Three Mac computers from Apple’s line have been refreshed recently, that being the mini, iMac and Mac Pro.

Odds  are you’re probably not interested in the Mac Pro because it’s out of the range of what most people can afford these days ($2,499), however you might have been interested in the other two.

The new Macs don’t bring any significant design changes but do put more horsepower under the hood. The iMac in particular gets bumped to a 320GB hard drive and has better processor offerings, but for some strange reason still only offers a 8x speed SuperDrive.

It should be noted that Apple’s Macbooks are far outselling the desktop versions, and to be honest are a better deal. People are switching more towards laptops these days compared to desktops. The entry level 13-inch Macbook is priced correct at $999 and will hold higher resale value compared to the desktop version, so not only is it lower in price but will sell for more later when you trade up.

According to AppleInsider, Apple has begun testing for the 10.5.3 update to it’s OS X Leopard operating system. The update is said to include 75 bug fixes. According to the story:

Among those components in need of evaluation, people familiar with the matter tell AppleInsider, are AddressBook, AppleScript, Audio, Back To My Mac, Dashboard, the Dock, DVD Player, Finder, Graphics, iCal, Mail, Portable Home Directories, Printing, Rosetta, Spaces, Spotlight, Time Machine, and VoiceOver.

The developer community is busy testing the code, and we should see the public release some time in April or early May.

While I’m at it, I’m going to rub something in. Why? Because it is deserved.

Apple releases Leopard 10.5 on October 26, 2007. I, at that point, proceed to buy a Mac Pro. On November 15th, Apple releases the first update 10.5.1. On February 11, 2008, Apple releases 10.5.2. Now we hear 10.5.3 will come out in about a month from now. All the while, Leopard is running much smoother than Vista ever did.

I should also mention that 10.4 Tiger was released on April 25, 2005. So, we had about 2.5 years between major versions of OS X.

OK, onto Microsoft. They release Windows XP on October 25, 2001. Windows Vista was released to volume license holders on November 8, 2006 and released to the general public on January 30, 2007. Vista SP1 update was just released to the general public only 10 days ago (March 18, 2008).

So, let’s see, Apple released 3 updates to Leopard within 6 months. Microsoft took 5 years to develop it’s new OS (it took Apple 2 years) and it took them over a year to get out the first major update to Vista. In the meantime, Vista is annoying enough to cause a lawsuit and a “Save XP” petition”.

Needless to say, I am, at this point in time, glad I am running Apple. One company is staying ahead of the curve. The other company, well, isn’t.