Apple Announces Major Consumer PC Upgrades

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on October 20

Hot on the heels of its knockout earnings report from last night, Apple is seizing more attention today with a significant upgrade to its consumer PC lines, specifically the entry-level MacBook, the iMac, and the Mac Mini.

Here’s the rundown:

The MacBook has been redesigned with a new polycarbonate shell, which has a unibody design similar to that of the Aluminum unibody found on the MacBook Pro. It has a new look, with rounded edges, has a seven-hour battery that’s built in, just like on the MacBook Pro. It also has an LED screen, which gives the entire Apple notebook line backlit LED-based displays, which I think is new. Its microprocessor is an Intel Core 2 Duo at 2.26 GHz and hard drive space starts at 250GB. Price: Still $999.

The iMac is getting a major face lift. It too has LED-based displays of sizes of 21.5 inches and an impressive 27-inches. In fact the only non-LED based display in Apple’s line-up is the 30-inch LCD screen still offered. Apple VP Phil Schiller told me last night that getting an LED screen of that size is no small feat, so don’t expect an LED replacement right away.

The 21.5-inch model is a classic consumer design, sporting chips from Intel running at 3.06 GHz and 3.33 GHz. It will sport Intel Core 2 Duos at speeds of 3.06 GHZ and 3.33 GHz. Graphics options include the Nvidia GeForce 9400M or the ATI Radeon 4670. There’s support for up to 16 GB of RAM, and up to 2 terabytes of hard drive capacity. The starting price ranges: $1,199 to $1,499.

The 27-inch model is something else entirely. It’s aimed at the professional who might otherwise buy a Mac Pro, but who wants an iMac, because they look better. I saw the screen on this monster last night and it’s really impressive in person. It starts at $1,699, but there’s another model that has a quad-core Intel Core i5 chip, that starts at $1,999, and which won’t ship until November.

The entire iMac line will ship with a new mouse, dubbed Magic Mouse that replicates the multi-touch surface found on Apple notebooks, and which supports the same two-finger gesture movements for scrolling up and down and for moving back and forth between Web pages. Both iMac models will also have slots for SD cards, typically used in digital cameras. I generally wasn’t crazy on the whole multi-touch touchpad thing on notebooks, that is until I bought a MacBook Pro over the summer.

While I still tend to use a traditional two-button mouse more often than not, I like the touchpad a lot more than I ever expected to and use it more often than before. So if you like that touchpad, and even if you like a two-button mouse, then you’re going to love the Magic Mouse, because it gives you the best aspects of both. You can make the same two-finger gestures for scrolling and snapping back and forth between pages, but also, you can configure the mouse to recognize the “right click” found on a traditional mouse, as the click toward the right side of the mouse. Yes it looks a little weird when you first see it — its very thin and smooth — but I think it’s going to be very popular. Also, both the Magic Mouse, and the default keyboard that ship with the iMac are wireless.

Finally, the Mac Mini, much loved, but always rumored to be due for retirement, got some love today too. The new entry-level Mini still sells for $599 and sports a new 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo chip, an Nvidia Geforce 9400M graphics card and a 160-gigabyte hard drive. A second model priced at $799 boosts the performance on the Intel chip to 2.53 GHz and the hard drive space to 320 GB.

As many probably already know, it turns out that many Mac Mini owners use their machines as inexpensive servers. Seeing an opportunity — Apple’s Xserve professional server line starts at $2,999 – Apple has launched a Mac Mini server for $999. The target Schiller says is small businesses for whom an XServe would be too expensive, as well as enthusiast consumers looking for an inexpensive, small-footprint media server server to share files around the house. The server has the same dimensions as the traditional Mac Mini, and supports storage capacity as high as One terabyte, but lacks an optical drive. It ships with a server version of Apple’s Snow Leopard operating system.

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