Apple morning roundup, few Mac products left unscathed

Apple let loose a flurry of minor product revisions this AM, bumping internals on the Mac mini, iMac, Mac Pro and MacBook Pro -- even the AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule networking products got spruced up, while the Apple Keyboard got its numpad lopped off. It was one crazy morning. Check it all out below.

The best:

	Apple debuts new iMacs, including cheaper 24-incher Apple just announced new 24-inch and 20-inch iMacs, with some friendlier pricing and Mini DisplayPort video out.		Apple announces Nehalem-based Mac Pro Apple has announced a new Nehalem based Mac Pro with a starting price of $2,499.
	Apple refreshes Mac mini lineup with GeForce 9400M graphics We suppose the expected five USB ports will be a boon for homebuilt RAID enthusiasts, and the Mini DisplayPort and DVI plugs make for some nice dual monitor support.		Apple axes the numeric keypad on iMac's standard wired keyboard Apple has swapped out the standard wired Apple Keyboard for a new model lacking a numeric keypad.

The rest:

• New Airport Extreme and Time Capsule juggle two networks simultaneously
• Apple MacBook Pro 15-inchers get quiet CPU spec bump

[Neurasthenic Posted Mar 3rd 2009 6:21PM]

And of course, I realize that the memory is available for around $600 elsewhere, and I realize that DDR3 is expensive at the moment.
So when I said that it costs $1000+, I was referring to the price gouging that Apple is trying to get away with. I've never seen them try to rip people off by such a huge margin.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 3rd 2009 6:19PM]

Paul Miller sucks at Photoshop

[I liked my old name Some Troll Posted Mar 3rd 2009 6:28PM]

So what are they doing March 24? A song and tap dance?

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 3rd 2009 6:31PM]

When I heard about the new Mac Pros having Nehalem Xeons this morning, the first thing I wondered was, "aren't the Nehalem Xeons coming out at the end of this month?" So I guess the Mac Pro will actually be the first desktop to have them.

Also, the graphics options are nice for Macs, but on the PC side, people don't expect anything less than three PCI Express x16 slots, and the ability to use three Nvidia GTX 295's, which are currently the fastest cards on the market.

Also also, some of the memory configs are weird. The Mac Pro should be using triple channel memory only, since it's the fastest. But I'm seeing 8, 16, and 32GB options which are not triple channel.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 4th 2009 9:27PM]

this really is a worthless comment. What does your boyfriend think of this ?

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 3rd 2009 6:40PM]

This upgrades sucks
I am prety wonder if new mac pro will have beter performance at some price point as it predecesor.
also there is no dedicated cart in base level imac that suck...


and I am macbook pro owner

[Eternal Density Posted Mar 3rd 2009 6:44PM]

All this talk of 24-inchers, yet no comments lending themselves to a "That's what she said."

[barriecusvein Posted Mar 3rd 2009 7:47PM]

+1 i lol'd

[Eternal Density Posted Mar 3rd 2009 7:48PM]

Thanks.
But it turns out there was: http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/03/apple-debuts-new-imacs-including-cheaper-24-incher/comments/17441227/

[rednano74 Posted Mar 3rd 2009 7:17PM]

OVERPRICED...nuff said!

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 3rd 2009 7:42PM]

Anyone else notice that in the educational store apple care is not offered for the imac? I wonder whats up with that.

[Lundmark Posted Mar 3rd 2009 7:30PM]

Cheaper?

In Sweden, the new low-end iMac 24" costs about $150 more and has a slower CPU than the old model.
The low-end Mac mini also received a $200 higher price tag, while the high-end model costs a whopping $1000 USD.

I have no idea why Apple kept the prices on the MacBooks as they were.

[popol Posted Mar 3rd 2009 7:49PM]

Relatively minor spec bumps to justify steep price hikes. iMac low end just jumped from AU1599 to AU$1999 here in Oz. 8 core MacPro was AU$4999, now starts at AU$5499. Cynical Apple ....

[Liquidmark Posted Mar 3rd 2009 9:55PM]

Nothing minor about those speed bumps.

DDR3 ram ain't cheap, neither are the nethalim processors in the new Mac Pro

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 4th 2009 12:45AM]

Yah we'll ignore the fact that as always Apple is late to the tech game by about 6 months or more and realistically nehalem is the only architecture that really takes advantage of DDR3. You get negligible boosts on anything with a FSB. But hey....better late then never Apple.

[Liquidmark Posted Mar 5th 2009 9:55PM]

John, Apple was one of the first manufacturers to make ddr3 a standard on their laptops.

You say Apple is LATE, but they are the first manufacturer with nethalim AFAIK.

All the other potential updates were negligible at best.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 3rd 2009 9:02PM]

Not as bad in Canada 2620$ usd for high end mac pro with exchange rate.

[boe Posted Mar 3rd 2009 10:27PM]

Any word on the 30" LED Cinema?

[roninfusegmailcom Posted Mar 3rd 2009 10:47PM]

wtf mac mini is still same price i was waiting that thing to be under $400 sorry for the late respond i was on a flight and no wifi

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 4th 2009 12:36AM]

So where do we stand? 12 posts about Apple today. Engadget. Just get it over with, and rebrand yourself Macgadget....you know you all want too.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 4th 2009 12:41AM]

I have to say though...only 1 post on this page.....wow...restraint. Now if we could only get ONE post about Apple here, and the rest as individual dumps on on your sister site TUAW...but that would make WAY too much sense.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 4th 2009 5:40AM]

as a mac user, i have to say tuaw is unreadable garbage

also, TECH WEBSITE COVERS APPLE. SHOCKING

[Joao Cagao Posted Mar 4th 2009 7:45AM]

I agree about TUAW.

As far as posts regarding Apple - take note on how many comments they get. Why wouldn't Engadget post about them? If you love Apple or (supposedly) hate them, everyone is interested enough to click through the article & comment. Like it or not, Apple is the biggest celebrity in the tech world.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 4th 2009 3:27AM]

Looks like I'll be getting the Mac Pro.

Apple could of at least throw in the GT 130 like in the iMacs instead of the 120 (aka Geforce 9000 series).

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 4th 2009 5:56AM]

Sydney Morning Herald reports on the new Macs
http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/biztech/apples-price-hike-on-new-mac-range/2009/03/04/1235842465726.html

Points
*iMac have gone up for Australians $400 (down for Americans $300) due to our dollar falling???
*when our $ was almost equal to the US$ at the end of 2008 for 3 months they refused to lower the prices because they felt the market dictated the price and people accepted the current costs as reasonable

Crazy, I think I'll stick to Windows just please someone release a decent MP3 player so I can ditch my 60GB iPod and delete itunes forever! Even a Zune (not available in Oz).

Mac fanboys are a special breed.

[RichyS Posted Mar 4th 2009 5:48AM]

I'm not sure what everyone is bitching about. Maybe it's all to do with expectation levels. Apple released some spec bumps to several (most) of their machines. No fan fair, no massive launch, no big press shindig. Just a store take down and (probably) press-release.

While the spec bumps are welcome (and in some case {cough}Mini{cough} well overdue, what more did people expect? In the current climate, rocking the boat is not a great idea. This is no time to be releasing a Cube replacement.

I think that people over the years have grown used to Apple having big product launches, and when something relatively minor happens, people are upset and disappointed. I don't see this much bile when Dell give a spec bump to their machines.

The real downer for me is the price rises that seem to have occurred outside of the US. Apple didn't exactly pass on the savings when the Dollar was weak against other currencies (I bought 2 160GB Apple TVs last year in NY for about the price of 1 160GB Apple TV in the UK), so now that the Dollar is (relatively) strong, we non-USers really ought not to be hit so hard. Still, no-one can argue that Apple don't seem to know what they're doing at the moment. Compared to the likes of Dell, HP, etc. they seem to be doing very nicely indeed.

Who knows, maybe this rumoured March 24th event will release something of real interest.

That is all.

[PF Posted Mar 4th 2009 8:04AM]

I don't know... in Canada Apple adjusted their pricing to reflect the rising Canadian dollar to a limited extent (I think the closest they got was a 10% difference). They adjusted prices for new product releases, but didn't go back and lower prices for older products. I suspect this is what they have done in other countries as well.

Based on the pricing of the new machines, there was only a partial increase - up to 1.15. It didn't fully reflect the drop in the C$, which is now closer to 1.30.

So overall, I'm happy with the machine I got and the price I paid for it. The key with these machines was that a spec bump, particilarly RAM and storage, was long overdue. The previous models were simply not competitive; the new ones are.

[ekwmin Posted Mar 4th 2009 11:27AM]

Question for all the smart people. I noticed that the Mac Pro has 8 memory slots, but it's DDR3 memory. Isn't better to only use 6 slots? Or is DDR3 different from how DDR2 works? Thanks in advance.

[rclyde Posted Mar 7th 2009 2:08PM]

DDR3 is sitll dual data ram just third gen look it up

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 10th 2009 5:05PM]

Mmm, that middle one makes me hungry for cheese...