The cat's out of the bag, folks. Apple has just sent out a press wire announcing that their much-awaited Mac OS X version 10.5 Leopard is now being readied for sale this Friday, October 26, at an expected retail price of US$ 129. Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 is further expected to host a total of 300 new features - we've listed some of the more interesting ones below:

• Stacks: A new way to easily access files from the Dock
• Redesigned Finder: Lets users quickly browse and share files between multiple Macs
• Quick Look: A new way to instantly see files without opening an application
• Spaces: A new feature used to create groups of applications and instantly switch between them
• Time Machine: An effortless way to automatically back up everything on a Mac.
• Improved Parental Controls
• The complete Boot Camp release: Previously available only as a beta, making it possible to run Windows natively on Intel-based Macs
• Web Clip: Bringing anything that a user wants from a web page to Dashboard as a live widget
• New Photo Booth features: helping users create animated iChat buddy icons or fun effects and backdrops with still or video images
• An enhanced Dictionary with Wikipedia built in: Allows users to access up-to-date information
• A newly updated iCal with multi-user calendaring based on the new CalDAV standard
• An updated version of Front Row, making it even easier to play music or watch movies, TV shows and photos on a Mac using the ultra-simple Apple Remote.
  

Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 will require at least 51 2MB of RAM, and is designed to run on any Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or G4 (867 Mhz or faster) processor. Set your calendars, and double-check with your resident Apple stores.

FastMac, a company specializing in upgrades for Apple products, announced that it plans on releasing the first 2X Blu-Ray burners for the Powerbook, iBook and MacBook Pro, iMac, and MacMini computers.

The new optical drives can read, write, and re-write to single and dual layer Blu-ray media up to 2x speed. The new component can also read and burn DVDs at 8x speed in single layer and 2.4x speed in dual/double layer modes.

In addition, it can rewrite both DVD-R and DVD+R at 4x speed. If for some reason you need to burn a CD or CD-RW, the new drive can also burn at 8x. Here's a short list of the different systems it is compatible with:

• iBook G4
• iMac G5
• iMac Intel
• MacBook Pro (17-inch)
• Mac mini
• PowerBook G3 Pismo
• PowerBook G4 Titanium (667 Mhz or higher)
• PowerBook G4 Aluminum

If you plan on picking up the FastMac Blu-Ray Drive, it is going for US$ 999.95. It comes with a one year warranty and a 30 day money back guarantee. If you want to know more, click on our Read link below.

So we told you before how the possible release of the Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard this Spring could be delayed. It turns out that this rumor holds no truth. Apple has responded to these reports, saying that Leopard will be released this Spring as scheduled and not on October, as previously thought.

We all know how risky believing in rumors is, but sometimes it's nice to dream. We guess the worth of the rumor must always depend on the worth of the sources. There were a lot of clues that eventually pointed out a Spring release for the Leopard. Besides, it's always safe to stick with the official announcements from the Apple people themselves.

It's a couple of days late, but we think it can still afford to be labeled important news. Now up for beta testing is the Gentoo PPC64 PS3 LiveCD, which will enable you to use a GNOME desktop environment on both the PS3 and the G5 Apple PowerMac.

If you don't know what GNOME is, it's a kind of open-source desktop environment that people have updated with open source versions of the software normally found in other operating systems. In other words, it's an alternative desktop choice that also has a big, supportive fanbase for newbie questions.

In addition to GNOME, the LiveCD also has Audacious, Evolution, Firefox 2-X (Bon Echo), Gaim, Gimp-2, and Xchat software included, which make it a pretty hefty package. You can find more information on the ins and outs of this new development at the source, and feel free to check the additional link for download mirrors. Just look for the "experimental/ppc64/livecd" directory in your respective mirror sites. Enjoy!

Offsite Link: [Gentoo Download Mirrors]

Mobility is what the Apple Remote offers for those who live day-in and day-out with their Macs. The remote lets you do things even if you're 10 ft away from your Mac. But, like any gadget, it can only do so much -- unless some really cool software comes along and liberates you from its limitations. Now, imagine your Apple Remote integrated with any Mac - yep, any Mac - and with just IR receivers on USB G3, G4, G5 & the new Mac Pro. Also, imagine that you can import and export application profiles which you can share online. It's now possible with mira.

Basically, mira allows you to personalize the control of your Apple Remote. It's like "easy" made "easier". It comes bundled with over 40 profiles for popular programs which you can easily change according to your own settings. Where you used to only open Front Row, with mira you'll have a giant menu that you can view across the room. The software application allows us to control any program even without knowing how to create scripts.

mira comes with a host of other features which you can check at Twisted Melon, but meanwhile you can check out some of the application's screenshots here.

How long do you have to wait before you decide to take action? After waiting for a week for Apple to pickup his broken iMac G5, Karl Hayden from Dublin, Ireland, decided to walk to the nearest Apple repair center to prove it will be faster than the company can pickup his machine.

Sounds drastic? Not really. Hayden's 10-month-old iMac crashed in mid-July. After failing to fix the problem with replacement logic boards, a power supply unit, and a back casing, Kayden said Apple agreed to replace the computer on August 14. A few days past the deadline, the company has yet to pick up Hayden's machine and ship him a new one. Adding to his frustration, Hayden waited nine weeks for repairs on another Mac which was lost three times in Apple's service system. The machine was later recovered and repaired in the end. And yes, he was billed for the repair work.

"I think there comes a time when the only thing that works with these companies is to show them up publicly and shame them into taking you seriously," said Hayden. "[Apple is] only interested in how negative publicity affects [its] sales and share price. Apple only seems to respond to customer concerns when direct action is taken to highlight [its] failings." Hayden will start his trek to Cork on Monday morning from his home in Dublin on foot with his iMac G5. We're pretty sure Apple won't roll out the red carpet for Hayden.

The team at Bare Feats may never win a Nobel prize for this but if you're a consumer on the market for a new computer, we suggest you check out their findings. The team put the 2.66GHz Mac Pro mano-a-mano with the 2.5GHz G5 Quad-Core Power Mac through a series of CPU intensive tests that include running:

Non-Universal Binary Apps

• PhotoShop CS2
  
• After Effects 7.0

Universal Binary Apps

• iMovie HD6
• Final Cut Pro 5
• FileMaker Pro 8.5
• Cinebench 9.5

And the results are...drumroll please...

Quad-Core G5 Power Mac beats Mac Pro Xeon/2.66GHz when running Photoshop CS2 and After Effects 7. Between the 3.0GHz Mac Pro and the Quad Core G5 Power Mac, Mac Pro is 5% slower on the Photoshop but 8% faster on the After Effects test.

Both versions of the Mac Pro are faster than the G5 Power Mac running iMovie, Final Cut Pro, FileMaker and Cinebench with the Mac Pro 2.66GHz up to 62% faster than the 2.5 GHz Quad-Core G5 Power Mac. The Mac Pro 3.0GHz was even faster by as much as 85%.

The Bottomline: If money is a big issue and the machine will be used for non-UB pro apps (like Photoshop CS2), Quad-Core G5 Power Mac is a good choice. If the machine is destined for heavy Universal Binary apps (like Final Cut Pro 5.1) and cost is not a factor, go for the new Mac Pro plus the expensive memory (the team recommend at least 4GB). However, expect a 5-week wait for the optional Radeon X1900 XT and the scarcity of correct memory from upgrade sources.

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

I remember debating, about a decade ago, the sensitive issue of "x86 versus PowerPC performance" with my fellow nerds while dealing with dandruff.

So look at where we are now. I still have dandruff, but the Apple Mac Pro is getting a whopper of a processor that promises to send professional desktop consumers to high heaven on fluffy clouds of cheddar (for the Apple noobs, the "cheddar" joke refers to the "cheesegrater-like appearance" of the Mac Pro casing - look at the picture above).

The Mac Pros are getting 64-bit dual-core Xeon Woodcrest processors. With 4MB L2 cache (for the non-technical, that just means the processor has a lot of built-in space to do extra things). Top speed? 3GHz. For those Appletons not familiar with the Xeon, the Xeon series of microprocessors are Intel's server-class PC microprocessors. They are usually used for multiple-processor PCs. And now, for multiprocessor Macs, because Apple is putting two (that's 2) of those Xeon beauties in each Mac Pro.

This new Mac Pro definitely promises to be better than the G5. While this is more or less what was previously anticipated, the details about the cheesy insides are just yummy: it has room for four (that's 4) internal HDDs, although the basic Mac Pro will "only" have a 250GB HDD. And 1GB RAM. And the NVIDIA GeForce 256MB 7300GT. And a 16x SuperDrive. That sounds about right for a powerful office server.

Not good enough you say? Can't grate the cheese you say? Well, you can opt for up to 16GB of RAM and up to 2TB of disk space (for noobs who don't know what a "TB" is, let me just say that one "TB" or terabyte is roughly one trillion bytes, one million megabytes, or one thousand GB). Now that's some serious cheese.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I'm now waiting for the Mac Pro to get the quad-core processor so I can calculate the meaning of life. And yes, I'm still dealing with dandruff.

As Apple gears up to reveal OS X Leopard (among other things) at next month's Worldwide Developers Conference, some people are beginning to wonder precisely which Mac models are going to 'make the Leopard cut'.

What's left discussions on this topic wide open at this point is the fact that no one knows for sure how Apple's going to do it. Will those that run the G3 or even the G4 processor be excluded from the list? Or are the good folks at Apple to decide based on the speed of the machines' processors?

eWeek's David Morgenstern thinks that if the decision is to be processor-based, it's unlikely that Apple will exclude all the G4 and G5 machines, at least not just yet. Apple still does sell computers that run on PowerPC processors; the company's transition to Intel isn't complete yet, which means that there isn't a large enough base for Intel machines for the company to go by. In addition, the last G4 machine, a 14-inch iBook G4, was discontinued just last May. If Apple does choose to go by processors, it's likely that it's the G3 machines that'll be denied a chance to 'get with the program' due to their age; the last G3 model sold was a variant of the iBook that was axed in 2003 (two OSs back).

But Morgenstern also thinks it's possible for Apple to base its decision on video RAM, or VRAM. Many older Macs lack VRAM, so, if Apple goes by a base level of installed video RAM, most (but not all) G3 models and many of the older G4 models, like the Cube, the older PowerBooks and the first few PowerMac G4s could be left by the wayside.

Any ideas? What do you folks think? Hopefully Apple will clear up this issue next month at the WDC.