Apple today unveiled an all new all-in-one iMac line featuring 20- and 24-inch widescreen displays encased in professional aluminum and glass enclosures. The entire new iMac line features the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors and a new, ultra-thin aluminum Apple Keyboard, built-in iSight video camera for video conferencing and iLife '08. The new ultra-thin aluminum Apple Keyboard is just 0.33 inches thin at its front edge. A new optional Apple Wireless Keyboard is a compact design that, with Apple's wireless Mighty Mouse, offers a cable-free desktop. The 20-inch iMac now starts at US$1,199, $300 less than the previous 20-inch model, and the 24-inch iMac starts at $1,799, $200 less than the previous 24-inch model.

Apple also updated its Mac Mini line computers. The entire line now features Intel Core 2 Duo processors. The $799 model includes a 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of RAM, SuperDrive and a 120GB hard drive. The $599 model includes a 1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of RAM, Combo Drive and a 80GB hard drive. Both models are available immediately from the Apple Store.

Apple has now joined the exclusive ranks of Sun, IBM, and HP as one of (now only) four companies to obtain the UNIX 03 certification. This means that, with the new OS, Apple has transitioned OS X from being a UNIX-based operating system to actually being the first real official consumer desktop version of UNIX. The certification is actually quite important for Apple and for the OS. The UNIX 03 certification means that Leopard conforms to the Single UNIX Specification Version 3 (SUS), a specification for how things like the shell, compiler, C APIs, and so on should work. This is important for Apple in the enterprise market as it allows its applications to be simply recompiled to run on other RISC-based processors and vice-versa. This makes it easier for companies to transition to Apple's XServe server hardware.

Early sales estimates are in and they are very impressive. According to market research firm Piper Jaffray, Apple sold about 500,000 iPhones from 6 p.m. on Friday through end of business Sunday night—300,000 more than the market research firm originally estimated the company would sell.

Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster also revealed that ninety-five percent of buyers in San Francisco, New York and Minneapolis purchased the 8GB model. Also, about half of the 253 buyers surveyed were new customers to AT&T.

Business is good at Apple. Actually, it's fantastic. In its quarterly financial conference call with members of the media and analysts, Apple revealed that Q207 has been the most profitable in the company's history.

Apple's Mac Business
In total, Apple shipped 1.517 million Macs during the quarter, representing 36 percent yearly growth. This included 891,000 notebooks and 626,000 desktop systems.

Demand for MacBooks and MacBook Pros during the quarter was exceptional. Notebook sales grew 79 percent year-over-year and accounted for 59 Percent of Macs sold during the quarter. Notebook sales generated $1.354 billion in revenue.

Desktop sales accounted for about 40 percent of the Macs sold during the quarter, rising only slightly from the year-ago quarter in which Apple sold 614,000 units. Desktops accounted for $914 million of quarterly revenue. Read More...

Apple on Wednesday reported a $770 million profit for the fiscal 2007 second quarter on $5.26 billion in revenue. The profit worked out to $.87 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $4.36 billion and net quarterly profit of $410 million, or $.47 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter.

The company shipped 1,517,000 Macs and 10,549,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 36 percent growth in Macs and 24 percent growth in iPods over the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 43 percent of the quarter’s revenue, according to Apple.

“The Mac is clearly gaining market share, with sales growing 36 percent — more than three times the industry growth rate,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO in a prepared statement.

At its special event being held at NAB in Las Vegas on Sunday, Apple unveiled on Sunday Final Cut Studio 2, it's production suite for film editors. As part of the update Apple will release Final Cut Pro 6, Soundtrack 2, Compressor 3, Motion 3 and a new application called Color. Apple also announced Final Cut Server, a new server application that works seamlessly with Final Cut Studio 2. The new product is aimed at creative professionals that need to deal with massive amounts of digital content and shrinking production schedules Read More...

In a statement today, Apple conceded that it will be unable to deliver its highly-anticipated release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard by June's World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) as it had promised earlier. The cause? Key members of the Leopard team had to be pulled from their jobs developing the next version of OS X in order to help deliver iPhone on time. Read More...

A while back we mentioned that MCE was offering a tray-loading Blu-ray burner for the Mac Pro line (and older Power Mac G5s). Now FastMac is bringing Blu-ray to most of the rest of the Mac line with a slot-loading Blu-ray burner that fits the MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac mini, as well as some older Mac portables (conspicuously missing from the list is the regular MacBook). The drive comes bundled with Toast 8, and will burn Blu-ray (50GB) and "all DVD and CD recordable media including DVD±R/RW + Dual/Double Layer, DVD-RAM, and CD-R and CD-RW." FastMac seems to suggest that the drive will play Blu-ray movies ("when you're ready to kick back and relax, enjoy the latest ultra-HD titles Hollywood has to offer"), but to my knowledge there is no available Blu-ray playback software for the Mac so I'm not sure how that's supposed to work.

In any case, the slim Blu-ray burner is available now for $799.95

Apple today announced the sale of 100 million iPods. This surely brings a smile to Dr. Evil, Apple enthusiasts, and shareholders alike as the first iPod was sold a mere five and a half years ago in November 2001


Read More...

MacNN reports that the 3GHz Xeon (Clovertown) processor that was introduced in the 8-core Mac Pro is a currently unannounced model.

According to comments by Intel's Bill Kircos: "We are indeed shipping a 3.0GHz Xeon version [and] expect to see faster gigahertz speeds for our high-end [Core 2] Extreme PCs very soon, too. For now, the product is in limited production and Apple has chosen to adopt it. We will introduce another 3.0GHz Xeon SKU later on as well."

Indeed, it appears Apple had waited for the 3GHz Quad-Core Xeon to become available before launching the 8-Core Mac Pro.

While rumors of an 8-core Mac Pro began back in October, the available chips at that time maxed out at 2.66Ghz. Only in March was it revealed by Intel that a 3GHz version would be coming "later this year".

It appears Apple is the first to use the as-yet unannounced 3GHz Xeon (Clovertown) chips.

Apple has released the long-anticipated 8-core Mac Pro. The update keeps current configurations but adds a top of the line 8-core 3 GHz model for $1498 additional beyond the base 2.66 Quad-core model. Interestingly, at the current time the model is only available in the US and Canada, although this may simply reflect a lag time in Apple updating localized versions of Apple's website.

The new model is available for shipping in 3-5 business days for basic configurations from the US Apple Store.

Update: The 8-core configuration has been added to the international stores. Pricing can be found on the online Apple Stores, e.g. United Kingdom, Germany, France, Australia, Japan.

Apple today lowered the prices on its line of Cinema Displays across the board. That means the "D" in BYODKM for the Mac mini just got a little more affordable from Apple. The 20-inch Cinema Display offering 1680 x 1050 resolution is now priced at $599, down from $699. The mid-range 23-inch Cinema HD offering 1920 x 1200 resolution is now priced at $899, down from $999. And the 30-inch Cinema HD model now retails for $1799, down from $1999. It should be noted that the 30-inch Cinema HD is not compatible with the Mac mini. Each Cinema Display features two FireWire 400 ports and two USB 2.0 ports, and support the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) mounting interface standard.

The new prices are reflected at the Apple Store

Update: The international stores have been updated to reflect the price drops, with some prices altered well in excess of the equivalent US dollar amount, e.g. the 20" Cinema Display on the UK Store has dropped £130 (~$250).