RUMOR: Apple plans new, significantly thinner iMac with teardrop profile before end of 2012

“A forum thread posted to Chinese site WeiPhone.com earlier this month claims that Apple is planning to introduce its next iMac at a press conference either this month or next month, with the new iMac offering a redesigned body with a thinner profile,” Eric Slivka reports for MacRumors. “The report includes a photo of what is said to be the logic board and other internal components of the new iMac.”

“The redesigned iMac is said to be considerably thinner than the current form factor, with the machine’s thickness almost impossible to gauge when viewed from the side,” Slivka reports. “The curved rear shell is also said to appear more like a water droplet than the squared-off design seen in the current model.”

Slivka reports, “The report also claims that the new iMac’s screen is glued to the front glass of the machine, in line with previous rumors stating that Apple is moving to fully laminate the two components together for improved display quality.”

Read more in the full article here.

26 Comments

  1. Apple’s recent “improvements in design” conspicuously involve more glue, more solder, and less user-accessible parts. I may choose not to tinker with my iPhone, but denying access to basic components such as RAM and storage drives is frustrating.

      1. Upgrading RAM in the aluminum iMac is pretty simple. Replacing the HDD is a bit more difficult, but I did it successfully while avoiding the need to disconnect the display interface ribbon cable. You need an extra pair of hands to do it, though. Going from 500GB to 2TB was well worth the effort, and my 2007 iMac is still going strong a year later.

        1. That sounds like good advice for a future Mac, M. Reasonable size internal SSD for OS, etc. Large external HDD (or, even better, NAS) connected via 10Gbps Thunderbolt. Perhaps the SSDs will eventually become thumb drive sized – you will just carry it around and plug it in wherever you go.

          I upgraded my Macs more often back in the old days (G3 processor upgrade, for example). In the past decade my hardware upgrades have been limited to RAM and HDDs. But I have always gotten pretty good longevity out of my Macs without a lot of upgrades. My old mid-1990s Powerbook offered probably the least value of any Mac that I bought (around $3,000 for a relatively slow laptop with a 9.5″ passive matrix LCD). My current iMac (2007) has offered the best overall value, although my PowerMac 9600 from the mid-1990s is a close second.

  2. I don’t get the teardrop design (if true). Making the iMac thinner accomplishes very little since the depth of the stand takes up significantly more space. It would only matter if the iMac was being wall-mounted, in which case a teardrop design would be a problem.
    I’d rather the iMac lose the chin and match up perfectly to the 27″ display side by side.

    1. That’s what I was expecting…the iMac to evolve into a computerized version of the APple Cinema Display. The teardrop shape does not seem likely to me, but Apple is known for doing some unusual things.

  3. Damn! I just took my 2011 into the Apple store because it had developed an intermittent problem with booting up. Sometimes after booting it would go crazy. Apple replaced the mother board and graphic cards also tried new Memory. But still the problem persisted. Eventually they decided top give me a brand new iMac (MAXED to the hilt with exception of memory).

    I was extremely happy, but now I am thinking….”if only it had happened a couple of weeks later”. Some people are never satisfied. 🙂

    BTW, try getting that kind of service from DELL or MS or HP or ASUS. Won’t happen.

  4. Where’s the photoshop render(s) of this teardrop shaped profile?? C’mon macheads! Curvature would go against the grain when everything they produce (except earbuds) is a machined rectangle.. I can imagine thinner, but not bulbous or curved(think mid 90’s Pontiac Grand-Am dashboard and you’ll be sick to your stomach lol). Maybe “doorstop” profile would be a better description…?

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