Apple reveals new iMac, MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, and iPad

Apple lifts the lid on a whole lineup of new products

The iPad Mini wasn’t Apple’s only bombshell today.  True to form, Apple had “a little more to show.”  Before it got to the iPad Mini, Tim Cook and Phil Schiller revealed four other new products: the 13-inch MacBook Pro, the new iMac, the Mac Mini, and the fourth generation iPad.

MacBook Pro

The new 13-inch MacBook Pro is 20% thinner at .75 inches, and is almost a pound lighter at 3.57 pounds.  As Phil Schiller points out, it’s the lightest MacBook Pro ever.  Naturally, it comes with the Retina display, and with four million pixels, it has four times as many pixels as the previous generation.  It comes with a 1920x1080 resolution, almost double the pixels of HD TV, with 29% higher contrast ratio and 75% reduced reflection.

“Surfing the Web is like reading a fine print magazine,” said Schiller.

The new MacBook Pro comes with Facetime HD camera, backlit keyboard, and a glass multitouch trackpad.  It also comes with a seven-hour battery, up to 768GB flash, 8GB memory, and it ships with OSX mountain lion. 

The 13-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1699, and it starts shipping today.

Schiller really made a point of going over the environmentally friendly features of each product.  The MacBook Pro and other products are Energy Star 5.2, EPEAT Gold, mercury free, PVC free, and are recyclable.

iMac

Fourteen years after the debut of the first iMac, the newest iMac is the lightest, thinnest yet.  It comes with edge to edge glass.  At 5mm thick, it’s 80% thinner than the previous generation and uses friction stir welding to fuse the molecules of the aluminum together to make one super strong, seamless piece.

“The text and graphics look like they’re sitting right there on top of the glass,” said Schiller.

The new iMac display has 75% less reflection using the plasma deposition process, an HD camera, dual microphones, a stereo sound system that sounds even better than the previous generation, and it’s eight pounds lighter than previous generation.

The 21.5 inch iMac starts at $1299 and ships in November, and the 27-inch iMac starts at $1799 and ships in December.  Schiller also pointed out that the new iMac uses 50% less energy than the previous generation.

Mac Mini

The Mac Mini server is the smallest, cheapest, most energy-efficient Mac to date.  With 16GB of RAM, a one TB hard drive, and 256GB of Flash, the Mini Mac consumes just 11 watts while idle.  The computer starts at $599, or you can get one with 2.3GHz starting at $999, and the Mac Mini starts shipping today.

iPad

Apple surprised today not just with a new iPad Mini, but with a new fourth generation iPad.  First, Tim Cook started with some numbers: two weeks ago, Apple sold its 100 millionth iPad.  Cook pointed out that Apple sold more iPads in the June quarter than any pc manufacturer sold of their entire PC lineup.

“You might ask, ‘so, why is iPad so phenomenally successful?’  Well—it turns out there’s a simple reason for this.  People love their iPads,” said Cook.

Some six months after Apple revealed the third generation iPad, Cook revealed the new fourth generation iPad, which comes with a new A6X chip, which is twice as fast as the A5X chip.  It also comes with 10 hours of battery life, Facetime HD, expanded LTE, and 2X faster Wi-Fi.

The 16GB version starts at $499 for the Wi-Fi version and $629 for the cellular version. 

Interestingly, Apple stock is nosediving.  Shares are down nearly 3% to $615, compared to yesterday's close of $634.

Apple will be releasing its Q3 earnings report this Thursday.