Geekbench Confirms Ivy Bridge MacBook Pro and iMac 133
An anonymous reader writes "It was inevitable that Intel launching the 22nm Ivy Bridge processors would lead to Apple using them in its laptops and desktop machines. While Apple never leaks details early, someone using pre-release hardware has managed to upload details of the new machine to Geekbench's database. We can definitely expect a Core i7 Ivy Bridge MacBook Pro and iMac later this year."
No ethernet... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Uh, where did you see this?
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Then again, for now these are indeed all rumors. Here's hoping they do actually include a port.
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I'm sure they're thinking is Thunderbolt docks. Full speed for all devices including displays. (not that I agree, just saying it's not a huge headache)
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just put it on usb.. that's how apple rolls anyways.
Re:No ethernet... (Score:5, Informative)
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I looked at that one... you can't hook up more than one computer and you can't hook up anything that's not thunderbolt. If you're going to spend $1000 on a monitor, get the Dell which has more screen space (area and pixels), and allows hooking up 5 computers and switching between them.
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I looked at that one... you can't hook up more than one computer and you can't hook up anything that's not thunderbolt.
That last one is a lie. If you had actually seen one of those Thunderbolt monitors you would have noticed that on its back [apple.com] there are three USB ports, one FireWire 800 port, one Ethernet port, and one Thunderbolt port for daisy-chainning. So when you get to work with your laptop you can use a single TB cable to hook it up to external USB/FireWire/TB disks, printers, keyboard+mouse, the gigabit network, and two or more external monitors (if your laptop supports them... MacBook Pros do), all running through th
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A lot of people use a mobile network already too, or share one via their handset. I'd think that one reason why Apple is removing the ethernet connector is to further integrate (their) static and mobile computing. Being connected by a wire is to be seen as old, but you still have the possibility to do that if you wish. It's just one step further than before (and you'd have to pay for it).
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The redmond pie article here http://www.redmondpie.com/new-15-inch-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-usb-3.0-and-thinner-profile-almost-ready-for-launch/
seems to have a ethernet port in the rendering. I don't think this was confirmed. I do think they are dropping the optical drive.
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I thought about that. Then I thought about my usage patterns - TBolt display at work, with GigE to my TBolt display, and wireless everywhere else.
Also, while USB->Ethernet sucks, TBolt -> GigE adapter would work for me. Hell, with TBolt, we can do TBolt -> 10GigE
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Also, while USB->Ethernet sucks, TBolt -> GigE adapter would work for me. Hell, with TBolt, we can do TBolt -> 10GigE
Well if the rumors are true it would be USB3->Ethernet, which would not suck. Considering how small the adapter is and how space is limited a small laptop, replacing Ethernet with USB3 sounds like a reasonable compromise. It is more common to be lacking a USB port (and not have a hub handy) then to require the speed of ethernet over wireless. But only if it's a USB3 port as USB2 is not sufficient to properly support GigE.
Re:No ethernet... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, because the replacement for gigabit ethernet is vastly slower WiFi. You're kidding, right?
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How often do you really need gigabit?
I use a macbook air at work and it seems fine. I do any heavy lifting on servers anyway, no laptop is going to compete with 4 Xeons anyway.
Re:No ethernet... (Score:4, Insightful)
Remote X11 to servers you don't control is still waaaay faster on a wire.
So are backups. And if you use the folder/drive sharing feature of RDC, this is way more usable using a wire.
Plus, wireless degrades less gracefully with multiple users and I find the wire to be more reliable in general.
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Remote X11 sucks ass on any medium. VNC is only a tiny bit better, but you can disconnect from a running session. Give XRDP a spin sometime. X11 needs to die, it's served its purpose.
Back to the topic at hand, if a wifi connection is not sufficient for your remote admin tools, and you need 1Gb, think about the overhead you are creating on your _server's_ connection. I assume your problem is with wifi throughput, because the latency should be reasonable.
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Remote X11 sucks ass on any medium. VNC is only a tiny bit better, but you can disconnect from a running session. Give XRDP a spin sometime. X11 needs to die, it's served its purpose.
Agreed but I don't have admin over these servers and some of the tools are painful to use without X11.
Back to the topic at hand, if a wifi connection is not sufficient for your remote admin tools, and you need 1Gb, think about the overhead you are creating on your _server's_ connection.
These are development servers and all of the bandwidth is being used for X11 sessions... not much else they have to do except serve some internal low-traffic web pages. A momentary spike in traffic won't hurt anyone.
I assume your problem is with wifi throughput, because the latency should be reasonable.
You are correct, but I'm not trying to stream video over X11 or anything - just open windows full of toolbars and stuff. Most of the bandwidth comes in a burst when you first create a new window
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I think there is something seriously wrong with your wifi network then. It's quite common that a crappy router can cause loads of issues and make wifi look a lot inferior to cable. However we've got in the office a number of Time Capsule's (latest gen) that support both 2.4Ghz and 5GHz and we've tested them to easily show speeds around 500Mbit/s to external servers over wifi. The cable connection gives 700-900Mbit/s and I think is more limited by the far end. Working on wifi or cable doesn't really impact r
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I think there is something seriously wrong with your wifi network then.
No, I tested it - I'm getting good throughput and latency (unless there are too many other users).
I think you mean 50Mbit/s :)
I'm not "remote", I'm just not in the server room. When I'm remote, I use RDC from home to my office desktop and then make the X11 connection on that.
At home I find WiFi to be quite acceptable for backup to the Time Capsule, but I still plug it in if I'm in a rush. The speed difference is quite obvious.
I never use the DVD drive :)
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I think you mean 50Mbit/s :)
No, I mean 500Mbit/s :) If you're getting only 50Mbit/s, then you're not using the N standard and good hardware :) And to be fair, the major speed boost came with the latest generation of time capsule, we never got over 100Mbit/s previously.
The result while performing backup over wifi at the same time: http://www.speedtest.net/result/1952406137.png [speedtest.net]
And while I wasn't doing backup (historic entry when I tested things): http://speedtest.net/result/1539505358.png [speedtest.net]
I guess it wasn't as fast this time, but in any c
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Yeah, if I had a good wireless connection of even 100Mbit/s I think I'd probably not need to plug in. Theoretically, I should be able to get 100-140Mbit on 801.11n - but we're not all-Apple or all-Linksys or all-Netgear or whatever the secret sauce is to getting that super-high wireless bandwidth. At home I have an Apple laptop with an Apple Time Capsule and I get fantastic speeds... in the same room. Put a wall or floor between me and that router and I get about 10x less speed.
Anyway, there's gigabit at my
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I need gigabit daily... My Aperture vaults are on an iSCSI share, and a great deal of my files are on Samba shares.
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Most people don't need this, -n is faster than 100, and most people can't afford a gigabit switch. If you can, then you can also afford a $25 to $50 adapter.
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"-n is faster than 100, and most people can't afford a gigabit switch."
Had to make sure I didn't accidentally click one of the links from 2006 when I read this comment.
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Even the final 802.11n in the best case is not that much faster than 100BASE-T, and that requires having no more than a couple of devices on the network, all close to the base station. By its nature, wireless communication is a shared medium, not switched, so as soon as you have two devices, they're competing for bandwidth; MIMO will eventually help with this to some degree, but even that only goes so far. It doesn't take very many devices on a wireless network before the average per-device bandwidth is
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Re:No ethernet... (Score:4, Informative)
How often do you really need gigabit?
I frequently pull a gigabyte of data over the network to my laptop to open a scene. In my case, it wouldn't be a 'pro' laptop without an ethernet port.
YMMV.
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The average person doesn't need things like gigabit or even a disc drive anymore (can't remember the last time I used a disc at home and other than my desktop and htpc which don't have wireless, the last time I plugged my laptop into the network was a long time ago and I only did it to save a couple minutes on a big transfer). But the business user (or professonal) has other requirements that they don't set.
At work, we run ethernet only--no non-phy
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If you have a stationary machine they still sell the macpro. This is about the laptops.
Re:No ethernet... (Score:4, Insightful)
How often do you really need gigabit?
Almost anyone working in media production will likely answer "Every day".
WiFi isn't a solution when users are transferring 300GB+ at a time over the network.
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Apple controls 90% of the over $1000 laptop market. It is core to their brand identity. It is a huge source of products. Further their entire development platform is dependent on OSX. Yes they make a lot more money on phones. They actually make very little on tablets and don't really have a good strategy for higher tablets.
So no, this is not going to happen.
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Apple controls 90% of the over $1000 laptop market.
citation requested. if they really did that, it would be time for some antitrust..
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NPD, you have to pay so I can't deep link. They first measured it at 91% in June 2009. This is when Apple's market share of all laptops was only 8.7%, it is over 10% today.
In terms of anti-trust they already make it easy to install Windows and Linux. I guess the court could demand they offer Windows versions. But really I think the argument would be their operating system.
I guess I could see a court forcing them to sell their operating system separately if there was a compelling interest in high end PC
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Here is the link to NPD, http://www.npd.com/ [npd.com]
They are a well known firm. Just google for the NPD results they are all over the place.
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I was referring to new Macbook Pros w/o Ethernet.
Sorry, I should have been more clear.
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Then a puny i5 or i7 is probably not up to whatever job you want to do with that data. Get a workstation with some big CPUs.
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What a convincing argument, with the zero points you made. I can see why you are such a success at life that you spend your time trolling contributors to slashdot.
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How often do you really need gigabit?
Every time I expect a policy for a system reimage to succeed.
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What, exactly, do you think companies use computers for, anyhow?
I've never run into an IT setup of any size that didn't consider "install approved image" as step 1 of deploying a new system, or redeploying one previously used elsewhere. The tools for doing this over ethernet (PXE/Netboot, dump image to disk, reboot) are commonly available and mature. Over wifi? Not so much. Over USB ethernet dongles? Surely you jest.
Doesn't matter much for home users, or very small scale outfits where the slower 'boot from external volume, fire up disk utility, copy disk image to int
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Since you can currently image MacBook Airs over the Ethernet dongle, I suppose that argument is gone. Perhaps you never imaged a mac?
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Example?
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Which model Mac and which model PC? I don't think you've actually done the comparison because when I've compared with similar Dell and HP notebooks in the past, the numbers are always plus or minus (yes, minus) 10%.
So I'd like an example.
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Seriously? Ethernet is cheaper than wifi?
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Yes.
Commercial grade Access Points are similarly priced for Same-capacity wired switches (don't forget wireless has a wired backbone)
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You probably can't get more commercial grade than Cisco, which is what we use at work. Guess what. It's not just the cost of switches, but also the cost of running those wires. At $50 to $200/drop, it quickly adds up. And if you need to add more...
Wired backbone cost is the same for wired or wireless switches, and so, is irrelevant.
Re:No ethernet... (Score:5, Insightful)
The kind that does not allow WiFi for security reasons.
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Latency can be a huge issue. Sure, we got wifi. No we don't trust sensitive data over the air, so you gotta use the wifi, out to the internet, into the VPN concentrator... the corporate VPN concentrator... on the other side of the country... So to VNC into a local server you get millisecond latency connections over wired, or hundred ms (sometimes more) latency over the wifi. Yuck.
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What kind of shitty company do you work at that doesn't have WiFi?
Well, the wifi where I work now is over-saturated and doesn't work so well. But that's immaterial because my company doesn't let you hit our network from the wifi, you can only go out to the internet on t.
Oh, and lots of places don't actually have wifi, it has nothing to do with the shittiness of the company.
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What kind of shitty company do you work at that doesn't have WiFi?
Well, the wifi where I work now is over-saturated and doesn't work so well. But that's immaterial because my company doesn't let you hit our network from the wifi, you can only go out to the internet on t.
Ditto, plus we don't allow outgoing mail over wifi.
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If there is heavy bandwidth use, wifi is a nightmare. Remember its half the speed of 100 mbit, and its shared. Then if you are in an office building the wifi is crap by itself since every's wifi on your floor plus 7 above and below interferes with your wifi (yes there are several channels but you should be able to see how easily all channels get occupied).
My last job had both, I'd regularly have to go plug in so I didn't have to wait forever for some large files to transfer.
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If there is heavy bandwidth use, wifi is a nightmare. Remember its half the speed of 100 mbit, and its shared. Then if you are in an office building the wifi is crap by itself since every's wifi on your floor plus 7 above and below interferes with your wifi (yes there are several channels but you should be able to see how easily all channels get occupied).
As I'm getting older, I can't see this as a "nightmare". A "nightmare" is when I have to run around and fix the problem. This is the exact opposite - I can sit down and relax until the file transfer has finished. Not my fault if it takes a while :-)
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The kind that invested in a wired gigabit infrastructure, no doubt.
But the real question is: "What kind of shitty company do you work at that uses Macs?" ;^)
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Given all of the places I work, the few times I need a physical cable, I'll deal with carrying a dongle for the few times I need to plug in a wire. Same goes for the CD/DVD these days. The few times I really need a CD drive, I'll just carry an external one. Hell for all of the CD drives that have failed me over the years, I'll gladly externalize it to save the weight of a device that will be dead weight when it breaks.
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"B-b-b-but...THATS A FEATURE!"
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Not giving up anything, and the gain is larger (Score:3)
Gigabit Ethernet is currently faster than any wireless than I know of yet if Apple says "You don't need that" we get dozens of posts saying "They must be right! Apple is genius!"
Apple is not saying "you don't need it". They are saying "most people do not need it, and those that do can still use it".
I have GigE on my current Powerbook. I use it perhaps six times a year. Obviously if they git rid or the port I would not care much, and I am a highly technical user - most users would simply never miss it.
For
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I'm hoping they keep gig-e on the pro machines, but realistically most of the time it is ever used is when you're at your desk. i.e., plugged into your thunderbolt display, which has gig-e. Why carry the port around all the time when you're away from your desk.
At least no doubt that is the theory, if it disappears.
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To me I'm fine with something like a GigE port going away, as long as I know an adaptor can provide the same speed.
I think that's the missing part of the equation, most people are thinking of USB network adaptors which could not deliver full GIgE speeds. But with Thunderbolt GIgE stuff, that's not an issue at all, and why I'm not concerned if I need to use an adaptor.
I have also read that USB 3.0 will be there in the new models, which it yet another high speed bus option.
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I agree to an extent. But for me, gigabit ethernet is something I (as a minority) really do want, without needing a dongle (irrespective of whether it is thunderbolt or USB3, it is still another thing to get lost/forgotten/etc).
But, as you say, thunderbolt opens up all sorts of possibilities - fibre channel, 10gig-e, etc. And I'd certainy understand the reasoning, if they were to drop as an internal connector.
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Currently I think only the APple thunderbolt display includes an ethernet connection - obvious a bit too expensive and large for a great dongle...
There's currently a hacky solution, you can buy a thunderbolt to Expresscard/34 bridge. From there you could add a GigE card... but that would be really bulky and terribly expensive.
However, we also do not yet have the systems that lack an ethernet connection (apart from the Air). I think when (or if) they do move the Pro line over to drop ethernet, at that time
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I don't usually agree with you. This one I do. Losing physical ethernet is a series downgrade. Being able to plug in physically is a huge advantage when things go wrong or when you want to deal with network hardware. I'm sure there will be some sort of attachment I have to buy and yeah this is going to cost me.
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I agree that it is too early. This one is going to hurt me personally. Even my wife, is unhappy with this change she loves the reliability of wired. We are both going to get adapters.
That being said let me explicate the why someone could be in favor of this. To start I'm not sure where you are getting a 1/16th of an inch the difference between the air and the regular it is about 1/4 inch. But it is not the size that matters it is the drop in weight from 4.5 lbs to 2.9 lbs (for 13 inch). Weight really ma
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If Apple thinks they are gonna get the entire industry to pick TB over USB 3? I'm sorry, not gonna happen. It'll be FW all over again, with very few things that support it and all WAY overpriced.
First off Apple is also going USB 3. TB is for monitors, SSD, HDD, ethernet... Things that are too fast for USB.
In terms of could Apple pull it off. Market share is much higher now that it for FW. They have over 90% of the over $1000 laptop crowd. That is very high market share among the profitable segments
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I do respond and I was asked once and I responded NPD which computes sales figures.
http://betanews.com/2009/07/22/apple-has-91-of-market-for-1-000-pcs-says-npd/ [betanews.com]
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Re:Wake up (Score:4, Interesting)
There are persistent rumors that Apple is going to 'airify' their MacBook Pro line. Following that line of thought, it's assumed that they'll take it to the extreme and not include an ethernet port.
Personally, I think it makes sense that some would think that. But I think they'll realize they'll have trouble calling it a 'pro' laptop without an ethernet port. That said, it is something I'd be double checking for once it's announced.
No harm done.
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Just think: When Apple announces it and it matches what you said, then you'll be right!
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Why not let people choose what they want?
Some people want an optical drive. Some people don't. Some people want a SSD. Some people want a hard drive with 10x the capacity for half the cost.
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Apple is not Dell. They aren't into "build you own your way". They design quality balanced systems. They drive their entire platform which reduces complexity for software vendors and users. If you want something outside the norm, they have wonderful solution you just pay a premium.
They are not into maximum choice, they are into good choices.
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On the current MBPs you can choose SSD or spinning disk. On the Airs the HDDs are a bit of a space problem.
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The model designation reads "MacBookPro", not "MacBookAir". The redesigned 15" MacBook Pro will almost certainly lose the DVD drive and go all SSD, just like the MacBook Air. That's still air-fication without going to the extreme of losing ethernet (which would have yielded a 15" MacBook Air instead).
HAHAHA.. I'd believe you if I hadn't been stupid and accepted a company laptop as macbook pro before checking that the size of macbook pro I was getting had intel graphics at that time of the year. So in all practicality it's just a macbook(even looks like one, if you'd blacken the Pro it would be very hard to tell the difference) with thunderbolt that I don't do jack shit with. anyhow, they can't go much thinner without losing the ethernet.
besides, it would actually fit _perfectly_ with their plans to sell
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A backlit keyboard and an aluminum case are not "Pro" features.
When Apple discontinued the plastic "Macbook" line and kept the aluminum "Macbook Pro" line it could have branded the 13" model "Macbook" and the larger models with performance upgrades "Macbook Pro".
Giving the 13" "Macbook Pro" performance similar to the now-discontinued base model and charging "Pro" prices for cosmetic features was somewhere between greedy and dishonest.
Geekbench confirms it... (Score:1)
The Mac Pro is dead.
This appears to be a mostly skip it chipset (Score:2)
and the same goes for Mac products, except in the possibility there may be a 15 inch Air style MacBook Pro coming. So unless they have moved SSDs more mainstream in the iMac I really don't see any reason to move if you have a current or previous year model of those machines.
Many have been very curious about the long time without update or hint thereof for the Mac Pro tower. There is a good amount of pent up demand for a newer model but even that number of people may not be sufficient to attract Apple much.
Why is this even remotely interesting? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is this even remotely interesting? We know Intel has released Ivy Bridge. We know there are other companies already using Ivy Bridge. Apple's current offerings are a generation or two behind the existing status quo for high-end hardware on the laptop/desktop market. It is a no brainer that, yes, Apple would also use the next generation of hardware, too.
This is not even remotely news worthy (though it might be for macrumours.com or whatever). Now, if they were changing architectures back to PPC or to ARM on the desktop, that might be something worth talking about!
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they had a negotiated 1 year headstart to tuberculosis.
and these two cpu's mentioned here... have been out for a month, you can get them from ebay, so the only news here is that apple may be refreshing the cpu's.
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The CPU in the first-generation MacBook Air was a custom engineered Intel Core 2 Duo Merom that was 40 percent of the size of the standard chip package.[17] For models of late-2008,The CPU was replaced with a low-voltage Core 2 Duo Penryn chip with 6MB of cache, running on a 1066MHz bus.
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The only reason it would be interesting is due to the fact that it's Apple, and that it's a Mac Pro. The Mac Pro hasn't been updated since July of 2010, and in computer terms, that's ancient. In Apple terms, where they usually don't support something that is older than 3 years, July 2010 is fucking ancient.
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MacBook Pro.
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Why is this even remotely interesting? We know Intel has released Ivy Bridge. We know there are other companies already using Ivy Bridge. Apple's current offerings are a generation or two behind the existing status quo for high-end hardware on the laptop/desktop market. It is a no brainer that, yes, Apple would also use the next generation of hardware, too.
In spite of being "a generation or two behind", people really like Mac laptops, so are excited about what might happen. (In actuality, as UnknowingFool points out, Apple is also ahead of competitors by years: Thunderbolt, Ultrabook, etc.) The fact that Apple will probably be releasing Mountain Lion at the same time, may have Air-ified the MacBook Pro lineup, might add full-width trackpad, etc, adds interest even if it's not directly related to Ivy Bridge.
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Apple is the the high end laptop market, so it is not possible for them to be a generation or two behind. No one else even really participates in a meaningful way.
So it's slower for iTunes (Score:2)
iTunes peaks out at 100% of a single CPU usage in its single threaded mode.
So I'm better off with 1/2 of two processors at 10,500 than 1/4 of 4 processors at 12,252
5,250 crushes 3,083
Any single threaded app wins huge on old gear.
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You (and Geekbench) may not be taking turbo mode into account. Quad-cores generally turbo to the same frequency as duals when you're only using one core.
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When do you manage to get iTunes to max out CPU usage?
I'm genuinely curious as I have a 40+ GiB iTunes library (with the actual media files stored on another machine and mounted via NFS) and I can't remember the last time iTunes maxed out a single CPU core.
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when it bugs.
alternatively, drag a season of simpsons to your ipod. get a sixpack before you do.
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It bogs badly with 326,000 songs on an external 3TB drive using 2.5 TB for tracks on my modern MacBook Pro.
iTunes likes to update its database with every little nit.
I use one iTunes db to add albums and update metadata, then copy to the big iTunes with minimal metadata updating.
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Or they could put a dongle in the Lion USB drive and say if it's got the dongle it's licensed, we don't support OSX on non-apple hardware but we're not going to do anything intentionally stop it from running on non-apple hardware so long as it's got the dongle, then just don't make any dick moves as far as hardware drivers go.
Of course this is probably just wishful thinking on my part.
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