“The contact for Gizmodo also claims to have seen evidence of high-end iMacs that aren’t in Best Buy’s inventory as of yet, but doesn’t have details,” Electronista reports.
“”As Intel has almost entirely replaced its mainstream mobile Core 2 Duo processors with the Core i3, i5 and i7, Apple has virtually no choice but to introduce systems like an expected Core i7 MacBook Pro and likely lower-end Core i5 models,” Electronista reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
…and USB 3?
The i3 is dual core and “faster” than older chips with the “same GHz”. The list price is … was? … in the same range as the older chips. It would be nice, very nice, to see the entire iMac line upgraded to “i”-CPU status.
I wonder if the MacBook Air will get an A4 chip?
WAIT ! ! !
No mention of updates to the Mac mini line? Or was our informant just not interested in that end of the line? There’s a SERVER in that group, guys. Serious hardware for the small shop!
I’m in the Market for a MBP so it seems worthwile to wait another few weeks for a faster machine.
Let’s see if they will be more expensive or the old ones will just come down in price.
Of course new MBPs are due.
Indeed, CNet had an article recently noting that some of Apple’s competitors (Sony, HP et.al.) were already shipping notebooks with the latest i-series CPUs, but nothing yet from Apple. Apple may have reason for delay, but it makes the leader look like a laggard.
@ MacMental
I wonder if the MacBook Air will get an A4 chip?
NO!
A4 is an ARM processor design – totally software incompatible with Intel.
In simple terms, your Mac software will not work with an A4.
Great! Now I can buy a new iMac… again. I bought an Quad Core i5 last THanksgiving and returned it for a full refund last month because it was plagued with screen problems that Apple couldn’t fix.
@MacMental
No. The A4 is ARM not x86.
FYI A4 is not a chip, it’s a SOC (system on a chip) which combines the arm core (cortex -a8 or -a9) and gpu.
Not sure you’d want A4 anyway in a MBA. Even if Apple compiles a version of Mac OS X for ARM, it’d be dog slow. From what I’ve been reading, 1 ghz is about on par with a pentium 3 at the same clock… so that would be a huge downgrade.
@ People talking about A4
That does not stop Apple from creating an A6 chip based on x64 architecture…
It would be like the long-lost G6 chip! Goodbye Intel, mwhahahaha!
Ok, maybe it’s too soon, but can wait a little longer…
@A4… Yes, the 1GHz G4s were also dog slow….
Please stop being an ignorant and watch this :
Did you really think that a Nexus One-like processor would handle the iPad so easily?
OS X has universal binaries, whatever the hell they are.
OS X can be made to run on any chip.
So there.
@TowerTone
…and USB 3?
No, they will put Light Peak tech on those babies… I hope.
@lukesky: not to get too OT here, I’m aware of the megahertz myth. Actually things really have changed since that presentation; it’s comparing x86 vs powerpc which really isn’t relevant here. ARM is not powerpc nor is it x86.
Google some benchmarks on the arm cortex if you really don’t believe me. The iPad using the A4 will be sufficiently powerful for the things that it does but people are fooling themselves if they think they can do things like encode video with it like they can on a desktop. The difference is Apple optimized the crap out of Safari and made full use of the gpu.
G4/5s were great for the time; I still have a dual 1.25 ghz MDD that runs like a champ but it’s no match for today’s chips…
@A4
Yes the A4 is based on ARM, however ever since the transition from PPC to Intel Macs have been using a “Universal binary”, which is basically both PPC and Intel binaries in one package that could be used on either system.
Since that packaging is already in place, how difficult do you think it would be to get ARM in the same package?
It would require re-compiling a lot of software, but it would be possible, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the next version of OSX is Intel and Arm so they can start doing just that.
@iPhonExtreme
You can get some good info on Mac upgrade cycles at the following link: http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/
There are no guarantees, but if you have the flexibility to delay your purchase, this site can help you estimate a likely timeframe for new Mac releases.
I just tried to order a MBP 2.8ghz model through Macmall, but it’s out of stock. The customer service rep offered me a small discount to upgrade to the 7200 RPM drive because they had a few of those left in stock. Looks like I’ll keep waiting to order, just like everybody else.