As admitted Apple fanboys, we are 100-percent stoked to finally have our MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo on order. The rumor of this little upgrade has been at the top of the queue on the Apple sites, and his Steveness’s quiet launch is about what we were expecting.
But that moves the other rampant rumors up the column. Two that are appearing over-and-over again are the iPhone and the iHDTV.
The iPhone is all-but-confirmed by Cupertino, but now we have word that Apple has enacted a hiring freeze to make room for the carrier liasons. That’s plural, meaning Cingular might not have a lock on the iPhone at launch as has been rumored.
That’s all fairly well known. The new hotness revolves around a refresh to Apple’s stagnant monitor line. Apple has a reputation for its monitors that’s well deserved, and rumor has it that it will drop prices on its current lineup and add super-high-end 42″ and 50″ monitors. True, that has been circulating for awhile, but the new hotness is that these monsters would also feature HDTV engines, to double as your computer monitor and your TV. Chances are the monitor/TVs would also feature Apple’s remote, Front Row, and WiFi to work with the iTV and iTunes Movie Store.
This would be a slick (but expensive) addition to Apple’s non-computer line-up, but would further its press out of the den and into the living room. It will be interesting to see if Apple turns its current LCDs into HDTVs as well, or if it advertises that it’s “iTV-ready”, which is what we’d suspect.
iPhone in Januray and 50 inch monitor [MacSimum News]