March Musings (Part 1)

Well, Apple’s last keynote appearance at MacWorld in January of 2009 has passed. No new Macs… unless you count the refresh of the 17-inch MacBook Pro to the new unibody aluminum stylings of its 15-inch and 13-inch siblings.

Then at the beginning of March, Apple somewhat surprised the Apple-watching world with updates to the iMac, Mac Pro, and Mac mini. While the fact that they were updating these systems was not surprising at all – both the mini and Mac Pro had not seen notable upgrades in well over a year – the timing was surprising. Thanks to some rumors in February, the consensus was that Apple would announce these hardware updates on or about March 24th. As for the updates, the Mac Pro got welcome updates to the new Intel Nehalem architecture and a new high-end graphics option in ATI’s Radeon HD 4870. The iMac saw the least notable spec upgrades with slight proessor bumps and a switch to Nvidia’s newly rebadged GT 120, GT 130, and ATI’s HD 4850 (as a BTO option). No quad core Core 2 processors nor Core i7 (however, in fairness, we must remember that there isn’t a quad core mobile i7 available yet). The entire desktop line added Mini DisplayPort and phased out Firewire 400 in favor of Firewire 800.

The Mac mini (the subject of my personal Mac lust) saw the most notable upgrades, finally bringing it useable graphics in the form of Nvidia’s 9400M chipset, just like the MacBook. The only problem many critics have had with the mini updates is that there was no improvement in price. At least the iMac saw effective price reduction by moving the price of the entry-level 24-inch model down to $1499. The entry mini remains at $599. Granted you are getting notably better graphics performance (from woeful Intel GMA950 to Nvida 9400M), slightly improved CPU capability (bumped from 1.86Ghz to 2.0Ghz the bus going from 800Mhz to 1066Mhz), and slightly increased hard drive size (80GB to 120GB). But given the passing of time from the last update a little more hard drive space at least would have been nice. Worse, the higher end model shares the same 2.0GHz CPU, an extra 1GB or RAM, and a 320 GB hard drive. Nice, but somewhat overpriced at a whole $200 step up. If Apple had given that model, oh, say an included 2.26 GHz CPU that is otherwise available as a BTO option, then the $799 model would be a decent value.

That all being said, I do believe that the new entry level Mac mini is a good system and worth the price, especially considering that you can perform your own RAM and hard drive upgrades if you wish or need to. If I had the extra $600 laying around, I’d snap one right up yesterday.

And, actually, by NOT dropping the price on the mini too much, Apple has left themselves room to do so if they see the economy and demand wane further as the year progresses. Given that recent articles have implied that demand for the new desktops is unexpectedly high, I don’t expect any such price adjustments any time soon.

So what is Apple up to for its rumored March 24th event? Probably nothing, because they have just announced an invitation-only press event for March 17th. The topic… much like last March, a new iPhone OS! More on that in part 2.