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Apple’s Consumer Upgrades Continue to Impress

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143394-imacfamily_originalYou have to say this for the folks at Cupertino. They know how to capture attention and come out with new products. Two days before the official release of Windows 7, Apple has created yet another stir with some upgrades across its consumer line of products.

Xavier has already highlighted the new mutli-touch mouse but here some of the other new moves by Apple.

New Macbook. The introductory price is still $999 but this follows Apple’s mobile trend of going with a uni-body construction and non-removable battery.

New iMacs. Again the prices remain the same, but you’re seeing more horsepower/storage/and memory on the lower end for the same bucks. You’re also going to be looking at a LED screen for the first time. And those screens have jumped up in size from 20 inches to 21.5 inches and from 24 inches to 27 inches. On the 21.5. inch model you’re looking at a 1920×1080 16:9 aspect ratio. On the 27 inch model you’re looking at 2560×1440 pixels staring back at you. While that is all well and good, the real news is the price per feature. For the same $1199 you’re now looking at a 500GB HD, 4GB of memory and a processor that is running at 3.06GHz. That’s quite a jump on all levels. The new iMacs also now offer a SD card slot below the optical drive.

Apple also updated the Mac Mini with new Nvidia graphics and increased storage and cache size.

All in all, I’d say this was an impressive roll out of the consumer line before the holidays. I’d also say it puts even more pressure on those pushing out Windows 7 machines beginning Thursday.

Any minute now I expect new Apple Tablet rumors to being bubbling up for a January announcement.

7 Comments

7 Comments

  1. tivoboy

    10/20/2009 at 11:48 am

    I simply CANNOT believe that apple continues to offer GLASSY only imacs. I will have to continue to make due with my White 24″ Imac Gen II until they come up with a better option for me.

  2. Sumocat

    10/20/2009 at 12:07 pm

    Certainly a nice series of upgrades, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “impressive”. Need Blu-ray or a touchscreen on that iMac. Still, I am pleased they finally offered multi-touch input for their desktop line (albeit after Wacom did).

  3. GoodThings2Life

    10/20/2009 at 1:07 pm

    The internal hardware specs are mostly just catchup… nothing genuinely revolutionary here. The pricing of the low-end Mac Mini is decent… it’s nice to see them in the sub-$1000 market for a change.

    Of course, the real improvements are in the design of the hardware, which continues Apple’s tradition of being the hot cheerleader of the computing industry… all looks and no real brains other than what it can copy from others.

    Thank God their looks and software are great distractions though, knowmsayin?

  4. Warner Crocker

    10/20/2009 at 1:16 pm

    Who needs Blu-Ray. discs of all types are fading fast. But seriously, the impressive part is about price per feature set.

  5. John

    10/20/2009 at 4:09 pm

    Who cares.

  6. John

    10/20/2009 at 4:11 pm

    I should elaborate….Apple belches out more “revolutionary”, “exciting” product.

    Who cares.

    Apple…so 2000s. 2010 is the year of Google and Android.

  7. Nameless

    10/20/2009 at 8:30 pm

    The MacBook just lost FireWire, and along with it, Target Disk Mode and any interest in me wanting one. (At least there’s the 13″ MacBook Pro.)

    The new Mac mini in server configuration does seem kind of intriguing as a basic file server, though. Small, energy-efficient, and just plain out of the way.

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