Something big is cooking in Cupertino, and honestly, it’s been a long time coming. If the rumors floating around Apple circles lately are even halfway right, we might finally be getting the iMac that power users and creative professionals have been screaming for since Apple quietly killed off the iMac Pro years ago – a large-screen, muscle-bound all-in-one that doesn’t apologize for being absurdly good at everything it does.

Here’s the backdrop you need to understand why this matters so much. Apple is going all-in on a new “Ultra” branding push in 2026, and it’s reshaping the entire product lineup as we know it. Mark Gurman at Bloomberg has confirmed that Apple is planning at least three “Ultra”-class devices this year – an iPhone Ultra (the company’s first foldable phone), a MacBook Ultra with a touchscreen OLED display, and an AirPods Ultra. That’s a serious flexing of Apple’s premium muscles across three major categories. But sharp-eyed observers noticed something missing from that list – a desktop Mac. And that’s where things get really interesting.

The desktop Mac has always been the product that made the most sense to wear the “Ultra” badge. It doesn’t run on battery constraints, it doesn’t have to be slim enough to slip into a bag, and it doesn’t have to worry about making compromises for portability. A desktop can go all out, throw every piece of cutting-edge hardware into one package, and just be outright powerful – no excuses, no asterisks. And yet, it’s the one category Apple has seemingly left off its 2026 Ultra roadmap. That silence speaks volumes.

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room – the Mac Pro. It was the beast of Apple’s lineup for years, the tower that let professionals configure their dream machine. But Apple discontinued it, and there’s a very simple reason for that: towers just don’t sell enough units anymore to justify their existence in Apple’s product philosophy. Apple loves clean, elegant product lines. Towers are complicated, bulky, and require customers to go buy their own monitor. Apple looked at the numbers and walked away from that form factor entirely. So if not a tower, then what?

The answer, according to multiple credible leaks and analyst reports, is a comeback for the iMac Pro – either under that exact name or rebranded as an iMac Ultra. Leaks suggest Apple is working on a 32-inch all-in-one Mac with a Mini-LED display featuring ProMotion and XDR technology. To put that in perspective, the current consumer iMac tops out at 24 inches, and the old iMac Pro that Apple sold between 2017 and 2021 was 27 inches. A 32-inch iMac would be the largest iMac Apple has ever built, and it would essentially be a Pro Display XDR fused into the body of a Mac. That’s not just a bigger screen – that’s a whole different category of product.

The chip situation is where things get absolutely wild. Leaked specs point to the M5 Max and M5 Ultra processors powering this machine. The M5 Ultra is a monster – it’s built by fusing two M5 Max dies together using Apple’s UltraFusion technology, doubling the core count, memory bandwidth, and GPU performance in one shot. We’re talking about a chip that makes the Mac Studio look modest by comparison. Pair that with up to 128GB of unified memory and Thunderbolt 5 connectivity, and you’ve got a machine that could handle 8K video editing, 3D rendering, large language model workloads, and whatever else professionals want to throw at it – all without ever breaking a sweat.

What would this machine actually look like? If the design rumors hold, Apple is reportedly eyeing a Space Black finish – a clear and very deliberate nod to the original iMac Pro’s iconic dark look. The Pro Display XDR design language, with its sleek aluminum stand and slim bezels, seems like the perfect canvas to borrow from. Imagine that beautiful monitor, but with an entire computer hidden behind it, and you’ve got the rough picture. There would be six USB-C ports, Thunderbolt 5, Ethernet through the power adapter, and likely a black Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad in the box to complete the dark-themed setup.

Now, who is Apple actually building this for? The current 24-inch iMac is a fantastic machine for everyday users – it’s colorful, fast enough for most tasks, and genuinely fun to use. But it has always frustrated a specific type of buyer: the video editor who needs real estate on the screen, the music producer stacking dozens of tracks, the architect rendering complex models, the photographer color-grading in high resolution, and the developer running multiple virtual machines simultaneously. These users either had to buy a Mac Studio and a separate monitor – which gets expensive fast – or they just bought a Windows workstation instead. An iMac Pro or iMac Ultra would give them a single, beautiful, no-compromise all-in-one solution.

The pricing question is genuinely fascinating here. The current consumer iMac with four Thunderbolt ports starts at $1,499. The M4 Pro MacBook Pro kicks off at $2,199. The Pro Display XDR, when it launched in 2019, was a jaw-dropping $4,999. But here’s the thing – that display price has aged well. The cost of panels like that has come down significantly in five years, and Apple hasn’t updated it. A 32-inch iMac Pro starting somewhere around $2,799 to $3,499 is genuinely plausible, and at that price, it would undercut the cost of buying a Mac Studio plus a quality external monitor separately. For the right buyer, it’s practically a bargain.

It’s also worth zooming out and looking at what Apple is doing with the entire product lineup right now. The company is in the middle of one of its most ambitious upgrade cycles in years. The MacBook Ultra is expected to arrive with an OLED touchscreen, Dynamic Island, M6 Pro and M6 Max chips built on TSMC’s 2nm process, and possibly cellular connectivity. The iPhone Ultra is a foldable with a crease-free display and an A20 Pro chip, launching alongside iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max this fall. Apple is clearly trying to push every product category into more premium territory simultaneously. Adding an iMac Ultra or iMac Pro to that mix isn’t just logical – it’s almost inevitable.

Timing, however, is the wildcard. The MacBook Ultra itself may slip from a late 2026 window into early 2027, partly due to a global RAM shortage that is squeezing Apple’s supply chain. It’s possible the iMac Pro faces similar delays, especially if it shares silicon with those other high-end machines. Apple tends to stagger its chip rollouts carefully so that one product doesn’t cannibalize another. But the groundwork is clearly being laid, leaks are getting louder, and the demand from the professional Mac community has never been higher.

If Apple pulls this off, it won’t just be selling a computer. It’ll be closing a years-long gap in its lineup, reclaiming a market segment it essentially abandoned, and delivering something that a huge population of Mac loyalists has been waiting – and quietly pleading – for. A badass, large-screen, Ultra-powered iMac is exactly the kind of product that makes people walk into an Apple Store and pull out a credit card on the spot. And honestly, that’s the most Apple thing imaginable.