Snow Leopard Pouncing Q1 2009 & Quad Core iMacs

When last talked about in June during the annual World Wide Developer Conference, Apple gave a passing mention for Snow Leopard’s release in the time frame of a year from then. A slip from Jordan Hubbard’s slideshow from his presentation at LISA ‘08 points toward a possible Q1 2009 release for Snow Leopard positioning its Delta status at 14+ months. Meanwhile, Intel has been busy rolling out their newest brand of CPUs dubbed Core i7 but revamps to the older Core 2 family could take a prominent place in Apple’s newest iMac in Quad Core form.

Core 2 Quad Based iMacs

Traditionally, Apple has utilized mobile workstation oriented CPUs from Intel in their iMac line to create a compromise between performance and heat requirements due to the slim form factor of the machine. The aggressive power draw of faster, multi core chips inhibited their use within the iMac and lower clocked, less energy intensive versions of the Penrynn Core was utilized.

Thanks to continuous improvements to the Core 2 line, Quad Core chips are expected to arrive optimized for Small Form Factor PCs that rely on a fast CPU and forgo slimmer designs for extra cooling or a bulkier enclosure, almost reminiscent of the iMac. The major selling point of a Quad Core upgrade for the iMac besides the massive utilization of all four cores once Snow Leopard arrives, is the lowered power consumption and heat output.

DigiTimes reports that four new Core 2 Quad chips will be released and world fit into the iMac’s energy and cooling requirements.

“Intel will launch the Core 2 Quad Q8200s (2.33GHz/4MB L2), Core 2 Quad Q9400s (2.66GHz/6MB L2) and Core 2 Quad Q9550s (2.83GHz/12MB L2) with prices at US$245, US$320 and US$369, respectively in thousand-unit tray quantities. These CPUs will have the same specifications as standard CPUs with the same model number, but will see their TDP drop from 95W to 65W.”

Snow Leopard Coming Sooner Than Previously Thought?

Although Snow Leopard has yet to receive an official launch date, a slip up from Jordan Hubbard’s presentation, could pinpoint a more realistic timeframe. Hubbard, who is Apple’s director of engineering for Unix technologies, showed a slide detailing the timeframe between releases of OS X since its early public inceptions as Beta Software.

Most notable is the release date plotted on the slide for 10.6 (which lacks the Snow Leopard code name moniker) as Q1 2009. This is the closest to an official word that has come from Apple however.

Via: CNet