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I'm surprised no one has brought this up here yet.

There have been several announcements from Apple in the past week that make it almost definite that they are about to release a mid-priced Mac.

Whether that Mac has expandability of any sort, is between the Mini and the iMac or between the iMac and the MacPro, is anybody's guess.

The specific announcement was a warning to investors that Apple's profit margins will tumble in the next quarter due to releasing a new mid-priced line of Macs that will undercut some of the higher profit margin models.

The reason they gave is that they had to reevaluate the price point at which they are protected from being bled by clones in the OS X space, as well as the price point at which they can better compete for the dollars of "switchers" and those who want better hardware just to run Windows.

They also have a touch-screen tablet-style computer (probably laptop/notebook form factor) that they more or less announced even earlier than last week and reinforced in last week's announcements.

The links were posted at Gearslutz as I recall, but I've deleted them after printing the articles last night. They're all from Mac Rumours website, but unlike the usual speculation, there's some real meat behind this one.

There were some rumors that the MBPs would get a slight redesign this Fall to *resemble*-- at least in shape-- the MacBook Air. The only feature I'd heard tell of was about a touch-sensitive mouse pad made of glass (?).

But considering how the current MacPros have grown and the lack of true expandability of iMacs themselves, there is definitely room for something in between in price and function.

One important thing is this Snow Leopard to come which threatens to make door stops of PPCs. A mid-priced tower might take some of the sting out of purchase considerations, especially for G5 owners who are not quite ready to take the leap into an 8-Core where getting into a new machine sub $2k makes a tad more sense.

Some pictures have already been released of the new MBP's, but not in enough detail to be of much value. The main thing that is clear is that the MacBook Air is more or less now the standard form factor for notebooks.

I consider all of that stuff incremental. It's the mid-priced desktop solution that is novel and bears the most curiosity.

mhschmieder wrote: I consider all of that stuff incremental. It's the mid-priced desktop solution that is novel and bears the most curiosity.

I'm definitely interested. One riser card would be fine if the slots still took 2- or 4-GB sticks. One concern: I can imagine there being 2 or even only 1 PCIe slot, and maybe no more than 2 bays for internal HDs.

I'd be curious to see what other MacPro features are trimmed-- back to one ethernet port? Could this be a return of the "single" dual CPU?

But if the fw buses on these new machines hold to the new fw standard of current '08 MacPros, that'd be a real plus on top of CPU/frontside bus advantages.

This will definitely be something to watch.

I don't know enough about the full range of Wintel options to know what they're up against. Are there Wintel desktops that only take one or two PCI slots? If not, then maybe this will simply be a hyped up Mac Mini with no expandability but more ports and better overall specs.

mhschmieder wrote:I don't know enough about the full range of Wintel options to know what they're up against. Are there Wintel desktops that only take one or two PCI slots? If not, then maybe this will simply be a hyped up Mac Mini with no expandability but more ports and better overall specs.

Apple really should get into mid-line expandability if they want to make this worth it. If they are just replacing the mini or coming up with a glorified iMac for basic term paper and internet use, that might be a different story. But I really think there is a place for a Mac SemiPro- or similar.

Not sure what the specific PC options are, but the roll-your-own users could probably configure just about anything they wanted.