“Apple will refresh its Mac Pro and Mac Mini desktop computers in August, with the new range featuring Intel’s new Sandy Bridge CPUs and Thunderbolt, the company’s latest high-speed peripheral interface developed in collaboration with Intel,” Bob Dormon reports for The Register.
“The unofficial news of these Mac desktop arrivals come from the Twitter account of CNet’s Brian Tong whose previous predictions on Apple product launches have turned out to be accurate,” Dormon reports. “His initial posting reported that the new models would launch at the end of July/ first week in August, with a later post emphasing August as the launch date and that Sandy Bridge and Thunderbolt would appear on both.”
Read more in the full article here.
Awesome!
I predict a new form factor for the Pro. The cheese grater has been around for a half dozen years and is now bigger than need be.
What about a Mac pro-like configuration in a Mac mini-like form factor?
What about the rumors of a redesigned rack-mountable Mac Pro?
Apple should just dump thunderbolt !! Do anyone really use and third party vendors ignoring it.
Like FireWire it won’t be accepted by the masses.
Another thing to note is sandy bridge battery hours or lack of in comparison to AMD Fusin processor . As a comparison , AMD lasts 1 hours more for the same spec !!
What!! Apple should provide customers with the choice to choose which processor to go with!!
Thunderbolt is new, not much out there yet. But there are new devices coming.
I have been tempted to replace my power Mac g5 that i only use for a media server in my house, with a mini.. so a new mini would be great.
I replaced my Power Mac (late 2005) with an aluminum mini. It does everything faster, and it fits in a plastic housing on the back of my LED flat panel. The G5 is a door stop right now, so I’ll be first in line for the newer mini after I sell it :0
This article is about desktop Macs. Who cares about battery life? FYI — FireWire was very well accepted by the masses and was used extensively for more than a decade. Licensing and pricing, and an “almost-good-enough” USB 2 finally derailed FW. TB has a lot going for it, and just beginning its rollout. I think you are bit premature in suggesting that it is time for Apple to dump it.
unfunny troll
Zulki I think if that isn’t a joke that needs to be iCaled… if its worth the space.
It ain’t a joke , I love the IDEA of thunderbolt , but so far what products do we have so far??
If Apple backs thunderbolt then they should create products to enable it use. For me I would love a NAS or time mahine with more than anemic 2 TB .
As for CPU you can just google for AMD fusion processor verses intel sandy bridge laptops.
there are NAS in the works that use Thunderbolt.
Apple just put the port out there, Intel are the people really behind the thunderbolt port.
And i don’t recall any Apple Firewire NAS devices.
thats what 3rd parties are for.
Awesome! iPhone 5, Mac Mini, MacBook Air. These are the rumors I want to fill my head with. Keep em coming.
Any idea of specs?
Again, this article is about desktop Macs, and more to the point, the Mac Pro, which is due for a major overhaul. There are many audio/video pro Thunderbolt peripherals due out at the same time these new Macs are to be introduced (if the story is true). Thunderbolt is VERY welcome in pro shops and will carry down to mass consumer gear later on. Maybe the AMD chip is better for laptops, but it is a bit off topic in the context of this story.
Just to point out , whether desktop or portable , power is always an issue. The ability to do more with less is always the goal eh .
For thunderbolt , it is an engineering feat ! And hopefully it will be widely adopted so consumers won’t be beggared for choices.
We’ll see an AMD chipset in the iMac before we ever see it in the Mac Pro.
You lost a big chunk of credibility on this site when you suggested Apple should dump TB, a product that just came on the market.
So, change your name and try again.
I think the AMD llano/ trinity chipset is more for the Mac mini and laptops rather than IMacs .
Bulldozer is more for non portables.
For credibility, i don’t one. I am
A consumer and make my POV.
Thundebolt is Amazing and Apple should support it. Create products for thunderbolt instead waiting for 3rd party.
They already sold time machine, cases for iPhones and a cover for iPad . So why not more products to market thunderbolt as a feature !!
So Apple you are due for a time
Machine refresh, raid pls with thubdebolt .
What you have to remember is that TB is – in the medium-term – going to deliver far more to high-end pro and prosumer markets than the average consumer.
By the time, the ISE/NAMM/Musikmesse/NAB circus comes to a close at the end of April next year, I’d give reasonable odds that you’ll have started to see announcements or real products from the likes of AVID/Euphonix, Yamaha, Mackie and many others in the audio and video post-prod market and very possibly in the live market as well.
TB with its 100Gb roadmap offers the possibility for broadcasters to put 25-30 streams of 3G-SDI and possibly 50 streams of HD-SDI on a single bus which will revolutionise studio wiring and broadcast suites.
Whilst it will eventually deliver consumer benefits, TB’s initial mission is aimed at people doing real jobs earning real money, not people who simply need to wait for a 6TB disk to be stacked four-high in a RAID array so they can have their entire digital movie and music library available to their entire home media network.
I sincerely hope you are right , adopted by the Professionals first and then by normal consumers.
Apple
Should market thunderbolt like t markets iPhone and iPad , it is equally revolutionary.
Mac Pro is NOT going to use “Sandy Bridge” CPUs. It will use the next gen “Zeon”-class processors, so its availability date will depend on when those chips are available. I don’t think it will be August.
XEON processors, not “Zeon”.
Typo… 🙂
If not Sandy Bridge then what? Haswell is Intel’s next significant advancement but it won’t debut until 2013. I think we’re going to see a Sandy Bridge/Lion combination using the LG2011 socket that will serve as a bridge to the 22nm offerings in Haswell.
I’m thinking there won’t be a CPU upgrade, but rather an improved kernel system extension process that rectifies the problems caused between S Leopard and Sandy Bridge resulting in those audio glitches and over-heating issues.
i think the biggest improvements will be seen in the Mac mini.
Well, yes… Mac mini will use Sandy Bridge, just like the newest versions of other Macs have been so far.
But I said “Mac Pro” won’t use Sandy Bridge. The current model has (up to) dual six-core “Xeon” processors (12 cores). It’s an entirely different class of processor (and computer). I don’t see Apple replacing it with Sandy Bridge. Is it even possible to do dual CPUs (effectively) with Sandy Bridge? Apple will just keep the current Mac Pro model until something better can be offered.
A “middle” headless Mac desktop choice (equivalent to current iMac without a built-in display) would be welcome (though unlikely), but Mac Pro will remain the “elite” Mac.
There is a Sandy Bridge Xeon.
The SB E Series which is supposed to debut in Q4 2011, will offer a quad-channel memory controller, Performance OverClocking support, and a new LGA-1356 socket, which will support 1 QuickPath Interconnect (QPI), which is designed to replace the Front Side Bus in Xeon and Itanium, and certain desktop platforms.
Designed to compete with HyperTransport, the Xeon E5, which comes in 2, 4, 6, 8 cores and will use the new LGA-1356 socket, whose protruding pins will touch the contact points on the underside of the processor. This socket makes use of the QPI system architecture.
In its simplest form, the QPI on a single-processor motherboard, is used to connect the processor to the IO hub. The LG-2011 for Xeons, which is expected to debut in Q1 2012, will support QPI pairs.
The Sandy Bridge CPU offers 17% more performance over Nehalem.
The Mac mini could benefit from Sandy Bridge, especially if Apple shipped it with the new Core i7 Extreme with the LG-2011, both of which will debut in Q4 2011, but it’s unlikely. We can dream though.
Well, that’s probably the one then… 🙂
But if it’s debut is Q4 2011, I guess it won’t in “August.”
Looking forward to seeing a 16-core Mac Pro. I won’t buy it, but knowing it exists will make me smile.
Apple should just dump Zulkifli & related comments about engineering feat…!
If Sandy Bridge outperforms the current Xeon line, then it will be used, server platform designed or not.
Zulkifli : “Apple should just dump thunderbolt !!”
Zulkifli (After being told where to go) : “Thundebolt is Amazing and Apple should support it.”
What a doosh.