Apple Releases Upgraded Power Macs and New 20" Cinema Display and Drops Power Mac and LCD Prices

The new Power Mac lineup consists of the high-end dual 1.42 GHz, dual 1.25 GHz and single 1 GHz G4 CPUs. They also include an 800 Mbps FireWire Port and built-in Bluetooth and are AirPort Extreme ready. The new SuperDrive is 4X! Both the top-end ATI Radeon 9700 Pro and NVIDIA GeForce4 TI graphics cards are available for the Power Macs. And they are quieter that the previous models.

While these new features are terrific, the new Power Macs range in price from a new low for the high-end dual 1.42 GHz Power Mac of $2699 to a new low for the low-end Power Mac of $1499. Wow! More speed, new faster features, quieter and lower prices.

Apple's Photoshop 7.0 tests show that the new Dual 1.42 GHz Power Mac beats out a top-of-the-line 3 GHz Pentium 4 Dell by 32 per cent. People who use Photoshop are among those with a real need for speed so for them Apple's Power Mac is still king.

The new 1 GHz and Dual 1.25 models are available immediately and the Dual 1.42 GHz model will be available in February. Here is Apple's press release.

Apple also introduced the new 20" Cinema Display that we've previously mentioned this and last week, for a terrific $1299. The resolution on the new flat-panel display is a wide-screen 1680x1050 pixels so it needs a GeForce2 MX graphics card at a minimum. The original 22" Cinema Display was discontinued and the price of the 23" Cinema HD Display was reduced by a whopping $1500 to a "mere" $1999! The price of the 17" flat-panel display was reduced to $699. So Apple's new display lineup is 17", 20" and 23", all with great prices. Here is Apple's press release.