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A week before Macworld, Apple released hardware updates for their Mac Pro and Xserve products, while I wont be covering the Xserve updates I have to say that they look strong. In the other hand the Mac Pro is the best machine I’ve ever seen and the fastest Mac ever -Apple said.

I’m very impressed with the technology behind this machine and definitely understand why Apple went with Intel for processing power. Not even AMD is getting close to the specs these new Intel Xeon chips have, up to 3.2 GHz Quad Core processors capable of managing 32GB of Memory, these specs are hard to match.

After reading the specs in detail and reading what the industry and bloggers are saying around the web, it looks like the Mac Pro still lacks some features people were expecting to see. The first one, a Blu-ray player option, Apple is a supporter of the Blu-ray format yet no one has seen anything Apple related with support for any HD format.

Apple 23 inch and 30 inch displays are advertise as HD capable and that’s it, no word on whether drives will be an addition on future dates and this drives people crazy (me on the one hand.) I personally think that they are long due to these offering and I can’t simply understand what the delay is.

Did anyone notice that Bluetooth is not an option anymore? WiFi is! This is very weird, the previous model had an optional WiFi-Bluetooth ad on for $99 USD, the new models have integrated Bluetooth and an optional WiFi Extreme card for $49 USD.

One thing I don’t understand, if you can stick up to 4TB why would anyone need a raid card that cost $800 USD to manage a raid on your Mac Pro. Is this true for all flavors of raid (0, 1, 5, and 10) I guess I’m missing something here, my experience with raid arrays is not enough to understand this.

With this new release, Apple included Memory running at 800MHz, which is nice to know that Apple is finally implementing this speed on their memory line. Almost all current processors have a system bus of 800MHz, maybe by Macworld 2008 we have iMacs, MacBook and MacBook Pro running same type of memory.

The addition of the NVIDIA 8800 GT makes this Mac the best choice for many people, let’s not forget that there is another optional graphics card, the NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 with 1.5GB of GDDR3 memory, which is killer. If you are thinking on gaming, me too.

Finally, reading Apple’s website I notice something interesting, Apple advertise the Mac Pro as a 1600MHz dual independent frontside bus couple with the 64bit architecture capable of a processing power bandwidth of 25.6GB a second. At this rate, you can manage lots of application and files at the same time on one of these systems, making you the most productive guy/gal on earth.

For those of you that were waiting of Apple’s new operating system, the wait is over. You can pre-order Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) as of today and if you bought a Mac anywhere from October 1, 2007, you can upgrade for just $9.95. When I did my usual website check in the morning I notice that the Apple Store was down, immediately started speculating about whatever rumors are out there like a 16GB iPhone, or a Red iPhone. Soon the Apple Store was back up and running announcing the availability of their new “Cat.”

Release date is October 26, 2007, coinciding with rumors websites that were speculating on this date already. Apple have added over 300 new features to its new operating system, some are under-the-hood enhancements but other are causing sensation even though we have only seen previews of it. The ones that have me all excited are Time Machine, Quick Look, and Spaces. Other features like Core Animation, 64-bit architecture, and the new Finder are very welcome.

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After waking up from a deep pleasant dream where I was using one of the new iMacs to write a post, I started planning my purchase. Then I started thinking about waiting until Leopard’s launch, that along will save me about $129.00. What would you do? I have a PPC MacMini and a Windows XP machine that is mostly used by my wife. I’m looking to merge these two with the use of Parallels, but as of today, my MacMini is working fine. Should I wait then?

The new 20 inch entry level iMac sports a 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, which compared to my 1.5 PPC G4 is smoking fast. 1GB of 667 MHz DDR2 memory that is twice what I have, and it comes on one SO-DIMM, which makes it super easy to upgrade to two. A 250GB hard drive giving me 68% more room to store all my photos and videos leaving my external drive available to use with Leopard’s Time Machine. I’m using my PC to record DVDs as my PPC G4 MacMini has only a combo drive, the new iMac sports a DVD writer across the board.
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This afternoon I spend it reading and watching all the information that I could to bring you the best of the Apple event that took place in Cupertino, CA. While it was not confirmed, it was rumored that Steve Jobs was going to lead the presentation. He was there and with the excitement that only the Mac community can bring, everybody was happy to see him so energetic giving an exciting presentation to the audience.

I want to make sure you understand that I was not at the event, all the reading you are about to do is just from what I read around the web. The new iMac is everything anyone can dream in a computer, since the beginning I loved the new all-in-one form factor of the iMac, and this new model is not an exception. The action took place at 1:00 PM EST, new iMacs, iLife, iWork, while it was not mentioned during the keynote is fear to point that the MacMini also was updated.
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