As we've talked about there before, the iMac has been distilled down to about all it can really be...the very thing Steve poo-pooed during the introduction of the iMac G4 in January 2002 (a flat screen with the guts glommed onto the back). Materials/sizes aside, that's been pretty much the iMac we've had since September 2004 with the iMac G5 unveiling.
20 years ago, they had color, translucency, curves, etc. to work with. Nothing seemed "off limits" during that cool period (the iEra, I've always called it...1998-2001). For better or worse, things just aren't that way anymore. The aluminum iMac, as we've known it since about 2007, seems pretty dialed-in.
Other than tweaking proportions and some chin removal (but that's never really bothered me the way it seems to others), I'm really not sure what they could do to the iMac that wouldn't come across as either "trying too hard" or "change for the sake of change"...neither of which I'm a big fan of. They're certainly not going to go back to colors and curves/swoops. All they're probably interested in doing at this point is removing more ports or "distractions" (although, that might've been Ive and his obsessions; with him gone, perhaps that mindset left with him and whoever's running that department now isn't so averse to functionality/utility).
"We've distilled the iMac down to a single 28" hunk of aluminum, at only 4mm thick and with no ports whatsoever." - Jony Ive, 2024 (assuming he'd stuck around).
The one thing I have wanted to see is some sort of adjustability. The nicest thing about the iMac G4 was that ability to put the display wherever/however you wanted. I used that feature/capability all the time, based on what I was doing at the moment. Sometimes I'd want it up, straight and eye level, and others I'd lower/tilt it. When someone came over and I wanted to show them something I was working on, I'd just rotate it over to them with a finger push. I don't know if others got into that feature as much, but it's the one part of that model that I miss.
That crazy-ass $1,000 stand they have now provides much of that (up and down and forward/backward tilt), but they'd have to figure out a way do incorporate that into an AIO without adding some crazy sum to the price...so I'm not holding my breath on that.
But I wouldn't mind seeing some sort of return to the iMac G4 philosophy...where the guts are in some compact, separate lower section that also serves as the base (it would have to be wide/heavy enough to securely support a 21.5"-27" display, of course), and then a "floating", infinitely-adjustable display - as thin/light as possible since it's no longer having to house the entire computer itself - above it. Although that that point, why not just sell the small base unit itself, as the mythical "headless iMac"?
Some say that's what the Mac mini kinda already is. And if you BTO it enough, I suppose it is. Then, after dropping $1,500+ on a somewhat-tricked-out Mac mini, you're still on the hook for a decent display to pair with it. And it'll be third-party for most because I don't think many people are going to pair a $5,000+ Apple Display (and a $1,000 stand) with a sub-$2,000 computer. There just aren't that many brain-damaged lottery winners out there.
PS - The online store is down. Yay...