Latest hardware in the lab

New Apple hardware and cool Mac gear are on my mind in this latest installment of the Macworld Podcast.

First, the new hardware: Apple has spent the past month freshening up its computers, with updates to the Power Mac, iMac, and PowerBook product lines. That’s led to a lot of late nights for the Macworld Lab, as it prepares benchmarks to measure the performance of the new systems. In this podcast, I talk with Lab Director James Galbraith about the new Apple hardware and the tests he runs to see how new Macs measure up to their predecessors.

As for the cool Mac gear, the cover story of December 2005 issue—which is currently shipping to subscribers and should be appearing on newsstands next week—highlights 44 gadgets that might make for some great gifts for the Mac user in your life (or even yourself). I talk about some of my favorites, including a few that didn’t make the final cut.

Listen to episode 13

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Show notes

You can get the complete benchmarks from Macworld Lab for:

• Dual-core Power Mac G5s;
• the 17-inch 1.9GHz iMac G5; and
• the 15- and 17-inch PowerBook G4s.

As for my favorite gear ideas, I mention:

• Power Sentry PowerSquid from ThinkGeek ($14.99);
• USB Mini Desktop Aquarium from ThinkGeek ($19.99);
• Blow Off Duster from CrazyPC ($5.99);
• There’s No Place Like 127.0.0.1 T-Shirt from ThinkGeek ($17); and
• I’m Blogging This T-Shirt from ThinkGeek ($17).

One correction from the podcast file: I misstate the price of the Blow Off Duster from CrazyPC. It’s a $5.99 product, as I listed above.

If you want to get a head start on the topic of our next podcast—Automator—check out this installment from our December 2005 Automator feature story.

Music credits

“Basic” by Epicte the Elemental. Want to hear more of his music? Need a DJ in the Washington, D.C. area? E-mail him at epicte@gmail.com.