Woke up late this morning to discover that Apple has released a new iMac with a 24-inch screen. That’s 1920 by 1200 pixels of resolution. That’s almost native HD resolution for editing 1080i HDV (which is 1920 by 1080 pixels); you have to give up some of those pixels for iMovie’s interface. Still, that’s a big beautiful screen.
All of the new iMacs (the 17-inch and 20-inch models have also been upgraded and are available) now run the 64-bit Core 2 Duo processor, which hopefully promises a nice speed bump too. The 24-inch model starts at $2000, while the 17-inch model hits the $1000 price point. The 20-inch and 24-inch models can support up to 3 GB of RAM, too, which is the first time Apple’s consumer Macs have broken the 2 GB barrier for RAM.
More details can be found at TidBITS and Macworld.