Why didn't Apple just wait a bit and opt for 65W TDP 9th gen i5/i7/i9..

[mrvo]

I somewhat feel like Apple should have went for these locked lower TDP in the regular iMac chassis. Same L3 cache, included iGPU w/ QuickSync.

i9-9900
i7-9700 (i7 is questionable from Apple obviously)
i5-9600

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-9th-gen-desktop-cpu-coffee-lake,39138.html

 

[codernova]

They seem to have lower clocks speeds as well, especially base clock speeds.

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

Think of this.

If Apple or any other manufacturer kept waiting for what was just around the corner, there would never be any new models.

 

[mikehalloran]

Are these actually shipping in the quantities that Apple would need seeing that the announcement was just a month ago?

Then there's this:

...Aside from the new Intel models that come as a byproduct of segmenting the chips into various core counts, clock frequencies, and memory support, there aren't many new features to speak of with the freshly-announced processors.

Lastly, exactly what real benefits do you foresee for the iMac user?

 

[Bohemien]

I agree with the above - first of all, a refresh of the iMac was LONG overdue (since 2017), so they had to come out with something, everybody was screaming for new machines. Second, they cannot just put processors in that were announced this month, there's a lot of designing, testing, production planning, distribution planning etc. going on before you can ship a product.

And third, while it would've made more sense to put that 65W TDP i9-9900 into the iMac, both from a thermal standpoint and leaving a more justifiable gap between the iMac and iMac Pro lines, I guess there would've been an outcry from users and reviewers alike they didn't put the fastest CPU they could into the machine.

 

[Woochoo]

I agree with the above - first of all, a refresh of the iMac was LONG overdue (since 2017), so they had to come out with something, everybody was screaming for new machines. Second, they cannot just put processors in that were announced this month, there's a lot of designing, testing, production planning, distribution planning etc. going on before you can ship a product.

And third, while it would've made more sense to put that 65W TDP i9-9900 into the iMac, both from a thermal standpoint and leaving a more justifiable gap between the iMac and iMac Pro lines, I guess there would've been an outcry from users and reviewers alike they didn't put the fastest CPU they could into the machine.

If ARM hasn't to come in Macs (or only in low power Macbooks like MB & MBA), Apple would be much better switching to AMD, specially considering Intel messed up Apple's Macs roadmaps many times. Zen & Zen+ already had better TDP and thermals than Intel's correlatives while delivering slightly much better multicore performance for the same price, or same performance for a much lower price. Apple loves huge benefit margins, and has thermal problems (that make Apple gimp clockspeeds much lower) so both fit in. And we also have to consider neither Meltdown or Zombieland cannot be totally fixed by software, only will be fixed in the next Intel architecture so all new CPUs are still affected.
Meltdown patch hits performance x5 harder in Intel, and Zombieland only affects Intel not AMD. Apple quantified the Zombieland patch+disabling hyperthreading to avoid security problems up to a 40% performance loss in Macs, and we should add up the Meltdown patch.

And now with Zen 2 at 7nm things got even better with same or higher IPC than Intel (so they are tied on single core performance now, while Zen being much faster in multicore) and much better efficiency. So it seems like a no brainer for Apple to go for AMD: performance-wise, in security, efficiency, thermals and better benefit margin.