Latest Rumors on Apple product line-up and release

[Bret Williams]

It’s amazing that so many are hanging on a single sentence from its CEO who basically said, “don’t worry we’ll have something cool in a year and a half.”

[Marcus Moore]

I’m not sure I get what you mean by “hanging on”. The CEO of the company made a public statement that a new product for the MacPro market was coming in 2013. What’s the confusion?

[Michael Phillips]

I’m certainly not hanging on to every word – just repeating. “Professional”, “Awesome”, and other superlatives need to be very explicitly defined as they can be interpreted in as many ways are there are those who hear it. Especially from a company that excels at marketing.

I am entertained by the amount of time spent on Apple watching from every aspect of the industry, and I certainly do not fall into the category that everything from Apple is a gift from God. 😉

Michael

[Bret Williams]

Ditto. I certainly am an Apple fan, but I didn’t wait for a new MacPro. Mine was old a year ago and I got the 2011 iMac. At that point I figured I’d already waited a year for a thunderbolt MacPro. If Apple does come out with a new Pro machine, it’s amazing that there will almost be 4 years between updates. What other company has customers faithful enough to wait that long? But heck, I’ve been a user since 91 when I touched my first Macintosh back in college. And at the time my father still worked for IBM!

[James Mortner]

The “confusion” is we have no idea what the CEO was talking about. He didn’t give any specifics, other than “something cool”. Erm, ok great thanks

What’s the confusion indeed.

[Marcus Moore]

I’m not sure what company you’re thinking of, but Apple doesn’t even generally acknowledge unreleased products. That fact that we know that something is coming, and that we even have a timeframe for release is way more than we’ve usually expect from Apple’s cone of silence.

My comment about confusion stems more from people even supposing that a product will be released, rather than what it will be. Noone knows that.

It could be amazing or it could be disappointing, but within the next 11 months there’ll be something.

[James Mortner]

Beg pardon, I think I misinterpreted your original comment.

Your clarification mirrors my feelings I think. I’m fairly indifferent as I struggle to imagine what they could really do that would knock socks off around the world.
Just knowing “something” is out there is profoundly unexciting. There always is!

[Craig Seeman]

[James Mortner] “Just knowing “something” is out there is profoundly unexciting.”

I think it comes down to the fact that Cook did not call it a MacPro update. It’ll likely be different than simply new Xeons, GPUs with the addition of Thunderbolt and USB3. Maybe some equate “exciting” with “good” (which is subjective) but a better word may be “controversial.”

Whatever it is, unlike an “update” this will likely be a new design and it likely will generate controversy.

[Marcus Moore]

Well, I think the only purpose the statement realistically serves is to quell talk that Apple is abandoning the MacPro space. They’re making SOMETHING for that space- it might or might not be a MacPro, but there you go.

The roadmaps for CPUs, GPUs, and Thunderbolt are already out there for this year, so I as well fail to see what any kind of MAMOTH surprise they can present from a hardware perspective.

And I’m not sure Apple needs to provide a blindside in this category. A modern and competitive solution that provides a platform for the next 5-10 years is all most people want.

People always want surprises from Apple, but the truth is that those don’t come along very often, and even more infrequently when you’re talking about traditional computing. Outside of the expected annual bumps in processor and graphics speeds, Display resolution seems to be only place where there will be a big shift in the next few years- and that will really just reset our expectations for performance like the transition to HD did almost a decade ago.

[Frank Gothmann]

I wonder why people are riding the Xeon and Xeon chipset train. Given what most people think the new box might be (if there is any) there is very little a xeon will provide that is of any advantage compared to an i7. Performance wise, there is very little difference. Xeons can even be used in certain desktop motherboards for the i7 1155 socket.

Dual CPUs are out of the question if the current form factor is supposed to be changed drastically. You simply cannot cool dual xeons in a much smaller enclosure (unless you go with server fans at full whack.)

– Xeon chipsets can hold more ram which is not that relevant because apple will superglue the thing down so you can’t get to it anyway. That plus it’s unlikely most folks here are going beyond 48gigs of ram. Memory is registered and has error correction but that, too, isn’t really that relevant here.

– More sata ports with raid capabilities which is irelevant because a) see point above and b) everybody predicts there will be limited to no internal expansion so the ports would be wasted anway

– More and faster pcie slots which is ireleavant because a) see two points above and b) everybody predicts pcie for expansion is not Apple’s idea of how stuff should be connected so let’s just get rid of it and buy expensive external thunderbolt boxes.

Leaves GPU and there is not difference between graphics that can be used with an i7 or a Xeon.

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