New Apple Products Are Here!
I’d hoped for a Magic Trackpad announcement from Apple earlier this year, but we were disappointed. Until now. This morning, Apple took down their store for a while, which is always a sign of good things to come. We now know what tricks were up their sleeve! Read on to see all the goodies…
Available in the Apple store now:
- Brand new Magic Trackpad
- New iMacs
- Battery Charger
Announced, but not available yet:
- 12-core Mac Pro
- 27″ Cinema Display
Let’s take this one piece at a time…
Magic Trackpad
I won’t know if this is a good thing until I actually use the new separate Magic Trackpad, but I’m excited about the possibility! Normally, I like to keep my range of hand motion in a very small area. I multi task and move fast, so I have never liked using a wireless mouse with my laptop when the trackpad is right there and easier to access. However… I have a gut feeling having a completely separate trackpad might sway me. The trackpad is way more attractive to me than a mouse. It’s ordered and on its way, so I’ll follow up on the show with my thoughts.
New iMacs
There’s a range, but you can get iMacs with dual-core up to 3.6GHz and quad-core up to 2.93GHz
Battery Charger
This one kind of came out of left field. It’s a battery charger.
Yep…a AA battery charger. You probably have one already. This $29 device will charge AA NiMH batteries just like a lot of chargers out there, and Apple says the batteries will last up to 10 years.
12-core Mac Pro
Phil Schiller says the Mac Pro is…
…the most powerful and configurable Mac we’ve ever made…With up to 12 cores, the new Mac Pro outperforms our previous top-of-the-line system by up to 50 percent, and with over a billion possible configurations, our customers can create exactly the system they want.
Since my team is using a fairly new Mac Pro to edit GeekBeat.TV, I’m not very happy with this, as you can imagine! Though, I learned something a couple days ago that makes this upgrade a lot easier to swallow, and I don’t think a lot of people realize this. The newest version of Final Cut Pro doesn’t actually allow you to take full advantage of all the cores, so this 12-core beauty won’t help much if all you’re relying on it for is editing in Final Cut. Whew… I feel better now!
27″ Cinema Display
The new 27″ display is 16:9 with an edge to edge glass display.
That’s it for the announcements… I’d love to hear what you’re interested (if any of it) – leave a comment below!
I’m also a fan of the trackpad, largely for the same reason. It’s just so convenient to use the trackpad because it’s really close to the keys on a laptop, and I’m a huge fan of two fingered scrolling – beats any mouse scroll wheel IMO.
I can’t see any reason why you’d want a separate trackpad for a laptop that already has one, but if you’re using it with an iMac or other device with a standalone keyboard and mouse, I could see positioning it right below the keyboard instead of to the right, experimenting to see if it’s possible to reproduce the efficiencies of laptop input.
Okay upgrades to the iMac and Mac Pro, the magic trackpad is the real game changer. I think many will exchange their mice for it all together, I am tempted to buy one to have in addition to my magic mouse. My plan as a lefty is to have the trackpad on the left of the keyboard and the mouse on the right (as I always have). A little on the expensive side though, for my taste.
I think the battery charger is mostly to satisfy environmentalists, as I don’t see them making a huge profit at it. Bundling 6 batteries was a smart choice, and the design is good, as always with Apple. Price is not too bad.
The 27 inch cinema display is actually a really good deal. You get a great IPS display with built in webcam, speakers, usb hub and laptop charger, and it is also cheaper than Dell’s comparable display. That said, I’m not trading in my cheap samsung display anytime soon, as $999 is not something I just have laying around.
The trackpad is interesting, but I’ve never enjoyed using one over a mouse. The macbook pro is certainly the best experience I’ve had with a trackpad, but I would still much rather reach for a mouse.
The one difference is scrolling. Yes, a magic mouse combines the two, but it’s a crappy mouse for comfort. And horizontal scrolling is odd. Swiping for next picture and stuff is cool too, but far more useful on a small device.
The new cinema display is interesting. It’s suppose to have a $999 pricepoint, which is cheaper than the comparable dell version. However, I despise how these new cinema displays are geared toward macbooks. The cords are not long enough for a lot of desktops, and I have to use extensions. wtf apple?
We’ve been expecting 12 mac pros for years and we knew when the 27″ iMac came out that 27″ Cinema Display were going to come; but a battery charger? well a battery chargershocks my pants off!
i waited and waited and want waited to get a new mac pro. when i got mine apple had not done a refresh for for over a year! i was struggling along with my G4 power book at the time when most people had been intel for a long time. if you gonna by a new mac always check the buyers guide on mac rumors that way you mac won’t be out of date before you know it: http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/
i open up activity monitor from time to time i have never scene an app use all CPU cores at once apart from quick time when it is compressing files.
i got 2x 2.26 GHz Quad – Cores my machine is the one that came out in march 2009
I ordered a Magic Trackpad too. I’ve never liked the use of the word “magic” to describe a computer device, but Apple marketing didn’t ask me. I plan on using it alongside my (Magic … –sigh!–) mouse rather than as a replacement. I caught myself trying to touch a button on my non-touch screen netbook the other day to activate it, so I’m definitely getting more used to gesture-based computing.
I’m hoping for a 128GB or better iPod Touch before Christmas. It’d be even better if it included dual cameras and Wireless N so it coult support Facetime. My 32GB Touch is feeling really cramped and I’m hesitant to upgrade to a 64GB before the next iPod product line refresh, just in case anyone is listening. I was disappointed that Apple didn’t announce any new iPods during the iPhone 4 release.
as a mac pro user with a apple display it could really do with a head phone jack as my mac pro sits on the floor so the head phone jack is just to fare away
Would anyone be inclined to use the keyboard viewer with the new trackpad? Do you think it would be practical?
I’m happy to see new Apple products for desktop machines, as the latter are my tools of choice for creating content. It seems as if Apple has been focusing so on iPhones and iPads lately that their superb desktop machines had been neglected or as Leo Laporte put it “… put on the back burner.” My favorite is the iMac, once considered for home and educational use, now the choice of a growing number of professionals.
Them taking the store down is a sign of anything to come, it’s just that anything they make you call “good”.
I plan on upgrading my two-year old iMac. Can anyone advise the MacPro config that would be enough for rendering HD movies without going overboard?
I use my mbp both on the road and on my desk, when its on the desk its connected to a big screen, external everything. Including magic magic mouse and bluetooth keyboard. I can surely imagine the trackpad being useful for me. I’ll definitely get myself one when they hit the local store.