After macworld would be insanity... The mac pro specs haven't been touched since August 2006... Why wouldn't they announce it at MacWorld if it's ready? It's free Press.
It's already insanity going this long. But if they have lots of consumer announcements, don't hold your breath. Sorry, I choose to be pessimistic at this point.
Don't gotta apologize. It's all speculation. Apple could announce any day, any time they want. They have done it many many times in the past.
You're right, it is insanity they have gone this long. I personally don't get it. They HAVE the cpus. What else is there to wait for? Graphics cards? Motherboards? If dell has the motherboards I'm sure apple does too. All I can think of is graphics.
Don't gotta apologize. It's all speculation. Apple could announce any day, any time they want. They have done it many many times in the past.
You're right, it is insanity they have gone this long. I personally don't get it. They HAVE the cpus. What else is there to wait for? Graphics cards? Motherboards? If dell has the motherboards I'm sure apple does too. All I can think of is graphics.
I used to go to keynotes and had my hopes dashed many a time where pro stuff is concerned, so I don't always go to MacWorld anymore either. They are pretty much consumer events, and consumer products are what generate buzz in the news, and gets Steve the CNN interviews. The pro stuff just doesn't get that interest. Look at other new pro PCs--they rarely make it beyond the trade media outlets. The only way, is if it is some revolutionary new technology not appearing in any of the other consumer lines debuts (in the same way as the multi-touch technology for the iPhone). Also, they did release the MacBook Pro there last year, but it got the new Intel chips for the first time, and featured drop sensors and MagSafe for the powercord--that all fits the 'innovative new technology' paradigm.
Good question. Maybe they're waiting for enough high-end chips from Intel? They know there will be a mad rush as soon as they are released, and they don't want people waiting months for new systems.
At the keynote, they'll also have an announcement of more iPod integration, like in airplanes or with AppleTV--they've already done cars+iPods, so that won't be mentioned. Maybe some new partnerships, much like the recent one with Starbucks for wifiTunes.
Here are past announcements, so you can see the trend...
MWSF has been "mostly" consumer centric in the past few years. But I agree that if there is a enclosure redesign and new ACDs, MWSF seems to be the right place to announce it because of the time frame.
Unless Apple has under it's sleeve a bunch of announcements already in place for MWSF, I can't see the MacPro without being upgrade pass middle of January 08.
If dell has the motherboards I'm sure apple does too. All I can think of is graphics.
Out of curiosity, I spec'd out a Dell T7400 with dual 3.2GHz Penryns (without fancy graphics or optical drive options) and saw what Dell is calling a "preliminary ship date" of January 7, 2008. While Dell has them on their website, it doesn't look like anyone can even get one right now. Maybe Apple is waiting to have actual volume of Penryn Xeons on-hand before they announce a new Mac Pro?
I can't help myself, but I actually like the new iMacs.
I do like the alu iMac. I would love to have Penryns and the new AMD/Ati GPUs in them though...
It would pack a bit more gpu punch that way. Quad core isn't essential for most apps.
But 3D and Final Cut may get the extra core quad boost. Quad core isn't quite mainstream yet. So...maybe by the time it is...the iMac may go quad corelaptop cpu by mid 2008. Just in time. Because I can see alot of PC consumer towers being quad core by then!!!
I just think with Apple's marketshare of Macs at 2million per quarter and rising...another laptop and desktop move may be imminent to round off their offerings. There isn't quite enough choice of desktops at the moment. It's worth noting that Apple has a greater range of iPods than they do Mac desktops.
Well, Dell are just doing what Apple used to do. 'Announce'...and wait months before shipping! ')
Which...is kind of annoying. It grabs headlines...but it's no better than Apple keeping its cards close to its vest/chest...
There's a shed load of conroe and Xeon cpu options...and it seems silly not expand the Mac Pro product range to cover them...especially when some of the Conroe quads are dirt cheap.
Why force us to pay for Xeon chips when Conroe chips would give us most of the bang for a much, much cheaper price?
The new Dell's use the same 667mhz ECC FB-Dimms... unless you get the fastest cpu which upgrades the ram to 800mhz. I don't understand why intel forces these chipsets to use ECC ram. Expensive, Slow, ECC ram. Desktop ram is DDR3 and approaching 1800mhz (granted a cas latency of 6 and 7 but who needs a fast latency when you have that fast of a bandwidth?). So in essence the ram Mac Pros use haven't changed since 2006... maybe Nehalem is where everything will change. I'm so tired of looking to the next technology. Seems things don't change as fast as they used to.
Very interesting, I guess I just assumed they were shipping. What about the lower model? Same thing?
The Dell T5400 w/the quad-core E5405's aren't available until December 19th... same thing for the higher-end X5460's... so while they're selling them, they're not shipping any... so at least we have a little less to grumble about with the delay on new Mac Pros!
The new Dell's use the same 667mhz ECC FB-Dimms... unless you get the fastest cpu which upgrades the ram to 800mhz. I don't understand why intel forces these chipsets to use ECC ram. Expensive, Slow, ECC ram. Desktop ram is DDR3 and approaching 1800mhz (granted a cas latency of 6 and 7 but who needs a fast latency when you have that fast of a bandwidth?).
Workstations generally need the ECC for better data integrity. Buffered memory is necessary to support more memory chips per channel. It just goes with the market, on the up side, workstations are usually incredibly stable, at least in my experience. I gave up consumer desktops for workstations in '97 and really hadn't looked back since.
It may well be that 1.8GHz memory is just a gimmick, I don't know.
If you're saying apple is going to wait until NAB or "photo shows" I highly disagree. The next event after MWSF is usually in March or April. Apple can't go that long without releasing. Apple has updated these machines on normal days in the passed, but I don't see any reason for apple to release these machines between now and MWSF... and I can't imagine they go much passed MWSF.
I'm just saying that MWSF is usually unlikely. Apple did go until a week or two before NAB to release the Octos, even though they could have done many months earlier, just not with the high-watt 3.0 chips.
I think Apple has updated the pro units away from any event though.
Is there nothing in December? I don't keep track of some of those shows.
I just found that NAMM'08 and MWSF'08 overlap in mid-January, so in a way, I guess I do agree now, you might see a January announcement. Given that Dell can't ship their machines until Jan, that may be the time. Apple doesn't seem to announce or ship until there is actual supply available to them. I think some pro hardware updates were done in conjunction with at least one NAMM, that's also when Apple tends to update Logic.
Apple doesn't seem to announce or ship until there is actual supply available to them. I think some pro hardware updates were done in conjunction with at least one NAMM, that's also when Apple tends to update Logic.
Up until a few years ago that statement was completely false. They were known for pre-announcing products much like dell did yesterday. G4's, G5's, XServes etc. Now you'll always catch steve saying "these are shipping today"... because apple had such a poor history of shipping WAY later (months) after the announcement. I wish they would bring back MWNY and schedule it around Sept / Oct. So then you'd have... MWSF in Jan, WWDC in May / June, MWNY in Sept. Only problem with that is MWParis is around Sept usually.
When I ordered my Quad G5 it took almost 2 months to get the machine. I am glad they are waiting to announce it now because the past shipping nightmares.
At the time i type this the French Apple store does not deliver MacPro's in CTO with Mac os X server ... Delay estimates jump from 5 days to 3 weeks so we can expect changes in Software as well as hardware wise (not that mac os x Server Leopard is ready for prime time deployment). So i would expect another major relase of 10.5. Server revision and a New Macpro (These machines allways have been SCREAMING fast with 10.5 Server regarding 10.5 Client) .
What can we expect from apple at MacWorld in terms of new Macpros would be around this line .
4 Core and 8 Core MacPros.
Why 4 Core being kept ?
1) Not all Applications can thread. (4D , Filemaker).
2) Apple neeeds a cheap entry point for desktop servers. 4 cores is more than enough to run mac os X server , though this may be wrong. but basicly you dont need every desktop in a company to be a full blown server rig.
What we can expect on the coming months as far as the MacPro might be concerned.
1) Faster FSB.
2) Better Memory bandwith , better EEC should do the trick in my humble opinion.
(EEC ram is slow but its is a Server centered machine , reliability matters heavily here DDR3 has its faults and when it fails you face a hardware crash AND it is mainly dual channel to support 8 Cores you would need Quad Channel and suprisingly well no one is proposing such rams , they sure propose quad channel DDR2 and nothing comes to mind in 64bit addressing with those things) . I am sorry for gamers out there but DDR3 bearing MacPros are relatively unlikely , bear as well in mind that MacPros can take up to 32GB of ram , that HAS to fit your needs NO ? )
3) New chipsets from intel. SLI support may be delaying here so i am wondering if we will see SLI support on the MacPro.
4) More PCie lanes than we currently have. (Sporting a smalltree ethernet card a Quadro and a 4GB fibre channel card outspaces the Pcie lanes you have to chose to take one card below its par capabilities).
5) New Cinema Displays (34 inch would be nice in something around 3k by 2k).
6) New graphics cards (though i am very happy with my Nvidia 4500). I tied it to a 30inch screen and voila perfect graphics and a good fast card for 3D of course not really gaming.
7) New Xraids (4Gbit Connects here we come).The Apple Fibre Channel Card shipping these days support 4Gb/s links but Xraid stays still at 2Gb/s
8) Mac os X server 10.5.2 with support for the new machines , straight out of the box usability and deployment capability rolled into one.
Relatively wacky things list.
1) Blu-Ray // DVD-HD (though i am perfectly happy with DVD double layers nowadays) , and the DRM schemes on both new standards are UGLY.
2) New Xraids (4Gbit Connects here we come).
3) SSD inclusion capability for scratch disk users , bootcaches have been introduced with 10.5 so i would expect things to heat up rapidly in this department).
4) AppleRaid onboard integration (Well for hardware raid i keep preferring external drives , call me parnaoid).
5) Digital Audio on the portables.
6) Touchscreen Macbook ?
7) Isight update , Isight integration in screen all across the board?
Unlikely things (NOT LIKELY):
1) Bios support for video cards (too many vendors , insecure and let us face it 99.999999 percent of mac users dont want EVER to see that BIOS screen again).
2) Windows becoming secure.
3) DirectX support on mac os X.
4) Steve Balmer wearing a turtleneck. see picture what that would do to the turtleneck ... (soaky).
MacBidouille suggests that the reason MacPros will only be released on 15 January is that Apple was waiting for Intel's new development tools (released last week) and is now partly rewriting Leopard to benefit from SSE4 instructions. They say that 10.5.2 will be the most important intermediary update ever for MacOS.
Mac Pros will be available immediately after the keynote.
They will all have 8 cores (up to 3.2GHz)
New video cards (incl. latest Quadro FX)
Blu-Ray as BTO
DVD Studio Pro will be updated to work with BR and will change name (maybe Disk Studio Pro, but they are not sure)
They are not sure whether iMacs and MacBook Pros Penryn will be announced at the same time, but they wouldn't be available immediately.
Apple might also launch some Xserve "Ultra" with Itanium 2 processors.
They consider their source to be close to 100% reliable but couldn't cross-check the information with another source, so they keep this as rumours.
Not much we couldn't guess by ourselves but it's at least reassuring to see that rumours start to appear.
I've got my hopes up this is a rumor that will come true. Everything about it is believable and logical except for the Xserve "Ultra" Itanium 2 processors part. That part is quickly refuted by experts at MacRumors.
Most of us believe that the mobile Penryn won't be shipping in sufficient quantity for the whole mobile & iMac line to be refreshed in January. And it looks like the sub-compact MacBook Pro will be the mobile star. So that leaves our beloved All 8 Core Mac Pro to steal the show among those who seek maximum power in 2008.
Looks like we're down to the last 40 days now folks.
I've got my hopes up this is a rumor that will come true. Everything about it is believable and logical except for the Xserve "Ultra" Itanium 2 processors part.
That does seem pretty dumb. Is it a gullibility test? There is always some chance of something odd like that happening, I'd just peg it as extremely unlikely, unless maybe Intel just pays the entire cost of developing it.
Apple's video card choices suck, plain and simple. Not only are the video cards in the iMacs underpowered, they have been isolated as the main reason for the freezing issue. I think the MBP got a decent break with the 8600gt, but it is by no means a screamer. The mini has older-than-dirt integrated GMA950, and the Mac Pro's video cards are almost three years old in some cases.
The base video card in the Mac Pro (nVidia 7300GT) is 17 months old and pathetically underpowered. It's like putting a 2-cylinder engine in a Mustang.
The x1900xt in the Mac Pro will be three years old this coming January. Some people had to have their cards replaced due to artifacting. Apple had Foxconn produce a revision 2 of the card that supposedly cut down on the artifacting.
The Quadro FX 4500 is about two and a half years old (July 05) and has been superseded by several generations of professional-level graphics.
Apple prefers cards that are quiet, and in doing so have and will regularly de-tune the cards to lower clock speeds so that fan speed can be kept to a minimum. Apple never takes into account graphics performance, or anything related to gaming, because quite frankly, His Steveness doesn't want you playing games on your Mac. He wants you to make edible garbage with iMovie 08 and post it to YouTube.
Pouring salt in the wound, Apple charges outrageous prices for these video cards, when you build-to-order. Want to add a second 7300GT to your Mac Pro?? It will cost you $150.00, when it can be purchased RETAIL for $50.00 or less. How about the x1900xt?? $400.00 for that card, where (if you can even find it anymore) it costs $150 or less. Consider this: an nVidia 8800GTS that would literally spank the x1800xt costs about $250.00. So for an extra $150.00 you can have a three year old card.
They could have done so much better on the video card options in the iMac, but they wanted high margins and low noise. And they could have at least updated the Mac Pro's at least ONCE since its inception a year and three months ago. The Mac Pro has been virtually untouched since its inception.
Apple has no grasp of video card technology, given their long history of poorly-performing and absurdly expensive graphics card choices.
That's incredible. Intel must be sandbagging on the Penryn. ... Shouldn't we really be at 4 gig by now anyhow? The design of the cpu is much better and the process is much smaller and efficient...
...so how come speed grades which are essentially the same as the last generation?
The high rate demo was no doubt a hand-picked chip, and it hasn't been running all that long. At 45nm and below issues of longevity are going to become serious, and running at high power/heat levels will impact chip lifetime in a major way. I expect that Intel is getting some small yield of chips that run crazy fast, and they are probably sandbagging a bit because they want to maximize their yields (and thus profits). That will leave them in a position 6-12 months from now to ramp the clock rates, as long as they are confident that their next generation processors won't force them to drop back down again.
Comments
After macworld would be insanity... The mac pro specs haven't been touched since August 2006... Why wouldn't they announce it at MacWorld if it's ready? It's free Press.
It's already insanity going this long. But if they have lots of consumer announcements, don't hold your breath. Sorry, I choose to be pessimistic at this point.
You're right, it is insanity they have gone this long. I personally don't get it. They HAVE the cpus. What else is there to wait for? Graphics cards? Motherboards? If dell has the motherboards I'm sure apple does too. All I can think of is graphics.
Don't gotta apologize. It's all speculation. Apple could announce any day, any time they want. They have done it many many times in the past.
You're right, it is insanity they have gone this long. I personally don't get it. They HAVE the cpus. What else is there to wait for? Graphics cards? Motherboards? If dell has the motherboards I'm sure apple does too. All I can think of is graphics.
I used to go to keynotes and had my hopes dashed many a time where pro stuff is concerned, so I don't always go to MacWorld anymore either. They are pretty much consumer events, and consumer products are what generate buzz in the news, and gets Steve the CNN interviews. The pro stuff just doesn't get that interest. Look at other new pro PCs--they rarely make it beyond the trade media outlets. The only way, is if it is some revolutionary new technology not appearing in any of the other consumer lines debuts (in the same way as the multi-touch technology for the iPhone). Also, they did release the MacBook Pro there last year, but it got the new Intel chips for the first time, and featured drop sensors and MagSafe for the powercord--that all fits the 'innovative new technology' paradigm.
Good question. Maybe they're waiting for enough high-end chips from Intel? They know there will be a mad rush as soon as they are released, and they don't want people waiting months for new systems.
At the keynote, they'll also have an announcement of more iPod integration, like in airplanes or with AppleTV--they've already done cars+iPods, so that won't be mentioned. Maybe some new partnerships, much like the recent one with Starbucks for wifiTunes.
Here are past announcements, so you can see the trend...
http://macs.about.com/b/2004/01/06/n...world-2004.htm
iPod mini
GarageBand
XServe G5
iLife '04
Final Cut Express 2
XServe RAID
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/articles/2005/01/mwsf
iPod shuffle
Mac mini
iWork ’05
Keynote
Pages
Final Cut Express HD
iLife ’05
iPhoto
iMovie HD
iDVD
GarageBand
iTunes
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/articles/2006/01/mwsf
MacBook Pro
iMac
iWork ’06
Keynote 3
Pages 2
iPod Radio Remote
iLife ’06
iPhoto 6
iWeb
iMovie 6
iDVD 6
GarageBand 3
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/articles/2007/01/mwsf
iPhone
Apple TV
AirPort Extreme
Unless Apple has under it's sleeve a bunch of announcements already in place for MWSF, I can't see the MacPro without being upgrade pass middle of January 08.
If dell has the motherboards I'm sure apple does too. All I can think of is graphics.
Out of curiosity, I spec'd out a Dell T7400 with dual 3.2GHz Penryns (without fancy graphics or optical drive options) and saw what Dell is calling a "preliminary ship date" of January 7, 2008. While Dell has them on their website, it doesn't look like anyone can even get one right now. Maybe Apple is waiting to have actual volume of Penryn Xeons on-hand before they announce a new Mac Pro?
I can't help myself, but I actually like the new iMacs.
I do like the alu iMac. I would love to have Penryns and the new AMD/Ati GPUs in them though...
It would pack a bit more gpu punch that way. Quad core isn't essential for most apps.
But 3D and Final Cut may get the extra core quad boost. Quad core isn't quite mainstream yet. So...maybe by the time it is...the iMac may go quad corelaptop cpu by mid 2008. Just in time. Because I can see alot of PC consumer towers being quad core by then!!!
I just think with Apple's marketshare of Macs at 2million per quarter and rising...another laptop and desktop move may be imminent to round off their offerings. There isn't quite enough choice of desktops at the moment. It's worth noting that Apple has a greater range of iPods than they do Mac desktops.
Lemon Bon Bon.
assumed
Well, Dell are just doing what Apple used to do. 'Announce'...and wait months before shipping! ')
Which...is kind of annoying. It grabs headlines...but it's no better than Apple keeping its cards close to its vest/chest...
There's a shed load of conroe and Xeon cpu options...and it seems silly not expand the Mac Pro product range to cover them...especially when some of the Conroe quads are dirt cheap.
Why force us to pay for Xeon chips when Conroe chips would give us most of the bang for a much, much cheaper price?
Lemon Bon Bon.
The new Dell's use the same 667mhz ECC FB-Dimms... unless you get the fastest cpu which upgrades the ram to 800mhz. I don't understand why intel forces these chipsets to use ECC ram. Expensive, Slow, ECC ram. Desktop ram is DDR3 and approaching 1800mhz (granted a cas latency of 6 and 7 but who needs a fast latency when you have that fast of a bandwidth?). So in essence the ram Mac Pros use haven't changed since 2006... maybe Nehalem is where everything will change. I'm so tired of looking to the next technology. Seems things don't change as fast as they used to.
Very interesting, I guess I just assumed they were shipping. What about the lower model? Same thing?
The Dell T5400 w/the quad-core E5405's aren't available until December 19th... same thing for the higher-end X5460's... so while they're selling them, they're not shipping any... so at least we have a little less to grumble about
The new Dell's use the same 667mhz ECC FB-Dimms... unless you get the fastest cpu which upgrades the ram to 800mhz. I don't understand why intel forces these chipsets to use ECC ram. Expensive, Slow, ECC ram. Desktop ram is DDR3 and approaching 1800mhz (granted a cas latency of 6 and 7 but who needs a fast latency when you have that fast of a bandwidth?).
Workstations generally need the ECC for better data integrity. Buffered memory is necessary to support more memory chips per channel. It just goes with the market, on the up side, workstations are usually incredibly stable, at least in my experience. I gave up consumer desktops for workstations in '97 and really hadn't looked back since.
It may well be that 1.8GHz memory is just a gimmick, I don't know.
If you're saying apple is going to wait until NAB or "photo shows" I highly disagree. The next event after MWSF is usually in March or April. Apple can't go that long without releasing. Apple has updated these machines on normal days in the passed, but I don't see any reason for apple to release these machines between now and MWSF... and I can't imagine they go much passed MWSF.
I'm just saying that MWSF is usually unlikely. Apple did go until a week or two before NAB to release the Octos, even though they could have done many months earlier, just not with the high-watt 3.0 chips.
I think Apple has updated the pro units away from any event though.
Is there nothing in December? I don't keep track of some of those shows.
I just found that NAMM'08 and MWSF'08 overlap in mid-January, so in a way, I guess I do agree now, you might see a January announcement. Given that Dell can't ship their machines until Jan, that may be the time. Apple doesn't seem to announce or ship until there is actual supply available to them. I think some pro hardware updates were done in conjunction with at least one NAMM, that's also when Apple tends to update Logic.
Apple doesn't seem to announce or ship until there is actual supply available to them. I think some pro hardware updates were done in conjunction with at least one NAMM, that's also when Apple tends to update Logic.
Up until a few years ago that statement was completely false. They were known for pre-announcing products much like dell did yesterday. G4's, G5's, XServes etc. Now you'll always catch steve saying "these are shipping today"... because apple had such a poor history of shipping WAY later (months) after the announcement. I wish they would bring back MWNY and schedule it around Sept / Oct. So then you'd have... MWSF in Jan, WWDC in May / June, MWNY in Sept. Only problem with that is MWParis is around Sept usually.
When I ordered my Quad G5 it took almost 2 months to get the machine. I am glad they are waiting to announce it now because the past shipping nightmares.
MacPro come soon, Please!!!!!!!!!!
What can we expect from apple at MacWorld in terms of new Macpros would be around this line .
4 Core and 8 Core MacPros.
Why 4 Core being kept ?
1) Not all Applications can thread. (4D , Filemaker).
2) Apple neeeds a cheap entry point for desktop servers. 4 cores is more than enough to run mac os X server , though this may be wrong. but basicly you dont need every desktop in a company to be a full blown server rig.
What we can expect on the coming months as far as the MacPro might be concerned.
1) Faster FSB.
2) Better Memory bandwith , better EEC should do the trick in my humble opinion.
(EEC ram is slow but its is a Server centered machine , reliability matters heavily here DDR3 has its faults and when it fails you face a hardware crash AND it is mainly dual channel to support 8 Cores you would need Quad Channel and suprisingly well no one is proposing such rams , they sure propose quad channel DDR2 and nothing comes to mind in 64bit addressing with those things) . I am sorry for gamers out there but DDR3 bearing MacPros are relatively unlikely , bear as well in mind that MacPros can take up to 32GB of ram , that HAS to fit your needs NO ? )
3) New chipsets from intel. SLI support may be delaying here so i am wondering if we will see SLI support on the MacPro.
4) More PCie lanes than we currently have. (Sporting a smalltree ethernet card a Quadro and a 4GB fibre channel card outspaces the Pcie lanes you have to chose to take one card below its par capabilities).
5) New Cinema Displays (34 inch would be nice in something around 3k by 2k).
6) New graphics cards (though i am very happy with my Nvidia 4500). I tied it to a 30inch screen and voila perfect graphics and a good fast card for 3D of course not really gaming.
7) New Xraids (4Gbit Connects here we come).The Apple Fibre Channel Card shipping these days support 4Gb/s links but Xraid stays still at 2Gb/s
8) Mac os X server 10.5.2 with support for the new machines , straight out of the box usability and deployment capability rolled into one.
Relatively wacky things list.
1) Blu-Ray // DVD-HD (though i am perfectly happy with DVD double layers nowadays) , and the DRM schemes on both new standards are UGLY.
2) New Xraids (4Gbit Connects here we come).
3) SSD inclusion capability for scratch disk users , bootcaches have been introduced with 10.5 so i would expect things to heat up rapidly in this department).
4) AppleRaid onboard integration (Well for hardware raid i keep preferring external drives , call me parnaoid).
5) Digital Audio on the portables.
6) Touchscreen Macbook ?
7) Isight update , Isight integration in screen all across the board?
Unlikely things (NOT LIKELY):
1) Bios support for video cards (too many vendors , insecure and let us face it 99.999999 percent of mac users dont want EVER to see that BIOS screen again).
2) Windows becoming secure.
3) DirectX support on mac os X.
4) Steve Balmer wearing a turtleneck. see picture what that would do to the turtleneck ... (soaky).
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/9050/
5) Zune becoming popular (i have to get generic to point how unlikely previous events are).
Add your own.
Some of these are not prioritized at all but if the MacPro is to evolve some of this might be worth considering.
MacBidouille suggests that the reason MacPros will only be released on 15 January is that Apple was waiting for Intel's new development tools (released last week) and is now partly rewriting Leopard to benefit from SSE4 instructions. They say that 10.5.2 will be the most important intermediary update ever for MacOS.
- Mac Pros will be available immediately after the keynote.
- They will all have 8 cores (up to 3.2GHz)
- New video cards (incl. latest Quadro FX)
- Blu-Ray as BTO
- DVD Studio Pro will be updated to work with BR and will change name (maybe Disk Studio Pro, but they are not sure)
They are not sure whether iMacs and MacBook Pros Penryn will be announced at the same time, but they wouldn't be available immediately.Apple might also launch some Xserve "Ultra" with Itanium 2 processors.
They consider their source to be close to 100% reliable but couldn't cross-check the information with another source, so they keep this as rumours.
The article is here, in French: http://www.macbidouille.com/news/2007-12-05/#15426
Not much we couldn't guess by ourselves but it's at least reassuring to see that rumours start to appear.
I've got my hopes up this is a rumor that will come true. Everything about it is believable and logical except for the Xserve "Ultra" Itanium 2 processors part. That part is quickly refuted by experts at MacRumors.
Most of us believe that the mobile Penryn won't be shipping in sufficient quantity for the whole mobile & iMac line to be refreshed in January. And it looks like the sub-compact MacBook Pro will be the mobile star. So that leaves our beloved All 8 Core Mac Pro to steal the show among those who seek maximum power in 2008.
Looks like we're down to the last 40 days now folks.
I've got my hopes up this is a rumor that will come true. Everything about it is believable and logical except for the Xserve "Ultra" Itanium 2 processors part.
That does seem pretty dumb. Is it a gullibility test? There is always some chance of something odd like that happening, I'd just peg it as extremely unlikely, unless maybe Intel just pays the entire cost of developing it.
Because Mac Video Cards are HORRIBLE...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Apple's video card choices suck, plain and simple. Not only are the video cards in the iMacs underpowered, they have been isolated as the main reason for the freezing issue. I think the MBP got a decent break with the 8600gt, but it is by no means a screamer. The mini has older-than-dirt integrated GMA950, and the Mac Pro's video cards are almost three years old in some cases.
The base video card in the Mac Pro (nVidia 7300GT) is 17 months old and pathetically underpowered. It's like putting a 2-cylinder engine in a Mustang.
The x1900xt in the Mac Pro will be three years old this coming January. Some people had to have their cards replaced due to artifacting. Apple had Foxconn produce a revision 2 of the card that supposedly cut down on the artifacting.
The Quadro FX 4500 is about two and a half years old (July 05) and has been superseded by several generations of professional-level graphics.
Apple prefers cards that are quiet, and in doing so have and will regularly de-tune the cards to lower clock speeds so that fan speed can be kept to a minimum. Apple never takes into account graphics performance, or anything related to gaming, because quite frankly, His Steveness doesn't want you playing games on your Mac. He wants you to make edible garbage with iMovie 08 and post it to YouTube.
Pouring salt in the wound, Apple charges outrageous prices for these video cards, when you build-to-order. Want to add a second 7300GT to your Mac Pro?? It will cost you $150.00, when it can be purchased RETAIL for $50.00 or less. How about the x1900xt?? $400.00 for that card, where (if you can even find it anymore) it costs $150 or less. Consider this: an nVidia 8800GTS that would literally spank the x1800xt costs about $250.00. So for an extra $150.00 you can have a three year old card.
They could have done so much better on the video card options in the iMac, but they wanted high margins and low noise. And they could have at least updated the Mac Pro's at least ONCE since its inception a year and three months ago. The Mac Pro has been virtually untouched since its inception.
Apple has no grasp of video card technology, given their long history of poorly-performing and absurdly expensive graphics card choices.
Now, that's what you call a beating, my friend.
Lemon Bon Bon.
Stinging criticism indeed. I just wish I could take credit for this excellent Macrumors forum post...
Lemon Bon Bon.
That's incredible. Intel must be sandbagging on the Penryn. ... Shouldn't we really be at 4 gig by now anyhow? The design of the cpu is much better and the process is much smaller and efficient...
...so how come speed grades which are essentially the same as the last generation?
The high rate demo was no doubt a hand-picked chip, and it hasn't been running all that long. At 45nm and below issues of longevity are going to become serious, and running at high power/heat levels will impact chip lifetime in a major way. I expect that Intel is getting some small yield of chips that run crazy fast, and they are probably sandbagging a bit because they want to maximize their yields (and thus profits). That will leave them in a position 6-12 months from now to ramp the clock rates, as long as they are confident that their next generation processors won't force them to drop back down again.