Then there’s the third interpretation of the silent upgrades to Mac Minis: that there will be no refresh of the current hardware for a while. iMacs in Intel but no Mac Minis yet. All of a sudden the price point of the Mini–now 2-3x slower than a base iMac at half to 3/4s the price–doesn’t make sense.
However, the new Macbook Pro sure as hell makes sense. “Fastest notebook ever”–4-5 x faster than existing PowerBooks using the Intel duo Core processors — two processors in a single chip. Thinner than the current 17″, 15.4 LCD, built in iSight. I’ll miss the PowerBook moniker, but after all it’s lasted for 15 years now. And, as Steve points out, Apple is kind of done with the whole Power name, having given the PowerPC the big heave-ho. It also comes with an Apple Remote–meaning that Front Row is spreading…
Magnetically attached power adapter–I guess they’ve learned something from all the broken adapters on PowerBooks over the last three-four years.
$1999 price point. 512 MB RAM and 80 GB hard drive–you’ll still probably need to add more RAM unless univeral Mac OS X is more efficient there, which I doubt. Shipping in February, taking orders today. I’m personally having difficulty not pulling out my credit card.