With the death of the venerable XServe blade server at the beginning of last year, Apple has essentially abandoned the market for corporate servers. If you want to run a Mac server, Apple recommends the Mac mini with Lion Server, which is only really a viable option for small businesses.

Over at MacMagazine, reader Joseph Arthur had a great idea: why not redesign the Mac Pro slightly so they are stackable?

It’s a cute idea, and I get a kick out of the visual, but two problems: the Mac Pro looks like it’ll be killed off sooner rather than later, and the Mac Pro solution leads to the same problem the Mac mini solution had, in that centers can’t fit the machines in their existing blade racks. Still, pretty ingenious.

Despite being overshadowed by the MacBook and other mobile devices, Apple’s venerable iMac accounts for nearly a third of the 14.5 million all-in-one desktop computers sold in 2010. The strength of iMac demand put Apple ahead of Lenovo and HP, expecting to unveil two new desktop computers at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show.

Apple has neglected to update its Mac Pro for just under 18 months now, and recent speculation has suggested that the company may be set to discontinue the high-end desktop. However, according to drivers found in the latest Mac OS X 10.7.3 beta, a new Mac Pro is on its way, packing AMD’s upcoming “Tahiti” graphics cards.

The biggest shopping day of the year is fast approaching. This Friday, countless retailers all over the U.S. will be slashing prices for Black Friday, causing a frenzy amongst shoppers who cannot wait to spend some of their hard-earned cash on discounted goods.

Apple famously recognizes the event by discounting some of its hottest products in the Apple online store for one day only, with savings to be made on new Macs, iOS devices, iPods, and even the latest accessories for your beloved Apple gadgets. This year will be no different, so based on the past few years’ reductions, here’s what to expect at the Apple online store on Black Friday.

Last week’s three-month minimum delay to their Xeon-class Sandy Bridge processors may be the final nail in the Mac Pro coffin, inside sources are now reporting.

Dying to get your hands on an iPad 2 before the weekend? Don’t order one from the Apple online store, then, because a whole host of Apple’s gadgets have had their shipping times mysteriously extended.

Remember when Apple said to drag your Mac into your local Apple Store and piggyback their WiFi to download Lion if you didn’t have high-speed internet? It seemed silly at the time, but we didn’t take into account that Apple might set up dedicated Lion install servers in their retail locations to help with the load. Silly us.

We’ve been hearing that Apple’s next desktop operating system, OS X Lion, will be released on July 14th. Alongside Lion, there have also been rumors that Apple will release a new MacBook Air and Mac Pro model at the same time.

Apple is reportedly set to release new machines with Intel’s Sandy Bridge chips. The new MacBook Airs aren’t expected to have an exterior design change, but instead focus on improved internal hardware. The updated Mac Pros are rumored to have a rack-mountable, narrower enclosure.  

Although it hasn’t seen an update since last year, the Mac Pro isn’t dead… it’s just been getting a little beauty rest before it debuts next month post-Lion, boosting a new 16 core configuration capable of searing the melted physiognomy to even the most cynical benchtester’s skull.

Apple’s Mac Pro and Mac mini family of desktop computers are still patiently awaiting their Sandy Bridge and Thunderbolt upgrades… but CNET’s Brian Tong has received word that a refresh for these machines isn’t too far away.

It’s been about a year since Apple updated its Server line-up with new Mac Pro and Mac Mini Servers. Now, constricting supplies of both indicate that a new refresh is coming… just in time for Lion.

Mac Pros released in early 2009 can now support six-core Xeon CPUs and faster 1,333MHz RAM thanks to a new firmware hack. By installing an EFI firmware update, users can convert their machine into a mid 2010 model Mac Pro.

Update: Final Cut X will be $299 and will be available in the App Store in June. Still unknown are the future of Final Cut Studio (Including Soundtrack, Motion, Compressor, Color, DVD Studio) or Express.

Apple is, at the very moment I’m writing this, taking the cloak off of Final Cut X live and to much applause in front of the Final Cut Pro User Group Network in Las Vegas. For several weeks there have been rumors and murmurings that Apple would today unveil the next iteration of its venerable Final Cut video editing software, we’re learning now those rumors were true.

Final Cut users know that the last major update the software had was about 10 years ago. Though many users love the program, it was getting so long in the tooth it was starting to look like a vampire.

Details of the new Final Cut X are still coming in since the unveiling isn’t over yet, but one attendee at the event is posting updates via twitter (thanks @fcpsupermeet). Here are some notables from his twitter stream:

• Crowd is unruly!
• Final Cut X is a full rebuild from scratch
• 64 bit – Crowd: “finally!” “thank you!”
• Cocoa, Core Animation, Open CL, Grand Central Dispatch support
• The Focus was on image quality
• Fully color managed
• Resolution independent playback/timeline all the way up to 4K
• Features people detection, single or in groups
• Non-destructive auto color balance
• Automatic audio cleanup (option to auto noise reduce audio, more)
• Features “smart collections”: a lot like the smart folders found in OS X
• Editing can start immediately during importing of AVCHD and other media, switches silently to local media as it ingests
• Uses every available cpu cycle to keep things rendered. Also highly scalable. Will even work on a Macbook
• No interruption for rendering. No transcoding, EVERYTHING native. (incl DSLR footage–assume this means AVC)
• Presentation received a standing ovation!

Via macrumors.com.

Updates galore! Hot on the heels of the Snow Leopard 10.6.7 update yesterday, a fresh new update to Apple’s Aperture is also now ready for your installing pleasure via Software Update.

The Aperture 3.1.2 update fixes the following:

In a day and age when every pair of headphones looks just as utilitarian as every other, I was surprised when I ran past the Urbanears booth at CES 2011 and was stopped by what I saw: understated; beautifully crafted; no-design-detail-missed; headphones. Surely they didn’t have the audacity to sound good too…

If you’re a network administrator in love with the svelte, stackable design of Apple’s Xserve line, you’d better stock up: Apple has announced that they will be discontinuing the Xserve line starting January 31st, 2011.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ky9sowEKBo

I sometimes wonder what monsters haunt the nightmares of Apple’s resident designer, Mr. Jonathan Ive. He’s so prim, so meticulous, so clean and proper, but on those nights when he has a slice of pepperoni pizza a little too close to bed time, what horrors does he dream up? Some horrible Cenobite iMac dragging itself bloodily across the floor whispering “Make way for the new flesh:” a biomechanical monstrosity of Foxconn components crammed into the pulsating sack of some skinless, cancerous stomach?

Or is it something more like this cardboard box Hackintosh, put together by the guys over at One Block Off the Grid — a cooperative for buying photovoltaic solar panels at a group discount — after one of their Macs proved too slow to run Adobe After Effects?

If you bought your Mac Pro from between August 2006 and January 2008 and if you’ve noticed your video acting wonky, good news: Apple has heard your plaintive cries and posted a support document acknowledging an issue with that computer’s ATI X1900 XT graphics card.

If you’ve been drooling over the 27-inch iMac’s gorgeous 2560 x 1440 display and eager for Apple to make good with an updated Cinema Display at the same dimensions in order to employ it as the window into your Mac Pro’s soul, it looks like your wait might soon to be at an end.

Over on the Mac Pro customization page, additional wording suggests you supplement a newly purchased Pro with the 27-inch Cinema Display… despite the fact that the only current options for purchase are the existing 24- and 30-inch flat panels.

You can look at this in one of two ways: either this is news to be excited about as Apple prepares to officially launch the 27-inch Cinema Display, or as your last chance to order the soon-to-be-discontinued 30-inch, which boasts just a few more vertical pixels than its successor. Best get moving if you’d rather have one of those.

Apple’s fastest Mac is the 12-Core Mac Pro, featuring two 2.93 GHz Xeon processors. Configure it with 25GB of DDR3 ECC SDRAM, and Apple’s fastest Mac will cost you $8,749.00.

Yowza. That’s an extraordinary amount of money. If you don’t mind dropping an extra $300, though, you might be interested in Macintouch’s guide to building not Apple’s fastest Mac, but the world’s fastest Mac yourself.

Yup, according to Macintouch’s tests, their Hackintoshed monstrosity — a total beast of a machine running two 3.33GHz hexacore Westmere processors overclocked to 4.2GHz each and supplemented with 24GB of DDR3 RAM — melted the Mac Pro’s face off.

Of course, there’s a lot of drawbacks to this approach, including compatibility issues and a much louder system than the Mac Pro, as well as a desktop footprint that makes the Pro look compact. But as of right now, it seems that a Hackintosh is the fastest Mac in the world. God help us.

[via Hardmac]

Dealing with overheating engines by running cold air over them is fine for old Volkswagen Beetles with almost the horsepower of an electric toothbrush and weird French cars (I know, the word “weird” there is redundant). As engines have become more powerful though, air-cooling has become less attractive — at least, in the automotive world. Computers still lag behind though. Mostly.

Zack Fanning, who handles (surprise) marketing for computer cooling system expert Asetek, asked the outfit’s engineers to mod his Mac Pro with a liquid cooling system. The results are pretty interesting: He’s able to overclock his 2.8 ghz Mac Pro to 3.18 while reducing noise — due to the fan not having to work as hard — by 13 decibels over a strictly air-cooled Mac Pro running at the same speed. Pretty cool.

Want one? While Zack’s is a one-off, lovingly handcrafted custom job, Corsair’s H50 liquid cooling system (actually made for them by Asetek) can be had for about $80; just make sure to check first about compatibility, because the H50’ll only work with later-model Mac Pros.

– Part 1. “The Plan”

The new hexacore Mac Pro’s are coming, the screaming performance and egg frying potential of those new machines are making my previously five thousand dollar 2006 model look positively dated.

To be sure, I’m in the midst of a computational mid-life crisis. Follow me after the jump for the cure…

The Apple Store went down this morning, and when it came back up, Apple had given us all a depressingly good excuse to give them five grand: their new 12-core Mac Pros.

Even the minimum specs for this thing are eyeball melting: two 2.66GHz hecacore Xeon Westmere CPUs, 6GB of memory, an eighteen-speed dual-layer SuperDrive and an ATI Radeon HD 5770 GPU with 1GB of DDR5 memory.

Prices start at $4999.99, but I was able to spec one close to $15,000 with all the bells and whistles before my eyeballs bugged out of my sockets. Shipping is in seven to ten business days, so get ordering

This morning the Apple Store is down and backs up rumours that product updates and introductions could be imminent.

Rumors have circulated recently about updates to the iMac and the Mac Pro, as well as the introduction of a 27-inch Cinema Display and a “Magic Trackpad“.

We’re not sure yet whether new products will appear, but this is a good sign. It’s also typical of Apple to release/update products on a Tuesday.

We’ll keep our eye on the Apple Store and be sure to inform you when it’s back up and if there’s new goodies to check out!

If you woke up this morning ready to pull the trigger on that long-lusted for Mac Pro, here’s some counter-intuitive good news for you: it’s currently “unavailable” for purchase at both the Apple Store and many retail stores around the United States.

This is good news, trust us. Apple pulling an item from inventory usually signifies an imminent hardware refresh, and rumors have been swirling for the last few days about what the next MacPro might have going for it.

What does the scuttlebutt have to say for itself Try a USB 3.0 capable Mac Pro with FireWire 1600 (or even 3200) ports, and — in all likelihood — a couple of Intel Core i7 processors.

We’ll keep readers informed if and when new Mac Pros go on sale. We’re certainly hopeful that any new Mac Pro update will hearken a company-wide adoption of the faster USB and — in Pro-level computers — FireWire processors.

[via Mac Rumors]