After announcing record-breaking earnings for the third quarter, Apple is looking for a repeat performance  with a slew of hardware products: A new iMac line, a lighter MacBook, a Mac mini, and a Magic Mouse.
First up, a new MacBook with a polycarbonate unibody design that makes the laptop lighter and more durable. It features a non-skid bottom, weighs just shy of five pounds, and features an LED-backlit display with the same wide-angle viewing technology used in the MacBook Pro line.
The new MacBook comes with a 2.26-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor , 2GB RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics. Apple is marketing the new laptop as ideal for students and new Mac users. The price is $999.
"Apple is taking some MacBook Pro features and moving them down market," said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT . "It's not unusual to see companies sell premium features at a premium until they reach a certain level of maturity, then start using those features or technologies to pump up the quality of lower-end products and also raise the prices of those lower-end products."
A New iMac Line
Apple also unveiled an all-new iMac line featuring LED-backlit 21.5- and 27-inch widescreen displays in an edge-to-edge glass design and an all-aluminum enclosure. Starting at $1,200, the new line boasts Intel Core 2 Duo processors and Core i5 and i7 quad-core processors for up to twice the performance of older models.
"The iMac is widely praised as the best desktop computer in the world, and today we are making it even better," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing. "With brilliant LED displays and the revolutionary Magic Mouse, the new iMac delivers an amazing desktop experience that we think customers will love."
The 27-inch iMac features a 2560-by-1440-pixel display that offers 60 percent more pixels than the previous 24-inch model. Both 21.5- and 27-inch displays use IPS technology to deliver consistent color across an ultra-wide 178-degree viewing angle. The new iMac line also features 4GB of 1066-MHz DDR3 memory and capacity for up to 16GB of memory across four SO-DIMM slots.
Minis and Magic
The new Mac mini, Apple said, is faster, offers more storage , and comes standard with double the memory. Starting at $599, the entry-level Mac mini features a 2.26-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of DDR3 1066-MHz memory, a 160GB hard drive, five USB 2.0 ports, FireWire 800, Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics, and a SuperDrive. (continued...)
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