Mob Apple

One Thunderbolt port on your new MacBook Pro? Pah. The new 27-inch iMac has twice that many — two. When we got ours out of the box we just had to do the natural thing: fire up as many pixels as possible. Two 30-inch Dell displays and a couple of dual-link DVI display adapters later and we have what you see above: a wide swath of LCD covering covering 11,878,400 pixels. Sure, any average desktop can do this, but how many all-in-ones can push that many dots? The iMac’s 27-inch, 2,560 x 1,440, LED-backlit IPS panel is definitely a highlight, but flanked by another two monsters the combination is, honestly, a little overwhelming. We tried working this way but only made it about 30 minutes before retreating to smaller fields of view.

Other tid-bits we’ve learned about the updated iMac: those who’d rather swipe than drag can now choose to order theirs with a Magic Trackpad instead of a Magic Mouse, though we’re sure Apple would surely be happy to sell you both. Additionally, the 21.5-inch model can now be configured with a 256GB SSD, just like its big bro. The bigger news, of course, is what’s on the inside, with updated Radeon HD graphics featuring GDDR5 memory and Sandy Bridge processors all-round. We’ll be back with a full review later to get a feel for just how powerful this thing is, but until then dig all those pixels in the video below. 

Intel has just announced it will soon be making development kits available for its new Thunderbolt interconnect. The cable that can carry 10Gbps (in both directions!) has so far only seen itself installed in Apple’s MacBook Pro computers, but storage and other peripheral manufacturers are starting to unveil their lightning-scorched offerings this week at NAB and this announcement is sure to give Thunderbolt an extra spur of momentum. What’s going to be intriguing going forward is to see whether manufacturers take it up instead of USB 3.0 or install the DisplayPort lookalike alongside the latest and greatest from the USB camp. If you ask us, we can never have enough high-speed interconnects… how does SuperSpeed Thunderbolt sound?