Apple iMac with Retina 5K display officially announced

Apple has announced a new iMac which comes with a 27 inch Retina Display. This display offers a resolution of 5210 x 2880 pixels, which puts it into the 5K display territory, making it one of the best displays on a desktop computer.

According to Apple's Phil Schiller, the iMac boasts the “world’s highest-resolution display”, with a total of 14.7 million pixels. For the sake of comparison, the new iMac offers 7x more pixels than a standard (1080p) HDTV and 67% more pixels than the modern 4K TV sets.

In order to manage all these pixels, Apple has designed a new chipset they call ‘Timing Controller’, which increases the overall bandwidth of graphics. Apart from that, the display feature ‘Organic Passivation’, which reduces pixel cross-talk and saves energy.

Design

The iMac is already a beautifully crafted computer, but Apple has taken the design one step further, by trimming the new iMac to just 5mm around the edges. This makes it the sleekest Mac to date. Other than making it slimmer, Apple has retained its other design characteristics.

Hardware

The base model of the Apple iMac with Retina 5K display will ship with 1TB of Fusion Drive storage, a powerful AMD Radeon R9 graphics processor and a 3.2GHz quad-core Intel i5 processor with 8GB of RAM. Those who demand more power can configure Core i7 processors, faster graphics, more storage and additional RAM based on their need.

Software

On the software side, the new Apple iMac with Retina 5K display comes with Apple's Mac OS X (10.10) Yosemite pre-installed. The latest version of Apple's desktop operating system has been designed with the high-resolution Retina Displays in mind with an interface inspired by the company's mobile platform.

With OS X Yosemite and iOS 8, your devices work together in even smarter ways. Now you can make and receive iPhone calls on your Mac, even if your iPhone is in another room. Send and receive both iMessage and SMS text messages on your Mac. Start an email, document, or browsing session on one device and instantly pick it up on another. And turn on the Personal Hotspot on your iPhone right from your Mac so you can get online in an instant.

OS X Yosemite even comes with a collection of pre-installed apps to help with your productivity and your day to day life. These apps are deeply integrated with Apple's iCloud to ensure your works is seamlessly synced between all your Apple devices.

Pricing and Availability

The new Apple iMac with Retina 5K display is a pricey device, costing $2499 for its base model. You can purchase it right now on apple.com and the new iMac will be shipped out within 3 - 5 business days. It doesnt look like store availability is an option at this moment, but we assume the new iMacs will soon grace your local Apple Stores.