There reportedly haven’t been any signs that a 24-inch iMac with an Apple M2 processor is on the way. And that means the next iMac upgrade might be as much as a year away.

That would leave users of the all-in-one Mac desktop waiting for a total of three years for a faster version.

No iMac with M2 for you!

The 24-inch iMac launched in spring 2021 with a dramatic redesign and speedy performance, thanks to its Apple M1 processor. The faster M2 processor launched in summer 2022, and upgrading the all-in-one desktop machine with the new chip seems like an obvious move. But apparently not to Apple.

“I haven’t seen anything to indicate there will be a new iMac until the M3 chip generation, which won’t arrive until the tail end of this year at the earliest or next year,” writes Mark Gurman for Bloomberg. “So if you want to stick with the iMac, you’ll just have to sit tight.”

Any good detective will tell you “Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.” In other words, just because nothing about an M2 iMac has leaked yet, that doesn’t prove that there won’t be one. It’s possible Apple just kept the indevelopment of an upgraded iMac quiet.

But why not?

If this unconfirmed report does pan out, there’s some logic in Apple deciding to have the iMac line skip the M2 in favor of the M3.

While the M2 is an improvement on the M1, it’s not a dramatic one. Apple promises the newer chip offers an 18% faster CPU and a 35% more powerful GPU. While faster is better, these incremental upgrades aren’t likely to be very noticeable to average consumers in daily usage.

And consumers are the target market for the 24-inch iMac. It is intended for home and school use, not professionals rendering 3D video for movies. And the M1 processor runs Microsoft Word and Safari at essentially the same speed as the M2 would.

The Apple M3 will be made with a new 3nm process and will surely bring a significant — and more notable — jump in performance over the current iMac model.