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Apple announced yesterday that the iMac would be getting 5 new flavors, a speed boost and a price drop. The new model will come in 5 colors, Strawberry, Lime, Blueberry, Tangerine and Grape as well as the original Bondi-blue that made the iMac so popular in the first place. From Steve Jobs:
"For most consumers, color is much more important than the megahertz, gigabytes and other gibberish associated with buying a typical PC."
In addition, the company will be bumping the horsepower a bit to 266 MHz, while retaining the 512k of L2 cache. Storage is also getting a rise to a standard 6 GB hard drive.
To top it all off, Apple is lowering the price to US$1199 while the original iMacs (Rev A and Rev B) will drop to only US$1049 while supplies last.
The specs for the new iMac are as follows:
- PowerPC G3 microprocessor running at 266MHz
- 512k backside L2 memory cache
- Built-in 15-inch high quality display with 1024 x 768 resolution, 13.8-inch diagonal viewable image size
- Mac OS 8.5
- 32MB SDRAM (now expandable to 256MB)
- RAGE Pro Turbo Graphic controller and 6MB SGRAM
- 6GB IDE hard disk drive
- 24x CD-ROM drive
- 10/100BASE-T Ethernet
- 56Kbps modem (supports V.90 and K56flex)
- Two 12Mbps Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports
- Built-in stereo speakers with SRS sound
- Apple USB Keyboard and Apple USB Mouse.
Apple has sold over 800,000 iMac units since its introduction on August 15th and the new options are sure to help that very healthy pace continue. |
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The Mac Observer Spin: Apple has done a great job as usual. Despite what Mr. Jobs says, there will be many people who are more turned on by the speed increase and price drop of the new iMacs than they are by the five new colors (and one of those new colors is very similar to the original Bondi-blue). At the same time, the new colors are definitely going to garner more attention, more press, and more of that Steve Jobs magic.
We would like to have seen the processor bumped to 300 MHz, but the price would likely have had to stay at US$1299 had that been the case, and the price drop is certainly more important. The larger hard drive is also important for those doing side by side comparisons of features between new PCs and a new iMac.
Apple
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