Muscular Mac Pro is seriously serious

Well, Apple did it again: let people like me speculate, sift and often misanalyse rumours and then bam! Apple Inc hits us with new Macs.

It's not that we were wrong on content, just on timing. There were strong rumours yesterday of an Apple 'event' on 24th March, which threw us all off, and then today: all new Mac Pro, refreshed iMacs, all new Mac mini and even a 15-inch MacBook Pro has been speed-bumped slightly.

On top of all that, the AirPort wireless system has now got dual-banding, which lets devices run at the best speeds for them simultaneously on 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands.

But the most exciting news is the Mac Pro. The cases haven't changed - that distinctive heavy, thick, recyclable aluminium tower - but as speculated, the new-generation Pros have the new Intel Nehalem quad-core single-dye processors.

The new Mac Pro starts at a recommended retail price of NZ$5599 inc GST. That has one quad-core Intel Xeon Nehalem - the other standard option is the eight-core version, with two Nehalem quad-cores. Despite being rated at a lower speed (2.26GHz compared to the cheaper versions 2.66GHz) throughput is greatly enhanced, according to Apple's figures. It costs NZ$7299. There are options to get these processors at up to 2.93GHz.

Both have 620GB drives stock and NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 video cards with 512MB RAM (other options are available).

Luckily, although the new models have Apple's new little Mini DisplayPort as debuted in the unibody MacBooks, allowing the connection of Apple's recently released LED 24-inch Cinema display, they also come with DVI video outputs.

I've talked about this before - although 'upgrading' seems to be a thing of the past, all-new interiors make this more feasible and achievable than ever before.

The '09 Mac Pro includes four direct-attach cable-free hard drive carriers for installing up to 4TB of internal storage when using 1TB 7200rpm Serial ATA drives. There's an optional cable-free Mac Pro RAID card for performance up to 550MB/s. There are also four PCI Express 2.0 slots and, on the case, five USB 2.0 ports and four FireWire 800 ports. Bluetooth 2.1+EDR is built in and it ships with an Apple Keyboard (with numerical keypad) and the Mighty Mouse - a display is extra.

Of course, iLife (GarageBand, iMovie etc) is all on there, plus OS X Leopard.

Apple has stayed green with it too - the new Mac Pro exceeds Energy Star 4.0 requirements and is an early adopter of the more stringent Energy Star 5.0 requirements which only become effective later in the year. It has PVC-free internal cables and contains no brominated flame retardants, so achieves EPEAT Gold status.

The new Mac Pro will be available here in a week or so. The jury's still out on whether this represents a significantly big enough step away from the consumer desktop iMac line - more on that later.

At the same time, Apple finally released an all-new Mac mini, although thanks to the cruelties of the current exchange rates, it doesn't seem 'cheap' anymore.

The new 2GHz Mac mini, costs $1398 with a single gigabyte of 1066 MHz DDR3 SDRAM (maximum 4GB). The best news is that it's now aluminium, although some polycarbonate is still used, and it has the much-expected NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics chip. The hard drive is a 120GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 5400 rpm - as I've said before, a mini is pretty much a MacBook shoehorned into a small case, so the specs are as expected.

Still it has built-in AirPort Extreme wireless plus Bluetooth (2.1+EDR) and Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000 BASE-T). The rumours were right, by the way, on the wealth of USB2 ports - it has five! Plus one FireWire 800 port, audio line in, audio line out port (both optical digital and analogue). Cynics might call it an expensive USB hub with a Mac inside, but it still packs a lot in.

The pricier model comes with 2GBs RAM and has a 320GB drive - this will knock you back $1848. There are build-to-order options - check the Apple site.

 

But wait, there's more, as Steve Jobs liked to say, once upon a time, at his Macworld keynotes ... the iMac line has been refreshed. To me, this looks like the end-of-line, best-of-model refresh Apple pulls off shortly before it supersedes the model entirely, but I could be wrong. They're all faster, basically, with double the RAM.

Interestingly, Apple also announced its popular AirPort Extreme 802.11n Wi-Fi Base Station and Time Capsule now feature simultaneous 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz dual-band networking. I like the new Guest Network feature - it allows users to set up a secondary network for friends and visitors with internet-only access, so you don't have to hand out your WiFi password every time Bill pops in to check his email.

Time Capsule combines an 802.11n router and server-grade hard disk for automatic wireless back-up with Time Machine, and is immediately available in two models: a 500GB model for $629 and the 1TB model for $1049. The AirPort Extreme Base Station costs $379.

I really want a Time Capsule now.

The critics might bemoan this and that, but I'm thrilled Apple has pulled off such a sudden and comprehensive refresh.

- Mark Webster mac.nz