Those one-uppers in Cupertino, Calif., have done it again, as Apple has released a 4K-beating iMac that adopts the Retina display brilliance made popular on Apple's mobile devices.
There is standard high definition of 1920 x 1080 resolution, then Ultra HD at 3840 X 2160, 4K at 4096 x 2160 and now Apple's latest Retina 5K display at a pixel count of 5120 x 2880. The iMac's new pixel-rich display measure 27-inches, framed in a 5-mm bezel.
"Precision and innovation have always been a part of the iMac story," says Apple. "Bringing the Retina 5K display to the 27-inch iMac was no different. It meant making incredible leaps in design at every level, from re-enineering the brains of the display to maintaining the 1/100th of a micron tolerances with the display cell."
With a price tag of $2,499, the iMac with 5K Retina display has the premium hardware needed to push every spec of its 14.7 million pixels. The iMac is available with a 3.5 GHz, quad-core Intel i5 processor or a 4 GHz, quad-core i7 processor.
The base model of the $2,499 iMac includes a 1-TB Fusion drive with the option to switch it out for 3 TB of long-term storage. For users unhappy with the speed of the solid state hybrid drives, they can opt for a full-fledged 1-TB SSD.
The choice of graphics hardware is a very interesting note about the iMac with Retina. Apple has generally favored Nvidia hardware in flagship models, but the iMac with Retina goes with AMD's beastly R9 M290x or upgraded to the M295X graphics card.
"All the pixels in the world won't do you any good if you can't quickly and efficiently command them into action," says Apple. "That's why the new iMac with Retina 5K display features the latest AMD high-performance graphics -- with up to 3.5 teraflops of graphics compute power. So you experience stunning motion graphics, jaw-dropping visual effects, and 3D graphics so true to life that you'll feel like you're part of the action."
To move those massive 4K files, the iMac with Retina includes two Thunderbolt 2 ports that each have bandwidths of 20 GB.
All of the premium elements of the iMac with Retina sing in unison, thanks to the newly released OS X Yosemite.
Best friends with iOS 8, Yosemite puts iMac users in command of content across all their Apple devices. The enhanced Spotlight search enables users more efficiently mine for local content, while features like Air Drop and Handoff allow users to seamlessly move files and phone calls between iMacs and Apple mobile devices.
