks the 25th anniversary of Steve Jobs introducing the iMac, a computer that helped Apple return to profitability following near bankruptcy in the late 1990s. The original iMac featured a colorful, translucent design in an era where most computers were boxy and beige, proving that computers did not have to look boring.

iMac G3 Fanned Feature
"This is iMac," said Jobs, at the Flint Center in Cupertino. "The whole thing is translucent. You can see into it. It's so cool. We've got stereo speakers on the front. We've got infrared right up here. We've got the CD-ROM drive right in the middle. We've got dual stereo headphone jacks. We've got the coolest mouse on the planet right here."

The original iMac pioneered many industry firsts, such as USB and FireWire, while abandoning the floppy drive and other legacy ports. The computer featured a 15-inch display, a PowerPC G3 processor, a 4GB hard drive, 32MB of RAM, a CD drive, two USB ports, and an Ethernet port for connecting to the still-nascent internet.

Over the past two and a half decades, the iMac has received many design changes, moving to a flat screen and an aluminum enclosure. Fittingly, the current 24-inch iMac features a colorful design just like the original model did all those years ago.

When to Expect a New iMac

Apple released the 24-inch iMac in April 2021 with the M1 chip and an ultra-thin design available in seven colors, including green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, blue, and silver. This is currently the only new iMac in Apple's lineup, as the Intel-based 27-inch iMac and iMac Pro models were both discontinued over the past few years.

A new iMac will launch in late 2023 at the earliest, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. In February, he said Apple had no plans to update the iMac with the M2 chip and is waiting until the M3 chip, which has yet to be announced. The M3 chip is expected to use TSMC's 3nm process for significant performance and power efficiency improvements.

TSMC has reportedly faced yield issues with 3nm chip manufacturing, and Gurman said there is a possibility the new iMac does not launch until 2024. In any case, the next iMac appears to remain several months away from launching.

Related Roundup: iMac
Buyer's Guide: iMac (Neutral)
Related Forum: iMac

Popular Stories

apple wallet drivers license feature iPhone 15 pro

iPhone Driver's Licenses: These 17 U.S. States Offer Them or Will Later

Thursday June 19, 2025 11:28 am PDT by
In select U.S. states, residents can add their driver's license or state ID to the Wallet app on the iPhone and Apple Watch, providing a convenient and contactless way to display proof of identity or age at select airports and businesses, and in select apps. Unfortunately, this feature continues to roll out very slowly since it was announced in 2021, with only nine U.S. states and Puerto...
iPhone 16 Battery Life Feature

iOS 26's New Battery Life Mode Available Only on These iPhone Models

Saturday June 21, 2025 9:02 am PDT by
Last week, we reported that iOS 26 introduces an opt-in Adaptive Power Mode on the iPhone, alongside the existing Low Power Mode. Apple says that Adaptive Power Mode can make "small performance adjustments" when necessary to extend an iPhone's battery life, including slightly lowering the display brightness or allowing some activities to "take a little longer." The full description of...
ios 26 call holding

iOS 26 Beta is Hiding a New Ringtone — Here's What It Sounds Like

Thursday June 19, 2025 7:25 pm PDT by
Apple is hiding a new ringtone within iOS 26. The new ringtone is an alternative version of the existing Reflection ringtone, which has been the default ringtone since the iPhone X was released in 2017. It was discovered within the code for the first developer beta of iOS 26, but it remains hidden, so you will not find it in the list of ringtones available in the Settings app for now. It...
iPhone 17 Pro Blue Feature Tighter Crop

iPhone 17 Pro Launching in Three Months With These 12 New Features

Saturday June 14, 2025 5:45 pm PDT by
The iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are three months away, and there are plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of June 2025:Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone X through iPhone 14 Pro have a...
apple watch ultra 2 new black

Apple Watch Ultra 3 Finally Coming After Two-Year Hiatus

Monday June 16, 2025 8:45 am PDT by
Apple will finally deliver the Apple Watch Ultra 3 sometime this year, according to analyst Jeff Pu of GF Securities Hong Kong (via @jukanlosreve). The analyst expects both the Apple Watch Series 11 and Apple Watch Ultra 3 to arrive this year (likely alongside the new iPhone 17 lineup, if previous launches are anything to go by), according to his latest product roadmap shared with...
iOS 18

Apple Releases iOS 18.6 Public Beta

Wednesday June 18, 2025 10:24 am PDT by
Apple today seeded the first betas of upcoming iOS 18.6 and iPadOS 18.6 updates to public beta testers, with the betas coming just a few days after Apple provided the betas to developers. Testers who have signed up for beta updates through Apple's beta site can download iOS 18.6 and iPadOS 18.6 from the Settings app on a compatible device by going to General > Software Update. When the...
General Spotify Feature

Spotify Preparing to Launch Long-Awaited Lossless Audio Tier on iPhone

Thursday June 19, 2025 1:46 pm PDT by
Spotify appears to be gearing up to launch its long-awaited lossless music tier. Chris Messina (via TechCrunch) and Spicetify (via The Verge) spotted new lossless references within the code for Spotify's desktop app and web player. With assistance from Aaron Perris, MacRumors has confirmed that the latest beta of the Spotify app for the iPhone also contains new lossless-related code....
airpods 4 blue

Apple Offering Free AirPods — Here's How to Get Them

Tuesday June 17, 2025 6:33 am PDT by
Apple is running a new promotion that offers free AirPods to qualifying customers. Now through September 30, college and university students in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Singapore can receive free AirPods 4 when they purchase an eligible new Mac or iPad from Apple. AirPods Pro 2 are also available at a discount. If you do not want AirPods, the promotion also offers various other...
Craig Federighi No

John Gruber Reacts to Apple Declining His Interview After His Criticism

Wednesday June 18, 2025 8:10 pm PDT by
Every year between 2015 and 2024, at least one Apple executive agreed to be interviewed by Daring Fireball's John Gruber for a special WWDC episode of his podcast, The Talk Show. Last year, for example, Apple's software engineering chief Craig Federighi, marketing chief Greg Joswiak, and top AI researcher John Giannandrea joined Gruber on stage at the California Theatre in San Jose to discuss...

Top Rated Comments

DMG35 Avatar
28 months ago
Still have one, but its an aquarium now (that needs a new fish).



Attachment Image
Score: 72 Votes (Like | Disagree)
swingerofbirch Avatar
28 months ago
FireWire first came out on the iMac? I know it wasn't on the first one. I had the bondi blue Rev. B. I know they had it on the later iMac DV models.

But I thought FireWire was first on one of the PowerBooks with the coffee-colored keyboards, but it's difficult to remember.

Not sure if I would describe the Internet as "nascent" when the iMac came out. Making it *easier* to get on the Internet was a marketing push of the iMac, but it was by no means new.

Weird tidbit I remember: The original iMac was supposed to at first only come out with only a 33.6k modem, but they changed it to 56k shortly before shipping.

And with the Rev B I had I believe the only change was a slightly increased amount of VRAM. It was a great computer.

Edit: Going down memory lane a bit more with little tidbits I remember:

The first time I saw an iMac was transcendent. It just looked so different and was so cool. I know by rote memory that it had a huge impact, but it's hard to remember it viscerally because now I kind of think: How could that have made such a huge impression? But it did. This was before Apple stores and it was in a local electronics shop.

The CD-ROM was very noisy --I think it was a 24x CD-ROM, and Apple shipped an update to address the noise that was just a software fix to make it run slower.

It came with Nanosaur, and some other games I don't remember as well.

I somehow got postcards from Apple that were to help advertise the iMac. It had pictures of the iMac with marketing slogans. One said Mental Floss, I recall.

I got the bondi Rev B iMac in 9th grade, and at the time I remember trying to explain to my teacher what it was, and she said, "You mean it's like a Dell?"

That year in my science class, we had to write a report on inventors, and I wrote one on Steve Jobs and included the iMac as one of his inventions. Wish I still had that report.

It was a pretty big deal to get a G3 Mac at that price. From memory, the other G3 Macs were not that much more powerful than the iMac. It was Apple's re-entry to the consumer market.

Everything became translucent with blue highlights like the iMac for a while, including the USB printer we bought to go with it. A lot of knock-off products.

I didn't do this, but I also vaguely recall that it could somehow play PlayStation games out of the box owing to the iMac and PlayStation using the same type of processor.

We ended up donating the bondi iMac to my cousins, shipping it cross country. Unfortunately for some reason they said it didn't work (not sure what was wrong or if it was user error) and they tried opening it up and it further broke . . .
Score: 27 Votes (Like | Disagree)
rufwork Avatar
28 months ago
“We've got the coolest mouse on the planet right here.”

There’s a reality distortion field that didn’t work.

What a craptastic hockey puck. Hurt to use for a long time, and it was hard to orient for quick adjustments - take hand from keyboard, grab mouse, guess which way is up, move slightly sideways.

Man I hated when I was in a lab full of bondis and [only] first party mice.

(Granted, with a good 3rd party mouse it was a great computer!)
Score: 26 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ThomasJL Avatar
28 months ago

Today marks the 25th anniversary ('https://www.macworld.com/article/1801616/25-years-ago-apple-introduced-the-product-that-changed-everything.html') of Steve Jobs introducing the iMac,
That is the type of innovation that we will never see under the leadership of an inside-the-box thinker like that mediocre MBA suit Tim Cook.
Score: 24 Votes (Like | Disagree)
maflynn Avatar
28 months ago

Time for the Magic Mouse to be redesigned and have USB-C
I still cannot believe Apple being an incredibly ergonomically minded company who's design aesthetics are market leading produced this horrible design.


Attachment Image
Score: 24 Votes (Like | Disagree)
gpat Avatar
28 months ago

Time for the Magic Mouse to be redesigned and have USB-C, and include more than 8GB of RAM, at least on the higher-tier models. I want to upgrade, but if those two things aren't included, I may have to skip it.
8GB is a lot of RAM to have on a mouse, you know.
Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)