The new iMac will be...

Posted by tracydanger on January 5, 2012 12:04 pm 37

via 4.bp.blogspot.com

The iMac has long been based off of laptop internals, so I recently asked myself what the iMac's future will be (based off of Apple's stated direction of the laptop). They already use uni-body construction, they already offer the magic trackpad. When they introduced the more recent air, they said that all laptops were headed that way. So how will this impact the iMac?

Flash storage

This should seem obvious since you can already get an SSD as an option on the iMac. Benefit: faster access, instant on.

No optical drive

Yes, it may not cost much for them to keep it in, but they already sell an external optical drive and most people rarely if ever use it, so it doesn't need to be there all the time. They weren't shy about getting rid of the floppy drive on the original iMac, so this isn't much of a jump. Especially, with everything headed to the cloud. Benefit: Thinner iMac, cost reduction.

Retina display

Yes, this is not a current laptop feature, but we've all heard the rumors, so it would only make sense that it would come to their entire line of computers.

Conclusion

So, thinner, lighter & impact resistant might not be the main selling points of a desktop machine, but there are notable positives if and when these changes come to the iMac line. The question is how soon we will see this happen.