All-in-one Mac archive
iMac history, from Bondi blue to Apple Silicon
A crawlable iMac history page covering the colorful original iMac, lamp-style iMac G4, aluminum Intel iMacs, Retina iMacs and Apple Silicon iMac generations.
12 models1998 first entry2024 latest entry
All models
iMac G3The "i" was for internet, the colour was Bondi Blue.
iMac G4The iMac learns to float.
iMac G5Apple hid the entire machine behind a flat panel on a simple foot, establishing the all-in-one shape every iMac has used since.
iMac (Intel, early 2006)The Intel transition begins on the desktop: same iMac G5 body, but two to three times faster inside — and now able to boot Windows.
iMac (Aluminum, 2009)The iMac went all aluminium and glass and grew a gorgeous 27" 2560×1440 display — for a while you could even use it as an external monitor via Target Display Mode.
iMac (Slim, 2012)A stunning redesign with a 5 mm-thin edge (achieved by friction-stir welding) and a laminated screen, plus the hybrid Fusion Drive blending SSD speed with hard-disk capacity.
iMac (Retina 5K, 27")Apple put a jaw-dropping 5K panel — more pixels than a 4K TV — into the iMac before standalone 5K monitors even existed.
iMac ProA stopgap for pros waiting on the new Mac Pro: workstation Xeons, up to 256 GB RAM and 10-gigabit ethernet crammed behind a 5K screen — in striking space grey.
iMac (27-inch, 2020)The last big Intel iMac was a polished endpoint: 10-core CPUs, better webcam, SSDs across the line and an optional nano-texture 5K panel before Apple Silicon changed the all-in-one story.
iMac (24-inch, M1)Apple Silicon let the iMac shrink to a striking 11.5 mm slab and bloom into seven cheerful colours, with a colour-matched keyboard, mouse and even braided power cable.
iMac (24-inch, M3)Same gorgeous seven-colour shell, now with the faster M3 and hardware ray tracing — a tidy speed bump for the everyday desktop.
iMac (24-inch, M4)The colourful all-in-one gains the M4, a 16 GB base for on-device AI, and — at last — a centre-stage camera and optional anti-glare nano-texture glass.Browse by year
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Last updated: 2026-06-30