MacBook Pro Refresh Seeing Only Minor Delays Due to Intel Problems?
By Eric Slivka
Fri, February 11th, 2011
Much has been made of Intel's issues with a design error on its new Cougar Point chip used with its Sandy Bridge processors and whether the company's need to produce revised hardware will delay a highly-anticipated refresh of Apple's MacBook Pro lineup.
But a new report from AppleInsider suggests that any delays appear to be minor, on the order of two weeks for machines already in production.
However, one person familiar with the matter tells AppleInsider that some -- not all -- of the company's upcoming MacBook Pros were affected by the situation. According to this person, the Mac maker elected to make minor tweaks to the logic boards of those models, but that those changes would translate to a delay of less than two weeks.
Reading between the lines can only lead to speculation that Apple was an early recipient of some of those Cougar Point chipsets from Intel, and that the changes it's making involve tweaks to SATA ports that those MacBook Pros will utilize.
The report notes that supplies of the MacBook Pro continue to tighten beyond the initial constraints we reported late last month. Notably, Apple had reportedly offered major retailers restocking dates of late January for MacBook Pro models but has since pushed those dates out by a week several times.
Intel has officially announced that it will begin shipping the dual-core Sandy Bridge chips for notebooks on February 20th, with those chips expected to be used in the revised MacBook Pros.
