It's Just Micheal

Over the past couple weeks, there have been some significant updates for several Apple products. Most times we see one product receive an upgrade and others in following weeks. This time however, Apple released updates to six products. Visits to the apple page early Tuesday morning were welcomed with the familiar yellow sticky. For those that haven’t seen this before, this is Apple’s way of building excitement and getting everyone to talk. On the yellow sticky is a message, “We’ll be back shortly.”

The first and most anticipated update was the Mac Mini. The only change on the physical appearance is on the back. Apple has removed the DVI output and exchanged it for a mini DVI output as well as a mini Display output. They also exchanged the Firewire 400 for a Firewire 800 and added one more USB port for a total of five. The new unit has a speed increase, new NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics card (which we first saw on the MacBook and MacBook Pro), now handles up to 4GB of memory, larger HDD options, and now even more energy efficient. The starting price remains at $599.

The next update is the iMac, everyone’s favorite All-in-One desktop computer. The updated iMac has “Twice the memory and twice the storage” for the same price. There is now only one 20in option, and now two 24in options. The 20in starts at $1199 and the 24in models range from $1499 to $2199 starting price. The $1499 iMac will get you an Intel Core 2 Duo processor running at 2.66GHz, 4GB memory, 640GB HDD, the usual Super Drive, and the new 9400M graphics card. A mini Display port has also been added, and the Firewire 400 exchanged for a Firewire 800.

The top of the line Mac Pro now starts $300 cheaper, has Intels new Xeon “Nehalem” processor chip, a redesigned interior, and has the new mini Display output, in addition to a standard DVI output. Even though $300 is a lot off, the Pro still starts off at $2499, no display included. There is simply too much about the Mac Pro for me to list off, so visit Apple’s Mac Pro site to learn more.

The smaller updates include the Airport Extreme and Time Capsule, a new keyboard, and a speed bump to the 15in MacBook Pro. The two wireless devices now have dual band support, allowing them to use both the faster N network and slower G network simultaneously, keeping faster devices at top speed even when slower devices are on the network. It also adds a new “Guest Network” feature, allowing your friends access to the internet without access to your network. The default wired keyboard now is much more like the wireless keyboard, no numeric keypad. The wired keyboard with the numeric pad is still available and there is no price difference. The top 15in MacBook Pro and starting 17in MacBook Pro now have a starting speed at 2.66GHz.

You can see that there are many updates to Apple’s computer and accessory products, much of them were anticipated, some were a surprise.