News for Tuesday, 8 August 2006

Yesterday, Apple unveiled the Mac Pro, the long awaited and expected computer for both high-end consumers and professionals. Our team has spent hours discussing, digging up information and analyzing this machine in order to provide you with our evaluation.
Let's start with the positive points:
- First, the price: cheaper than the PMG5 Quad, and, in addition, you can configure your machine with a dual Dual Core Xeon 2.0GHz for 2200 € (all taxes included)
- You can install a second optical drive. This is really a good point, and one will not have to choose between DVD or BD burner — get a DVD burner now, and buy a BD burner when prices will finally be reasonable (ATA-100 bus).
- 4 HD storage space, a dream for many users that has finally come true. The motherboard can manage 6 SATA HD: 4 are located in their dedicated bays, and 2 additional SATA ports remain available (we will comeback to this point later).
- Peripherals and audio: so many ports available both on front and back panels (2 FireWire 800, 2 FireWire 400 ports, 5 USB 2.0 ports (two on front panel, three on back panel), front-panel headphone mini-jack and speaker, optical digital audio input and output Toslink ports and finally, analogue stereo line-level input and output mini-jacks)
- GPU: all graphic cards available for the Mac Pro are good models. Nevertheless, we notice that a mid-range offering is missing between the entry level GF7300GT and the high-end XT1900XT. In addition, Apple has learned from the PMG5 problem: now the new double-wide, 16-lane PCI Express graphics slot brings an end to sacrificing a slot in favour of better graphics.
- Last but not least, the Dual Core Xeon WoodCrest are NOT soldered to the motherboard. So you can buy a 2GHz Xeon based Mac Pro and update it later.
To sum up, the Mac Pro offers design, performance, and expansion that we expect from a Pro computer. And even more!! This model can directly and easily compete with AMD CPU-based Sun workstations or similar offers from Dell.
However, we have to mention some "negative" points:
- The RAM: 667MHz DDR2 ECC fully buffered (FB) DIMM memory, the top but the most expensive RAM available. As usual, do not buy it from the AppleStore, ask your local Apple reseller as it will be much cheaper. The heat sinks do not provide any advantages and do not improve heat dissipation, as has been proven in the past by many reviews from PC-dedicated websites.
- "Only" 3 PCI Express slots for expansion
- HDs are located in trays, sliding into dedicated bays. It's a good idea, but the availability of the trays as a standalone product remains a bit unclear so far (it seems that they are present and deliver with the default model). One would of course like to install Raptors or other high velocity HD in such machine. In addition, the 2 remaining SATA2 ports can be used to plug external HDs.
- If 4 graphic cards are installed, the nVidia SLI or the ATI CrossFire technologies are not supported.
- No hardware RAID, although the OSX-based software RAID approaches the performance of rather expensive hardware RAID cards.
Other points:
- The ADC port is not present anymore, which is a good point unless you still own an ADC display. You will need a DVI to ADC adapter.
- It is an airflow-based cooling system that will probably be beneficial over time versus the liquid cooling system found in the previous PMG5.
- Benchmark results provided by Apple have to be considered with caution: they compare a PMG5 Quad with a Dual Dual Core Xeon 3.0GHz Mac Pro, whereas the default Mac Pro is powered by Dual Dual Core Xeon 2.66GHz. So the gain recorded for the Mac Pro might directly be linked to the CPU clockspeed difference.
We might have expected a model with only one Xeon core duo processor in order to have a desktop that can grow with your needs but remain in the price range that would fit with certain corporate needs or other, more budget-conscious customers.
To conclude, those Mac Geeks who have claimed that Apple sells and will sell standard, beige and ugly PC after Intel CPU transition have already been proven wrong with the MacBook and the MacBook Pro. This Mac Pro, or "PC by Apple", will satisfy many users and demonstrate that Apple can learn from the past (2nd optical drives, 4 HD, etc).
Those of you who have been reading Hardmac for more than 3 years, will know that we have no problem criticizing Apple decisions or hardware models, but today we admit that this Mac Pro is probably the best desktop that Apple have ever made.
JCJ

Ernest Prabhakar, Apple Open Source Product Manager, has announced the release of OSX.4.7 Intel Kernel Sources, together with other Apple's technologies (iCal Server, Bonjour, Launchd). Ernest apologized for the delay of this release, but also introduced the new Mac OS Forge, a new community site hosted by Apple, aiming to support WebKit and other open source projects focused on Mac OS X, especially those looking to transition from OpenDarwin.org.
It might also be a way for Apple to get a closer look at open source projects related to OSX.
Already available:
Intel Kernel Sources : http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/tarballs/apsl/xnu-792.10.96.tar.gz
New Open Source Calendaring Server: http://collaboration.macosforge.org
Apache-Licensed Bonjour and Launchd sources: http://bonjour.macosforge.org/ and http://launchd.macosforge.org/

Apple discreetly lowered the price of its displays after the update to the store from the WWDC announcements:
- The 20" Cinema Display is now 799 Euros (previously 819)
- The 23" Cinama HD is now 1149 Euros (previously 1399)
- The 30" Cinema HD is now 2299 Euros (previously 2699)

...on Apple's site, HERE.

According to a survey Apple made, only 26% of people perform backups, and only 4% of them are automated. For this reason, Leopard will bring the introduction of TimeMachine, an automatic backup solution integrated in the OS.
TimeMachine can do a complete system restore or a file by file restore from any moment in the past (dependent on the size of your backup disk, of course). The most impressive aspect being the Star Trek style interface, based on the new CoreAnimation library, which caused quite a few "Oohs" and "Ahhs" during the keynote.


Open a folder in the finder where you lost a file, click on the TimeMachine icon, and the desktop transitions to a view of deep space with iterations of your window in the middle going back until the dawn of time. On the right there is a time scale which allows you to move back to the desired date. Alternatively, you can click an arrow to go back day by day until you find the last modification. And to top it off, all this occurs at the OS level, so it will be available to all Cocoa applications. Backups can be made to disk or to a server.
A "Sneak Peak" of TimeMachine is available on Apple's site.