New and Noteworthy: Woodcrest, Conroe, and the "pro" Macs; WPN: Windows To Make Apple Rich; more

Woodcrest, Conroe, and the "pro" Macs Ars Technica attempts to glimpse into the future and paint a picture of Apple's forthcoming Intel-based "pro" Macs. "The prime candidate for the high-end Pro Mac workstation would be the Xeon 5160. It's clocked at 3.0GHz (enabling Steve Jobs to finally reach the magic 3.0GHz number?albeit two years late and on an entirely different architecture) and has a 1333MHz FSB. It's also pricey: US$851 in quantities of 1,000. Now that Intel has a one-price-for-everybody model, Apple shouldn't count on any deep discounts. So we're looking at US$1,700 for the processors alone. Add in another US$400 or so for a high-end video card, another US$400-500 for the motherboard, and the price rapidly escalates?perhaps beyond the US$3,299 of the current Quad G5. That could mean Xeon 5150. That's still a respectable 2.66GHz and is US$161 cheaper than the 5160." More.

WPN: Windows To Make Apple Rich WebProNews speculates that Boot Camp and Parallels will fill Apple's coffers as users switch to the platform in droves. "For applications requiring a Windows-or-nothing platform, users can switch over to XP via Boot Camp, and likely run what they need. A great example of this would be the software-as-a-service (SaaS) available from Salesforce through its AppExchange program. Software that may not run under a browser in Mac could do so in IE on the XP side. If SaaS does take off as Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has evangelized, maybe it will be Mac hardware that provides some impetus for more users to embrace it." More.

Barron's: Macs, not iPods, will surge Barron's speculates that analysts are looking at the wrong product line when judging Apple's profit potential. "Judging from its stock price, you'd think Apple Computer only made iPods. The shares, which soared more than 10-fold in the three years through this January, largely on excitement about the portable music players, have since plunged by 40%, to about 51, mostly on fears that the iPod craze is losing steam." More.

Previously on MacFixIt

• MacBook Pro: More on problems with airline power inverters -- power draw the issue; workaround
• Firefox 2.0b1 (#2): Minor issues, improvements
• Odds and Ends: Symantec: There are no viruses for Mac OS X -- currently; Knowledge Base updates

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