If brand new Apples are way, way, way out of your pocketbook's league, you may want to consider these refurbished MacBooks and iMac G5s that come with much lighter price tags:

• 1.83GHz MacBook Pro notebook with 512MB of memory for $1,599 (21% off )
• 2.0GHz MacBook Pro 1GB of memory for $1,999 (21% off)
• 2.16GHz MacBook Pro 1GB of memory for $2,199 (22% off)
• iMac G5 systems with SuperDrives includes 17-inch 2GHz iMac with a 128MB ATI Radeon 9600 graphics card ) for $949 (save $550)
• 17-inch 1.9GHz iMac with 128MB DDR ATI Radeon X600 Pro graphics card for $999 ($300 discount)
• 20-inch 1.8GHz iMac with a 64MB DDR NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra graphics card for $1,099 (save $800)
• 20-inch 2.0GHz iMac with 512MB of memory, a 250GB SATA hard drive, and a 128MB DDR ATI Radeon 9600 graphics card for $1,249 (save $550)
• 20-inch 2.1GHz iMac with 512MB of memory, a 250GB SATA hard drive, and a 128MB DDR ATI Radeon X600 XT graphics card for $1,299 ($400 savings)

Also available:

• Intel Core Duo iMacs with SuperDrives which includes 17-inch 1.83GHz Intel iMac with 512MB of memory, a 60GB SATA hard drive, and a 128MB GDDR3 ATI Radeon X1600 graphics card for $1,099 ($200 less)
• 20-inch 2.0GHz Intel iMac with 512MB of memory, a 250GB SATA hard drive, and a 128MB GDDR3 ATI Radeon X1600 graphics card for $1,399 (save $300).

There are indications that Apple is working on "ultra-portable PCs" and fast-booting notebooks with NAND flash memory according to UBS Investment Research analyst Ben Reitzes. "We believe these new products could start in notebook products with combo-drives (NAND and HDD) or ultra-portables (NAND only), and could be released in time for MacWorld."

Macworld Conference & Expo is a trade show dedicated to the Apple Macintosh platform with conference tracks occurring twice a year in the United States. The next MacWorld is slated for 8-12 January 2007. Reitzes points to Intel's announcement to build NAND flash memory into its own PC logicboard designs due in early 2007 as one of the signs of the looming arrival of the ultra-portables. Intel is Apple's microprocessor supplier. The new line of Macs, if they materialize, could help boost overall Mac sales to 1.24 million during Apple's third quarter.

The MacMini came out over a year ago as an answer for those whose needs did not require, or whose budgets didn't allow, the purchase of a Dual Processor G5. A compact little machine about the size of a jewelry box, the Mac Mini was good for everything but the most extreme, high-end video processing, and could be had for under $600.

Now, a Mac user in Taiwan has reportedly replaced the stock CPU in his MacMini with a 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo Merom. The souped-up Mini beat  1.8 GHz and 2.5 GHz Dual Processor G5s when it came to an iTunes .mp3 to AAC conversion, despite the fact that the Mini had a slower hard drive. In Photoshop v7 - a notoriously large and cumbersome application - the results for the Mini were also quite promising. This is especially significant when one takes into consideration the fact that Photoshop requires Rosetta to translate PPC instructions for the Intel chip.

As for the upgrade itself, it was a fairly simple procedure - and actually a good thing for the machine, since the Intel chip runs cooler than the previous one.

A year after Apple Computer announced their plans to use Intel processors in its computers, the Steve Jobs camp is pushing the semiconductors giant into new and innovative directions. This was according to Anand Chandrasekher, senior VP and general manager of Intel's sales and marketing group. If you're thinking that the Apple's influence on Intel is negative, no, you are wrong there.

She said that "they (Apple) push us to think about things that we may not always think about...We were hoping for that to happen and that certainly happened." A major influence of Apple to Intel is their view on how the computer market will evolve, the Intel Exec implied that their product roadmap is definitely going to change because of that.

When asked for specific changes because of Apple, Chandrasekher refused to give a specific answer and opted to not comment on it. One area of importance to Apple is heat dissipation. Intel's ability to deliver mobile chips that consume less power while offering better performance was one of the reasons that convinced Apple to make the switch from IBM Corp.'s rival PowerPC chips.

Apple's demand for processors that produce less heat has been felt tremendously at the Intel camp. According to the same executive, "you can anticipate that they (Apple) probably pushed us (Intel) on packaging and thermals and things like that". Intel will announce several additions to its processor line that promise better performance and lower power consumption in the coming days.

Intel is planning to deliver Woodcrest (the code-named successor to its Xeon server processor) this month, and sources at Apple confirm a July release the first Intel-based Xserve.

In the meantime, Apple's Power Mac systems are making the transition to Intel processors with the Core 2 Duo which has been code-named Conroe.  Intel is planning to make these processors available in July as well. Industry scuttlebutt has it that new pro systems will come out in conjunction with Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference, which takes place in early August.

If Apple follows through, it would not be the first time its Xserve has outdone the Power Mac performance-wise.  Apple started started shipping Xserve units with 2.3GHz Power PC G5 processors on the sly when the Power Mac still topped out at 2GHz.

On a related topic, Intel sources report that Merom, the laptop-friendly version of the Core 2 Duo, is still planned for an August release. A new MacBook Pro may arrive soon afterwards, depending on when Apple to install the new chip in its products.

There have been rumors about Apple possibly offering upgraded versions of its Intel-driven Macs which will come with Intel's forthcoming Conroe (Core 2 Duo CPU).

Back in 2005, Apple announced that it was planning to switch back to using Intel's portable CPUs (the Core Duo and Core Solo). Fortunately for the company, its machines turned out to be faster than its G4- or G5-powered predecessors.

Some or all of the Intel-driven Macs will be upgraded with the even faster Merom (Cor 2 Duo) portable CPUs that will arrive later this year. But it's still unknown as to when exactly Apple will be upgrading its desktop Power Macs with Intel's CPUs, though many people are betting that if the company decides to do this upgrade, the announcement will be made during the 2006 Worldwide Developers Conference which has been rescheduled to take place August 7 to 11.

At the opening of this event where Intel CEO Paul Otellini will be one of the keynote speakers, the expected speech from Intel will include the announcement that Conroe-powered top-end desktops will be available immediately. Details about the arrival of the faster desktop Macs, Conroe Extreme CPU-powered servers and two or more dual-core Intel Woodcrest CPUs will be revealed.

A couple weeks ago I posted about my Boot Camp Fantasy. It seems that someone has hacked a similar functionality. Linked below is the video of it on YouTube. Basically they used Parallels to run the 'other' operating systems within their OS X environment. Then they fiddled with Virtue - an open source Virtual Desktop app - so that a cubed transition to a next desktop would reveal the operating system they want to work with.

Looks pretty sweet! I wonder what the hardware specs are on the Intel Mac Mini they're using. I'd imagine the RAM is way up there... Anyhow - looks cool, and I bet it works pretty nicely for them as well. Thanks for making my fantasy a reality (sort of)!

Well after a day full of events, all due to the release of the Boot Camp software which allows users to run XP on Intel Macs, it seems that one faithful individual by the name Speedeye has gone about taking pictures for us to gaze at showing the processes that Boot Camp takes you through. The screens were all sourced from Flickr, and we've compiled about 10 of our favorite screens from the 34 for you to have a look at. They all show an individual step in the process, from creating partitions to actually running Windows Update in XP. Enjoy.

An engineer from Apple Computer pointed out that we should not put much hope on easily running Windows on Intel Mac.

Although the Mac fans have been hoping that the incoming Windows Vista would be able to run on a Mac easier than the Windows XP, since Vista will be introducing the support of EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) besides the normal BIOS support, Apple Senior Software Architect Cameron Esfahani said he only know that the EFI will be present only in 64-bit versions of the Windows Vista. However, the current Intel Macs are all equipped with 32-bit Intel CPUs. Also, he pointed out that the implementation of Mac's EFI doesn't have much legacy support for the Windows system.

Apple won't stop users from trying to run Windows on Macs, but users should not put any hope on Apple's support on this. And on the other hand, Microsoft has stated that the initial release of the Windows Vista won't have EFI support at all.

Macworld has posted some brand new images of a dissected Intel Mac mini. Nothing major has changed on the new Mac minis besides a few added ports on the rear and, of course, the new Intel chipset. They have, however, made it more difficult to upgrade by making the RAM slots less accessible, changed the hard drive to a Serial ATA 2.5" drive (from a Parallel ATA drive) and relocated the Bluetooth card.

The Intel based Mac mini's (available in Core Duo and Core Solo flavours) are available now from the Apple store from $599 US.