Apple's unveils new Mac Pro desktop with up to 12 processing cores - Page 6

May be true on current models, which means the thing Apple is most guilty of on the pre-update Mac Pro is not adjusting the price downward as the chip price decreases. Of course if they bought all their CPU stock up front, they would lose money selling cheaper.

The 6 core 2.66 Westmere is the X5650 and it is $996 on the Intel price sheet. The 2.93 is the X5670 and it is $1440. There is a 3.33 Xeon with only 12MB L3, which looks like it could probably be the BTO chip from the single cpu model, the W3680 is $999. Clearly saying that Apple only uses the W series would be incorrect for the future models.

I understand how this works. I'm not saying that the compression/decompression cycle is any less safe than any other. What I'm saying is that the more you manipulate data, the greater the chance of corruption, no matter how good the algorithm. Other drives don't do this.

As we know, most all drive manufacturers have shipped bad firmware This includes SSD makers and their controller suppliers. Sandforce themselves had bugs. IBM had bugs that lost data. Seagate had problems that were well publicized with their HDDs.This isn't a sure thing. The more complex the firmware, the greater chance of some obscure bug getting through. That is a problem.

The cosmic ray flip is just an additional unknown.

Ugh! Another interesting, but really difficult question. Spin off means to make another company, which the parent company may, or may not have enough stock in to control.

I don't think Apple would want to do that. At least, not unless they get so big that there could be a problem with the government.

Otherwise, why would they want to do that? It could be good for the shareholders, if the computer portion of the operations is doing really well at the time. In some cases, companies can be worth more in parts than they are as a whole. It's hard to say if that would be true for Apple though, because of management, which is seen AS the company, not so much the products. How would management be split up if they spun off a portion? I don't know.

Who would run the new "Apple Computer", or whatever they would eventually be called? The same team designs, and no doubt argues over the fine details. They are a finely honed team. Breaking them up could be bad for everyone.

I thought I'd state what motivated my question and please note that I'm not suggesting
a spin-off. Some folks seem to think Macs are being neglected in favor of iPhones and iPads. I wondered if a Mac division could shorten the upgrade cycle while an Apple Mobile
division would continue its work on iPhones, iPads, iPods, etc. Maybe it really just a matter
of resource allocation.

Most folks get wound up about the upgrade cycle for lery litle reason. Q. How often per year does Intel come out with new chip architectures???? A. Planed for once per year -- Tick-Tock they call it.

Manufacturers like Dell follow this same rough cycle on their high end machines, but play all kinds of games during the year for their "consumer" offerings with different speed flight rollouts. Mostly because they initially sandbagged on the higher end in the consumer space, then six months later do another rollout of the same stuff, with a barely there GHz refresh. Or the other good trick is ship high end chips for the first year in a compatible but poorly suited mainboard, then six months out, ship the real mainboard and call it an upgrade/update, when the first six months were really shaft the early adopter as hard as possible.

Another perception only issue is that there is one Apple and a bajillion PC vendors who all roll out on different days and then market their stuff as latest/greatest when it really isn't. A few boutique whitebox builders break that mold, but they are tiny volume really high price for cream of the crop machines. Those guys get away with it because they buy components in lots of dozens, not lots of hundred thousands. Several orders of magnitude easier to manage stock and channel inventory that way, because essentially there is none of both.

Peripheral adds are just that, sure Dell offers stuff for OEM purchase Apple hasn't yet, like Blu-Ray, but it's awfully damn expensive. Today even Dells RAM upgrade pricing looks like the Apple premium of old. How do you compete on those little radio checkbox adds of selling 3rd party gear if you're Apple, you just don't. Folks will go to their favorite mail order house and get the same stuff for less anyway, if they really need it, not just the radio button which that wouldn't but spec-whores love.

So why again do we need to get all worked up about faster than yearly rollouts when that is approximately the same rate as the major, difference making, components arrive?

Ooohhh! Two (2) "SuperDrives!" Wow! What are those "SuperDrives"? They must be some sort of next generation optical media drives for super high data storage and for playing super high definition movies. When are the SuperDrive movie discs shipping? All I can find at my video store is BluRay.

do we know the date in august when these newly-announced mac pros will be available for purchase in the apple store yet?

Last I heard was Monday the 9th.

It's not 8/13.
I caled to check stock, they said the 4 core 2.8GHz was in stock, no problem. I get there, and they say this series isn't out yet, maybe September. Ouch. There's an hour in my car for nothing.

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