It's been busy in the dwarven mines of Cupertino, we can tell: much new iron has arrived today, and the store is back up (though getting hammered at the moment)! We'll go into detail on each of the announcements in the next hour or so, but here's the basic scoop:

All of Apple's consumer desktops have been updated, with new iMacs and new minis. The iMacs offer 'twice the memory, twice the storage' in the new $1499 base 24" model, and all have been updated with the GeForce 9400M graphics subsystem. BTO options on the 24" iMac include up to a 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, a 640GB or 1TB HD, and a rogues' gallery of graphics upgrade options: the NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 or the ATI Radeon HD 4850 instead of the 9400M. Gamers, start your engines.

The mini... well, Dave and I have to eat our words on the mini, because the new models do indeed come with five frickin' USB ports, FW800 and both DVI and DisplayPort video-out, as well as the 9400M integrated graphics. The spy shots, the video and the box picture appear to have been spot-on (despite the 'scientific' scoffing analysis of Photoshop artifacts in the original shot). $599US gets you the base model with a 2GHz C2D and 120GB hard drive/1GB of RAM (really? 1GB?), $799 doubles the RAM to 2GB and bumps the HD to 320GB. The new mini also uses less power than before, only 13 watts at idle. For all of you that had 'five USB ports' in the pool, instead of 'sharks with lasers on their heads' -- congratulations. Who knew that Gillette was collaborating with the Onion and Apple on product design?