Mac OS 10.5.2, Mac Pro Update At Macworld?

[darthraige]

If there is a bug in the Penryn chips, that pushes the MAc Pro update back a month or so, many people will not only be peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee'd off, but will then start to think about waiting for Nehalem.

You know how bad I am in need of a MacPro. I will get the Penryn MacPro if it's available on or before January 15th. I can not wait any longer. If a report does come out saying the MacPros are delayed, I buy Woodcrest, unless Apple apologizes for this long MacPro wait and drops the price on the 8-Core Clovertown this month. Hopefully that's what will happen to clear out stock.

 

[richi3]

All this and not to mention that HD DVD is winning the hardware war. I mean damn, did you see that Wally World had limited quantities of HD DVD players on sale for $99! Also, from what I can see a lot of studios have moved away from blu-ray exclusive releases. Even the ones that do do blu-ray only releases in the US often release the same movie in HD format overseas.

You really need to check some facts and not make assumptions:

On the high-def front, however, software sales for the Blu-ray Disc format dominated those of HD-DVD on the biggest shopping day of the year. According to Nielsen VideoScan First Alert numbers, for the week of 11/19 to 11/25 (Monday to Sunday), Blu-ray held a commanding 72.6% share of high-def software sales compared to HD-DVD's 27.4% That's very nearly a 3 to 1 margin, and it comes in spite of a strong surge in HD-DVD player sales in the wake of Toshiba's recent discounting.

According to Black Friday numbers, when adding in 360 addon HD drives for HD-DVD and PS3 for Blu-ray, you have 750,000 HD DVD players sold and 2.2 million BD players.

Another edit for up-to-date numbers:

Meanwhile, the Blu-ray Disc Association is now reporting that their hardware numbers have passed the 2.7 million mark in North America (through 11/24), in the wake of strong Black Friday sales.

I'm not saying BD has won yet, either but to claim HD has won is very silly (also BD is outselling HD in Europe over 3:1 currently).

Edit: Also, Apple is on the BD group so when they start adding in BD drives, that'll help out BD, too. Of course, MS is pushing HD.

 

[V.K.]

If a report does come out saying the MacPros are delayed, I buy Woodcrest, unless Apple apologizes for this long MacPro wait and drops the price on the 8-Core Clovertown this month. Hopefully that's what will happen to clear out stock.

Have they EVER done that before?
The fact that they haven't once lowered the price on the clearly outdated current offering doesn't make me very optimistic...

 

[richi3]

Apple clearly hates both and would prefer to have downloads and internet content.

Where do you get this?

Blu-ray Disc has gained a large amount of support in the corporate world, with companies such as Apple, Dell, and Panasonic backing it.

Apple (and Disney) are big supporters of Blu-ray and Apple, afaik, is on the Blu-ray board of directors: http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/03/10/bluray/index.php

 

[richi3]

Have they EVER done that before?
The fact that they haven't once lowered the price on the clearly outdated current offering doesn't make me very optimistic...

I think you have the wrong name in the quote there?

 

[BWhaler]

Forget the hardware.

If this is true, which I doubt, but if it is, the best news is the huge upgrade to Leopard.

It's not the bugs, although there are truck loads of them which need fixing.

It's the poor design. Spaces just doesn't work in an Apple way.

My hope is Apple leadership is using Leopard now full time and they see the problems with it.

I hope the .2 release is the Leopard we should have seen at launch. It can still have bugs, but fix the big nasty ones and make things like Spaces usable.

 

[KiraDouji]

It's the poor design. Spaces just doesn't work in an Apple way.

... Explain?

- Kira

 

[V.K.]

... Explain?

- Kira

I think he probably means this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=M57JGvWOlCg

 

[ilogic]

So does it mean we're all going blu-ray??

 

[richi3]

So does it mean we're all going blu-ray??

Hopefully

 

[zedsdead]

Where do you get this?



Apple (and Disney) are big supporters of Blu-ray and Apple, afaik, is on the Blu-ray board of directors: http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/03/10/bluray/index.php

If you watched the Keynote for the iMac/iLife '08 release, it was clear that Jobs was trying to diminish the need for DVD. Yes Apple in on the Blu-Ray board, but they also support HD DVD (which already exists in DVD Studio Pro)...Jobs was clearly pushing his Pseudo HD "Large" (960x540) resolution big time. The format war is not something Apple wants to get involved with or they would have jumped in already. Also, iTunes and the Apple TV also support Apple moving towards HD Downloads in the future. Apple has a vested interested in downloading content vs. DVD's.

Of course, when it comes to dvd authoring, the Mac Pro's market is indie filmmakers and the like, so it is important to many of them...I do expect a Blu-Ray option/burner soon, but Apple may do the smart thing and support both.

 

[poundsmack]

I would like to clear up a few things with regaurds to compilers and Xcode and what not. But instead of typing it all out I will just do this

http://www.intel.com/cd/software/products/asmo-na/eng/compilers/266992.htm

and for what its worth it is almost 100% certain the the Intel version of OSX will be compiled frmo here on out with Intels official compiler. as a software developer i can say full well that the difference in spead from my compiled apps from Intel's to the GCC is a big preformance gain using the newly released C++ comiler from Intel.

 

[richi3]

I would like to clear up a few things with regaurds to compilers and Xcode and what not. But instead of typing it all out I will just do this

http://www.intel.com/cd/software/products/asmo-na/eng/compilers/266992.htm

and for what its worth it is almost 100% certain the the Intel version of OSX will be compiled frmo here on out with Intels official compiler. as a software developer i can say full well that the difference in spead from my compiled apps from Intel's to the GCC is a big preformance gain using the newly released C++ comiler from Intel.

I hope so, too. Intel's compiler has always had a reputation for very fast, efficient binaries.

 

[richi3]

Of course, when it comes to dvd authoring, the Mac Pro's market is indie filmmakers and the like, so it is important to many of them...I do expect a Blu-Ray option/burner soon, but Apple may do the smart thing and support both.

I see what you're saying. I just think 'hate' is too strong of a word especially when they're sitting on one of the format's board. I think they're backing BD but from their point of view they want downloading to be more in the forefront in the long run.

Which might explain BD over HD in their eyes: BD has a stronger foothold for use as a general purpose storage medium for computers.

 

[MacCoaster]

but Mac fanboy sites. The technical community isn't excited (neither disappointed) about SSE4. Most of the new instructions are rather convenience functions, making the life of a hand writing machine programmer somewhat easier. Don't dump your SSE3 machines, yet. From the SSE perspective alone there won't be much difference.

Depends on whom you're ask. There's a new radix-16 divider, so that speeds up a lot of things because a lot of things depend on the divider. That's nice for performance.

Also compiler writers will be happy to write more efficient code for assembling.

One more, the shuffle operation is much faster. It used to take a few cycles, but it's now a single cycle afaik.

Anyone's free to correct me if I'm mistaken.

 

[MacCoaster]

and for what its worth it is almost 100% certain the the Intel version of OSX will be compiled frmo here on out with Intels official compiler.

For many things in Mac OS X that will work, but they do not have an objective-C compiler, so a large portion of Mac OS X won't see this benefit. I wonder if they're working on an objective-C compiler for Apple.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

When I read the original article doesn't it say anything about a Xserver Ultra to be presented during the MacWorld. What it say is this: "According to our sources, Apple might be launching a series of Xserve "Ultra" powered by Itanium 2 in a near future."

That is something rahter plausible, isn't it.

No, it's not plausible. "Possible", yes. "Plausible", no. If Apple had gone with Itanium instead of Core Duo on the original Intel switch, maybe. But Itanium is a completely different instruction set than Core Duo/Core 2 Duo/Xeon. (And Intel has never even made an attempt to make Itanium-family chips low enough power for mobile computers. The "lowest end" they ever even attempted to market it was for high-end workstations. They stopped marketing it as a workstation chip a few years ago, now it is solely a server chip.)

The chips used in everyday PCs, and now in Macs, are "Intel x86" instruction set computers (Intel calls it "IA32".) The latest ones support what is usually called "x86-64", (called "EM64T" or "Intel64" by Intel, and "AMD64" by AMD,) which are just a 64-bit extension to the old x86 instruction set architecture. x86-64 chips are 100% compatible with 32-bit x86. They have to be, since at their core, they are still x86. The actual instruction set is called a "CISC" instruction set, for the way the instruction set itself work; although the actual processors are, deep down, mostly "vaguely RISC", and have been for over a decade, doing internal conversion from the x86 instruction set to their own native "micro-ops". These "native" micro-ops are *NOT* available to programmers, because they can change wildly from one processor generation to the next, based on what Intel learns about how to improve performance.

Itanium on the other hand, is a completely different instruction set. Not at all compatible with x86. It uses the "IA64" instruction set, which is a "VLIW" instruction set. It is so completely different, that when the very first Itanium was released, Intel embedded what was essentially a small Pentium Pro processor in it, for compatibility with x86. It turns out that software emulation (like the old SoftPC or Virtual PC for PowerPC-to-x86; or PearPC or Rosetta for x86-to-PowerPC,) can emulate the x86 instruction set so much better than the little embedded x86 chip, that Intel removed it from the Itanium 2.

This means that Apple would have to develop *ANOTHER* Rosetta-like software to allow an Itanium-based Mac to run Intel-Mac software; and yet another emulator to allow an Itanium-based Mac to run PowerPC software! This is in addition to the raw challenge of compiling OS X for Itanium; which would mark a FOURTH architecture: PowerPC, Intel x86, and ARM (iPhone/iPod touch.) Well, at least they don't have to support 680x0 any more...

 

[Braz0s]

New Mac Pro

I hope they use the new Ati/AMD 38xx class of video cards as an option in the new Mac Pros. They've gotten great reviews in the pc world.

 

[netnothing]

I think he probably means this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=M57JGvWOlCg

That video is awesome. Any idea what build that was from? That IS the way Stacks should work.

C'mon Apple....you can do it.....fix stacks.

-Kevin

 

[netnothing]

If there is a bug in the Penryn chips, that pushes the MAc Pro update back a month or so, many people will not only be peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee'd off, but will then start to think about waiting for Nehalem.

So say the bug pushes the launch back a month, that's mid feb before they come out. Nehalem comes out end of October or the beginning of November.
A third through it's product cylce before being usable.

I thought this sort of thing was the exact reason that Apple switched to Intel in the first place.

Interesting to see if there really is a bug in the Xeon Penryns. I think a Penryn Mac Pro update would be cool...however, I'm really looking towards later in 2008 with Nehalem.

Nehalem sounds like a huge step in the right direction:

From Hardmac.com

Intel Penryn CPUs are not available yet, that information about the future CPU generation is already spreading on the web. The Nehalem will be engraved at 45nm and should be available during H2 2008. It will be true native Quad Core CPUs and not dual Dual Core CPU as today for Xeon Penryn. It will also be the first Intel CPU to integrate the memory controller into the chips to boost performance and even further increase the cache size.

-Kevin

 

[guzhogi]

I really hope Apple updates the Mac Pro. It hasn't been updated at all since it was first announced (except for a hardware RAID option). The xServe & xServe RAID really need to be updated, too. I'd really like to see the RAID be upgraded to SATA and/or SAS. Practically no hard drive comes in parallel ATA now. Seems like everyone is on SATA.

Hopefully, 2008 will bring in new enclosures for everything, too. Everything's in roughly the same enclosure as the PowerPC Mac it replaced. I know, the Mac Pro has 2 optical bays compared to 1 on the Power Mac G5, the iMac is Aluminum now and the MacBook has a chiclet keyboard. But still pretty much the same (on the outside at lest).

 

[ek76]

please please please

let it be true about a new mac pro. I'm currently on a G4 and need to ugrade by 12/19 to meet a new client's demands. I'm thinking about renting a mac pro for a month for $850 because I don't want to feel like a sucker when a new Mac Pro comes out on 1/15. Am I throwing money away? Is it too much of a gamble?? I'm so stressed out this!

 

[paulrbrown7]

let it be true about a new mac pro. I'm currently on a G4 and need to ugrade by 12/19 to meet a new client's demands. I'm thinking about renting a mac pro for a month for $850 because I don't want to feel like a sucker when a new Mac Pro comes out on 1/15. Am I throwing money away? Is it too much of a gamble?? I'm so stressed out this!

Ouch! $850 to rent it for a month? Heck, it seems like it would be worth it to buy one and sell it...

 

[Setmose]

Why People Want an Ultra-Slim Notebook

It's mostly for people who give presentations as a large part of their business routine. Execs these days like to have a notebook open in front of them as they sit around a large table to monitor their email. Makes 'em look like a television news anchor.

I hope there will be some extra innovation worth waiting for in this long delayed update of Mac Pro. There have been some rumors about built-in native Vista capability.

Hot video cards are a must. Big RAM and disk also.

It would be nice to see an upgrade to this case design.

At least this way we get to watch the drama unfold with various blogs and/or video streams from MWSF!

 

[knobsturner]

2+ Years is enough time to do something big for Mac Pro

Apple's Mac Pro line as it sits right now is a 'me - too' computer. The current motherboard design of all PCs and Mac Pros is getting very old.

One thing that might happen:

Putting the graphics card on a pci slot is silly.
----------------------------------------------------

If the graphics chip is socketed on the motherboard, then the graphics bus bottleneck goes away, and all graphics cards have access to all of the RAM on the machine. Running the latest 64 bit 3D game? The graphics card can use 10 Gigs of RAM. With PCI, there is the concept of '16x' bus speed, etc. By putting the graphics chip on the motherboard, you get 'infinite x' - there is no separate bus. With proper dirvers, and a faster bus, you get it all. This is not 'integrated graphics'.

Since AMD has ATI, and Intel's in house graphics never seem to work out that well, it would make sense for NVidia, Apple and Intel to work on a new PC standard - one that would require new graphics drivers, etc. Apple, with its limited number of hardware configurations could make this work.

Also, graphics chips can use a lot of power, and having a huge 70+ watt _card_ sitting on a 20 year old bus just does not make sense.

Silicon Graphics once had a machine designed like this.

Also, see this: It seems that NVidia has a new 'Motherboard GPU' that called MCP79 (or MCP7A-U?)that also supports adding in another pci graphics card that works with Hybrid SLI. http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=42279&page=1

So maybe it will be a NVidia MCP79 on Apple's new Mac Pros? That gives people the option of another graphics card if they just can't get enough.

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