Apple has revealed its 'holiday season' lineup - nothing earth-shattering, but some cool new hardware for Mac fans.
First up is a new MacBook. This now has a MacBook Pro-style 'unibody' one-piece chassis (still plastic, though), so no unsightly joins like other notebooks or laptops and hopefully fewer stress fractures after long-term use. There's a faster processor and up to seven hours' battery life, thanks in part to a low-power LED display.
The Mac Mini range has been tweaked - you can now get it with a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo and 4GB RAM, but the base model remains laughably underspecced for £500 - where does Apple even find these 160GB hard disks? Maybe from the same bankrupt stock as the previous MacBook's CD writer.
More interesting is the creation of a Mac Mini desktops server - by removing the optical drive Apple has squeezed in two 500GB hard disks. This comes pre-installed with the unlimited client version of Snow Leopard Server for your £799, and is aimed at small businesses as a relatively inexpensive and easy way of setting up an email, calendar and file server.
The big brouhaha was about the new iMac line of computers. This was very pretty. There's now a 21.5 inch and 27 inch model to replace the 20 inch and 24 inch versions, and resolutions are up to full HD 1,920 x 1,080 and CAD package-friendly 2,560 x 1,440. No Blu-ray drive for spinning disc HD playback, but you should be able to plug your blu-ray player into the 27 inch model's Mini DisplayPort input once Belkin brings out a suitable adaptor.
First up is a new MacBook. This now has a MacBook Pro-style 'unibody' one-piece chassis (still plastic, though), so no unsightly joins like other notebooks or laptops and hopefully fewer stress fractures after long-term use. There's a faster processor and up to seven hours' battery life, thanks in part to a low-power LED display.
The Mac Mini range has been tweaked - you can now get it with a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo and 4GB RAM, but the base model remains laughably underspecced for £500 - where does Apple even find these 160GB hard disks? Maybe from the same bankrupt stock as the previous MacBook's CD writer.
More interesting is the creation of a Mac Mini desktops server - by removing the optical drive Apple has squeezed in two 500GB hard disks. This comes pre-installed with the unlimited client version of Snow Leopard Server for your £799, and is aimed at small businesses as a relatively inexpensive and easy way of setting up an email, calendar and file server.
The big brouhaha was about the new iMac line of computers. This was very pretty. There's now a 21.5 inch and 27 inch model to replace the 20 inch and 24 inch versions, and resolutions are up to full HD 1,920 x 1,080 and CAD package-friendly 2,560 x 1,440. No Blu-ray drive for spinning disc HD playback, but you should be able to plug your blu-ray player into the 27 inch model's Mini DisplayPort input once Belkin brings out a suitable adaptor.
