Apple silences rumors

Apple on Monday evening silenced circulating rumors by saying that consumers should not expect updates to its product lineup before the end of the year. Outting to rest earlier rumors of pending updates to its iMac and Mac mini product lines, the company says it allow its Mac mini models to languish a bit longer and allow its aluminum iMac lineup to age a few more months. Though its mainstream desktop line has aged more than six months (and its Mac mini much longer), Apple said it would not release updates to any of its products before the holidays.

The unusual, but official comment was made to Macworld today after rumors suggested that the Cupertino-based company would update its desktop products (and possibly the Mac Pro) as early as next week. The characteristically quiet Apple made the comment likely to avoid delays in purchases by consumers during the holidays: "Our holiday line-up is set," an Apple representative told the publication (which ironically didn't carry the original rumor report). The statement, however, leaves open the possibility of new product introductions in January at the much-anticipated Macworld Expo.

Apple last updated its aluminum iMac desktop lineup in late April with processor technology similar to that of the latest MacBooks (Pros), but the advanced processor does not quite share the same performance as the latest Penryn-based Core Duo 2 processors from Intel. Other manufacturers such as Dell have already begun offering the Core 2 Quad in its latest 20- and 24-inch all-in-ones launched on October 30th.

The latest Apple laptops, introduced in mid-October, also offer significantly better graphics processing than previous generation laptops using a new all-in-one NVIDIA architecture. It is not known if the Apple will bring the same performance-boosting NVIDIA graphics to iMac, which has used the same (aging) ATI Radeon HD 2400/2600 (introduced in June of 2007) since its introduction in August of 2007. (Dell's all-in-one also already offer an option for the NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT for advanced gaming or heavy-duty HD video decoding). It is unknown whether Apple will bring the same all-in-one NVIDIA GPU and or the new display connector technology (DisplayPort) to the iMac or Mac mini.

Last week server colocation firm Macminicolo also claimed that Apple was planning to finally update the Mac mini with DisplayPort technology to free up space on the back of the computer, support for more memory (up to 4GB), and an updated/faster optical drive (or the option of a second hard drive in place of the drive for more hard drive capacity).

by MacNN Staff