Come Seybold San Francisco this month, Apple's Power Mac G4 systems will have officially been stuck at an industry trailing 500MHz clockspeed for an entire year. And an AppleInsider two page report written back in January, entitled "Outlook for Faster G4 Systems Appear Gloomy," has unfortunately held its ground.
According to reliable sources, Apple Computer recently halted production of their new Multiprocessor Power Mac G4 systems just as the first units were beginning to arrive at resellers nationwide.
After returning from a rather chaotic Macworld, Apple's Mac OS Developer team was quick to pound out the third alpha build of Mac OS 9.1 Update, which the company has code-named 'Fortissimo.'
Last week at this time, Apple Chief Executive Officer, Steve P. Jobs, was going through his stack of Macworld Expo speech cards with a big fat magic marker — replacing almost all occurrences of the word "ATI" with streaks of black ink.
You could almost feel the sadness by glancing at the faces of the numerous ATI employees staffing the company's conference room at Macworld Expo New York. According to reliable sources, a recent mishap has left the graphics chip supplier in a tub of hot water with OEM partner, Apple Computer.
Over the past couple of week's, AppleInsider has published reports detailing Apple's plan to revamp its display offerings to go alongside its new desktop-based products. A rumored, revamped, 15" flat-panel Studio Display is rumored to be marketed alongside the company's new Power Mac G4 Cube.
Over the past couple of week's, AppleInsider has published reports detailing Apple's plan to revamp its display offerings to go alongside its new desktop-based products.
Reliable AppleInsider sources, whose track record is nearly unblemished, were kind enough to pass along these images of what finally appears to be Apple's final design for what the company is expected to officially call the "Power Mac G4 Cube."
According reliable Apple sources, Apple will announce a new array of software products at tomorrow's Macworld Expo New York.
Earlier in the week, we reported that Apple was in transition to a major corporate rebranding that should be completed and announced or made evident at January's Macworld Expo.
Apple\'s next-generation PowerBook G3, code-named Pismo, was originally scheduled to be completed no later than the 20th of December and was to then immediately hit the production lines in Quanta\'s Taiwan facility. Pismo was to be the only one of the major product announcements at January\'s Macworld Expo that would be readily available upon introduction.
The Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft had originally planned to release Mac Internet Explorer 5.0 alongside Mac Outlook Express 5.0 earlier this Fall. However, as some may have already read elsewhere, the software giant decided to put off the release of Internet Explorer until early 2000 in order to improve the stability and performance of the new rendering engine used in the release, code-named "Tasman."
Back in early October there were rumors that Apple was in the process of completing some form of corporate rebranding. At the time it was suggested that the computer maker was considering altering its "Think Different" advertising slogan; new information suggests that the move is planned to be much, much more.
Minuet, otherwise knows as Mac OS 9.0.1, was slated to go Golden Master for Pismo (the next-generation PowerBook G3), Mystic (the Multiprocessor Power Macintosh G4 systems) and P7A (the 17 inch iMac) by the 14th of December, and overall by the 20th.
As many will remember, back in October we ran a report on a rumored set of Multiprocessor Power Macintosh G4s that were said to be underway at Apple under the code-name "Mystic." At the time it was widely suspected that these units would make their debut alongside Mac OS X Consumer release, though according to new sources, these new powerhouses will touchdown as early as this January's Macworld Expo.
Even though the rumored 17 inch iMac, which goes by the code-name "P7A," is not expected to go Golden Master until the last week of January, sources within Cupertino claim that a limit production run of P7A prototypes recently rolled off the assembly line at LG Electronics\' Mexcali, Mexico facility — the same facility responsible for a majority of Apple\'s current iMac production.
Minuet, a release consisting of less than 50 components, turned beta on December 1st. The release did in fact skip over the alpha sequence (from delta to beta). This is possible because the software update is not very complex.
Whether it\'s evident right now, or not, Apple has been listening to their customers. However, listening to consumers also means that Apple will slowly be forced to expand upon their 4 simple product points.
Last year when Steve Jobs unveiled Apple\'s iMac personal computer, no one would have thought that a year later it would be graphite grey that would be dominating the enclosures of Apple\'s entire product matrix. Maybe Apple is listening to their customers or maybe Steve himself has mistaken a recent MacMall or MacWarehouse catalog for his holiday Toys \'R\' Us circular, too.
Since the beginning of time, artists have signed their work. "It\'s a symbol of pride in one\'s accomplishments," as one Apple Employee puts it. "A well-written piece of software is as much a work of art as a Renaissance painting." In the early 1980\'s, Apple engineers, including Steve Jobs, would even have their signatures inscribed in the moldings of the inner portions of the Macintosh\'s enclosure.
There's a piece of software about which Apple has remained extremely private over the course of its development cycle. In fact, only the few and privileged have been able to catch a glimpse of the much-rumored major upgrade to Apple's office suite, now know as AppleWorks.
Sometimes Apple even surprises us, as was the cases with this week\'s announcement of QuickTime 4.1, the much anticipated upgrade to QuickTime 4, which was code-named Chagall. While Phil Schiller, Apple\'s Vice President of Product Marketing, talked about a few specifics of the new release, there were a few things left unsaid that we had planned on detailing once the feature-set on the new release was frozen.
Apple\'s next-generation PowerBooks are winding down in their development cycle and word from reliable Apple sources is that several third party developers who are close to Apple have received test units over of the past few weeks.
Back in July we broke a story, Apple to Take a Stab at Retail with Apple Boutiques, which carefully detailed Apple\'s distribution layout and how they intended to slowly transform to a more direct sales model, which would include the launch of Apple branded Retail Stores (or Boutiques). Since then we\'ve mentioned very little on the subject, but this is by no means because the rumor turned out to be bogus or what not. In fact, we at AppleInsider have a very strong belief that this is one of those rumors that has yet to come to pass due to the extensive planning that must go into such a venture.
Last week we published a report on a rumored multiprocessing Power Macintosh project underway at Apple, code-named \'Mystic.\' Judging from the reports submitted by sources shortly afterwards, the project is very real, and said by some to be the \"Next Big Thing\" to come out of Apple.
{{ summary }}
