Apple hints

I'm expecting some kind of new Mac in the next week or so - possibly as soon as tomorrow. Why? It's pretty simple, actually, so I'll lay out my reasoning:

- We know that the 10.4.9 revision (likely the final Tiger update) is pretty much done, with no new seeds issued in about two weeks. Normally, that would have hit the street by now. But holding it back probably means new CPU support is being spliced into it.

- Leopard is allegedly real close to going RTM. When Apple announces it, they won't want any Macs sharing that burst of publicity.

- There haven't been any new systems since October, when the Core 2 MacBook Pros shipped.

- Intel has been shipping quad-core Xeons for a couple of months now. No Mac Pro update yet, however...

- A new support chipset that enables true 64-bit goodness with Core 2 is shipping now, and it has improved graphics support.

My predictions:
Upgraded Mac Pros in the next week or so. Upgraded iMacs and MacBook Pros soon afterwards. At least one of them will come with and require 10.4.9. Minis will get Core 2 upgrades before Leopard ships.

And Leopard is announced in mid-April, with shipping scheduled for May.