Apple Computer today refreshed its line of desktop computers, offering a new top-end Power Mac that packs dual 2.7-GHz G5 processors, a new graphics card from ATI, and a new 16x SuperDrive that can burn data to double-layer DVDs.
Apple also unveiled a new dual 2.3-GHz G5 model as its midrange dual-processor desktop computer while continuing to sell two models it had offered before: a single 1.8-GHz G5 Power Mac for $1499 and the dual 2-GHz G5 model, which now sells for $1999--$500 below its former price.
The new dual 2.3-GHz G5 model is priced at $2499, and the top-end version sells for $2999. That's the same price that the now-discontinued dual 2.5-GHz G5 models sold for.
Like those dual 2.5-GHz G5 models, the new king-of-the-hill Power Mac is liquid-cooled. The other models are air-cooled.
LCD Price Drop
Apple also announced price cuts on two LCDs. The entry-level 20-inch wide-screen display falls in price from $999 to $799, and the 23-inch display drops from $1799 to $1499. The price of the 30-inch display remains $2999, but buyers of the new top-of-the-line Power Mac no longer have to shell out extra money for a video card to drive the display. Instead, the ATI Technologies Radeon video card built into the dual 2.7-GHz G5 model will run the behemoth 30-inch Apple Cinema Display out of the box.
"We have been hard at work on virtually every part of the stack, from the hardware and the displays through Tiger and the enabling technologies [in it]," said David Moody, vice president, worldwide, for Mac product marketing. "We've been busy."
Get 'Em Now
The new Power Macs--whose release had been widely expected--are available immediately and will come with Apple's Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" operating system installed. Tiger will officially be released on Friday, though some buyers have reported that their copies of the new operating system have already shipped.
Though Apple announced the hardware upgrades only this morning, Amazon.com jumped the gun, offering the dual 2.7-Ghz G5 model for preorder at its Web site on Tuesday--prompting speculation in the Mac community that release of the new desktop machines was imminent.
The dual 2.7-GHz model is the fastest yet offered by Apple, but it still falls short of the 3-GHz processors that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had predicted would be released in 2004. Jobs backed off on that forecast last year after it became clear that IBM was having trouble pushing its processors to faster speeds.
Nonetheless, Apple officials touted the new models as delivering a solid jump in processing speed and offering customers better value--especially when paired with the cheaper Apple Cinema Displays, according to Scott Brodrick, Apple's product marketing manager for displays. "The lower price points on the Cinema Display line are a great complement to the Power Mac line," he said. "For our pro customers, this is a real value."
Though the price of the largest of Apple's three LCDs remains unchanged, Brodrick stressed that customers who want to use the 30-inch display will save almost $500 that they would have had to spend in the past to obtain an upgraded video card.
The top-end Power Mac features an ATI Radeon 9650 video card with 256MB of video RAM, which will support one of the 30-inch LCDs. Before Wednesday, buyers had to spend $450 for an optional NVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL graphics card.
The ATI Radeon 9650 is available on the other two dual-processor models as a build-to-order option, but it isn't available on the entry-level single-processor Power Mac.
Customers who want to run two displays, however, will still need to buy the NVidia card, Brodrick said.
Apple officials said that the new SuperDrive in the dual-processor machines can burn twice the amount of data (8.5GB) to double-layer DVD disks that the previous burner could to a single-layer disk (4.7GB). In addition, the new 16X SuperDrives burn data at twice the speed of the previous models.
All three dual-processor models come with 512MB of DDR400 SDRAM standard, while the base model starts with half that amount. The dual 2.3-GHz and dual 2.7-GHz models come with a 250GB Serial ATA hard drive, too; the dual 2-GHz model has a 160GB hard drive, and the single-processor version has an 80GB drive.
A 400GB hard drive is available as part of a build-to-order configuration for either $200 or $275, depending on which dual-processor model the buyer is upgrading.
