As the rumors said, Apple released a new iMac at the beginning of this week. The appearance looks no major changes but it uses the 45 nm Penryn Core Intel Core 2 Duo processor.

In accordance with prior practice, iMac has been using the mobile version of Core 2 Duo processor. But this time the way of using processor is rather special. All the Core 2 Duo processors from 2.40 GHx to 3.06Ghz are 45 nm process and with a 3=6MB L2 cache and a 1066 MHz front-side bus. These processors have never been appeared in the official list of Intel processors. Maybe they are specially designed for Apple. Other features are including AirPort Extreme 802.11n Wifi wireless network, blue tooth2.1+EDR, Gigabit Ethernet, built-in iSight camera, 8x superDrive DVD burner, FireWire 400 and 800 interfaces, coming with Apple remote controller and so on. The machine's preinstalled with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard operation system and iLife 08 softwares. The whole set has passed the EPEAT certification and Energy Star 4.0 standard..

The new iMac models targeted include:

20-inch widescreen, 2.4 GHz processor, 1 GB of memory, 250 GB hard drive, ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT 128MB cards at 1,199 U.S. dollars
20-inch widescreen, 2.6 GHz processor, 2 GB of memory, 320 GB hard drive, ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO 256MB cards at 1,499 U.S. dollars
24-inch widescreen, 2.8 GHz processor, 2 GB of memory, 320 GB hard drive, ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO 256MB cards at 1,799 U.S. dollars
24-inch widescreen, 3.06 GHz processor, 2 GB of memory, 500 GB hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS 512MB cards at 2,199 U.S. dollars

Customizable upgrade programme includes a maximum 1 TB hard drives, 4 GB of memory, and so on. Standards of the new iMac models are now on sale, the top 3.06 GHz model will have to wait a few days.