Wednesday, September 06, 2006

24 inch iMac released

Just a few days ago we were talking about a rumoured 23" iMac. The rumours were wrong. It's 24 inches:

24-inch widescreen LCD
1920x1200 resolution
2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
4MB shared L2 cache
1GB memory (2x512MB SO-DIMM)
250GB Serial ATA hard drive
8x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD+R DL, DVD±RW, CD-RW)
NVIDIA GeForce 7300GT with 128MB GDDR3 memory
Built-in AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth 2.0
iSight
Apple Remote

CAD$2249
US$1999
£1349.01 (£1148.09 ex VAT)
Eur 1949 and up

As expected, it also comes with Core 2 Duo, at an impressive 2.16 GHz with 4 MB L2 cache, with the option of an upgrade to 2.33 GHz. It also comes with an nVidia GeForce 7300GT with 128MB GDDR3. While the 7300GT and the older ATI Radeon X1600 compete in the same ballpark, the GeForce should be faster on average. More importantly however, there is also an option for the 7600GT with 256 MB RAM, a no-brainer upgrade for gamers and Aperture & Motion users given the low cost. In addition, this machine comes with Firewire 800 too, the first consumer Mac to do so. Very impressive.

All in all, this is an excellent package.



Also impressive is the low end iMac. Apple has released a Core 2 Duo 17" iMac with GMA 950 graphics. The specs are not so impressive, but the price is, at $999. This is the ideal machine for many entry-level consumers, at an affordable price.

[Update 2006-09-08]

It looks like we Canadians are getting a bit of a price break for a change. The 7600 GT GPU upgrade costs C$90 in Canada, or about US$80 at current exchange rates. It's US$125 in the US.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So what will be announced in the Apple Expo?

Eug said...

There is no Jobs keynote at Apple Expo. However, apparently the "It's Showtime" media event will be streamed to Apple Expo. Probably an iTunes Movie Store and perhaps new iPods will be announced at that media event.

Merom MacBook Pros should be coming soon too.