Apple to Unveil 4 New iMacs, 1 Mini, Source Says

According to an analysis of all the rumors surrounding the Macworld 2009 keynote, Apple is on track to showcase at least five new Macintosh models, including four iMacs and one Mac mini.

Apple is known to have some deep sentiment for NVIDIA's latest achievements, making it the reason its unibody line of notebooks is using the respective hardware. Upon announcing the new MacBook models last year, the company itself promised that more Macs would see the GPU goodness included with revamped models of the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and the consumer-aimed 13-inch MacBook. As such, the company is expected to beef up its desktop line of computers, starting with the iMac.

PC Perspective suggests that two new 20" iMacs equipped with NVIDIA chipsets , as well as a large 24" iMac slapped with a 9600 / 9800 GPU are on track for a Macworld 2009 unveiling. Moreover, as highly improbable as it may sound, the site's sources believe Apple is also rolling out an uber iMac, boasting a 28-inch diagonal. To complement the large display, the same rumor mentions the new Intel Core i7 processor with an NVIDIA 9800M handling all the moves, all included with the new computer.

After reading such an impressive specs breakdown, readers may be a little less eager to learn about the offerings of a new Mac mini coming out of Cupertino this time around. Still, Apple is said to be prepping a cheaper model, versus higher performance. This should get everyone's interest going again...

The new Mac mini allegedly has a a front slot loading tray (a tray?) along with some updated graphics, obviously powered by NVIDIA's 9400/9300M platform. Two port versions are expected to show up on the device, one for use with Apple's old monitors, the other (MiniDisplay Port) for use with the company's new Cinema displays. A new firewire 800 port is also rumored for the new-generation Mac mini. Design and other impressions are still too diverse to even discuss at this point.

Softpedia take: While all this seems very plausible, the source of these allegations fails to mention the 17-inch MacBook Pro, as well as a second version of the Mac mini. Apple is widely expected to release the biggest member of the unibody family at this year's Macworld Expo, while two versions of the new-gen Mac mini make a lot of sense, with a low end (9300M) version priced at under $500.