Rumor Roundup: iMac and Mac Mini due to refresh before October 9th?

We have received countless tips about the availability of iMacs and Mac Minis, or lack thereof. AppleInsider posted earlier that Apple notified retailers that Mac mini orders will not be filled at the moment -- but soon. A later update states that the low-end Mac mini has been discontinued entirely, leaving us to believe that we'll be seeing a hardware upgrade shortly.

Several of our tipsters work for Apple Authorized re-sellers who are running very low on desktop supplies; there's even an Apple Store employee tip saying they have 4 iMacs in stock. When I worked at the Apple Store, there were always 40+ iMacs in stock. Having 4 in a store is just unheard of -- unless there's something in the works. The day of, or a few before, the announcement, we would always get a couple pallets worth of machines that were labeled "Do Not Open Until" with either a date or "notification from corporate."

Another tipster ordered a mini on September 18th, and received shipping information, but today received an email saying that their Mac mini order will ship on October 9th.

Lastly, an Apple Store employee "confirmed" the rumor of new machines being out this October to one of our readers. I have to speculate and say that the employee (who we won't name) is probably reading too many rumor sites. Apple does not tell their retail employees about product refreshes for this exact reason. It's too risky -- one careless employee could essentially steal all of Apple's ability to announce a cool, new product. We're pretty good at digging the information up anyways... but why make it easy for us?

We're hoping that these rumors don't amount to a minor speed bump... SD Card slots, Blu-ray, Cinema Display styled design -- If we don't see something new, we'll all be somewhat disappointed. We're also hoping for a MacBook refresh but that conversation has paled in comparison to the iMac and Mac mini rumors. We've been on the edge of our seats since Monday when the store went down twice. Each time gave us no fruit from the Apple tree, but we'll keep an eye out. Let us know if you hear anything else about it via our tips page or in the comments.

View Tags

Source: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/09/29/apple_warns_of…

Categories

Desktops Hardware Rumors iMac Mac mini

We have received countless tips about the availability of iMacs and Mac Minis, or lack thereof. AppleInsider posted earlier that Apple...

Add a Comment

Sign in »

29 Comments

Filter by:

jspellen

What happened? Did the new imac launched??

October 16 2009 at 5:52 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

John MacMillan

Well ..... Oct 9th has come and gone and no new iMac, no announcement from Apple and no comment from TUAW and all the others who got it wrong?
What a bummer as I'm trying to hold off my purchase waiting to see what happens.

October 12 2009 at 1:55 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

aeyulous

okay it's october 9th today - - nuthin coming at all, yet?

October 09 2009 at 5:50 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

InkSpot

If they don't have HDMI on the new model (which I seriously doubt), buy this adapter. http://kanexlive.com/products/item.aspx?id=3495

It takes mini display port and optical audio (USB cable is for power for the converting circuits) and combines it into a HDMI port. Then you have a single HDMI cable with 5.1 digital audio to your TV or AV Receiver.

October 04 2009 at 9:23 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

yuu23

I am planning to buy a 15" mbp soon.. Do you think they will also refresh the mbp line?

October 04 2009 at 3:10 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

David Huff

Hmmm...might have to hold off building that small, mATX based Hackintosh until I see what Apple comes up with on the new Mini. If they came out with one for about $500 with 4 GB RAM, a decent processor, and reasonably sized hard drive it might be worth the extra $150 to $200 it'd cost me vs. a home-built machine.

And yes, given the components they put in the Mini, Apple could certainly afford to price such a box at that point.

October 01 2009 at 8:52 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

p00pers

I got a mac mini a month ago. Of course a new one is coming out soon.

September 30 2009 at 11:26 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

TS Low

HDMI on the MacMini and I would order one immediately. That and an upgraded video card. Really, the MacMini should come in 3 flavours: one bare bones desktop, one AppleTV everything killer + Mac, and one stripped down, no hard drive AppleTV device (BYODKM + drive).

September 30 2009 at 7:58 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jay

I have been holding out on getting an iMac because of the crappy, downgraded video card and the screen. I would be psyched if the new ones matched the new cinema displays aesthetically, with LED backlighting and those new nVidia gpus.

September 30 2009 at 5:34 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Steve

I have 2 days left to return my newly purchased $499 refurb mac mini. I have already swapped out the HD for a 500gb and upped the ram to 4gb.

I found myself in a tough situation yesterday. but i've decided to keep the mini and see what happens. Here's why:

My guess is that the current top end mini will be pushed down to the lower price point, and a new one with a modestly faster processor will be introduced as the new top end and that's all.

Only the low end model was discontinued, so the current high-end model must be sticking around. Also, it is a little early for major changes considering the updates in March, and I think if major changes were in the works we probably would have heard something about it before yesterday.

It this is the case, and I returned my mini, not only would I lose the $100 refurb discount, but I'd also have to pay a 10% restocking fee, and buying the new low-end mini at full price would be like buying the same computer back because I would be replacing the only things that were upgraded.

Regarding Blu-ray, I don't think it will ever make it to the mini, or any mac, for two reasons: 1, iTunes already makes money selling HD content, so creating an avenue for people to get it elsewhere would cost them some of that money, and 2, Apple wants optical media to die, for them to suddenly accept blu-ray so far into it's already short life expectancy would not make sense.

I've got two days to be convinced otherwise. Any takers?

September 30 2009 at 2:35 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply