Apple’s most iconic Mac just got a major upgrade, with the company releasing a refreshed iMac with the company’s M4 chip to help it better utilize Apple Intelligence.

The iMac revolutionized the PC industry and almost single-handedly turned Apple’s fortunes around. In the decades since, the iMac has continued to play an important role in the company’s lineup, offering users a powerful computing option at a lower price point than the Mac Pro.

With M4, iMac is up to 1.7x faster for daily productivity, and up to 2.1x faster for demanding workflows like photo editing and gaming, compared to iMac with M1.

“iMac is beloved by millions of users, from families at home to entrepreneurs hard at work. With the incredible features of Apple Intelligence and the powerful performance of Apple silicon, the new iMac changes the game once again,” said John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering. “With M4 and Apple Intelligence, gorgeous new colors that pop in any space, an advanced 12MP Center Stage camera, and a new nano-texture glass display option, it’s a whole new era for iMac.”

Apple says the new iMac delivers up to 2x higher gaming frame rates than the M1 iMac, and offers up to 1.5x faster web browsing performance. The company says the M4 iMac is up to 4.5x faster than competing all-in-one PCs, as well as 6x faster than the most popular Intel iMac.

The new iMac also features improved video calls, thanks to a 12MP Center Stage camera.

A new 12MP Center Stage camera with support for Desk View makes video calls even more engaging. Center Stage keeps everyone perfectly centered on a video call — great for families gathered on FaceTime. Desk View makes use of the wide-angle lens to simultaneously show the user and a top-down view of their desk, which is useful for educators presenting a lesson to students, or creators showing off their latest DIY project. Rounding out the unrivaled audio and video experience is the beloved studio-quality three-microphone array with beamforming and an immersive six-speaker sound system.

The new iMac retains the same form factor, but comes in green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, and blue, as well as the traditional silver.

Apple Intelligence Front and Center

Unsurprisingly, Apple Intelligence was front and center for the M4 iMac, with the new chip providing faster performance for intensive tasks. Apple says the refreshed iMac it “is the world’s best all-in-one for AI and is built for Apple Intelligence.”

The company took the opportunity to reaffirm the timeline for when users will see the various Apple Intelligence features roll out.

Apple Intelligence ushers in a new era for the Mac, bringing personal intelligence to the personal computer. Combining powerful generative models with industry-first privacy protections, Apple Intelligence harnesses the power of Apple silicon and the Neural Engine to unlock new ways for users to work, communicate, and express themselves on Mac. It is available in U.S. English with macOS Sequoia 15.1. With systemwide Writing Tools, users can refine their words by rewriting, proofreading, and summarizing text nearly everywhere they write. With the newly redesigned Siri, users can move fluidly between spoken and typed requests to accelerate tasks throughout their day, and Siri can answer thousands of questions about Mac and other Apple products. New Apple Intelligence features will be available in December, with additional capabilities rolling out in the coming months. Image Playground gives users a new way to create fun original images, and Genmoji allows them to create custom emoji in seconds. Siri will become even more capable, with the ability to take actions across the system and draw on a user’s personal context to deliver intelligence that is tailored to them. In December, ChatGPT will be integrated into Siri and Writing Tools, allowing users to access its expertise without needing to jump between tools.

In addition, Apple also emphasized its commitment to protecting user privacy with its AI features.

Apple Intelligence does all this while protecting users’ privacy at every step. At its core is on-device processing, and for more complex tasks, Private Cloud Compute gives users access to Apple’s even larger, server-based models and offers groundbreaking protections for personal information. In addition, users can access ChatGPT for free without creating an account, and privacy protections are built in — their IP addresses are obscured and OpenAI won’t store requests. For those who choose to connect their account, OpenAI’s data-use policies apply.

Conclusion

Overall, the M4 iMac is a welcome upgrade and a worthy successor to the generations of devices that came before it.