Apple, for its part, is ready to rock-and-roll with the new 45-nm Macs whenever Intel can deliver enough of those top-bin chips to trigger a manufacturing ramp. People familiar with the situation say Apple's end of the hardware is essentially complete, with builds having made their final pass through engineering earlier this fall. Availability now hinges on the Intel's capacity to deliver quantities of the new 45-nm Xeons, they say.
Long-time AppleInsider readers will recall a nearly identical situation facing the Mac Pro last October. At the time, AppleInsider reported on Apple's plans to release its first-ever 8-core system -- a Mac Pro sporting two quad-core Xeon "Clovertown" chips. Like Harpertown, the first Clovertown processors were slated for a mid-November release and (again) Apple's end of the hardware was similarly completed well in advance. The 8-core Mac didn't debut for another five months, however, as Apple held out for an exclusive 3.0GHz variant of the Clovertown chip while it waited patiently for Adobe to pull the trigger on its Intel-native Creative Suite 3.0 (CS3) software. Following the release of CS3 in late-March, Apple in April finally rolled out the 8-Core Clovertown Mac Pro.
Apple Mac Pro waiting for Intel's Penryn chips
Posted on Saturday, October 20 2007 @ 3:30 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck