Tag Archives: Macs

By Staff | Published: January 5, 2009

With the first Steve-less Keynote looming….


We have a lot to post tonight and throughout the week as our Macworld San Francisco coverage launches into full swing, so stay tuned! Xerces Media and all of the partners old & new of the Xerces Int’l partnership, now in its 10th year, have many exciting and time-consuming projects in flight even as we ramp up the most extensive and complete coverage machine we have wielded in Mac OS Rumors’ going on fourteen years of dishing out the most exclusive dirt and breaking the most exciting new rumors of Apple’s dramatic resurgence to become the world’s leading technology company by virtually any measure.

Phew! That’s a mouthful, and the past thirteen-plus years have been a roller coaster ride worthy of a book — if not a hefty tome of a novel. Read more

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Posted in Apple Events, Apple Inc. | Also tagged , , , , | 1 Response
By Staff | Published: November 18, 2008

Mac OS X 10.5.6 update may be released within the week

According to reliable sources, OS X 10.5.6 will be released to considerable excitement — well justified, based on our hands-on experiences with the update that will be posted shortly — within the next few days. Details to follow. Read more

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Posted in Apple Software | Also tagged , , , , | 3 Responses
By Staff | Published: July 11, 2008

Does the huge MacBook Air price drop suggest an imminent revision?

Apple is becoming better known for tooting it’s own horn, especially where price point/performance improvements are concerned. Yet, the recent drop of $500 off the price of the high-end MacBook Air ($400 less for the SSD drive and $100 for the 1.8GHz CPU) breaks with that pattern; no press releases or fanfare of any sort. Why?

Popular speculation is that a newer, faster, better Air may be just around the corner.

Lack of attention to the price drop may indicate a wish on Apple’s part to sell off the older models faster, if not in larger volume….then perhaps in order to clear space for the new MacBook Air.

Such a price drop could facilitate an early clear out of the old models to make room for the new models in time to avoid an even bigger price drop down the road. Read more

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Posted in Apple Hardware | Also tagged , , | 7 Responses
By Staff | Published: June 9, 2008

Mac Nano a reality with “Fusion”?


As TUAW notes, evidence has appeared suggesting Apple may be releasing a new Mac, dubbed Fusion, as an ultra light but powerful machine, possibly for developer use. If true this is quite obviously the Mac Nano everyone has been talking about for quite some time, but as with any rumor we will see what happens at WWDC tomorrow. The language of the pages is a bit unlike Apple, especially the focus on developers with a machine that will obviously replace the Mini and be desired by just about everyone, but they do stray from their straight consumer talk when targeting developers and power users, as this page appears to suggest they are doing with Fusion.

The screenshots appear to be unreleased Apple website pages, which state the following:

“Building your applications for the Mac has never been easier. Read more

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Posted in Apple Hardware | Also tagged , , , | 1 Response
By Staff | Published: May 29, 2008

Logic Express 8.0.2 update follows Pro version

Despite escaping the notice of many readers who are distracted by show-stopper updates like OS X 10.5.3, Server Admin Tools 10.5.3, Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 2.1, et cetera….Apple has indeed released the 8.0.2 update to Logic Express that Express users have been waiting for since the Pro version was released earlier in the week.

The update weighs in at 73.7MB, and its release notes provide essentially no information on what the changes are — but given the size of the update, they are clearly significant.

When queried about the dearth of details on the two recent Logic updates, reliable sources in Cupertino explained that the changes are almost entirely bug fixes and were not entirely detailed for several reasons.

Chief among these, apparently, is concern among high ranking executives working under the VP of Software that several of the changes would be embarrassing to the company and that at least one might violate an NDA which Apple has signed with a third party. Read more

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Posted in Apple Software | Tagged | Leave a comment
By Staff | Published: April 29, 2008

Apple introduces new iMacs clocked at up to 3.06GHz(!)

Although this announcement comes as no surprise to many on the grapevine who have been reporting on it regularly over the past several weeks while most of the Rumors staff was on leave or sabbatical….many in the community expressed great enthusiasm for the new machines which form the backbone of Apple’s family of Macs.


The new iMacs sport an enclosure and display panels (20in 1680×1050 and 24in 1920×1200) which look on the surface, as well as on paper, identical to the previous generation but according to some of our oldest and most reliable sources at the highest levels within Cupertino’s Mac Hardware engineering division.

There is a lot more going on here than meets the eye in this latest update, even if you dig deep into Apple’s published specs so far. Read more

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Posted in Apple Hardware | Also tagged , , | 4 Responses
By Staff | Published: April 24, 2008

Future macs to include coprocessor chips?

Apple recently made a bid for PA Semi, a semiconductor design company specializing in high performance, low power processors. The company is a licensee of IBMs POWER architecture, previously used by Apple as the PowerPC chip line, leading some to believe that Apple may be moving its Mac line back to PowerPC chips.

The truth however is less dramatic. Apple may be working on differentiating its hardware lineup by including discrete coprocessors for tasks such as video encoding, graphics design acceleration, and other high performance applications.

This sort of acceleration has been possible for a while now with the OS X Acceleration Framework, which takes advantage of whatever hardware is available on a machine, like SSE or Altivec instructions, graphics processors such as the Intel GMA or Nvidia chips, and in the future, dedicated coprocessors. Read more

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Posted in Apple Hardware | Tagged | 6 Responses
By Staff | Published: February 27, 2008

Apple announces new Macbooks, Macbook Pros

As recently predicted by Rumors, Apple has updated the remainder of its laptop line-up following last month’s introduction of the Macbook Air.

Sporting powerful “Penryn” 45-nanometer mobile Core 2 Duo processors from 2.1 to 2.6GHz, these new laptops are poised to crush the competition and expand Apple’s market share considerably. Read on for specs, analysis and more details!

Both the Macbooks and MBP’s have received significant enclosure/industrial design tweaks — notably, both sport the same “modern raised-button” keyboard design as the Macbook Air and Apple’s latest stand-alone ‘board.

Most of the new laptops are build around the “standard” Penryn chip, running at 2.1-2.4GHz with 3MB of enhanced on-chip cache memory; as Rumors reported previously in this article about Penryn & future Macbook Air specs, this new cache is faster and more intelligent than previous Merom/Santa Rosa based designs which included 4MB of cache. Read more

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Posted in Apple Hardware | Also tagged , , , , | 4 Responses
By Staff | Published: January 30, 2008

Apple seeds 10.5.2 build 9C23; massive 500MB

Following our recent report on the “Mac Pro build” of OS X Leopard, 9C16 and recent seeds of 10.5.2, Apple has posted a new seed for third party developers to evaluate, 9C23. The already extremely lengthy changelist and fast-growing update package is now over well into the hundreds of megabytes and could eventually exceed 400MB(!), making it the single largest point update to OS X ever.

Depending on whether one is updating a PowerPC or Intel Mac, packages could vary from 250 to upwards of 400MB in size, and some on the grapevine believe its final weigh-in could be very close to five hundred megabytes.

Either way, it will be a huge download and there has been a lot of debate at Infinite Loop, according to reliable sources, as to whether the update should be split into multiple packages (the core system update, and individual updates to applications or components), hold back some changes for Security Updates that will follow shortly after the point upgrade…..or a more unusual solution, such as offering the update with a nominal pricetag of a few dollars on a CD-ROM disk for purchase at the Apple Store, to ease the burden on modem users or others for whom such a massive download is impractical. Read more

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Posted in Apple Software | Tagged | 14 Responses
By Staff | Published: January 29, 2008

iDevice gaming “set to explode,” say game industry insiders

The sheer number of companies actively planning or already executing projects with target platforms like the modern day iPod Nano, iPhone/iPod Touch, and even AppleTV is much bigger than public perception seems to acknowledge. We’ve recently talked with a number of our friends in the gaming industry — from die hard Mac developers now focusing on “Cider” (DirectX –OpenGL abstraction layer, allowing “Windows games” to be developed once and deployed simultaneously on OS X) development, to console companies and newcomers to the gaming world, virtually everyone is very excited about the future of game-style entertainment on Apple devices.

Cute little arcade games like those we see on the Classic iPods are all well and good, but a modernized Breakout with 3D graphics can only keep you amused so long; even Bejeweled gets old after a while. Read more

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Posted in 3rd Party Software | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
By Staff | Published: January 29, 2008

Is Apple planning a desktop version of “Macbook Air”? A “Mac Air”?!

As long-time readers of Rumors know, we were among the first to break the initial rumor of a stripped-down, mid-range Macbook designed to target the “ultraportable” market and further raise the bar with stunning industrial design that couldn’t have come from anywhere but Cupertino.

We have also been among the first to reexamine long-standing rumors of a major overhaul to the Mac Mini…..some have even gone so far as to speculate that the Mini as we know it is coming to the end of its lifespan and will be replaced with something categorically similar — but with a different name and striking differences. At this time, however, Rumors is confindent that the Mini, more or less as we know it today, will be around for a while yet — instead of replacing the Mini, we believe we will see an all-new model designed to sit in between the Mini and iMac in the desktop product matrix. Read more

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Posted in Apple Hardware | Also tagged , | 24 Responses
By Staff | Published: January 19, 2008

Macbook Air may be updated a lot sooner than one might think….

According to reliable sources in Cupertino who our Macworld reporting team have been visiting now that the Expo is over, the Macbook Air was originally designed around Intel’s 45-nanometer mobile processors but was instead modified to accept slower-clocked “Santa Rosa/Merom” class Core 2 Duo CPUs at 1.6 and 1.8GHz.

It will take some time, but after the Macbook Pro is moved over to Penryn sometime in late Winter, the Air won’t be too terribly far behind. It will be a solid update, but we don’t necessarily think that readers should play the waiting game

The first 45nm “Penryn” mobile Core 2 Duo processors, sometimes referred to as “Santa Rosa Refresh,” will be shipping at the end of the month but Apple won’t be satisfied with supply levels until somewhere in the late February/early March ballpark. Read more

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Posted in Apple Hardware | Also tagged , , | 1 Response
By Staff | Published: January 15, 2008

Apple introduces MacBook Air

The all-new Macbook Air, which as Rumors has long predicted is a mid-range model between the entry-level Macbook and the Macbook Pro, sports Core 2 Duo (Merom) processors at 1.6 and 1.8GHz, respectively, with the standard 4MB of shared on-chip L2 cache on both.

Many of the other specs are fairly standard for a Core 2 Duo based laptop and are parallel with the other Macbooks: 800MHz front side bus, dual-channel DDR2-667 memory (2GB standard), 13.3-inch 16:10 widescreen display from the entry level Macbook with the same 1280×800 resolution, et cetera.

One of the main differences is of course the ultra-light, ultra-thin enclosure: the frame tapers from 0.16-0.76 inches thick (averaging less than 0.6 inches over the bulk of its horizontal depth/width) and weighs in at only 3 pounds(!). Read more

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Posted in Apple Hardware | Also tagged , , , | 6 Responses
By Staff | Published: January 15, 2008

Apple website hints “Something in the Air”…..

Although we have been skeptical up to this point about certain leaks (the Wikipedia posting of what was claimed to be Steve Jobs’ notes for the address being only the most prominent of dozens) that hit the Web yesterday, it seems that the part about an emphasis on wireless innovation and a nearly cable-free Macbook were closer to the mark than many on the grapevine had initially thought.

“Macbook Air” may indeed be the name for the long-rumored “Macbook Thin/Mini/Nano”….but there are still a great many unanswered questions about how this new Mac will fit into the product lineup, and whether the “Air” marketing will be exclusive to that product or part of a more general campaign on Apple’s part to reduce cable clutter & increase wireless adoption…..Stay tuned to Rumors for more live coverage from the Keynote, the Expo floor, and “undisclosed locations” around Cupertino where our reporters will have their yearly meetings with sources while the executives are off in San Francisco otherwise occupied….it’s going to be a heck of a ride! Read more

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Posted in Apple Events | Also tagged , , | Leave a comment
By Staff | Published: January 10, 2008

Week of January 7th

Rumors, under new management and re-focused around a new team of writers who are almost all former (or current!) insider sources, is nearly ready to roll out our all-new Web site!

Just in time for our reports on the new Mac Pro & Xserve, an in-depth Macworld San Francisco preview, and our best most intense Expo coverage in 13 years on the air!Though some other rumor-mongers are quitting the “cloak and dagger” game, and others are scaling back their dirt-dishing or posting a lot of off-topic/non-rumor “filler,” Rumors is dedicated more than ever to bringing you the hottest insider info first and best.

Rumors has broken almost every major Apple/Mac news story of the past decade-plus, and become famous — in no small part because of the tremendous print & online press coverage we’ve received over the years — for being the first to bring you the dirt that shapes Apple’s future. Read more

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 1 Response