Merom in MacBook and MacBook Pros in September?

Kevin C. Tofel writes "If you want to see where the computer industry is going, you often have to watch the computer component manufacturers, and that's just what DigiTimes did. AsusTek and Quanta both produce Apple notebooks and sources appear to have just revealed that September is the month for 64-bit Merom CPUs in the MacBook and MacBook Pro line."

News?

[necro81]

The features of the Merom processors (multicore, 64-bit, aimed at mobile processing), and Apple made the Intel switch largely due to Intel's processor roadmap and what was coming down the pipeline. Based on Apple's past desire to gobble up the latest processors as soon as they are available, I'd say it was a foregone conclusion that the Merom would show up in the MacBooks as soon as they came off the fab line. So I ask: is this news?

yay!

[spykemail]

Assuming Apple takes this opportunity to eliminate hardware defects I'm officially declaring Spring 2007 "but a new labtop" season. With Merom, Leopard, Bootcamp, and no more serious hardware problems the MacBooks will be posed to slurp up more market share in the US, if not everywhere.

Manufactured Demand

[wwiiol_toofless]

Core 2, 4x4, SLI, physics cards...

64 bit processing, let alone dual-core tech has yet to be fully applied in the mainstream. People salivate and argue over the latest and greatest and when to buy what to stay "future-proof" in terms of hardware.

I'm still waiting for a viable 64-bit OS fer cryin' out loud, and don't get me started on SLI...

I am going to purchase a single-core AMD 64 San Diego core for $139 bucks and I'm going to be just fine for the next 2 years minimum. I keep my gaming system in tip-top shape, so I don't need an extra CPU core to process all the spyware running in the background.

Just bought an MacBook!

[Numeric]

Doh! I just bought a MacBook this week from CompUsa. I spoke to them I can return it for a CompUsa GiftCard for my purchase price. I'll wait til next month and repurchase a 64-bit.

iMac

[Balthisar]

I'd like to see this in an iMac. Yeah, I know -- "consumer model." How about a more expensive iMac Pro?

I've had a 17" Intel iMac for just over a month now -- it was bought to replace my homemade Windows PC. I also have plans to replace my "main" QuickSilver with a 20" iMac as soon as I have cash-in-hand, but I may wait things out. I'm usually against the all-in-one solutions, but this iMac really has impressed the hell out of me with its elegance and simplicity. That's no laughing matter, either. My Quicksilver is a bundle of wires -- keyboard, mouse, USB hub, the round thing that gives me audio-in-over-USB (pre-"digital audio" PowerMac), monitor cable, power to the Mac, power to the monitor, speaker wires, power to the speakers. Sheesh. I do like the expandability of my PowerMac, but all I ever really install are hard drives. I don't even do that anymore, because I've set up a homemade Myth box dual purposed as a NAT with 600GB of RAID1 storage so I can work on any computer in the house.

So, yeah, I do want a Pro machine's power, and am willing to pay for a Pro machine's power, but I really want the all-in-one-ness of the flat panel iMac.

Re:What is the deal with 64 bit?

[phalse phace]

But since when has the "average consumer" needed more than 4GB of RAM, let alone 1GB or 2GB's?

Re:iMac

[phalse phace]

It wouldn't be a big surprise to see the Merom in the iMacs since the Mac Pros have Dual-Dual Core Xeon processors in them. If Apple puts a Merom in a iMac, there'd still be a significant difference between it and the Mac Pro.

Re:What is the deal with 64 bit?

[Moofie]

Right, because nobody's ever been bitten in the ass by that kind of thinking before.

Re:Technology dust doesn't ever really settle

[timeOday]

I disagree - the "duo" (dual core) version of core 1 was the first major step in laptop CPU performance in a long, long time.

I also disagree with those who say, "now is always the time to buy, because there will always be something better coming along." I disagree because progress (and price drops) are not uniform over time. Look what happened when Core 2 hit the desktop.

Re:Digitimes is not a good predictor.

[Funkcikle]

Digitimes may be rubbish, but nothing beats a self-submitted story which is basically just a link to your own advert-covered blog with a few extra words arranged around a link to...Digitimes.

Re:Technology dust doesn't ever really settle

[drinkypoo]

Um keep in mind that Core 1 is a mild upgrade from the Pentium M. So buying into it was like "wow, this exact same orange looks slightly different."

Maybe that's true of Core Uno or whatever they called it. It's not true of Core Duo. Going from a single core to dual cores with shared cache is more than a mild upgrade.

Re:dust + settle

[pkulak]

Yea, I'm really pissed that I bought my Core 1 MacBook. As soon as the Core 2 ones come out, I'll have to live with the fact that the new ones... uh... encode video faster. How exactly will the new processor affect the performance of the machine again? Oh yea, that's right, except on paper, probably not at all.

Re:What is the deal with 64 bit?

[drinkypoo]

The average consumer currently needs 512MB RAM. NEEDS. 256MB is no longer enough. It takes longer to boot than it does to write a letter. The power user needs 1GB minimum. 4GB will seem stifling very soon. Here's a true story for you: I upgraded from 512MB to 1GB RAM on my Athlon XP 2500+ system with a two-drive RAID0 (80GB, 7200RPM, x2) and cut my boot time literally in half.

Re:dust + settle

[Overly Critical Guy]

Core Duo is a great chip. If you're kicking yourself over getting an Intel Mac, don't. This year's Core 2 Duo Macs would be made obsolete next year anyway, when Intel's Santa Rosa platform is released. See here [intel.com]. The summary is that Santa Rosa has a faster FSB, DirectX 10-level graphics, 802.11n, and more, and is designed for the Core 2. The Core 2s being released this year are just an "initial version" put out there to meet the holiday buying cycle, which is why they're socket-compatible with the Core 1. The real Core 2 platform is coming next year.

Quote from the press release:

The next generation of Intel Centrino mobile technology, codenamed Santa Rosa and detailed for the first time in Maloney's keynote, is designed to give users better overall performance and graphics, improved wireless connectivity and improved security and manageability. Santa Rosa is expected to include a more powerful mobile microprocessor, an improved graphics chipset, codenamed Crestline, an IEEE* 802.11n Wi-Fi adapter, codenamed Kedron, as well as Intel-optimized advanced management and security solutions. The platform will also include Intel's NAND flash-based platform accelerator, codenamed Robson, which enables much more rapid boot-up time and power savings. Santa Rosa, available in the first half of 2007, will use Intel's next-generation dual-core mobile microprocessor based on Intel's Core(TM) microarchitecture, codenamed Merom, Intel's new foundation for delivering even greater energy-efficient performance. An initial version of Merom will also be available for the current Intel Centrino Duo platform to align with the 2006 holiday buying cycle and will be socket or pin-compatible with the current version of Intel® Core(TM) Duo processors.

Re:What is the deal with 64 bit?

[masklinn]

Uh i'd say that 1Gb of RAM is pretty much a baseline requirement nowadays if you're either running XP SP2 or OSX Tiger, with 2Gb the "sweet spot".

Re:Too bad they didn't wait..

[Guy Harris]

Imagine intel macs being 64 bit from the start.

That would either mean that they'd be running Tiger, in which case you'd have the same limitations as on the G5 machines (no GUI in 64-bit code, so you'd have to split the app between a 32-bit front end and a 64-bit back end), or Leopard, in which case "the start" would have been Spring 2007.

As it is, I'm sure they're stuck running in 32 bit mode for 'compatibility' reasons.

If you're "sure", presumably you just got your Mac Pro and tried building a 64-bit app and checking whether it had a >4G address space and 8 more registers to play with, and found the answer was "no", right? (Otherwise, you can't be "sure" - you're just guessing.)

I run with less

[cappadocius]

I run Tiger with 384 Mb of RAM (128+256). I'm not saying all the eye-candy works like it does in a SteveNote, but it runs without problems.

Re:dust + settle

[Onan]

The threshold of being noticeably faster is generally held to be around 30%. Below that and you mostly don't notice unless you're really looking for it.

(Exceptions abound, of course.)

Re:dust + settle

[GWBasic]

If you keep waiting, you'll never buy anything!

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

He could be a distant relative of e.e. cummings ?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:What is the deal with 64 bit?

[WuphonsReach]

A good quality laptop can easily last 5 years. You can even get the backlight replaced for say $300 in year 4 and give it another 2-3 years of use. Batteries are a sore spot and usually have to be replaced after the first few years as well.

(Typing this on a 4.5 year old Tecra 9100 w/ 1GB of RAM.)