Back in January at the Macworld keynote, Phil Schiller stated that the day was going to be all about the Mac. But it turned out to be more about the inner workings of the Mac with the release of the new iLife suite (and its sweet updates to iPhoto and iMovie) with a paltry offering of new hardware with the announcement of the 17-inch MacBook Pro (albeit with a horking huge battery). Today, however, is truly about Mac hardware as Apple not only unleashes new iterations of its entire desktop lineup–iMac, Mac mini, and Mac Pro–but also refreshes its lineup of Airport Extreme and Time Capsule wireless networking products (as well as throws in a new wired Apple keyboard and a faster MacBook Pro for kicks). For the most part, the new models increase speeds and feeds and don’t

Mac mini

While the new Mac models released today primarily get bumps in speeds and feeds, the new Mac mini gets some new ports on its backside, hewing exactly to the leaked photo and video that made its way to the gadgetosphere a few weeks ago. It bumps its crop of USB ports up to five from four and replaces the large DVI port with two video outputs–one mini DisplayPort and one mini DVI–as well as upgrades the FireWire port from 400 to 800.

Aside from the boost in CPU via the 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, the biggest change is the addition of NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics chip found in the unibody MacBook line, which (Apple boasts) provides five times the video processing power over its predecessor (though it should be noted that the 9400M shares its memory with the system RAM). The mini comes in two flavors (both now upgradeable to 4 GB of RAM):

• 120 GB hard drive, 1 GB RAM, 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M with 128 MB shared memory
• 320 GB hard drive, 2 GB RAM, 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M with 256 MB shared memory

iMac
The new iMac lineup gets four models–three with 24-inch screens and a single 20-inch unit. All models get some Core 2 Duo speed increases and an injection of NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics goodness for the two entry level models. The faster, higher-end 24-inch models offer a choice of GeForce GT 120/130 graphics processors with either 256 MB or 512 MB (respectively) of discrete memory. Also, all the 24-inch models all start with a base of 4 GB of RAM (and all units are upgradeable to 8 GB).

• 20-inch screen, 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 320 GB hard drive, 2 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M with 256 MB shared memory
• 24-inch screen, 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 640 GB hard drive, 4 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M with 256 MB shared memory
• 24-inch screen, 2.93 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 640 GB hard drive, 4 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 256 MB of GDDR3 memory
• 24-inch screen, 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 TB hard drive, 4 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 with 512 MB of GDDR3 memory

Mac Pro
The eagerly awaited refresh to the Mac Pro was also released with Intel’s latest Nehalem line of Xeon quad-core processor, and it’s available in either single quad-core set up or an 8-core with dual quad-core processors. And despite the fact that the new processors are actually a little slower than those found in the previous Mac Pro line, Apple claims that the new Xeons are faster thanks to a single-die, 64-bit architecture that, according to TidBits, “keeps cached data on the chip as it travels from core to core. Also helping boost performance is an integrated memory controller that gives the processor faster access to data in RAM, reducing memory latency by up to 40 percent.” The two flavors of Mac Pro are as follows (with each upgradeable to 4 TB of internal storage and including an 18x SuperDrive with double-layer support):

• Single 2.66 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 640 GB hard drive, 3 GB RAM (8 GB max), NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 512MB GDDR3 memory
• Two 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 640 GB hard drive, 8 GB RAM (32 GB max), NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 512MB GDDR3 memory

Airport Express/Time Capsule
Apple also came out with refreshes to its two wireless networking boxes, which now have the ability to run two Wi-Fi networks at once at different speeds–one at 2.4 GHz and one at 5 GHz. As Wired’s Gadget Lab puts it, “Thus you can run a speedy and long-ranging “n” network for all your computers and a separate “g” section so that your iPods and iPhones don’t slow things down.” They also now include the ability to create a network for guests so you don’t have to fiddle around with complicated passwords. The Airport Extreme is joined by 500 GB and 1 TB flavors of the Time Capsule, the latter of which adds remote access via MobileMe.

Hidden Bonus Tracks: Apple Keyboard and MacBook Pro
Finally, Apple also bumped up the speed in the top two models of its MacBook Pro line to 2.66 GHz and 2.93 GHz (from 2.53 GHz and 2.8 GHz) and it released a new slimmer, wired Apple Keyboard that is based on the Apple Wireless Keyboard, which doesn’t include a numeric keypad. Ars Technica notes that both the new compact Apple Keyboard and newly renamed Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad are available at the same price ($49) and that the new compact version is the one that ships with the new line of iMacs.

–Agen G.N. Schmitz

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