An Apple With 8 Cores

Well if an apple had eight cores I suppose it wouldn’t be much fun to eat, so it’s a good thing that this is an Apple. Today, Apple Inc. unleashed a new Mac Pro with the option to upgrade from dual two-core processors to dual four-core Intel Clovertown processors. While it’d certainly nice to have the bragging rights of such a beastly computing machine, I’m not sure if it warrants the extra (nearly) $1500 for the step up in speed.

The biggest reservation I have, as many would, is that applications these days simply aren’t optimized for computing with eight cores, most machines with two are hardly ever maxed out. The good news is, however, that right along side of these machines is the new Creative Suite from Adobe. Coincidentally (or maybe not so) CS3 applications are optimized for such mammoth of a computer.

On a side note, I have a brief story. Once upon a time there was a curse bestowed on Leo Laporte (former TechTV personality and current podcaster extraordinaire). As the story goes, shortly after Leo makes an Apple purchase, the product is replaced with a newer updated version. As luck would have it, it seems as if this curse is in effect if Leo is even present at the purchase of a Mac. So, two days ago Leo went to a nearby Apple store with a colleague of his. The man purchased a Mac Pro, with a measly four cores and two 24-inch Apple Cinema displays. Unluckily for this man, just two days later (today) Apple introduced the new speedier Mac Pro, and to make matters worse dropped the prices of cinema displays by $100. Quite bad luck I must say.