Apple kit
STORE GUIDE
Your complete guide to the best Apple hardware and third-party accessories
EDITED BY ROB MEAD-GREEN
iMac
From £1,049
EXPECTED MAY 2021
UPDATED AUG 2020
The iMac’s all-in-one design combines power and poise – especially in the higher-end 27in models.
Ever since the famous Bondi Blue iMac debuted in August 1998, Apple’s all-in-one desktop computer has been setting standards in gorgeous design and powerful performance. Apple’s innovation was as clear back then as it is today – the iMac was the first Macintosh to drop the floppy drive in favour of USB, and its colourful aesthetic set it apart as a playful option in a world of beige boxes.
The current entry-level 21.5in was finally updated in August 2020, although its specs remain largely unchanged from March 2019. What changes there are, are confined to your storage options – Apple has finally dropped the 5,400rpm hard drive in favour of SSDs across the board. Fusion Drives are now only available as Build To Order options.
The biggest changes can be found in the 27in iMac, which also got an August 2020 update. It too now sports SSDs across the line and you can choose from six-core tenthgen Intel Core i5s on the entry level and mid-range models, or an eightcore tenth-gen Intel Core i7 on the top-end – Apple says the new iMacs offer up to 65 per cent faster performance than the models they replace. The 27in iMacs also get AMD Radeon Pro 5300 graphics on the entry-level and mid-range models with an AMD Radeon Pro 5550 XT GPU on the £2,999 model, and up to 55 percent more graphics power than before.
Other changes include improved speakers and studio-quality mics. You can also add up to 128GB of memory and up to 8TB of SSD storage if you wish, although the prices are eye-watering.
iMac super power
If you want even more oomph, the iMac Pro is an impressive step up.
Prices start at £4,999 for a 27in iMac Pro with a Retina 5K display, ten-core Intel Xeon W processor 32GB of RAM, 1TB SSD and AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 graphics – and rise inexorably from there.
Choose an iMac
MacBook Pro
From £1,299
EXPECTED MAY 2021
UPDATED NOV 2020
The MacBook Pro 13-inch (Late 2020) features Apple’s own silicon 5nm M1 chip.
In November 2020, Apple rather surprised the tech world with an earlierthan-expected release of the first MacBook Pro with its own custom designed 5nm Apple M1 chip.
The eight-core CPU is said to offer 2.8 times faster performance over its predecessor, while the eight-core GPU has five times faster graphics. The 16-core Neural Engine completes the powerhouse spec sheet for advanced machine learning. All this, coupled with a 61W battery, translates to the longest battery life for a MacBook Pro so far, with an impressive 17 hours of web browsing and 20 hours of video play. The Pro comes with 8GB of unified memory but you can upgrade to 16GB. Storage starts at 256GB SSD, and can be configured up to 2TB.