Ben
Last
week, Apple announced a new
Mac
Pro just one week before Macworld. Why then? So Mr. Jobs can focus his
keynote on more press-worthy items. What those will be are anyone’s guess — for
another day that is — but rest assured there’s no shortage of speculation.
The new Mac Pro is loaded with an alphabet soup of technical specifications that
can make even seasoned analysts flinch but creative professionals and scientists
will desire the bleeding-edge 8-core workstation. With it, Apple is showcasing
Intel’s most powerful workstation platform (Harpertown) in a highly configurable
model. While the speeds and feeds are certainly impressive, its killer
application is the Leopard operating system. The Mac Pro is a solid upgrade for
targeted graphics and scientific clients but it isn’t a general-purpose
enterprise desktop, a market Apple hasn’t yet focused their efforts
on.