As expected, Apple today announced new iMacs with a new streamlined retro look. The new iMacs feature a new sleek aluminum and glass skin with brand new speedier innards. The iMacs start at $1199 and come in 20 and 24″ form factors and feature 2.4GHz Core 2 Extreme processor, up to 4GB of memory, ATI Radeon HD graphics card, up to 1TB of hard drive storage and 802.11n plus Bluetooth 2.0 built-in. Snazzy.
We’ve no specs or anything at all but we can confirm this Tuesday there will be new iMacs released with new keyboards. We’re presuming that the Mighty Mouse will be updated as well to suit the new color scheme. Hurrah! only 2 more days…
You can tell we’re just a little excited over this. Apple has sent invites to sites (not us though, boo) for a “product presentation for Mac” at Apple Town Hall in Cupertino next week. What will we see? New iMacs? iPods? iLife? New apps? Totally new hardware?
ThinkSecret is reporting that they believe Apple will launch their longly awaited new generation of iMacs this August. They describe the new iMacs as:
The iMac, based on similar internals as the recent MacBook Pro, will sport a brushed aluminum enclosure and will measure just 2″ thick.
AppleInsider is reporting that the long-awaited next generation updates to the iMac will come mid-late Summer. They say:
Apple engineers have been toiling long-hour days on a pair of radically redesigned 20- and 24-inch iMacs that will be both slimmer and sleeker than today’s offerings. When the project manifests later this summer, it will represent the first major industrial design overhaul to hit the flagship all-in-one consumer Apple desktops in nearly three years.
The current range of iMacs came in August 2004 replacing the “Sunflower” design which itself replaced the original iMac. How much thinner can these new iMacs be and what do you think they’ll look like? Will this be the first all metal iMac?
We’re siding with AppleInsider by saying there will be NO new iMacs coming next week. Sorry ThinkSecret.
According to a thread on the MacRumors forum, the latest series of iMacs are suspected to include a new 801.11n wireless card. A user booted up into Windows Vista and when he went to check the system specs he found that the iMacs wireless card was listed as “Broadcom 802.11n” when Apple lists it as only b/g compatible. The new spec will allow wireless transfer speeds of 100Mbps and should be finalised early next year. This is not the first time Apple has used technologies before being standardized. The Airport Extreme system used the “g” specification before it was finalized. This confirms what we all previously thought - Apple’s Airport system will be updated soon to to support “n” (as will all Macs) and also the upcoming iTV setup box will support this new specification.
Apple today announced that its entire iMac line now features the new Intel Core 2 Duo processor in every model, delivering up to 50% faster performance than the previous iMac, notes the company. A new 24″ iMac with a 24″ widescreen display joins the 17″ and 20″ models, and iMac prices now start at $999. Every new iMac includes a built-in iSight video camera for video conferencing out-of-the-box; Apple’s Front Row media experience; and iLife ‘06, the next generation of Apple’s suite of digital lifestyle applications. “The new iMac lineup includes four models: a 1.83GHz and a 2.0GHz 17″, a 2.16GHz 20″ and the all-new 2.16GHz 24″ iMac, and features the new Intel Core 2 Duo processor which delivers up to 50% faster performance than the previous 20″ iMac running industry standard benchmarks,” notes Apple. Complete pricing and technical specifications are available in the press release.
Apple is preparing to update their iMac range in September to be powered by Intels new Merom processors. These new processors have dual cores and are 64-bit compatible. The update will bring in a new flagship iMac model at 23″ with 2.33GHz processor followed by another model in 2.16GHz. These will be the first Macs to have Dual Core processors. It is expected that the whole Mac range will shift to the Merom by Spring next year as Mac OS X Leopard will take advantage of 64-bit…
Update: ThinkSecret and AppleInsider have both confirmed reports on the new iMac. Get your credit cards at the ready!
Update 2: They’ve now been released.
This nearly brushed complete by us. It was today, 8 years ago, that Apple revolutionized the computer industry as well as re-vitalizing Apple with the release of the original bondi blue iMac! Today we might laugh at the meagre 4GB hard drive, 2MB video, 32MB RAM and Mac OS 9 (available for $1,299.00) but it was the coolest thing ever back then. Many revisions followed with new colors (my favourite being Blue Dalmation!) and then it morphed into the classic G4 “lamp” iMac and then agan into the iMac G5 and now, 4 generations later, the Intel iMac. Thank you Steve for changing our lives forever!
On Wednesday Apple Computer confirmed the fact that the new iMacs experience video playback problems. An article at Information Week states that video sometimes has random horizontal lines, ghosting, video tearing, and other problems. These do not occur when playing movies in QuickTime, rather in iMovie and in alt-tabbing circumstances. Consumer Machine takes a good look at what exactly is wrong. They say that most cases are not software related, pointing the finger at ATI. An excerpt from a company email reads:
Apple is aware of this issue and is looking into it, If a customer has any technical issues, they should contact AppleCare.
It appears that the Intel Core Duo chip already inside thousands of new Intel Macs may indeed be 64 bit. An article at Hexus claims that the Intel chips may are 64 bit. The huge question remains, why would Intel hide such a feature? Speculation has it that Windows has not been booted on new Intel Macs for this reason.
Note: This story has not been fully acredited and may be untrue.
Apple developers who hired out a “Developer Transition Kit” are now able to swap them in for a new 17″ Intel iMac. The new “DTK Exchange Program” rewards early developers who began transitioning their code early. Developers have until 5:00PM PST on March 31st 2006 to process their exchange requests. Only developers who ordered a DTK system from Apple between June 6th 2005 and January 10th 2006 may participate in the DTK Exchange Program. We can see lots of happy developers 
The new age is here, the first of the Mactels has arrived on Earth! Apple has released new iMacs powered by Intel Duo Core, but everything else is the same - even the price. So we have the 17″ 1.83GHz model at $1,299 and the 20″ 2.0GHz model at $1,699.00. Both come with iLife ‘06, Airport Extreme, Bluetooth and a rather snazzy ATI Radeon X1600 graphics card. They are available now at your local Apple Store or online.
