During the Scary Fast event, Apple introduced the updated 24-inch iMac with the M3 processor, as well as hardware ray tracing for gamers. The 24-inch iMac was first released in 2021 as one of the first Macs with an M1 processor. Its thin and light chassis with flashy colors made it stand out, but it hasn’t been updated since. Apple finally revealed the updated iMac on Monday night, but not much has changed. The M3 processor was announced alongside the iMac, but the design and color scheme of the desktop did not change.
Features of the 24-inch iMac model introduced
The 24-inch LED-backlit 4.5K Retina display with a resolution of 4,480 x 2,520 has 11.3 million pixels. It also features 500 nits brightness, Wide Color (P3) coverage, True Tone, and a 1080p FaceTime HD camera on top. The M3 processor follows the iPhone 15 Pro’s A17 Pro as the second Apple Silicon chipset built on the 3nm process. It has an 8-core CPU, a 10-core GPU option, and compatibility with up to 24GB of unified memory. It offers up to twice the speed compared to the previous M1 generation.
Another feature of the M3 that appears in the M2 but not in the M1 is the Media Engine, which provides custom hardware-accelerated video encoding and decoding elements. This means an increase in video editing and similar workflows. Apple has a Neural Engine similar to previous 16-core chips but also included hardware ray tracing. Users can play games like ray tracing-enabled Resident Evil 4 on the 24-inch Mac, just like on the iPhone 15 Pro family.