iMac 2017 release date, specs & features latest news: Tim Cook says Apple has 'great desktops' in the works, to launch in early 2017?

Apple enthusiasts were dismayed when the Cupertino-based tech giant seemingly ignored its desktop computer, the iMac, this year as it did not receive an update amid the arrival of new iPads, iPhones and the MacBook Pro. In order to counter this prevalent perception, Apple CEO Tim Cook recently sent a message to the company's employees stating that they have not abandoned their desktop lineup.

"Some folks in the media have raised the question about whether we're committed to desktops. If there's any doubt about that with our teams, let me be very clear: we have great desktops in our roadmap. Nobody should worry about that," Cook, apparently, wrote in a post on an employee message board obtained by TechCrunch.

Cook iterated that the desktop continues to be an important product for Apple because unlike their notebooks, they have the ability to equip it with more performance, memory and storage. He also stated that a lot of people are still using desktops.

Even though the current generation iMac has not been updated in about 434 days, Cook remains proud of the product, calling it "the best desktop we have ever made" and saying that its Retina 5K display is the best in the world.

According to reports, Apple is expected to release a new iMacs next year with USB Type-C ports and discrete graphics cards from AMD. The tech giant is also slated to reveal a 27-inch stand-alone external 5K display called Cinema Display.

The iMac 2017 is rumored to be powered by Intel's seventh-generation Kaby Lake processors but recent reports suggest that Apple could instead equip it with the sixth-generation Skylake or even possibly Intel's Xeon processor designed for workstations and servers. Regardless of which one turns out to be true, both are considered as significant improvements over the current generation's Broadwell chip.

Based on the predictions of KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the next-generation iMac desktop computer will arrive in the first half of 2017.