Apple at an event in New York city today announced new changes to their line of Powerbooks, and added Dual Core processors to their Powermac G5 lineup.

New PowerBooks

The 15-inch model now features a screen with 1440 x 900 resolution, the same as the previous generation 17-inch model. The 17-inch model now features a 1680 x 1050 pixel display — the same resolution as Apple’s 20-inch Cinema Display

The new PowerBooks sport 22 percent greater battery life, standard DVD-RW “SuperDrives” and built-in support for Apple’s gargantuan 30-inch Cinema HD Display, according to Moody. Prices start at $1,499 for the 12-inch model, $1,999 for the 15-inch model and $2,499 for the 17-inch model. All systems are shipping today.

New Power Macs

The new systems feature dual-core PowerPC processors and a new system architecture that can support up to 16GB of 533MHz DDR2 RAM. They can also hold up to 1 terabyte (TB) of internal Serial ATA (SATA) storage, and are the first Power Macs to feature PCI Express (PCIe) expansion slots. DDR2 RAM and PCIe are both featured on Apple’s recently refreshed iMac G5 system.

Apple has worked with graphics maker Nvidia Corp. to feature four new graphics options for the refreshed Power Mac G5 line, including the Quadro FX 4500 — Nvidia’s fastest workstation card. This fills a gap in the Power Mac line that has long been criticized by 3D graphics professionals and others who have wanted faster graphics systems than the consumer-oriented cards and chips Apple has offered in the past. The Quadro card can support dual 30-inch displays, according to Moody.

The new Power Macs G5 “Quad” system touts eight floating point units, four velocity engines, four 1MB Level 2 caches and is capable of processing 76.6 gigaflops. “There is some serious horsepower under the hood,” said Moody.

The Power Mac G5 starts in a single-processor, dual-core configuration clocked at 2.0GHz for $1,999. The 2.3GHz dual-core system costs $2,499, and the “Quad” dual-processor, dual-core system starts at $3,299.

Cinema HD Displays

Apple has also realigned pricing on its 23-inch and 30-inch CInema HD Displays. Effective today, the 23-inch Cinema HD Display costs $1,299, down from $1,499, while the 30-inch Cinema HD Display costs $2,499, down from $2,999.

These updates will probably prove to be the last before Apple begins moving to Intel processors next year.

Apple also introduced a new software application for proffessional photographers called Aperture. The new software was developed from the ground up as a productivity tool which allows easy managing of massive photo libraries and simple editing of RAW files from all major camera manufacturers. Aperture will be available starting in November for $500 US.