Gurman: M3 iMac in production testing, may launch 2H 2023

March 6, 2023

3 min read

While we’re expecting a few different new Mac launches this year like the 15-inch MacBook Air and Apple Silicon Mac Pro, one product that’s been notably absent from rumors is a refreshed iMac. Now we’ve got news from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman on what to expect from the next iMac including chip, size, colors, and a potential launch date.

Mark shared the iMac details and more in his Power On newsletter this morning noting the most common question he gets each week is “when is a new iMac coming out?”

New iMac development stage

He says the good news is that the next-gen iMacs, codenamed J433 and J434 are “at an advanced stage” of engineering validation testing (EVT) and Apple is currently running production tests of the desktop.

New iMac size and colors?

9to5Mac reported last year that Apple wasn’t working on anything but a 24-inch version of the new iMac and Mark reports that is indeed the only size the next iMac will be available.

As for colors, the next-gen iMac is being tested with the same as what’s available with the M1 iMac including silver, blue, pink, and orange. No specific mention of yellow, green, or purple in the report, but those could be available again too.

What M-series chip?

Mark notes that naturally, the new iMacs will be more powerful with an updated Apple Silicon M-Series chip. But he stops short of naming it – at first.

Last year he reported that Apple was working on the next-gen iMac with an M3 chip and we corroborated that with an independent source here at 9to5Mac.

Further into the report, he reiterates the expectation that the new iMac will be “one of the company’s first M3-based machines.” And like unveiling the M2 at last year’s WWDC, we could get a peek at the M3 this June ahead of the new iMac’s launch a bit later.

New iMac launch date?

Mark says that even though the new iMacs are quite far along in development they are not “expected to go into mass production for at least three months.” That puts the earliest launch into the second half of 2023.

While that may be a bummer for those eager for an updated iMac, it’s nice to know they’re on the horizon and hopefully, the launch won’t get pushed into 2024.