Following our report in July detailing Apple’s work on a new 4K display, today a report from Taiwan-based display researchers WitsView claims Apple will release a new 5K iMac by the end of this year.
Adding a little bit more weight to today’s report is the fact that Dell just announced a 27-inch 5120×2880 5K display that would be a likely candidate for a future Retina iMac panel if today’s rumors are true.
There have been several hints that Apple is working on a higher-resolution iMac that would introduce the pixel-doubled Retina resolution mode available to Apple’s Retina display equipped MacBooks. In June, code found in Apple’s upcoming OS X Yosemite release hinted at Retina resolution scaling options for a larger desktop-sized Mac. Those resolutions included 6400 x 3600 (probably a 3200×1800 HiDPI), 5760×3240 (2880×1620 HiDPI) 4096×2304 (2048×1152 HiDPI) resolutions, but didn’t reveal a native resolution for the device in question. Apple also recently added new resolution scaling options and improved support for 4K displays.
WitsView, which closely tracks the display industry and supply chain, claims Apple will release the new 27-inch 5K iMac by the end of the fourth quarter and that the release “is expected to spur a new wave of demand for ultra high-resolution monitors.”
