In a followup to yesterday's report on further Power Mac G5 delays, sources have informed AppleInsider that shipping dates for Apple's newly announced Xserve G5's appear to have slipped once again.
The Xserve G5 was first announced on January 6th, with availability scheduled for the month of February. Estimated ship dates for orders placed on that day were initially listed among the first week of February, reports state. But recent emails from the Apple store have informed Xserve G5 customers that they will not be receiving their orders until the last week in March.
As with the forthcoming 90-nanometer Power Mac G5s, explanations for the Xserve delays are currently unknown. While some sources have indicated the possibility that graphics cards are a weighing factor in the Power Mac delays, sources from Mac rumor site, MacRumors.com, are pointing the finger at cooling difficulties in the faster machines.
In November, the first batch of about 50 pre-production Apple Xserve G5s rolled of an assembly line at one of Quanta's manufacturing facilities, almost all scoring poorly on temperature quality assurance tests, sources said at the time. But a successive test run in December, of about half the size, provided admirable results and the units were soon after announced to the public.
It's unlikely that Xserves are once again delayed do to heat issues, leaving some insiders to speculate that all newly announced and forthcoming G5 products from Apple are being delayed by insufficient stockpiles of the new 90-nm G5 processor.