Apple: Incremental Updates To Their Desktop Line

March 4th, 2009

Apple finally announced updates to their entire desktop line: new iMacs, Mac Pro, and the Mac Mini which was under heavy speculation via a series of odd photographs.

• Mac Mini: Turns out the leaked, rumor photographs were right. The new Mac Mini has five USB ports and both Mini DVI and DisplayPort. It comes in two models as before, both with the improved NVIDIA graphics, 2.0 Intel Core 2 Duo, larger hard drives, and SuperDrives. The only head-scratcher is the cheaper model only has 1 GB RAM. Kind of disappointing since that will require opening up the case to get it up to par.
• iMac: Four new models, starting from $1,199 and marching up into overkill land. The base model has a 2.66 Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, and NVIDIA graphics. It’s a 20 inch screen while all the others have 24 inch monitors. The top of the line iMac is a 3.06 Intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB memory, a terabyte HD, and a NVIDIA GeGorce GT 130. It will set you back $2,199.
• Mac Pro: comes in two basic configurations: Quad-Core and 8-Core. These are the expected “Nehalem” Xeon processors.

I think with these announcements, all Macs (including that white MacBook) now have SuperDrives. FireWire (800 as opposed to 400) is present on all these new Macs except the unibody MacBooks. And DisplayPort is provided as an option on these new Macs as well.

I say “incremental” as these all look like slight increases in speed and power and nothing dramatic like a new case design. Still, I’m pleased overall with this new line up, since I am personally interested in a Mac Mini or iMac, and now know what is the latest and greatest from Apple in both regards.

Now the last missing piece is an Apple TV update — hope that shows up soon. If not, there’s a good possibility I’ll purchase a new Mac Mini and delegate our old one to the home entertainment center.