Good morning! I trust you slept well last night, right after you ordered an iMac, Mac Pro, and several of those cutting-edge, multi-touch Apple Magic Mice. Got your coffee? Seated comfortably? Good. You may now commence screaming, because Apple has announced updates to the iMac and Mac Pro lines, along with the release of a new multi-touch “Magic Trackpad.”
Let’s break this down:
iMac tech specs
- The processors come in several flavors, starting with the Intel Core i3 for both the 21.5 inch low and medium iMacs, as well as 27 incher (clock speeds vary, of course, from 3.06 GHz to 3.2). At the top tier, however, you can get a 2.8 GHz Quad-core i5 processor, or drop $200 for a 2.9 GHz Quad-core i7 processor.
- 4GB of RAM standard on all models
- 500 GB of hard disk on the low end, 1 TB for everyone else
- 8x double-layer DVD Superdrives (natch)
- ATI Radeon graphics cards, starting with the ATI Radeon HD 4670 with 256MB on the low end and ATI Radeon HD 5750 with 1GB on the high
- Shipping now
Mac Pro tech specs
- This is where it gets fun, because you can get either a single quad-core processor up to 3.2 GHz or a “Westmere” series, which comes in quad-core and 6-core versions. Here’s the kicker. The Mac Pro can support either one or two processors. “Which means,” as Apple tells us, “that you can have a 6-core Mac Pro at 3.33GHz, an 8-core system at 2.4GHz, or, to max out your performance, a 12-core system at up to 2.93GHz.”
- Graphically, the Mac Pro comes with ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB of GDDR5 memory, which can be upgraded to an ATI Radeon HD 5870 with 1GB of GDDR5 memory
- Available in August
But what everyone’s going to be talking about is probably the Magic Trackpad, which gives you, well, a laptop trackpad for your desktop computer. It supports gestures, of course, along with mouse control, and the entire surface (made of the same material as a trackpad) is a button, so you can click anywhere. It uses Bluetooth to communicate with the computer: no USB option at all. It’s $69, but isn’t shipping standard with any Mac.
Products [iMac, Mac Pro, Magic Trackpad]
Not much detail in this article….What about whether iDVD will continue or not…heard it may
not be in new models.
That has more to do with the next version of iLife, Phil, than with a new hardware rollout. I don't believe Apple has made any comments on it, but the latest rumor we've heard indicates it won't be:
<a href="Rumor" rel="nofollow">http://www.appletell.com/apple/comment/ilife-11-due-in-august-with-a-new-addition/">Rumor: iLife ‘11 due in August with a new addition