If you’re planning on getting a new iMac, you may want to save yourself a trip to your local Apple Store as some particular finishes are only available in the online Apple store.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS:
- Yellow, purple and orange models are only available online.
- The remaining four iMac colors are available in physical stores.
- All of the seven M1 iMac colors are available via Apple.com.
Only four iMac colors are sold at Apple Stores
Concretely, those visiting their local brick-and-mortar Apple Store will only be able to purchase their new 24-iMac in green, pink, blue and silver. Conversely, if they’d like to get their iMac in yellow, purple or orange, shoppers will need to purchase these through the online store.
For clarification, all of the seven M1 iMac colors are available online, according to a press release on Apple’s website announcing retail availability of the new iMac and other products.
iMac configurations in green, pink, blue and silver will be available to purchase directly at apple.com and Apple Store locations, and all seven colors will be available at apple.com.
It’s not like someone at Apple has made the decision that yellow, orange and purple are going to be the most popular new iMac colors so they only made them available online to increase sales. Don’t forget that we’re still in the middle of this awful COVI-19 pandemic and retailers like Apple are feeling the heat, what with limited walk-in traffic at stores and more.
Besides, carrying all colors in which the new iMacs are offered in retail stores is a logistical nightmare. The stores would need to be stocked with all colors, some of which will sell better than the others. Yes, Apple stores previously offered Apple products in the full lineup of colors—but Apple has also had to delay Mac and iPad production due to the global chip shortage.
And last but not least, every unsold unit puts significant pressure on the physical store in terms of space and money required to carry stock of unsold colors.
Which new iMac model is for you?
The new M1-powered 24-inch iMac family is available in three distinct configurations: the baseline $1,299 model, the mid-range $1,499 one and the flagship $1,699 model.
Both the baseline and mid-range models offer 256GB of storage, but the former is the only all-in-one desktop in the lineup to feature a seven-core Apple-designed GPU in the Apple M1 chip instead of eight graphics cores that present in the other two models.
→ How to boot M1 Macs into macOS Recovery
All three models come outfitted with 8GB of unified memory, a 24-inch Retina display rated at 4.5K resolution and two Thunderbolt / USB4 ports. The mid-range and flagship models also have one Gigabit Ethernet port (on the charger), a pair of additional USB 3 ports and a Magic Keyboard with wireless Touch ID. The flagship model also doubles the storage to 512GB.
Apple offers many build-to-order options when configuring your iMac through the online store.