Electronista reports that HP has upgraded their workstations with the new Intel Penryn Xeon processors. The new 45-nm Xeon 5200 (dual core) and Xeon 5400 (quad core) processors can be configured in dual-processor configurations (up to 8 cores total).

Yesterday, Lenovo announced their first machines powered by the Intel Xeon 5400 processors. These new Penryn based PCs, however, are not expected to ship until January 2008.

Intel will be officially launching the Penryn processors on November 12th. Apple is expected to adopt the new procesors in a revision to the Mac Pro. The new Mac Pro is rumored to be ready to launch as soon as enough Intel processors become available.

The latest claim comes from Crave who said that “Asus is helping Apple build a Tablet PC.” Further information from their source indicated that it will not be based on existing Asus designs and will come from a completely new blueprint.

While Apple Tablet rumors have been running for years, the possibility of it seems more likely now than ever with all of Apple’s research into touch-based interfaces. The last rumor of an actual “Tablet Mac” came from Smarthouse.com.au in late 2006 in which Apple was said to be working on an Intel-based Tablet Mac with docking station and HDMI output. More recently, however, Appleinsider described a project inside Apple that was described as a PDA but would carry a form factor about “1.5 times the size of the current iPhone” which we could see as early as January at Macworld San Francisco 2008.

Rumors of a Tablet Mac hit an all time high in 2003 when multiple sources pointed to the existence of a Tablet device from Apple, but for whatever reason was never released.

Source : Macrumors

With Mac OS X Leopard a little over a week old, Apple has already begun making preparations for seeding the next revision of Mac OS X (10.5.1) to testers.

No details on the revision are yet available, but Apple has traditionally pushed out updates quickly after initial release. Apple released the first (.1) update to Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) less than three weeks after its initial release.

Meanwhile, we are still waiting for the Mac OS X 10.4.11 update which has been expected any day now. Apple even references the unreleased update in a number of technotes.

Source : macrumors

Note: Q8mug.com will be posting a review of Mac OSX 10.5 (Leopard) soon.  

Released via Software Update are new versions of iTunes (7.5) & Quicktime (7.3). Updates are as follows:

iTunes 7.5 – 41.3MB
iTunes 7.5 features the ability to activate iPhone wherever service is offered and support for Phase, a new interactive music game designed exclusively for iPod nano (third generation), iPod classic, and iPod (fifth generation). This release also includes bug fixes to improve stability and performance.

Quicktime 7.3 – 51.8MB
QuickTime 7.3 addresses critical security issues and delivers:
- Support for iTunes 7.5
- Updated support for creating iPhone-compatible web content
- Updated JavaScript support in the QuickTime Web Plug-in
- Numerous bug fixes

For detailed information on the security content of this update, please visit this website: http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n61798.

T3.co.uk claims to have seen a forthcoming update to the iPhone — firmware version 1.1.2. According to T3:

“First off, there’s support for dozens of languages, so if you happen to be a fluent Cantonese speaker, the phone has all the relevant character sets so you can display your language properly.

There’s full support for French and German, with special keyboard lay-outs on the ready to tackle accented characters – perfectly understandable, of course, what with the phone heading for launch across the channel this month too.”

Our source also mentioned that 3rd party SIM unlock software will be once again broken as well as some 3rd party applications. iToner was specifically mentioned as being broken by the update, though readers should note that Ambrosia has released a free update for every firmware release thus-far.

Apple today has updated its Macbook and Macbook Pro lines to the following specs:
Macbook
White 13.3″ at 2.0GHz – 1GB RAM – 80GB – Combo Drive – GMA X3100 – $1099.99
White 13.3″ at 2.2GHz – 1GB RAM – 120GB – SD-DL – GMA X3100 – $1299.00
Black 13.3″ at 2.2GHz – 1GB RAM – 120GB – SD-DL – GMA X3100 – $1499.00

Macbook Pro
Add the option to upgrade to a 2.6Ghz Processor for $250 and a bigger Drive. 

Several rumors site are reporting that the new Macs have been sited at Apple stores across the US.  If you are waiting to buy a new Mac laptop now is the perfect time to do it.  On a side note, it comes with Leopard!

Apple has apparently changed its tune on the ability to run Mac OS X Server inside a Virtual Machine (such as VMWare’s Fusion or Parallels Desktop). Though the company’s license wording previously disallowed running multiple copies of Mac OS X Server on a single Mac, the new software license agreement included with Leopard reads “This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Mac OS X Server software (the “Mac OS X Server Software”) on a single Apple-labeled computer. You may also install and use other copies of Mac OS X Server Software on the same Apple-labeled computer, provided that you acquire an individual and valid license from Apple for each of these other copies of Mac OS X Server Software.” According to TidBits, the license change could herald new offerings from Parallels and VMWare that allow Mac OS X to run inside a virtual environment on top of itself.

Ben Rudolph, Director of Corporate Communications for Parallels, told the publication, “Enabling Leopard Server to run in a virtual machine may take some time, but we’re working closely with Apple on it and will make it public as quickly as possible.” Pat Lee, Senior Product Manager at VMware, concurred, saying “We applaud Apple for the exciting licensing changes implemented in Leopard Server. Apple customers can now run Mac OS X Server, Windows, Linux and other x86 operating systems simultaneously on Apple hardware so we are excited about the possibilities this change presents.”