MacRumors

The Inquirer reports on rumors circulating around Tokyo about Apple's interest in high end Penryn processors for their upcoming Mac Pros.

According to the rumors, Apple has "pre-booked" all the top (3.2GHz) Penryn bins for this year, leaving only "minimum quantities" for other big vendors. The 3.2GHz Penryn Xeon ("Harpertown") processors offer a faster 1600MHz bus and 12MB of L2 cache. The quad-core processors could provide Apple with an upgrade path for their current Mac Pro line which has not seen major upgrades since August of 2006. Apple did introduce the 8-core Mac Pro in April of 2007, but left the existing models untouched.

By incorporating these new processors, Apple could increase the top speed Mac Pro to 3.2GHz with a 1600MHz front side bus (up from 1333 MHz). This would not be the first time Apple would have "exclusive" use of an otherwise unreleased Intel processor. The introduction of the 8-core Mac Pro used a 3.0GHz Xeon chip that was otherwise unannounced at that time. Similarly, the Penryn Xeon processors were not expected to reach 3.2GHz based on early reports.

The new Intel Penryn Xeon processors are due in November 2007.

Confirming rumors circulating earlier this week, Microsoft announced today that Bungie Studios will be spun off into a privately held company in which Microsoft will hold a minority equity interest.

Bungie Studios was founded in 1991 as a Mac game developer, but in 2000 was bought by Microsoft who launched Bungie's Halo as an exclusive title for Microsoft's Xbox. The Halo franchise has seen enormous success, with Halo 3 launching with record sales numbers.

Comments by Bungie to Macworld indicate that while Bungie will continue to focus on the Xbox, they open up the possibility of returning to the Mac platform.

"But sure, now that we're branching of and controlling our destiny, that puts us in a position where we could put ourselves back on the [Mac] platform definitively again," said Jarrard.

The DailyPrincetonian reports on a growing trend amongst at least some universities.

The Princeton University newspaper reports that Princeton's Mac marketshare has been rising dramatically, with 40 percent of students and faculty currently using a Mac as their personal computer. This number is up from only 10% of Mac users on campus only 4 years ago. And this number could still be growing. This year, the University's Student Computer Initiative reportedly sold more Macs than PC's, with 60 percent of students choosing a Mac, up from 45 percent just last year. Students were offered a choice of Dell, IBM and Apple computers.

This follows a recent report that looked at a similar trend at many other colleges. According to a separate Pioneer Press survey, Dartmouth is up to 55% freshman with Macs (up from 30% in 2005), University of Virginia with 20% of freshman with Macs (up from 17% in 2006), and Cornell with 21% dorm network users with a Mac (up from 5% between 2000-2002).

PioneerPress attributes the uptick in sales to the popularity of the iPod, security of Mac OS X, design and ease of use.

These numbers are much higher than the general population, in which Mac marketshare numbers have been hovering around 5-6%. (All of these figures may not be directly comparable, as marketshare numbers typically represent new sales in a particular time-period rather than the installed base. Regardless, the numbers are still significantly higher than would be expected.)

Apple has filed a patent application published on October 4th, which reveals that as far back as March 2006, they have been investigating the possibility of pressure sensitive touch screens.

Apple describes that historically, purely pressure-sensitive screens offer little advantage as an input device. The resultant "stiction" created between the finger and the touch surface makes it difficult to operate smoothly.

Instead, resistive (Newton, Palm) touch displays and more recently capacitive (iPhone) displays have dominated the market. Neither of these touch screen technologies, however, measure the degree of pressure the user applies to the screen. By incorporating this pressure information in a hybrid capacitive + pressure display, Apple believes useful information could be gleaned to provide a better user experience.

This is not the first time that Apple has described the use of "pressure" information to aid in gathering information from the user. A patent application published in March 2006 also describes the use of pressure and length of time pressed as variables that might change action. An example provided is when the user is given the option of a "Delete" button, the user would have to press harder for the delete button to be acknowledged.

Apple has seeded version 1.1 of ZFS (Zettabyte File System) for Mac OS X to Developers this week. The preview updates a previous build released on June 26, 2007.

In the release notes, Apple confirms that the original release of Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) will only offer Read-Only ZFS. As a result, no ZFS pools or filesystems can be modified or created under 10.5.0. This developer's preview enables full read/write capability, including the creation/destruction of ZFS pools and filesystems.

ZFS is described as "a fundamentally new approach to data management. We've blown away 20 years of obsolete assumptions, eliminated complexity at the source, and created a storage system that's actually a pleasure to use."

The initial version of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is rumored to be released on October 26th, 2007. It's unclear when Leopard will incorporate full Read/Write ZFS support, but it seems clear that Apple is working on adding this functionality.

Apple has acknowledged an iMac freezing issue that was published by AppleInsider earlier this week.

AppleInsider had noted two growing Apple discussion boards filling with complaints regarding the issue (one, two). Indeed, MacRumors' own forums have dealt with the issue.

It has been suggested that the ATI graphics drivers are to blame, as the issue became more pronounced after iMac Software Update 1.1. Both software updates for the new iMac have been geared towards the graphics drivers.

In a statement to Macworld, Apple confirms it is aware of the issue and assures a fix is coming.

We are tracking down the root cause of this bug, and will issue a software update which corrects it as soon as we can most likely later this month, the company spokesperson said. We apologize for the inconvenience.

9to5mac suggests that Apple has already lined up specific development partners for 3rd party applications on the iPhone. EA is reportedly porting their existing iPod games over to the iPhone, with "other big developers" also on board.

9to5mac expects Apple to adopt an application model from T-Mobile's Sidekick, in which developers submit applications for review and approval.

If Tmobile/Danger feel the application is stable, won't interfere with other applications and would be of interest to their customers, they make it available for download and install through an integrated payment system. The cost of application is added to the customer's monthly bill. The Danger team actively works with the developers to insure compatibility and stability in applications through SidekickOS updates.

The site also suggests that Apple will continue to thwart efforts for user-installation of 3rd party apps to reduce piracy concerns.

Appleinsider believes that Apple is preparing for announcements late in October, specifically between the 22nd and 27th of the month.

They specifically point to October 26th as the likely ship date for Mac OS X Leopard, but don't rule out the possibility of additional announcements near that date.

ThinkSecret also believes that Leopard will launch on or around October 26th.

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is available for pre-order at Amazon

Apple's iPhone "SDK" will remain web-based for the foreseeable future, according to an Arstechnica source. However, the source elaborated to say that Apple is actively working to expand the capabilities given in the web-based SDK.

Improvements are said to be forthcoming to Safari to allow off-line storage capabilities which would gain the ability to run 3rd party web-based code without accessing the internet. Other possible improvements include deeper access to iPhone functions via JavaScript and home screen icon placement.

"The entire purpose of all this work is to make the iPhone 'SDK' (WebKit) more usable," our source told us.

The targeted release date of such improvements is January 2008, most likely Macworld San Francisco.

Poll: Before iPhone 1.1.1, did you install 3rd party applications on your iPhone?