Thursday, October 16th 2014
Apple Introduces 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K Display
Apple today unveiled the 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display, featuring the world's highest resolution display with a breathtaking 14.7 million pixels. At this amazing resolution, text appears sharper than ever, videos are unbelievably lifelike, and you can see new levels of detail in your photos. With the latest quad-core processors, high-performance graphics, Fusion Drive and Thunderbolt 2, iMac with Retina 5K display is the most powerful iMac ever made - it's the ultimate display combined with the ultimate all-in-one.
"Thirty years after the first Mac changed the world, the new iMac with Retina 5K display running OS X Yosemite is the most insanely great Mac we have ever made," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "With a breathtaking 14.7 million pixel display, faster CPU and graphics, Fusion Drive, and Thunderbolt 2, it's the most beautiful and powerful iMac ever."
iMac with Retina 5K display delivers an amazingly immersive user experience. With a resolution of 5120 x 2880, iMac with Retina 5K display has four times more pixels than the standard 27-inch iMac and 67 percent more pixels than a 4K display. Text looks as sharp as it does on a printed page, and you can see more of your high-resolution photos with pixel-for-pixel detail. In apps like Final Cut Pro X, you can view 4K video at full size while still leaving plenty of room for your assets and editing tools.
The display on the new 27-inch iMac has been engineered for performance, power efficiency and stunning visual quality. iMac with Retina 5K display uses a precisely manufactured oxide TFT-based panel to deliver vivid display brightness from corner to corner. A single supercharged Apple-designed timing controller (TCON), with four times the bandwidth, drives all 14.7 million pixels. iMac with Retina 5K display also uses highly efficient LEDs and organic passivation to improve image quality and reduce display power consumption by 30 percent, even while driving four times more pixels at the same brightness. To improve the contrast ratio, iMac with Retina 5K display uses a new photo alignment process and a compensation film to deliver blacker blacks and more vibrant colors from any viewing angle. In addition, every iMac with Retina 5K display is calibrated using three state-of-the-art spectroradiometers to ensure precise and accurate color.
Not only is iMac with Retina 5K display more beautiful on the outside, it is also more powerful on the inside. It comes with a 3.5 GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.9 GHz, and for the first time can be configured with a 4 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 4.4 GHz. Every new iMac with Retina 5K display also comes with AMD Radeon R9 M290X graphics and can be configured with AMD Radeon R9 M295X graphics, delivering up to 3.5 teraflops of computing power, the most powerful graphics ever offered on an iMac. iMac with Retina 5K display comes standard with 8 GB of memory and a 1 TB Fusion Drive for the first time. The new iMac can also be configured with up to 32 GB of memory, a 3 TB Fusion Drive, or up to 1 TB of super-fast, PCIe-based flash storage. In addition, iMac with Retina 5K display includes two Thunderbolt 2 ports that deliver up to 20 Gbps each, twice the bandwidth of the previous generation.
Every new Mac comes with OS X Yosemite, a powerful new version of OS X, redesigned and refined with a fresh, modern look, powerful new apps and amazing new Continuity features that make working across your Mac and iOS devices more fluid than ever. OS X Yosemite is also engineered to take full advantage of the iMac's Retina 5K display, delivering stunning clarity across all your apps.
iMovie, GarageBand and the suite of iWork apps come free with every new Mac. iMovie lets you easily create beautiful movies, and you can use GarageBand to make new music or learn to play piano or guitar. iWork productivity apps, Pages, Numbers and Keynote, make it easy to create, edit and share stunning documents, spreadsheets and presentations. iWork has been redesigned with a new look, support for iCloud Drive and a host of new features, including a new comments view in Pages. iWork for iCloud beta lets you create your document on iPad, edit it on your Mac and collaborate with friends, even if they're on a PC.
Pricing & Availability
iMac with Retina 5K display begins shipping today with a 3.5 GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.9 GHz, AMD Radeon R9 M290X graphics and a 1 TB Fusion Drive for a suggested retail price of $2,499 (US). Customers can order iMac with Retina 5K display through the Apple Online Store.
"Thirty years after the first Mac changed the world, the new iMac with Retina 5K display running OS X Yosemite is the most insanely great Mac we have ever made," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "With a breathtaking 14.7 million pixel display, faster CPU and graphics, Fusion Drive, and Thunderbolt 2, it's the most beautiful and powerful iMac ever."
The display on the new 27-inch iMac has been engineered for performance, power efficiency and stunning visual quality. iMac with Retina 5K display uses a precisely manufactured oxide TFT-based panel to deliver vivid display brightness from corner to corner. A single supercharged Apple-designed timing controller (TCON), with four times the bandwidth, drives all 14.7 million pixels. iMac with Retina 5K display also uses highly efficient LEDs and organic passivation to improve image quality and reduce display power consumption by 30 percent, even while driving four times more pixels at the same brightness. To improve the contrast ratio, iMac with Retina 5K display uses a new photo alignment process and a compensation film to deliver blacker blacks and more vibrant colors from any viewing angle. In addition, every iMac with Retina 5K display is calibrated using three state-of-the-art spectroradiometers to ensure precise and accurate color.
Not only is iMac with Retina 5K display more beautiful on the outside, it is also more powerful on the inside. It comes with a 3.5 GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.9 GHz, and for the first time can be configured with a 4 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 4.4 GHz. Every new iMac with Retina 5K display also comes with AMD Radeon R9 M290X graphics and can be configured with AMD Radeon R9 M295X graphics, delivering up to 3.5 teraflops of computing power, the most powerful graphics ever offered on an iMac. iMac with Retina 5K display comes standard with 8 GB of memory and a 1 TB Fusion Drive for the first time. The new iMac can also be configured with up to 32 GB of memory, a 3 TB Fusion Drive, or up to 1 TB of super-fast, PCIe-based flash storage. In addition, iMac with Retina 5K display includes two Thunderbolt 2 ports that deliver up to 20 Gbps each, twice the bandwidth of the previous generation.
Every new Mac comes with OS X Yosemite, a powerful new version of OS X, redesigned and refined with a fresh, modern look, powerful new apps and amazing new Continuity features that make working across your Mac and iOS devices more fluid than ever. OS X Yosemite is also engineered to take full advantage of the iMac's Retina 5K display, delivering stunning clarity across all your apps.
iMovie, GarageBand and the suite of iWork apps come free with every new Mac. iMovie lets you easily create beautiful movies, and you can use GarageBand to make new music or learn to play piano or guitar. iWork productivity apps, Pages, Numbers and Keynote, make it easy to create, edit and share stunning documents, spreadsheets and presentations. iWork has been redesigned with a new look, support for iCloud Drive and a host of new features, including a new comments view in Pages. iWork for iCloud beta lets you create your document on iPad, edit it on your Mac and collaborate with friends, even if they're on a PC.
Pricing & Availability
iMac with Retina 5K display begins shipping today with a 3.5 GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.9 GHz, AMD Radeon R9 M290X graphics and a 1 TB Fusion Drive for a suggested retail price of $2,499 (US). Customers can order iMac with Retina 5K display through the Apple Online Store.
79 Comments on Apple Introduces 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K Display
One of many 4k monitors. You can certainly build a much better machine with a 4k monitor at a better price.
4K isn't even near the monsterous, astronomically heavy 5K.
While 4K is 8.29MP, we're talking about a 5K 14.7MP here. This is immense.
To drive new games even at medium settings through this, you will need the GPU power equal to about three GTX 980s
Also, far more importantly, 5K is nothing like 4K in terms of pixel density and usability. First of all the pixel difference is vast and will help to pave over the problems with current 4K implementations. Right now, cheap 4K panels are TN 60Hz 28 inchers. Trying to use them at native res is a struggle as everything is comically small. You can try 150% scaling, but that is a world of hurt in terms of blur. You can do 200% scaling, but then you end up with information density of 1920x1080 on a 28 inch screen and everything ends up comically huge. Especially if you are used to 2560x1440 or something similar. And even if you use 200% scaling Windows still does a worse job at displaying scaled content than OSX. Both Apple and their dev community have been pushing software development to take advantage of super high resolution displays and they are ahead of Microsoft on that. The main idea behind a 5K display is that it will enable you to run a super sharp version of 2560x1440. Similar to how the Macbook Pro screen is mostly used like a 1440x900 pixel grid, but displayed in much higher quality on a 2880x1800 panel. Native res will likely be used only when photo editing and maybe in certain (light) games. Maybe also multimedia, though there is a dearth of content at such high quality levels and storage demands or internet bandwidth demands are going to be massive for 5K video.Dell released nothing 5 weeks ago. They previewed it with no firm info on launch date or price. Even in your own link it is stated that the display will be available "by Christmas" and the price for the monitor alone is expected to be around 2500$. You can order a 5K iMac right now and if Anand's price rumours are correct then someone at Dell is frantically readjusting pricing and profit margins on those monitors right about now. We will also see how they'll resolve connectivity issues. It will likely be a tiled display using two outputs since there is no DisplayPort standard capable of carrying a 5K signal over one output. And tiled displays plain suck.
Apple consumers, on the other hand, don't care about the specs. They care that it is Apple, it is a Mac, and it is "new."
"Retina" displays really haven't caught on anywhere except at Apple and then, only because Apple often doesn't give users a choice.
MPAA and TV manufacturers are going to start pushing 4K hard soon which should drive the prices down just as has happened with 1080p.
The 290X is barely capable of driving 4K. let along 5, and it has nothign to do with the interface, and everything to do with the pixel driving power, but I imagine Apple has some magic pixie dust that makes 30hz seem wonderful, so as long as you don't game on it, which isn't much of a problem anyway you will be fine.
Nevertheless, the price is still consider expensive in my country...
In my state, there is only ONE Apple store serving over 3 millions people. And the store is always empty compare to next door store selling windows system...
if not, then this imac is only good for spreadsheet and not for gaming.
that looks like a waste of 5k technology
I know that gamers like to think they're the most important people in the world and that any advance in the IT industry should be judged by how it affects them, but that's not actually how things work in reality.
Affordable 4K monitors have been around for PC for over a year so Apple is actually behind in the ultra HD monitor space.