You can either take it as gospel truth or with a pinch of salt, but Mac insider John Gruber, who has been equally right and wrong about upcoming Apple announcements in the past is predicting a bevy of new Apple gear.Apple has released the Mac Pro in two models namely a quad core model and an 8 core model. The quad core Mac Pro sports one 2.66 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 3500 series processor with 8MB of shared L3 cache and 3GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM memory, expandable up to 8GB……
Sure, we’ve been hearing whispers that Apple’s got a new Mac Pros and some updated iMacs waiting in the wings, but our friend John Gruber at Daring Fireball seems just a mite more confident about things — in a post trumpeting the return of his podcast The Talk Show, John coyly says tomorrow “might hypothetically” bring new Mac Pros, speedbumped iMacs (we’d guess the Core i3 will make its OS X debut), and a new 27-inch 16:9 Cinema Display will all arrive tomorrow.
As for the 8-core Mac Pro, it is packed with two 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5500 series processors with 8MB of shared L3 cache per processor and 6GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM memory, expandable up to 32GB. The Mac Pro models are accessorized with a Mighty Mouse and the Apple Keyboard that includes a numerical keypad.
All Mac Pro systems now feature the Nvidia GeForce GT 120 graphics with 512MB of GDDR3 memory, 640GB Serial ATA 3GB/s hard drive running at 7200 rpm, 18x SuperDrive with double-layer support and Mini DisplayPort and DVI (dual-link) for video output with adapters sold separately. The systems also wrap in 4 PCI Express 2.0 slots, 5 USB 2.0 ports, 4 FireWire 800 ports and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR.
With 4 direct-attach cable-free hard drive carriers, the systems allow the installation of up to 4TB of internal storage via 1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA drives. The Mac Pro also includes an optional cable-free Mac Pro RAID card. Delivering performance up to 550MB/s, the card allows setting up the four internal drive bays in RAID 0, 1, 5, or 0+1 configurations.
Based on the Leopard OS, the Mac Pro systems are also early adopters of the stringent Energy Star 5.0 requirements. The OS ensures the computer systems are loaded with the features like Time Machine, revamped Finder, Quick Look, Spaces, Mail, iChat and the iLife 09 suite of applications.
If you’re not familiar with the Mac Pro, it is the only traditional tower computer that Apple makes and features highly sought after features that have professionally content creators drooling. These features include up to 32GB of RAM, up to 8 terabytes of hard drive space and 4 PCI Express slots. Unfortunately, like I mentioned above, the hardware has not seen a substantial update for some time. Although, rumors of an updated version have emerged at various times including right around this year’s WWDC 10 where Apple came forth to announce the new iPhone 4.
The Mac Pro, iMac and Cinema Displays all sound good but I’m still undecided about the Trackpad. Would consumers really take to controlling their desktop computers the same way they do their laptops or should the pointing device be solely used for portable applications.
John also says the Magic Trackpad might also arrive tomorrow, but he’s calling that one a “double-hypothetical,” so who knows — we’d think anything more serious than hardware refreshes would warrant a Jobs introduction, but hey, maybe Steve’s all talked out for the month. We’ll see what happens — stay tuned.
Resources:techshout.com,nexus404.com,engadget.com
