Monthly Archives: February 2009

By Staff | Published: February 27, 2009

Mac OS X 10.5.7 enters beta; broadly seeded to devs

As Rumors has recently reported, the development of Mac OS X 10.5.7 has been proceeding at a slow but steady pace…and in the past few days, has crossed over into “beta” status with a new build that has been seeded to the full developer community.

Seeded to devs in a full distribution Apple Developer Connection (ADC) release earlier this week, Mac OS X 10.5.7 build 9J22 weighs in at a hefty 400MB (770MB for “Combo” version) and continues to grow in size at a blistering pace — particularly given the relatively small number of builds that have been made of 10.5.7 to date (a mere 22, apparently).

As usual, the OS X Server variant of the 10.5.7 package will be significantly larger and is expected to end up close to a full gigabyte in its Combo version. Read more

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Posted in Apple Software | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Response
By Staff | Published: February 22, 2009

Real or fake, the case of the 5 (USB) port Mini

Now that Macworld 2009 has come and gone with no Mini, rumor sites and Mini lovers have been waiting patiently (or not) for some news on the new Mini. What will it look like? Will it adopt a new style to match the iMac and Unibody Macbook lines? Previous rumors about the Mini included talk of dual monitor ports (one Mini DVI and one Mini DisplayPort), a removed optical drive, no firewire (ala Unibody Macbook), 2 internal hard drives, and a complete merging of the Mini with the AppleTV. We previously covered these details and speculation on Apples plans.

In the past few days some details, a picture and a short video have surfaced that appear to show a Mini with the old style, the aluminum sides with the plastic top, sporting 5 USB ports, 2 video ports, Firewire 800, and an optical drive slot, but otherwise no major changes. Read more

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Posted in Apple Hardware | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Responses
By Staff | Published: February 11, 2009

Will my GPU be fully supported by Snow Leopard’s OpenCL?

According to reliable sources, if you own an Intel Mac other than the Mini or an original Macbook — either of which shipped with Intel’s GMA950 integrated GPU — then you are already good to go for support of the full range of OpenCL acceleration features.

If you have a Mac with the Intel GMA950, then you will get most of the benefits of OpenCL though the performance level of those functions will be significantly lessened due to the lack of dedicated graphics RAM and absence of support for many programmable GPU features that exist in other chips/cards going back to the ATi X1000 series.

To get that full support, GPUs as “old” as the ATi X1600, X1800 and X1900 (the latter of which was available for PowerMac G5s with PCI Express slots, based on the PowerPC 970MP dual-core processor while the former shipped in early Intel iMacs and its X1600M cousins in Macbook Pros) will do the job….but certain nVIDIA cards from the GeForce 7000 series, which shipped in iMacs and PowerMacs during the G5 era, most likely will not. Read more

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By Staff | Published: February 10, 2009

Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” – First Sneak Peek

Even as Mac OS Rumors worked to prepare our first in-depth look at developmental “alpha” stage builds of Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” earlier this week…the first builds (10A250 and later) seeded to third-party developers in quite some time and the first to be nearly feature-complete hit the grapevine like a shock wave. We have modified this first Sneak Peek to incorporate some of these reports, notably on the most recent 10A261 seed, and will be posting smaller more frequent Snow Leopard updates in the days ahead.

To begin with, let’s review the straightforward nature of Snow Leopard’s mission: eschewing “innovation” at the user level for primarily under-the-hood upgrades, Snow Leopard is a one-year project that Apple has embarked on to catch up with its backlog of ambitious architectural and technological plans for the Mac OS X operating system. Read more

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Posted in Apple Software, Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 16 Responses
By Staff | Published: February 4, 2009

Will new iDevice features (Flash, multitasking) premiere first on Pro devices?

Recently, Rumors was among the first to report on references to an “iPhone 2,1” in last week’s v2.2.1 iDevice OS firmware release, and suggest that this was almost certainly the forthcoming iPhone Pro. Now, along with emerging suggestions of a corresponding high-end iPod Touch, the grapevine is abuzz with rumors about background tasking, Adobe Flash and other features which may be tied to the powerful new “Pro” iDevice hardware.

These are fast-emerging & -developing rumors which we are monitoring around the clock with the help of our sources and the grapevine at large….so keep a close eye on this site for ongoing posts which will add detail and analysis to these early reports.

That said, in the wake of the exciting early iPhone “2.1” Pro rumors we have been able to talk to our oldest, most reliable sources who have shared with us significant new information. Read more

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By Staff | Published: February 4, 2009

OS X 10.5.7 nearing beta phase; supports new macs, bug fixes

Despite somewhat less hands-on time that we usually like to have in our first sneak-peeks of developmental Apple software — particularly system updates — we are taking a look under the hood of Mac OS X 10.5.7 which is fast approaching the ‘beta’ phase when it will be seeded to third-party developers for testing & feedback. Interestingly, our examinations turned up not just software dirt, but hints of what’s to come for the iMac, Mac Pro & even Macbook Air.

As the introduction and subject-line suggest, the late-alpha builds of Mac OS X 10.5.7 that Rumors has been able to explore through source reports, “batphone” streams, and limited direct hands-on usage by our Silicon Valley team thus far have all brought us to one conclusion. Read more

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Posted in Apple Software | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Responses