Obviously all of the talk about the 2011 iMacs is speculative as Apple keep very quite about any of their upcoming products, however we think it is a full gone conclusion that the iMacs will boast Thunderbolt connectivity and Intel’s new Sandy Bridge processors, but will this be enough for people who already own an iMac to upgrade?

The Thunderbolt connectivity is a great addition, however for some people it will be unused as they do not requite high-speed I/O functionality, let’s face it the iMacs have beautiful HD screens therefore there is not much of a need to connect your Mac to an external display, also online backup is getting cheaper and more reliable so people may not want to spend a lot on an external HDD which features Thunderbolt connectivity.

The other big attraction will be the use of Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors, at first there were problems but now people are making the most out of the faster, more efficient architecture. Obviously people who use their iMac for high-end tasks will be excited by this new addition, however a lot of people use their iMac for relatively basic tasks, therefore they will probably not see any benefits from the jump in performance.

Perhaps Apple will shock us by really overhauling the iMac in 2011, we will have to wait and see, for now we would like some feedback on the matter so please answer the poll question below and share your thoughts in the comments section.
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If you head over to the Apple Store you will see 21.5-inch and 27-inch models, over the years it seems as if each new iMac features a larger display than its predecessor. Perhaps the next iMac will be available with a display nearer to 30-inches, would you like to see this?

In terms of specifications we can take a little bit of insight from the recently refreshed MacBook Pro models which arrived back in February. The new MacBook Pros feature a range of specs however the high-end models features quad-core Intel Core i7 processors, even the cheapest model featured a dual-core Intel Core i5 chip. We presume that Apple will offer Intel’s new Sandy Bridge processors which deliver better performance and efficiency than the first-gen Intel Core processor.

One new technology we saw the MacBook Pro was Apple / Intel Thunderbolt, this technology wiped the floor with USB 3.0 and eSATA, so much so that even the new MacBook Pros snubbed USB 3.0, this shocked us a little. We pretty much guarantee that the 2011 iMacs will feature Thunderbolt connectivity.

Other specs we may see as standard in the high-end models include 8GB of DDR3 RAM, 2TB of storage (or a high capacity SSD), a Blu-ray drive and a significant jump in graphics from the ATI Radeon HD 5750 which is used by the most recent iMacs.

We would love to hear what you want to see the new iMacs feature in terms of specs and screen size, let us know in the comments section below.