“Earlier this month, Apple completed a round of hardware updates to its Mac Pro, iMac and Mac mini lines, offering up modest speed boosts, some pricing tweaks and — most importantly — the Nvidia 9400M chipset for graphics,” Michael DeAgonia reports for Computerworld. “Best of all for iMac fans, Apple also made the 24-in. version of its popular all-in-one configuration a more tempting proposition by making it less expensive.”

“For those who’ve waited almost a year for an iMac update, the latest round of changes has made all of Apple’s computers Snow Leopard-worthy, putting in place hardware that can best handle Mac OS X 10.6, due out later this year,” DeAgonia reports.

“The biggest under-the-hood change with this iMac release is the inclusion of the Nvidia graphics chips. That may not seem like much at first glance, but it actually completes the transition of Apple’s computer lineup to full Snow Leopard compatibility,” DeAgonia reports. “All Macs running on Core 2 Duo processors (or any newer chips) will be able to utilize Snow Leopard’s 64-bit architecture, but it wasn’t until this round of updates that all desktops could take advantage of OpenCL and Grand Central, two major features in Snow Leopard.”

“Briefly, OpenCL allows software developers to tap into a computer’s graphics processor for general processing, putting the GPU to work during times when it normally sits idle,” DeAgonia reports. “Grand Central is a new set of multi-core optimized APIs built into Snow Leopard, allowing developers the ability to allocate tasks across all available processors and cores easily and much more efficiently.”

DeAgonia reports, “If those technologies don’t sound exciting, consider this: while a Core 2 Duo chip features two 64-bit cores, in Snow Leopard, those cores will play in concert with the processing cores of the Nvidia 9400M GPUs, of which there are 16! (The Nvidia GeForce GT 130 that ships in higher-end models has 48 processing cores, by the way.)”

DeAgonia reports, “I’ve seen a couple of updated application demos (under a non-disclosure agreement, so I can’t hash out details), and I was very impressed by what I saw. The performance increases are very real.”

DeAgonia reports, “With these latest hardware updates, Apple has increased the overall value of its entire iMac lineup. Since their performance will improve with the next release of Mac OS X, Apple is actually extending the real-world life span of these machines. The latest models are at least as fast as the previous generation, and they stand to gain yet another boost in speed with the release of Snow Leopard.”

DeAgonia reports, “The bottom line is this: With its sleek lines, thoughtful and minimalist design, large and beautiful screen, robust operating system, polished iLife suite of apps, and updated hardware, the new iMac is a great value for anyone looking for a desktop computer.”

There’s much more in the full review – recommended – here.