Apple has announced an update to its iMac line, with Intel Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 processors up to 3.6GHz plus new graphics including the ATI Radeon HD 5750. The range is now available with dual-core Core i3 and Core i5 chips and quad-core Core i5 and Core i7 processors.

The 27-inch iMac has the option of a 256GB SSD as a primary or secondary drive. The iMac SSD supports up to 215MB/s data transfer rates for faster startup and application launch times. An SD card slot on the iMac now supports the SDXC format to handle the latest high-capacity storage cards.

Full specs are as follows…

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Apple is facing yet more embarrassment this morning as some of its customers are threatening lawsuits over a Mac Mini price debacle.

The Mac Mini is at the centre of Apple's latest blunder.

Last Friday, Apple’s online store priced its Mac Mini with 8GB DRAM at about €480, a massive drop from the original price of around €1,135. The price quoted for the mini desktop is believed to have been a mistake, though customers across the globe took advantage of the error and placed their orders. Continue Reading

Nick Lee, a 15 year-old boy in the US has caused some consternation over in Apple Towers after creating a ‘Trojan’ iPhone app that allowed users to connect to the internet for free.

Those who downloaded ‘Handy Light’ can keep enjoying its benefits.

Lee designed a ‘Handy Light’ app which at first glance appeared to allow users to change the colour of their screen. It was charged at less than a dollar to upload on App Store. However, the app contained a hidden code that allowed people to use their iPhone as a 3G modem.

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As it’s Friday – and as it’s damn slow news day – I thought you might enjoy finding out what happens when a Sith Lord decides to call Apple on the issues with his iPhone 4.

“Are you seriously defending the new phone by saying that it almost performs as well as the old phone? Is that what the plan is?”

Yep, Darth Vader’s complaints echo those of millions of iPhone 4 users – while there are also a few digs at the Droid X, HTC Evo, AT&T as well as a porky rank and file Empire guard. Enjoy!

Think back to a few years ago and very few of us countenanced the idea of having a phone that wasn’t made by Nokia. However, since the dawn of the smartphone era the company’s profile and sales figures have suffered, falling behind rivals such as Apple, RIM and HTC, culminating in today’s quarterly results which show that Nokia’s profits have slumped by 40% since this time last year.

A Guardian report on the matter notes that although net sales were 1% higher at just over €10bn, the profitability of its handset and service division slipped as the company cut the prices of its higher-end phones to make them more attractive to consumers. Continue Reading

Microsoft’s decision to give every one of its 90,000-plus worldwide employees a Windows Phone 7 device is getting a mixed reaction today.

Clearly hoping that this might get a few employees to ditch the iPhone – there are plenty of them swimming around Microsoft’s Irish offices anyway – some feel the move looks a little desperate but overall, we think the (mostly) good press it creates will be worth it. Continue Reading

O2 and Vodafone have announced their data plans for the iPad and, unsurprisingly, they’re both pretty much the same; save for a few cents here and there.

The cold numbers for O2 go as follows: Continue Reading

Microsoft may have been dealt something of a body blow by reports that the Asus Eee Pad – set to be released in 10- and 12-inch versions in early 2011 – will run a tablet version of Android after switching to the mobile OS from Windows.

The Eee Pad.

The news originates from an article on Netbooknews.de which suggests that the formerly Windows CE 7 Asus Eee EP101TC tablet is now sporting Android ‘Froyo’ 2.2 instead. Continue Reading

One of the core points that Steve Jobs made at last Friday’s press conference over the iPhone 4 antenna debacle was that it wasn’t just his latest baby that had signal issues. Jobs said that smartphone makers such as HTC and Samsung faced similar problems with their handsets, and added that the antennae problem was “a challenge for the whole industry”.  His rivals however, disagree strongly.

An industry-wide problem or just a silly mistake from Apple?

Taiwan’s HTC said today that reception problems aren’t common on smartphones and Apple should address the problem on its own rather than blame competitors. “The reception problems are certainly not common among smartphones,” HTC chief financial officer Hui-Meng Cheng told the Wall Street Journal. “They (Apple) apparently didn’t give operators enough time to test the phone.”

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For those looking for a summation of the iPhone 4 antennae situation before tonight’s press conference, let’s help you out in musical form. It’s not astonishing, but it’s not astonishingly bad either, ladies and gentlemen… The iPhone 4 Antennae Song…

, but with a heartwarming message – if you don’t want an iPhone 4 don’t buy one, if you bought one and it’s annoying you, then bring it backA heartbreaking tale of one man, his phone, and lying signal bars. Ah, the wisdom of song.

Since the launch of the iPad, any other tablet device has pretty much run aground upon release or just been scrapped altogether (come back Microsoft Courier, we thought you looked awesome), however there was high hopes for HP’s upcoming Android tablet device.

I’m using the past tense there as it appears that this particular slate won’t be coming to stores near you, me, or anyone else for that matter for some time, if indeed at all. Continue Reading

Yesterday we though excitable reports of an Apple iPhone 4 recall were wide of the mark, after all millions were out in the wild and being used quite happily by consumers. However, in the wake of the much-publicised antennae issue – and the subsequent refusal by Consumer Reports to make it a recommended product – Steve Jobs et al have decided it’s time to act.

Will Jobs turn up at 6pm?

News has escaped this morning that that Apple has called a surprise news conference for tomorrow evening (around 6pm Irish time) to talk about the iPhone 4. The company has refused to give details about whether the event will address reception problems that some users have reported with the phone, launched just last month.

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