While the price plans are up, we're curious as to whether the App Store will be a popular haunt for iPhone 3G users in Malaysia.

CORP TALK: Malaysian telecom company Maxis has joined the ranks of SingTel (Singapore),  Globe (Philippines) and TrueMove (Thailand) to make Malaysia the fourth country to officially bring the Apple iPhone 3G into the ASEAN region. Available for pre-order on their website, the iPhone 3G will launch in Malaysia on 20 March with a price plan dependent on the type of contract a user chooses.

There are three main contract plans: 6-month, 12-month and 24-month, with each plan having four different tiers of free talktime minutes, data usage, additional data usage, SMS and so on. For those who take up the 6-month plan, there are two tiers where voice rate charges differ if a Maxis user calls a non-Maxis user versus a Maxis user.

Anyway, for a 12-month contract, the 8GB iPhone will cost between RM1080 (US$295) and RM1900 (US$519) while the 16GB version will range from RM1470 (US$400) to RM2290 (US$624). That’s just for the phone. For free talktime and data usage rates, plans like i-Value 1 costs RM100 (US$27) monthly and gives users 333 minutes and 500MB of data. The highest plan, i-Value 4 costs RM375 (US$102) monthly and gives users 2500 minutes and 3GB of data. (more…)

SHOWCASE: Apple has updated its consumer desktop range with quiet fanfare, which includes a new Mac Pro with Intel “Nehalem” Xeon processors, an affordable 24-inch iMac and Mac mini with integrated graphics.

Apple's refreshed Mac Pro now supports 4-core or 8-core (2x quad) Intel Xeon processors.

Under the hood of the new Mac Pro, you’ll find an Intel Xeon processor up to 2.93 GHz, with integrated memory controller for three 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC memory and NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 (512MB GDDR3 memory). To simplify that in two words, it’s pretty top-of-the-line. Price starts from US$2,499 (quad core) and US$3,299 (2x quad core), with additional options for specs customization. More info can be found here.

Of course, then you have the 24-inch iMac, which costs US$1,499 and gives you 30 percent more display space (the 20-inch used to cost the same), twice the memory and storage. The Mac mini (US$599) takes this one up a notch with Core 2 Duo processors, five USB ports and NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics within that aluminum unibody. More info here.

More images after the jump. (more…)