Apple Product Update

At 6:30 AM Apple time (that is pacific time zone, 9:30 AM eastern), Apple brought its online store down for about 2 hours. Durning that downtime, Apple updated the Mac Pro, iMac, and Apple Cinema Display and also added also unveiled a new product to the online store.

The new Mac Pro (excluding the base $2500 model) now uses a 32 nm Westmere processor, instead of the 45 nm Nahalem processor the previous model uses. The result is the newer Mac Pro fits two 4-core Xeon processors (to a total of 8 Cores), or step up to two 6-core Intel Xeon processors (a total of 12 cores). Other options includes one or two ATI Radeon HD 5770 cards with 1GB of GDDR5 memory, up to 16GB of DDR3 ECC SDRAM on the 8 core Mac Pro/2GB of DDR3 ECC SDRAM on the 12 core Mac Pro, and the option to add four 512GB SSD or four 1-2 TB SATA hard drive.

The iMac has many new configuration options for its 21.5″ and 27″ models. Options ranging from a 3.06 GHz Intel Core i3 processor with 3GB of ram, ATI Radeon HD 4670 with 256 MB GDDR3 SDRAM, with a 7200 RPM 500GB SATA drive to a 2.93 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 processor with 16 GB of ram, ATI Radeon HD 5750 with 1GB GDDR5, with a 7200 RPM 1TB SATA drive. There is also an option to have a 256 GB SSD drive instead of a SATA drive or as a secondary drive.

Apple updated its LED  Cinema Display models from the max being a 24″ sized monitor to a 27″ sized monitor with a resolution of 2560 x 1440. The cost for the new 27″ monitor is $100 more than the 24″ costing $999. The brightness has been upped to 375 cd/m2 and the response time is now 12ms from 14ms. The connection port and contrast ratio remains the same.

Apple also released a the Magic Trackpad to the Apple Store. The Magic Trackpad gives desktop Mac users multitouch, gestures, and bluetooth connectivity. The Magic TrackPad is mainly the same as the TrackPad in the Macbook, except it has a 80% more surface area and the whole device acts as a button. The Magic TrackPad has the same dimensions to accompany Apple’s Wireless Keyboard and can be used from 33 feet away. Like most of Apple’s peripheral, it is battery operated.

With most of its devices using batteries, Apple released their first battery charger. The charger can handle up to 6 AA batteries at once and boasts the lowest draw of any charger out there.

Most of the devices updated or unveiled were rumored and most of the rumors were correct.