New Macbooks?

[J. Bernard Vallon]

Now that I know roughly when I'll see my camera, I know when I'll need to buy a new computer.

Does anyone have any guess as to when apple will release new Macbook pros?

How long has this generation been on the market?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

New Macbook Pros should ship within the next 8 to 12 weeks, methinks. Intel is wrapping up and about to ship their latest mobile chipset and some revised mobile CPU options in the coming weeks.

New models should bring the ability to install up to 8GB RAM for starters. We can only speculate on whether or not we'll see GPU updates or not. ATI has a mobile R600 coming, but Apple's 1" thin design is killing them in the heat dispersion department... I think that's why with the last C2D revision this past October, we didn't see a GPU upgrade even though there are plenty others on the market from both ATI and nVidia that would be a superior choice... None offer the performance vs. heat/power that the X1600 does though, then or even now.

[Anders Holck]

October. I'd expect new models to be delivered just before WWDC in June

[Jeff Kilgroe]

October. I'd expect new models to be delivered just before WWDC in June

I'll agree with that. :)

[Bruce Allen]

Apple should release new Mac Pros pretty soon - they will probably be based on Santa Rosa and other laptop manufacturers are supposedly shipping the first ones now. Probably they'll bump up the screen res to PC standards (or higher ;) in conjunction with Leopard's res-independent announcements. So WWDC seems logical... maybe later.

By the way Intel just announced that they will have a Quad-core Penryn laptop chip "for gaming" - maybe even by the end of this year but probably beginning of next year. I posted on the 4-core laptop chip coming soon but had predicted Nehalem, not Penryn. That was part of my "4K finishing folly" thread:
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=781&page=13&highlight=quad+core+laptop

Here is that post, updated with new info:

later this year:
- quad-core chips hit $250-$300
- better memory bandwidth for laptop

early next year - "Penryn" (45nm Core 2)
(UPDATE: Penryn coming out earlier - by end of this year maybe?)
- quad-core hits 3.2 - 3.6 ghz
- new instruction set that accelerates some video tasks
- if some cores are waiting for others, the cores that ARE working can be dynamically overclocked (UPDATED: laptop only)
- better virtualization
- more cache
- UPDATED: 4-core laptop variant

late next year: - "Nehalem" (45nm successor)
- faster architecture
- 8 core-per-chip desktop
- 4 core-per-chip laptop? (UPDATED: certain now with Penryn 4-core announcement, I'd say)
- integrated memory controller (lower latency, probably better bandwidth)

Of course, you need to think about GPUs too. Very, very important in the future, especially running Color and perhaps RedCine.

Hope this helps.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com