With iPhone 4 pre-order frenzy in full effect at Apple and AT&T stores (and even taking AT&T’s order network down)another new item has quietly had a refresh. Today, Apple released a new version of its compact Mac the Mac Mini with a host of improvements and enhancements.

The new Mac Mini is made out of a solid chunk of aluminum and comes in two flavors:

Regular:
2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2 GB RAM
320 GB hard drive
$699

Server:
2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4 GB RAM
Dual 500 GB hard drive
$999

Both models have been updated with NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics, the same integrated GPU in the MacBook and MacBook Pro. They also sport a new HDMI port (finally) and the “Server” Mac Mini allows you the option to not have an optical drive in favor of an additional hard drive.

Apple has also made the Mini a bit easier to upgrade, at least in terms of adding more RAM. Instead of a completed procedure involving several kinds of tools and a trip to Home Depot, the new mac Mini has simple twist off panel on the bottom to allow for RAM upgrades. No word yet on if this makes it easier to upgrade the hard drive but since the new Mac Mini is available today, word on that should be coming shortly.

Back in 2006, Apple ran the first of many different variations of “friendly warfare” commercials, which pretty much portrayed the competition (Microsoft) as a nerdy, uncool, unorganized human (played by John Hodgman), while the “Mac” was a cool, casual, suave human (played by Justin Long).

After four years the aptly titled “Get a Mac” ad campaign is coming to an end. Apple’s site has changed over to the “Why You’ll Love a Mac” page, and Justin Long even suggested a few months back that the ads were starting to dry up and he didn’t see them continuing much longer.

Losing their edge or not, it was always a treat for Apple fans to get these ads sandwiched into spot breaks between our favorite shows. Hodgman, who was also a regular contributor to The Daily Show, garnered certain fame from the campaign and has even been invited to give commencement speeches at several universities.

We’ll always remember the epic promotional campaign, and some of our favorites as well. After the jump, check out one of those personal favorites, guest starring the amazing Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean.

R.I.P. “Get a Mac” Ads.

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Today Apple announced the availability of the second version of the iPad, aka the iPad 3G. For those of you who’ve been waiting for some iPad goodness, you have a definitive date to count the minutes until: April 30, 2010. In addition, those of you who pre-ordered the 3G iPad should start to receive shipments the same day.

The iPad 3G will set you back $130 premium more than the Wi-Fi-only iPad. You will also get the pleasure of using AT&T’s 3G network for your needs but in a somewhat surprising move, you won’t have to agree to a teo-year contract in order to do so.

The 3G service from AT&T will be available on an as-needed basis. In other words, if you need it for a day, you pay for a day. A month? Pay for a month. That’s quite a bit better than having to stick with a company for a minimum of two years, especially given their relatively poor track record of network performance.

On a related note, Apple also announced its second quarter earnings today and, no big surprise, the numbers look pretty good. It reported adjusted earnings of $3.33 per share, well above Wall Street estimates.

Total revenues were $13.5 Billion. That’s more than $700 millon above even the most optimistic predictions. Gross margins up to 41.7 percent, from 39.9 percent a year ago.

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Like it is when pretty much anything new is released by Apple, their online Apple Store was down for a bit this morning. Now, the store is back and with it are new, improved MacBook Pro models for your purchasing pleasure. These updates were rumored to come for the last months and now they have and provide an impressive array of new features and models from which to choose.

The 15″ and 17″ models now use the i5 and i7 Intel dual-core processors (at 2.4, 2.53GHz or 2.66Ghz, respectively), giving them a big performance boost and permitting hyperthreading (up to 4 virtual cores). They also include the GeForce GT 330M graphics chip, and the NVIDIA-driven Optimus technology to switch from the high-end video subsystem to integrated graphics on the fly to improve power management.

Users of previous generation MacBook Pros will remember that this process used to involve logging out and in to switch, but now simply requires the click of a mouse. The improved power handling lets the 15″ and 17″ models supposedly go 8-9 hours on one battery charge. That, of course, remains to be seen. In addition, all models now include 4GB of RAM standard.

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Instead of commenting on the latest TV show, comic book, or superheroine, I’ve decided to fire a shot in a war that’s raged for decades: PC or Mac? For 5 years I’ve had one HP desktop PC at home and used several Mac desktops and laptops in the office.

I’ve finally decided to buy a new computer and because I work in the business of show, I will soon be drafted into the Mac army. I will use my new laptop for both home and work to edit, create flash animations, surf the net, write columns, listen to music, and watch TV.

Before apple juice is spilled and I’m forced to yet again hear about the greatness of Macs, you need to know I do not consider myself to be a tech guru or a first adopter. I have, however, been on computers since the age of 2, I’m an avid user of CNET, I’ve programmed in HTML, and I’ve troubleshot excel and everyday computer glitches for my co-workers.

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Well Apple and Mac fans, if you’re currenty running some version of OS X 10.6 (aka Snow Leopard) it’s time to head on over to Software Update (or by downloading the Combo Update), fire it up, and download and install the latest version of 10.6 to bring your system up to 10.6.3. The update is recommended for all users and addresses the following:

• improve the reliability and compatibility of QuickTime X
• address compatibility issues with OpenGL-based applications
• address an issue that causes background message colors to display incorrectly in Mail
• resolve an issue that prevented files with the # or & characters in their names from opening in Rosetta applications
• resolve an issue that prevented files from copying to Windows file servers
• improve performance of Logic Pro 9 and Main Stage 2 when running in 64-bit mode
• improve sleep and wake reliability when using Bonjour wake on demand
• address a color issue in iMovie with HD content
• improve printing reliability
• resolve issues with recurring events in iCal when connected to an Exchange server
• improve the reliability of 3rd party USB input devices
• fix glowing, stuck, or dark pixels when viewing video from the iMac (Late 2009) built-in iSight camera

If you do update, let us know if you have any problems.

Yesterday, the good folks at Apple were kind enough to update their flagship image handling software Aperture to version 3.0.2 and today the updates keep on coming with the release of an update to iMovie, which brings the application to version 8.0.6. The update “improves reliability when working with videos from Aperture and requires Mac OS X 10.5.6 or later and iLife ’09.” It is 35.84 MB and available via Software Update.

Also updated, just not by Apple, was Flip4Mac‘s free Windows Media player, which brings it to version 2.3.2. In case you’re not familiar, Flip4Mac is a QuickTime plugin that lets you watch Windows Media files in a QuickTime Player. It’s a great tool that’s saved the day more than once when standard Quicktime won’t open a video file. The new update fixes problems playing back files and streams with MP3 content and corrects problems launching QuickTime Player if you’re using Snow Leopard.

In addition to Flip4Mac’s player, Perian was also updated to 1.2.1. Perian is a QuickTime plugin that allows you to play pretty much any kind of media through QuickTime Player. This particular update adds Indeo 5 decoding and fixes some pesky bugs that seem to crop up from time to time.

Have any trouble with these updates? Let us know in the comments.

Yesterday, Apple reported its financial results for Q1 2010, which ended December 26, 2009, and said results were, to say the least, impressive. The company had its all time highest quarterly revenue and its all time highest quarterly profit.

Here are the important numbers:

• Revenue of $15.68 Billion

• 58% of revenue derived from international sales

• Net quarterly profit of $3.38 Billion or $3.67 per diluted share

• Gross margin of 40.9 %

• $5.8 Billion generated in cash

Sales of Macintosh computers and iPhones blew up with Apple selling 3.36 Million computers and 8.7 Million iPhones, representing a 33% increase for Macintosh sales and 100% growth for the iPhone when compared to Q1 2009.

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This week, those of you who love the Mac but need to use Windows 7 for some reason, just got a little more help from Apple as the company has updated Bootcamp to support Windows 7. The Boot Camp 3.1 update consists of a single .exe file download that you need to run in Windows 7 once it’s installed. Or you can just run Apple Software Update if you’re already using Windows 7 on your Mac.

The update provides the necessary Windows 7 drivers for various pieces of Mac hardware including the Mighty Mouse. Boot Camp version 3.1 supports the 32-bit and 64-bit version of Windows 7 and Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate are supported as part of the update as well.

With the upgrade in software and support for new drivers and utilities, if you need Windows 7 to run certain software, processes, or perhaps you prefer to use Windows for things like coding and development, now you can. Although, not sure why you would want to if you have a Mac. But hey, we don’t judge here.

Apple has also published a support document that details a number of installation problems for Windows 7, plus a tool to assist with upgrades from Windows Vista to Windows 7.

Late yesterday, Apple released an update to its flagship operating system OS X 10.6, also known as Snow Leopard. We’ve been expecting Mac OS X 10.6.2 to ship soon since developers have had it for some time. Well, it has finally arrived.

Some the things fixed and/or updated with this new version of OS X include the following:

• An issue that might cause your system to logout unexpectedly
• A graphics distortion in Safari Top Sites
• Spotlight search results not showing Exchange contacts
• A problem that prevented authenticating as an administrative user
• Issues when using NTFS and WebDAV file servers
• The reliability of menu extras
• An issue with the 4-finger swipe gesture
• An issue that causes Mail to quit unexpectedly when setting up an Exchange server
• Address Book becoming unresponsive when editing
• A problem adding images to contacts in Address Book
• An issue that prevented opening files downloaded from the Internet
• Safari plug-in reliability
• General reliability improvements for iWork, iLife, Aperture, Final Cut Studio, MobileMe, and iDisk
• An issue that caused data to be deleted when using a guest account

For detailed information on this update, head over to Apple’s website. To download, go here for the Combo Update and here for the non-combo.

After only a short time of release in the wild, Apple has today issued an update to its brand new version of OS X — code named Snow Leopard. This update, which should now be live in Software Update and at Apple’s website, provides several bug fixes and security enhancements which in typical Apple-speak could mean almost anything.

Here’s a list of at least some of the items this update addresses:

• Printer compatibility fixes for printers that do not properly appear in the “Add Printer” browser.
• Fix for DVD playback (when playback stops abruptly)
• Fix for the Dock (bug prevents removal of icons from the Dock)
• Fix for account set up and sending mail via SMTP servers in Mail
• Fix for Sierra Wireless 3G modems
• Adobe Flash Player update (new plug-in version 10.0.32.18)

Apparently, the Flash update is of particular importance because the version shipping with Snow Leopard has a number of security vulnerabilities fixed by this update. For the scoop on that, head on over to Adobe’s website. As with any OS update, we suggest you download and install the Combo Update instead of doing an update via Apple’s software update. Sadly, as of now, the Combo update doesn’t seem to be live at Apple’s download page yet so you may consider waiting until tomorrow to do the update.

Fans of Apple’s advanced operating system known as OS X have another reason to be happy this week. Besides the OS X’s stellar reputation for ease of use, security and reliability, its now going to get a brand new update in the form of OS X 10.6 (aka Snow Leopard). This new OS, which we’ve talked about before, is being released by Apple this Friday, August 28th, so you can go to the store and pick up the $29.00 upgrade version — if you’re already running Leopard — and go to town.

Conveniently, you can also pre-order the update version at Apple’s website for delivery on the 28th. Shipping is free but it will still cost you sales tax. No getting around that one. Finally, you can do what I did and pre-order it from Amazon and wait until Monday for it to show up. If you do that, you wait a couple extra days but pay no sales tax or, if you’re an Amazon Prime member, no shipping. That’s the best deal going right now.

Remember, before you go ahead and buy the upgrade version, you can only install the upgrade if you’re currently using Leopard on your Mac. If you’re not, you’ll need to buy the Mac Box Set, available for $169 for a single user or $229 for a Family Pack.