• Apple Refreshes Mac Line-up

    Apple Refreshes Mac Line-up

    Techtree News Staff, Mar 04, 2009 1735 hrs IST

    Brings out editions of iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Pro and Mac Keyboard

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iMac


If you have been expecting an update in the iMac lately, there's something to cheer about. The new iMacs now come with a price reduction. Apple now offers one 20-inch iMac and three 24-inch iMac options with better specifications.


The 20-inch iMac now starts at a price of $1,199 (Rs. 60,000 approx.) instead of the earlier $1,499 (Rs. 75,000). The 24-inch iMac is available at $1500 (Rs. 75,000 approx.), which is similar to the price of the older 20-inch iMac. Earlier, the cost of the 24-inch iMac base model was $1,800 (Rs. 90,000 approx.), which has now been slashed by $300.


The new iMac features a glossy display made of glass with a built-in iSight video camera, mic and thin aluminum chassis design.


iMac


Unfortunately, no quad-cores processors are added in the iMacs but all have glossy LED-backlight display. The only 20-inch iMac model has 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 6MB shared L2 cache and 1066MHz FSB. On the other hand, the 24-inch iMac versions are available in 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU options with 6MB shared L2 Cache.


Apple dropped ATI Radeon HD 2600 integrated graphics and replaced it with NVIDIA GeForce 9400M in the 20-inch iMac and base 24-inch iMac models. Surprisingly, both the high-end 24-inch iMac models use dedicated discrete graphics cards. The 2.93GHz 24-inch iMac uses Nvidia GeForce GT 120 with 256MB GDDR3 memory as discrete graphics and option of upgrading to Nvidia GeForce GT 130 with 512MB GDDR3 RAM or ATI Radeon HD 4850 with 512MB GDDR3 RAM. While the 3.06GHz 24-inch iMac model has an option of swapping the GeForce GT 130 to ATI Radeon HD 4850 with 512MB GDDR3 RAM.


The 20-inch model comes with 2GB DDR3 1066MHz RAM, while all 24-inch models come with 4GB DDR3 1066MHz RAM. Apple now allows upgrading RAM up to 8GB! Storage platters become flatter at the higher end. The 3.06GHz 24-inch iMac has 1TB SATA HDD 7200RPM storage, 2.93GHz and 2.66GHz 24-inch iMac models has 640GB SATA HDD 7200RPM storage and the 20-inch iMac has 320GB SATA HDD 7200RPM storage.


The FireWire 400 gets replaced by a fourth USB drive while the iMacs now sport FireWire 800 port. Another notable improvement in the iMac line up is the more compact keyboard, which is available for purchase at $49 (Rs 2,500 approx.) the same price as the old one.



For detailed specifications visit the iMac Tech Specs page.

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Discussion Board
(6) Comments
Sam
,San Francisco, on Mar 05, 2009 11:28 PM
I ordered the Mac Pro a few days before they changed their entire lineup and I had the option of either sticking with the Mac Pro I originally ordered, or the new "top of the line" Mac Pro. The only problem is, it seems as though they lowered their prices on everything, but the new processors. From top to bottom, the 2.26GHz and the 2.93 has an overwhelming price difference! $2,600 in the US. Comparing what I ordered side by side with the 2.66GHz, the price for the new quad-core Nehalem chips is devastating to say the least, even if RAM has become dirt cheap. Is the price tag worth the "greatest and latest technology" ???
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Chris
,Toronto, on Mar 04, 2009 08:02 PM
You said "Apple surprised everyone with a slew of product refreshments much ahead of their respective time cycle." This is completely untrue. All three of the desktop products were in fact *overdue* for updates and in some cases this was the longest time between refresh ever experienced historically. Please correct the article.
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TT News
,Mumbai, on Mar 05, 2009 12:29 PM
@Chris, by "respective time cycle" we were referring to Apple's Annual product update time-cycle for their respective products like iPhone to get some update in June et al. Thanks for pointing out those tricky bunch of words though. Cheers.
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Greg H.
,Atlanta, on Mar 04, 2009 08:12 PM
Why would ANY computer today only come with 1 gig of DDR2 RAM?? By the time you upgrade the RAM to a respectable 4 gigs, add some space to the hard drive, and get Applecare, you're spending $1000.00 on the mini, and you're still only getting about one-third the computing power you can get by buying a same-priced higher end PC. OSX is great. It's a shame it's put into extremely overpriced "fluff" machines.
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Anonymous
,chi chi, on Mar 04, 2009 08:48 PM
Your forgetting that the average consumer does not need 4 gigs of ram, or 500 gigs of hard drive space. The mac mini is exactly what it's name projects, and it's marketed to consumers who are looking to surf the internet, watch a movie, maybe type a paper.
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ncd
,Kolkata, on Mar 05, 2009 06:08 AM
Also, you should keep in mind that MacOSX is not as crippled with 1 GB of Ram as a Windows Vista PC would be. The core of the system is very small and efficient.
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