Apple’s new offerings

What exciting news this morning to notice that Apple’s online store was down, traditionally a key indicator that they’re covertly updating one of their world—famous product lines. It stung, yes, to see these new updates a mere two weeks after posting this post about the company’s apparent stagnation in the innovation sphere, but the new products are a welcome change nonetheless. I have a lot of opinions regarding Apple’s newest product releases, and I’d like to share them with you here.

MacBook

The consumer-focused MacBook line, with the brief exception of a 13.3” aluminum model bearing the moniker for a few months, has seen zero changes from the design standpoint since its inception in May 2006. The low-end $999 option has been carried over since the introduction of aluminum unibody MacBook Pros as an affordable alternative with marketing targeted at students. The economical carryover has since become the only remaining non-aluminum system in Apple’s lineup, and remains so even after this morning’s design refresh.

The new white MacBook features a polycarbonate unibody design, a casing sculpted from plastic rather than from aluminum. It sports a speedier processor (2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) and larger internal hard drive (250GB, larger even than the cheapest 13.3” MacBook Pro’s measly 160GB). The most noticeable change is the dramatically curved corners and tapered edges, which give the notebook a distinctly pebble-esque appearance. Perhaps most importantly of all, the MacBook now boasts the multi-touch glass trackpad used in the MacBook Pro line, bringing multi-finger gestures and more to the low-end economy option.

For a fresh[er] design and a price point sure to attract students the world around, the new, redesigned polycarbonate MacBook earns an 8.3 out of 10.

Mac mini

The littlest Mac has been around since 2005, and in that time has not even once been physically redesigned. I’d been hoping for something exciting today, something with the width of the Apple TV and the footprint of an Airport Express (an exaggeration to be sure, but perhaps someday a possibility¹), but was again disappointed by the lackluster effort that seems to plague Apple of late, inspiring my latest blog post. The hard drive sizes doubled (160GB and a generous 320GB), the lowest price dropped $100 to $599, and—most interestingly—a new “Snow Leopard Server” option was introduced for $999 with no optical drive and 1TB of storage.

For a sheer lack of effort and disappointing subtle alterations, the virtually unchanged Mac mini receives a 4.6 out of 10. The server option is what saved this “update” from oblivion.

iMac

While the aforementioned products are great and all, the real news today is the refreshed iMac line, with a couple improvements which, to be honest, blew my mind. Sporting a new unibody enclosure reminiscent of their 24” LED Display, the flagship Mac brings new processors and hard drive capacities to the table. But the real story of the iMac itself is its display: available in either a 21.5” or massive 27”, this looming, gargantuan beast of a screen utilizes the environmentally friendly LED backlighting to illuminate its ridiculous 2560x1440 pixels (that’s 16:9, the same aspect ratio in HDTVs). While the screen is truly incredible, let’s speak for a moment about the real marvel: the peripherals.

Magic Mouse

On August 2, 2005, Apple introduced Mighty Mouse, a computer mouse with a scroll ball for easily navigating documents and web pages in 360 degrees. The little wonder has reigned supreme for over four years now, but customers (myself included) have experienced issues with the little scroll ball, which over time refuses to operate. In conjunction with these issues, Apple recently came under fire for the name “Mighty Mouse,” which was suggested to be in violation of a great number of copyrights. Well, today Apple replaced their bundle of joy with something much, much nicer.

It’s called Magic Mouse, and it’s the world’s first multi-touch computer mouse. Making use of Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch technology, Magic Mouse enables you to scroll and navigate documents and web pages—the functions of their faulty scroll ball—with a flick of your finger across its surface. Essentially, the Magic Mouse is a MacBook Pro’s multi-touch trackpad draped over a computer mouse form factor, and the results are as beautiful to behold as they are exciting to use. Oh, and it’s exclusively Bluetooth. Not only that, but the Magic Mouse now comes standard with every new iMac, along with the Apple Wireless Keyboard. Shazam!

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For innovations galore, including a display that turn heads and a mouse to change mice forever, the new iMac earns a whopping 9.5 out of 10—they still haven’t gotten rid of that chin, or the annoying bump on the back. Do those two things; you earn a 10.