Thursday, July 28, 2011
Cool Backgrounds For Mac
Original marketing materials for the Mac Pro generally referred to the middle-of-the-line model with 2 × dual-core 2.66 GHz processors. Previously, Apple featured the base model with the words "starting at" or "from" when describing the pricing, but the online Apple Store listed the "Mac Pro at $2499", the price for the mid-range model. The base model could be configured at US$2299, much more comparable with the former base-model dual-core G5 at US$1999, although offering considerably more processing power. Post revision, the default configurations for the Mac Pro includes one quad-core Xeon 3500 at 2.66 GHz or two quad-core Xeon 5500s at 2.26 GHz each. In general, the Mac Pro has been well received in the press. The combination of high performance, reasonable expandability, very quiet operation and superb mechanical design makes it routinely appear as the comparison system against which other systems are measured. The Xeon platform is, however, Intel's "high end" system and not aimed at more general purpose use. Nevertheless, current-generation Xeons are priced competitively with their high-end desktop platforms, allowing Apple to sell a very powerful system at prices that are considered quite competitive, even by reviewers who do not normally review Apple systems. The Mac Pro is a workstation similar to other Unix workstations such as those previously manufactured by Sun Microsystems. Although the high-end technical market has not traditionally been an area of strength for Apple, the company has been positioning itself as a leader in non-linear digital editing for high-definition video, which demands storage and memory far in excess of a general desktop machine. Additionally, the codecs used in these applications are generally processor intensive and highly threadable, speeding up almost linearly with additional processor cores. Apple's previous machine aimed at this market, the Power Mac G5, had up to two dual-core processors, but lacked the storage expansion capabilities of the newer design. An Intel-based replacement for the Power Mac G5 had long been expected prior to the release of the Mac Pro. The iMac, Mac Mini, MacBook and MacBook Pro had moved to an Intel-based architecture starting in January 2006, leaving the Power Mac G5 as the only machine in the Mac lineup still based on the PowerPC. Speculation about the G5's eventual replacement was common. Rumors initially expected the machine to differ physically from the existing G5 and considered a number of different possible internal configurations based on different chipsets, but the coincidence of Intel releasing a new Core 2-based Xeon workstation platform just prior to the 2006 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) made it fairly obvious that the resulting machine would be based on it. Even the naming was "obvious"; Apple had dropped the term "Power" from the other machines in their lineup, and started using "Pro" on their higher-end laptop offerings. As such, the name "Mac Pro" was widely used before the machine was announced. On November 5, 2010, Apple introduced the Mac Pro Server, which—alongside the server option for the Mac mini—replace the Xserve line of Apple servers as of January 2011. On April 4, 2007, a dual Quad-core Xeon Clovertown model was launched and it was replaced on January 8, 2008 by a dual Quad-core Xeon Harpertown model. The current model Mac Pro was announced on July 27, 2010 and features Intel Xeon processors based on the Nehalem microarchitecture/Westmere microarchitecture. There are options of up to 12 processing cores, up to four optional 2TB hard disk drives/512GB solid state drives and ATI Radeon HD 5770/5870 graphics. The first Mac Pro was based on dual Dual-core Xeon Woodcrest processors and formally announced on August 7, 2006 at WWDC. A new Intel Xeon-based Xserve was announced along with the Mac Pro, completing Apple's transition from the PowerPC to x86 architecture. The Mac Pro is a workstation computer manufactured by Apple Inc.. The machines are based on Xeon microprocessors, but are similar to the Power Mac G5 they replaced in terms of outward appearance and expansion capabilities. The Mac Pro, in most configurations, is the fastest computer that Apple offers and one of three desktop computers in the current Macintosh lineup, the other two being the iMac and Mac Mini.
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