Holy new iMacs, Batman. It seems the rumor that we’d been hearing about new iMacs at the September 12th Special Event were just a little bit off. Instead, we’ve got a brand new high-end iMac, with a 24” widescreen display and a 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo processor. 64-bit Core 2 Duo processors are de rigeur all across the iMac line, in fact, running down from the 24“‘s 2.16GHz to a 1.83GHz in the 17” base model.
The 17” base model also drops to $999, finally giving Apple an all-in-one solution under the $1000 price point. Unlike its larger siblings, the 17” lacks Bluetooth 2.0, a SuperDrive, an Apple Remote, and it features an Intel GMA950 integrated graphics chipset; the mid-range 17” and 20” feature an ATI X1600 graphics card, while the 24” features an nVidia GeForce 7300GT. The 24” model can do 1920x1200 resolution and it includes, for the first time on an iMac, a FireWire 800 port.
At $1999, the 24” iMac is clearly positioned as just shy of the $2500 Mac Pro, while the $999 17” is a step-up from the $799 Mac mini.
[via MacCentral]
No Apple Remote? No Bluetooth? Integrated graphics?? God, I hate integrated graphics... But for $999, I guess it's a pretty good deal.
Goose,
That's the educational iMac. Schools don't want kids that actually know how to sneak around the limitations that schools put on the computers to start controlling them with IR and Bluetooth and burning DVD's all day long. I suppose integrated graphics is to keep the price down for those classes that don't do video editing and stuff. It seems like it could be a little cheaper, but it's still not bad.