New iMac Release Date Set for Friday

The new iMac release date is set for Friday November 30th, barely hitting Apple’s announced November release, but putting to bed rumors the new iMac models would face a delay until 2013.

The 21-inch iMac goes on sale online and in-store on Friday November 30th and starts shipping immediately. Users can also order the new 27-inch iMac on November 30th, but it will not ship until December, likely mid-December.

Apple announced the new iMac models at a special event in October, when the company announced the iPad mini and iPad 4th generation.

The new models feature a new slim design and a new display that Apple claims cuts 75% of reflections. The edge of the new iMac is 5mm thick, thinner than an iPhone, though the center features a bulge in the back where the stand connects.

Apple offers a new Fusion hard drive as an upgrade. This new hybrid hard drive combines a 128GB SSD with a standard hard drive to deliver the speed of an SSD with the storage capacity of a hard disk. To the user, there is only one volume, or drive, visible so iMac owners won’t need to make decisions about what to store where.

The new iMac features an Intel Core i5 third generation processor, 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive standard, with options to upgrade to an Intel Core i7 processor. The 2012 models include dedicated graphics from Nvidia. The 21.5-inch iMac includes the NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M GPU with 512MB video RAM as standard and the 27-inch iMac includes a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M with 512MB video RAM. Shoppers can upgrade to more powerful dedicated graphics options.

The new models start at $1,299 for the 21.5-inch iMac and $1,799 for the 27-inch iMac. It’s not clear what time the iMac will go on sale in the Online Apple Store on Friday, but it could happen at 12:01 PM Pacific, as it often does with iPad and iPhone releases.