If MacScoop's "reliable sources" are right, they can get smaller and thinner still. Although it seems that Cupertino's scaling the MacBooks up and larger, there seem to be plans for Apple to develop and release a smaller, thinner, form-factored MacBook sometime in early 2007.

Part of the reason why the MacBook has upscaled in screen size as well as processor power is because of its potential use as a multimedia platform - the wide screen certainly made sense for on-the-go video editing. But we think that going back to the 12-inch - and getting it slimmer - should appeal to another class of consumer, who want the power of a MacBook but can't lug around the entry-level 13-inchers. This would also hearken back to the 12-inch PowerBook, and perhaps even serve the same purposes as a regular office laptop.

Albeit with beefed-up specs, as this smaller, sexier beast should still keep its larger siblings' dual core heart (bless their dual-core heart) and optical drive. Beyond that, no other specs could be revealed by MacScoop or their reliable sources. Well, they're expecting a US$ 1,700-US$ 1,800 price range for the sexy beast so that's something to be revealed (and something that could change, too).

This lucky person certainly did get a new Mac Pro. Not only was this brand new Mac Pro owner kind enough to share his experience with the world, he also ran his new machine through a gamut of benchmarks and real world application-based tests to prove its mettle. I think the fact that this guy took the time to provide us with usable information about the new Mac Pro makes his post different than the average all photography and no substance box openings that populate the web.

This particular machine has two 2.Ghz Dual Core processors (2 Xeon woodcrest processors- for a total of 4 logical processors), 1GB of ram, a 7300gt graphics accelerator, and a 250GB Seagate hard disk. As unbelievably powerful as that machine sounds, the specs for the test machine are not anywhere near the top of the line for the Mac Pro. Keep in mind that this test machine has but 1GB of ram. 1GB of ram, inside a machine that has the capacity for an astonishing 16GBs of ram total, is not a whole lot. In fact, 1GB is the minimum amount of ram that you should have when using a dual processor system as powerful as this one.

Geekbench provides an entire page full of test results that indicate the actual performance potential of this particular Mac Pro. The generous new Mac Pro owner also ran a Photoshop test, a timed compressor test, a Rosetta test and an encoding test. Of course, this extremely giving person also blessed us with a variety of near pornographic shots depicting the new machine in intimate detail. I must admit, when I look at the pictures of our lucky Mac Pro owner opening that box, my heart begins to race and my mind wanders off to think of the things that I could do if I had one.


Photoshop Test:
Test 1: 80% memory allocation, 20 history states = 3min 52secs

Test 2: 90% memory allocation, 1 history state = 3min 4secs

Test 3: (more a test of raw CPU) Radial blur 100, best quality on Eagle Image in test
Mac Pro= 29 secs
Quad G5 = 42 secs


Compressor:
source: 5min HDV 1080i60 clip (export from FCP timeline)
output: Compressor default 16:9 120min fast encode
results:
G5 2ghz 2.5gb ram: 34min
Mac Pro: 12min


Handbrake:
h.264 main profile
1000kbps Average Quality
2-pass encoding
128kbps AAC audio
Donnie Darko disc (not image on HD) 65fps average.

Geekbench:
297.9


Rosetta test:
194.8