Comments on: Next for Apple: Mac Pros and Xserves based on Intel Core i7

By: admin

admin — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:17:40 +0000

Watch for a “founder’s column” about this topic before the end of the week…..and see our team’s Twitter feeds (starting with @MacOSRumors) for somewhat more detail on that.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:14:20 +0000

So ‘admin’ – do you still stand by all of this? Considering new mac pro’s were released just a few days ago (early march) and have no cosmetic changes like you describe…

By: OS X 10.5.7 nearing beta phase; focuses on hardware support (new Macs) & bug fixes | Mac OS Rumors

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 10:01:54 +0000

[...] “Gainestown” Core i7 Xeon based Mac Pro & Xserve shipping around the end of March (additional details), and the next generation Macbook family (all three models including Air & Pro) which will [...]

By: admin

admin — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:12:20 +0000

Yes indeed -- we're working on exactly that as we speak, in fact! You can see special behind the scenes updates about such things, like what article(s) we are currently working on, simply by following our Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/macosrumors You can also follow our founder, Ryan Meader, who posts some relevant tweets to his feed as well: http://twitter.com/dalaixerces We will have a page here on the site soon that will list relevant tweets from staff and others (readers, etc), but for now they can be found on Twitter itself.

By: Setmose

Setmose — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 10:54:21 +0000

Ok, 3 weeks since this Jan 9 rumor. Any follow up from the “editors” involved?

By: SurgeFilter

SurgeFilter — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:37:30 +0000

I always wondered if anybody has updated their original Xeon quad in their original MacPro to something faster by pulling the processors and inserting newer models e.g. pulling an original 4-core to an 8-core for example.

Just wondering if it’ll be possible for original 4-core owners to do this with faster Core i7′s in the future (obviously after Snow Leopard is out)?

By: Francesco

Francesco — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:59:40 +0000

March!?!?! Too late for me!

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 08:29:59 +0000

Apple has always used Xeons for the MacPros since the switch to Intel. If Intel keeps to its roll out schedule, Core i7 Xeons are due in latter March? Doesn’t Apple plan to replace the Penryn Xeons with the Nehalem (Core i7) Xeons in its upcoming MacPros?

By: Francesco

Francesco — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:10:21 +0000

Hi, I’m waiting for the my first Mac, the new MacPro!
But…the release date?

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 05:10:24 +0000

I’ll definitely hold out buying my new Mac for this computer. When can we hope to see it hit the street???

By: Robin Giltner

Robin Giltner — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 12:32:36 +0000

Are these new Mac Pro’s based on the existing Nehalem processors, or are they based on the as-yet-unreleased Gainsfield line of Nehalem processors ?

By: admin

admin — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 09:10:44 +0000

Coming up very soon; we’re working on that very thing as we speak and the West Coast team has some really great source phone calls for us to catch up on this weekend. Pretty heavy dirt and a lot of Nehalem benchmarks from the developers/testers themselves, we hope.

By: Brendan Falkowski

Brendan Falkowski — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:12:21 +0000

I’m starving for a new Mac Pro to run Aperture. Could you please throw in some benchmarks for the app? Also, you said black+silver but didn’t say if it was ugly or pretty…

By: Barton

Barton — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:10:30 +0000

If this info is indeed reliable, then it would warrant a few extra weeks added to my Mac Pro purchase hold up.

Please, keep me up with ANY reliable news in the upcoming weeks as I’m eager to know about an imminent release date of the much anticipated Mac update.

Thanks

By: admin

admin — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 08:07:35 +0000

Great question, Chark! We hope to be far more active in these moderated comments sections in the future, and hope that readers will take the opportunity to do things like ask questions like this one.

To answer, it, yes, we were working with a build of which is after 10.5.6 but isn’t fully integrated into the 10.5.7 build tree either. From what we hear, a significant part of 10.5.7 will be drivers, hardware support and processor/platform optimizations centered around Nehalem — remember, Core i7 starts on the desktop but will also reach into the laptop space soon as well with dual and even quad-core, single-chip designs that also sport the triple-channel, DDR3-1066 based architecture which makes Core i7 so powerful.

We’re playing with a “late alpha” quality build of Snow Leopard (10.6) and although it will be a few more days before we get more hands-on time with that silver-and-black Nehalem beast of a Mac Pro prototype, we’re hoping to bring the two together as soon as possible to do comparative benchmarks. Precise numbers will probably get embargoed until closer to the announcement date (roughly six weeks out, if memory serves, though that could shift either way depending on cost and availability ramping curves from Intel), but stopwatch/ballpark results ought to be available in a week or two at the outside with any luck.

In short…..yes, we are working with what is basically 10.5.6 plus a basic set of Nehalem optimizations. Grand Central, which is at the heart of Snow Leopard, does a far better job we’re told and comes pretty close, even in its present form, to the most optimized system in existence for Core i7 according to sources at Intel and Infinite Loop. So we would expect considerable improvements indeed out of 10.6.