Briefly: Dell at Best Buy; Mac Pro and 10.5.2 at Macworld?

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Dell has bolstered its commitment to retail by placing some of its computer line on Best Buy's shelves. Meanwhile, one rumor suggests Apple will both update the Mac Pro at January's Macworld show and release an update to speed up new Intel processors.



Dell computers reach Best Buy



Texas-based PC maker Dell on Thursday said it would throw its hat into the ring at Best Buy, selling a portion of its desktop and notebook lines at 900 stores in the US.



Though Dell first began selling PCs at Wal-Mart and the affiliated Sam's Club chain this summer, the introduction at Best Buy is the first to include models from Dell's top XPS line. Both the XPS M1330 notebook and the XPS One desktop -- meant to target Apple's iMac -- will appear alongside a selection of budget Inspiron portable and tower systems.



The expansion is reportedly a reaction by Dell to poor sales versus HP, which has a stronger retail footing.



Apple is also heavily invested in Best Buy and plans to add 40 more of the stores to its roster of locations carrying store-within-a-store Mac boutiques.



Mac Pro, Leopard performance boost at Macworld?



Apple will kick off the new year with more than just a computer upgrade, according to a rumor from MacBidouille.



The January 15th keynote for IDG's Macworld San Francisco expo will see Mac Pros using new 45-nanometer, quad-core Xeons based on Intel's Penryn architecture, the French outlet reports -- systems which AppleInsider said earlier this year were dependent on Intel's supply of new processors before manufacturing could begin, and which would be available by the early 2008 event. These will clock up to the predicted 3.2GHz and use new video cards, including NVIDIA's latest Quadro FX workstation models.



A Blu-ray drive should also be an option, the site claims.



As significant as these updates may be, the report also cites sources which point to the release of Mac OS X 10.5.2 as being instrumental to the hardware upgrade. Apple software engineers are reworking Leopard code to optimize it for the SSE4 instructions found within Penryn and the architecture as a whole, both of which promise speed gains above and beyond clock speed boosts.



This update will be the most significant interim upgrade for Mac OS X ever made by Apple, according to the rumor.



Apple chief Jobs inducted into California Hall of Fame



Apple headman Steve Jobs was one of 13 luminaries inducted into California's Hall of Fame at an event held Wednesday night.



The Sacramento ceremony placed Jobs in the company of celebrities from diverse backgrounds who were also receiving the award, including actress Elizabeth Taylor and golfer Tiger Woods. Actor and now state governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife Maria Shriver hosted the event.



Jobs was allegedly reluctant to attend the event out of modesty and respect for his family, according to Shriver, who asked that all living recipients attend to qualify for the Hall of Fame position.



"He's trying to balance children, family, business, he doesn't like to be singled out," Shriver says of Jobs. "He believes that Apple is the star of the Silicon Valley, not him."
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 36
    As the crowd chants...



    Steve... Steve... Steve
  • Reply 2 of 36
    ajrajr Posts: 12member
    This is interesting about the Leopard upgrade. A friend of mine purchased a new Macbook at an Apple retail store about three weeks ago. One of the salespeople told her that Apple was going to release a major OSX upgrade in January, and that it was so big that they might actually charge $7 for it. It sounded so odd that I didn't pay it any mind at the time, but after this talk of "the biggest interim upgrade ever," I have to wonder.
  • Reply 3 of 36
    Im curious as to the PPC side of the update? I imagine it will only pertain to bug fixes etc..and not all the optimization as to the Intel side.
  • Reply 4 of 36
    msnlymsnly Posts: 378member
    I hope they fix the disk permissions problem, I haven't been able to get it to run yet.

  • Reply 5 of 36
    bdkennedy1bdkennedy1 Posts: 1,459member
    Somehow I highly doubt that the 10.5.2 interim upgrade will be more significant than the 10.4.4 switch to Intel processors.
  • Reply 6 of 36
    mimicmimic Posts: 72member
    Quote:

    Apple software engineers are reworking Leopard code to optimize it for the SSE4 instructions



    As if SSE4 just came out last week?? I'm really starting to think that Leopard was released months too early. And the notion of charging for this upgrade? HA!
  • Reply 7 of 36
    Congratulations to Steve Jobs, who clearly deserves to be in that crowd.



    That said, Jobs being "...... allegedly reluctant to attend the event out of modesty and respect for his family...." sounds a tad churlish and weird (if true).



    Modesty? Jobs? And, it is not clear what 'respect for family' has to do with taking one evening off to attend an event that seeks to honor you......
  • Reply 8 of 36
    msnlymsnly Posts: 378member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by bdkennedy1 View Post


    Somehow I highly doubt that the 10.5.2 interim upgrade will be more significant than the 10.4.4 switch to Intel processors.



    Agreed



    And about having to pay for it, what about us PPC users? If I have to pay for an upgrade and not get much benefit out of it when I have already payed for 10.5 I won't be a happy camper.



    Just fix Disk Utility Apple, and all the other quirky bugs PLEASE and do it SOON!
  • Reply 9 of 36
    I said it before, I'll wait until 10.5.2 is released before I even consider upgrading to Leopard. Tiger is just too darn stable and mature to upgrade right now...
  • Reply 10 of 36
    ipeonipeon Posts: 1,122member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MiMiC View Post


    I'm really starting to think that Leopard was released months too early.



    It was.



    The first version of OS X that I upgrade to from OS 9 was 10.2. At 10.2 we had everything back to what it was from a functionality point of view.



    With 10.5 it's like going back to some forward Beta in... Hummm, maybe we need to come up with a different definition.
  • Reply 11 of 36
    buddhabuddha Posts: 386member
    Any thoughts on if I'll be able to upgrade my current Mac Pro with one of the new cards? \
  • Reply 12 of 36
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ajr View Post


    This is interesting about the Leopard upgrade. A friend of mine purchased a new Macbook at an Apple retail store about three weeks ago. One of the salespeople told her that Apple was going to release a major OSX upgrade in January, and that it was so big that they might actually charge $7 for it. It sounded so odd that I didn't pay it any mind at the time, but after this talk of "the biggest interim upgrade ever," I have to wonder.



    Wonder about what? Fishy stories?



    Keep in mind that retail is NEVER told about anything in advance.
  • Reply 13 of 36
    Ditto MacRat.



    Chances are that Apple won't charge for software update, but they'll start putting 10.5.2 in the retail boxes instead of 10.5.0, much like they did with the 10.4.3 update. \



    If this does improve performance, it'll be nice. I think I'll wait for 10.5.2 before even thinking about buying Leopard.
  • Reply 14 of 36
    mactelmactel Posts: 1,275member
    It'll be weeks before I get my MacBook so maybe they'll surprise us and release 10.5.2 before Christmas and it will be pre-installed on my order.



    If I recall correctly they've made several 10.x.2 releases in past Decembers.
  • Reply 15 of 36
    asciiascii Posts: 5,936member
    A new Mac Pro and a new small formfactor Macbook Pro would be a pretty good Macworld.



    The rumor about 10.5.2 using the new Intel compiler sounds a bit far fetched to me. I have heard Intel compilers are very efficient compared to GNU and it would make sense to use them from that perspective, but it just seems like it would be too much to distribute for a point update.



    I guess it might be feasible if they just recompiled a few performance critical libraries and the kernel itself.
  • Reply 16 of 36
    dreyfus2dreyfus2 Posts: 1,072member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by bdkennedy1 View Post


    Somehow I highly doubt that the 10.5.2 interim upgrade will be more significant than the 10.4.4 switch to Intel processors.



    Well, not to be smart-assy, but... 10.4.4 Intel was not an upgrade, nobody could get it without buying an Intel Mac - it was an additional version, Tiger has never been Universal, up to and including 10.4.11 there are two distinct versions of every release.



    So, if this rumour has any substance, it could be the most substantial upgrade. Especially if they start moving some apps to 64-bit and/or improve multi-core support with some applications (e.g. even Motion is still not sufficiently addressing more than two cores).
  • Reply 17 of 36
    palegolaspalegolas Posts: 1,361member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ajr View Post


    ... One of the salespeople told her that Apple was going to release a major OSX upgrade in January, and that it was so big ......... but after this talk of "the biggest interim upgrade ever," I have to wonder.



    Perhaps it's the release of Leopard Touch. If the new sub notebooks are touch based they'll need a solid touch interface that differs somewhat from the existing interface. That would be pretty big.
  • Reply 18 of 36
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MiMiC View Post


    As if SSE4 just came out last week?? I'm really starting to think that Leopard was released months too early. And the notion of charging for this upgrade? HA!



    you thought correctly! like Aperture, Leopard was released prematurely. both were still beta-like. both disappointing marketing decisions by apple. would apple like to try for a third?
  • Reply 19 of 36
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,310moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MiMiC View Post


    As if SSE4 just came out last week?? I'm really starting to think that Leopard was released months too early. And the notion of charging for this upgrade? HA!



    Surely it's the new SSE4 instructions that are enabled by Penryn. Maybe there will be less advantage on current machines:



    http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-sse4.html?rel



    "The speedups for HL2 and DivX encoding are impressive, while the speedups for on the other benchmarks are modest but respectable. Penryn as a content creation platform is definitely going to rock the Mac Pro line when it comes out, even if long-time AltiVec hackers still turn their nose up at SSE4."



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by hypoluxa


    Im curious as to the PPC side of the update? I imagine it will only pertain to bug fixes etc..and not all the optimization as to the Intel side.



    Yes, no optimizations for PPC.
  • Reply 20 of 36
    zanshinzanshin Posts: 350member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by danielchow View Post


    you thought correctly! like Aperture, Leopard was released prematurely. both were still beta-like. both disappointing marketing decisions by apple. would apple like to try for a third?



    Since many experienced users refuse to buy into an OS release until it's been "fixed," selling it in an "less-than-perfect" state to those who want it right away not only scores huge amounts of cash influx as a return on the lengthy development investment, but also provides the user base from which the "fixes" stem.



    It would only be a bad Marketing decision if only a few early adopters bought Leopard, immediately panned it as unfit, and sales never took off despite a huge investment in advertising and market research. That hasn't happened; Apple's selling more copies of Leopard every day despite reported glitches and interface disappointments, so the decision to release it when Apple did (which likely rested with Jobs alone) was sound business.



    It should be pretty apparent by now that all software is never in a perfect state, there will always be fixes and updates, and you buy into when you're ready. For that matter, it works that way with buying new models of cars, too.
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