Jay Wennington / Unsplash — current 24-inch iMac; illustrative photograph, not the unannounced M6 model
M6 iMac Expected This Year in New Colors, Report Says
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says Apple’s next 24-inch iMac is close to launch, with an M6 chip and revised colors expected before the end of 2026. Apple has confirmed neither the product nor its timing, and the report points to an internal refresh rather than a new design.
Gurman's reporting, relayed by MacRumors and 9to5Mac, describes an iMac with the same 24-inch 4.5K Retina display and the same overall footprint as today's model. The headline changes are internal: a new processor and a revised palette. Gurman has not specified which shades Apple will offer, leaving open whether the company adds entirely new colors or simply adjusts the saturation and finish of its existing seven-color lineup, which currently spans green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, blue and silver.
Why colors carry weight for this particular product
The iMac's palette is not a minor styling choice; it is the product's defining trait since April 2021, when Apple retired the space gray aluminum unibody design it had used since 2012 and replaced it with a thin, two-tone aluminum shell available in seven finishes. That relaunch paired the color strategy with Apple's first M1 chip, marking the iMac as the standard-bearer for Apple Silicon on the desktop. Every subsequent refresh, M3 in 2023 and M4 in 2024, kept the same colorway rather than introducing new ones, so a genuine palette change would be the first since the design debuted five years ago. That history is part of why a color refresh, on its own, is treated as newsworthy rather than incidental.
What the M6 chip is expected to bring
Beyond the cosmetic question, Gurman's report ties the update to Apple's M6 generation, which multiple supply-chain reports describe as the company's first Mac processor built on a 2-nanometer manufacturing process. A smaller process node typically translates into higher transistor density, meaning Apple can pack more computing capability into the same power envelope, or deliver similar performance while drawing less energy. For an all-in-one desktop like the 24-inch iMac, where thermal headroom is limited by a slim chassis, efficiency gains from a new node matter as much as raw speed: they determine how much sustained performance the machine can offer without the fan spinning up audibly during everyday tasks like video calls or spreadsheet work.
No major design overhaul is expected alongside the chip and color changes. That is consistent with Apple's recent Mac cadence, where the company alternates between chip-only updates and larger industrial-design changes spaced years apart. The 24-inch iMac has not been redesigned since 2021, and nothing in current reporting suggests 2026 breaks that pattern.
What this means for buyers deciding now
Anyone shopping for a new iMac this fall faces a genuine timing question. If Gurman's "before the end of the year" window holds, buying an M4 iMac in September or October risks a color and chip refresh landing within weeks. Apple typically does not discount outgoing iMac configurations meaningfully ahead of a transition, so early buyers rarely gain a price advantage for waiting less long. Anyone who does not need a new desktop immediately, and who cares about color options in particular, has a clear incentive to hold off until Apple's fall announcements clarify both the launch date and the palette.
The report says nothing about pricing, and that omission matters given Apple's broader 2026 context. Tim Cook has already described industry-wide DRAM and NAND memory shortages as an "unprecedented" cost pressure, and Apple raised prices across much of its Mac and iPad lineup earlier this year in response. Whether the M6 iMac arrives at the same starting price as the current M4 model, or absorbs some of that memory-driven cost increase, remains unconfirmed. Prospective buyers budgeting for a fall purchase should treat the current M4 iMac's pricing as a floor, not a guarantee, for what its successor will cost.
Apple has not commented publicly on any of these details, and no launch date beyond "before the end of the year" has surfaced. The company's pattern in recent years has been to introduce new Mac desktop configurations either at a dedicated fall event alongside iPads, or through a quiet press release without a keynote — the iMac's own 2021 debut was the exception, arriving at a dedicated spring event.