Today Apple announced two new ‘Nehalem’ powered behemoths, the Quad Core and 8-Core machines. As a personal note, would have been much cooler if they named it Octa-Core. Either way, your bound to find the processing power you need with these computers.

Here are the specs for those interested:

Quad-Core: $2,499
– 2.66 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 3500 series processor with 8MB of L3 cache;
– 3GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM memory, expandable up to 8GB;
– NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 graphics with 512MB of GDDR3 memory;
– 640GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive running at 7200 rpm;
– 18x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW

8-Core (Octa-Core): $3,299
– Two 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5500 series processors with 8MB of shared L3 cache;
– 6GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM memory, expandable up to 32GB;
– NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 graphics with 512MB of GDDR3 memory;
– 640GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive running at 7200 rpm;
– 18x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)

If you want to get into some extensive reading today, here’s the official press release:

CUPERTINO, California—March 3, 2009—Apple® today introduced the new Mac® Pro using Intel “Nehalem” Xeon processors and a next-generation system architecture to deliver up to twice the performance of the previous generation system.* The new Mac Pro starts at $2,499 and features the latest graphics technology and an updated interior that makes expansion even easier than before.

“The new Mac Pro is a significant upgrade and starts at $300 less than before,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The Mac Pro features an advanced system architecture, new faster processors and our best-ever graphics options to deliver a faster, more powerful system that our professional customers are going to love.”

The new Mac Pro includes Intel Xeon processors running at speeds up to 2.93 GHz, each with an integrated memory controller with three channels of 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC memory that delivers up to 2.4 times the memory bandwidth while cutting memory latency up to 40 percent.** Every Mac Pro comes standard with the NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 512MB of GDDR3 memory, a high-performance graphics card with nearly three times greater performance when compared to the previous generation system.*** An optional ATI Radeon HD 4870 is available for even more performance. With both a Mini DisplayPort and DVI port, the new Mac Pro provides out-of-the-box support for the 24-inch Apple LED Cinema Display, the 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Display, or other DVI based displays.

An updated interior provides easy access to all components within the Mac Pro for hassle free expansion. The Mac Pro includes four direct-attach cable-free hard drive carriers for installing up to 4TB of internal storage when using 1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA drives. An optional cable-free Mac Pro RAID card delivers performance up to 550MB/s**** and allows the four internal drive bays to be set up in RAID 0, 1, 5, or 0+1 configurations for improved disk performance and redundant data protection.

Continuing Apple’s commitment to the environment, the new Mac Pro exceeds Energy Star 4.0 requirements and is leading the industry as an early adopter of the more stringent Energy Star 5.0 requirements which will become effective later this year. The Mac Pro enclosure is made of highly recyclable aluminum and the interior is designed to be more material-efficient. The Mac Pro uses PVC-free internal cables and components and contains no brominated flame retardants. The new Mac Pro achieves EPEAT Gold status.*****

Every Mac includes Leopard®, the world’s most advanced operating system which features Time Machine™, an effortless way to automatically back up everything on a Mac; a redesigned Finder™ that lets users quickly browse and share files between multiple Macs; Quick Look, the best way to instantly see files without opening an application; Spaces®, an intuitive feature used to create groups of applications and instantly switch between them; Mail with easy setup and elegant, personalized stationery; and iChat®, the most advanced video chat. Every Mac comes with Apple’s innovative iLife® ’09 suite of applications for managing photos, making movies and creating and learning to play music. iLife ’09 features iPhoto®, which introduces Faces and Places as breakthrough new ways to easily organize and manage your photos; iMovie® with powerful easy-to-use new features such as Precision Editor, video stabilization and advanced drag and drop; and GarageBand® which introduces a whole new way to help you learn to play piano and guitar. Optional Apple professional applications include Aperture™, Final Cut® Express, Final Cut Studio®, Logic® Express, Logic Studio® and Shake®.

For those who get a lot of use their Time Capsule, some wonderful rumors have been floating around the Apple blogosphere. The original reports of the rumor seem to have originated from 9to5mac.com.

It seems that Apple is working on a device, or perhaps upgrading Time Capsule that will allow access of local files over the internet. Steve Jobs has mentioned something along this line before, when talking about what functions could be added to Time Capsule in the future.

Here are some of the features that have been rumored that will be available with Apple’s media server device:

- User’s MobileMe accounts will be directly tied in with the media server, which will be used in accessing the files on the server.

- iTunes database would be shared, not just for music but video.

- Media would be available for access on the iPod Touch, and iPhone.

Some other bits of the rumor were that Apple might offer these services on ‘the cloud’. I really don’t see how it could be done, as storing that much information would take a hefty amount of server space. I do like the idea of adding the function to Time Capsule. It would be a nice addition if they are able to allow the function for existing Time Capsule owners.

Nearly all of the experts say that Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) could be released ahead of schedule. According to this AppleInsider report, Snow Leopard still has improvements in the works.

Just like most of the already known improvements, this latest report mentions more programming enhancements to Snow Leopard. The developers that preview Snow Leopard noticed improvements to Grand Central. Which is a new design by Apple to make it easier for developers to use the multi-processors of certain Macs.

Some areas that Apple is still heavily improving, is the 64 bit support and some of the programs used with the Cocoa programming interface.

Snow Leopard looks to be still be growing. Luckily, nothing in the report has led anyone to think that Mac’s next OS X will come any later than the speculated Spring 2009 launch.

Seth Weintraub over at Computerworld.com has apparently gotten insider information as to the details of the new line of Macbooks. Of course you probably want to know what these new features are, so here’s a list of the rumored MacBook updates:

- The new MacBook and MacBook Pro models are slimmer, with a more rounded body
- The trackpad is made of glass, to allow multi-touch and gestures
- The body is more ‘green’, as it’s made from a single piece of aluminum. Along with the body, the manufacturing process has changed

Weintraub also states that the updated MacBooks will be available sometime at the end of September.

I’m kind of dissappointed in the updates from Weintraub. If they were to have made the entire keyboard out of glass, and made the keys customizable that would have been something. Of course, slimmer is nearly always better, and a glass trackpad will be easier to use.

The day before the 4th of July, and already there’s good retail news abound. Apple has decided to drop the price of their high-end 1.8GHZ SSD Macbook Air by $500.

The price sits at a less ridiculous tag of $2598, while before it was $3098. The price drop has been implemented due to the drop in hardware costs for the processor and SSD. In a generous effort, anyone who has an outstanding order will benefit from the new price drop. Apple has sent out emails to the buyers that the new sales price would reflect on their form of payment.

It’s being reported by MacRumors via Economic Daily News that the MacBook line will be receiving a significant upgrade in the near future.

It looks as though the popular MacBook line will be getting a back-lit LED screen. This will put the line in the same LED class as the 17″ MacBook Pro series, and the MacBook Air.

LED screens bring all kinds of different benefits to the user. The largest benefit to a MacBook user, is that LEDs use up a significant less amount of battery power. The second benefit is that it will load at instant brightness, which will help with boot-up times.

The only downside to the news, is that it won’t be until 2009 until we seem them manufactured.