Delays in shipping Apple’s new iMacs are due mostly to “business reasons,” Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu told clients Monday.
Chief among the reasons are decisions on which chip to use in the iMacs and the timing of Apple’s release of its upcoming Snow Leopard operating system.
“Apple is in the midst of figuring out whether to power the new iMac line with Intel quad-core processors or more high-powered dual-core processors with larger caches,” Wu wrote in his report.
If Apple chose Intel’s recently-released quad-core processors, the move “could cannibalize the Mac Pro,” the analyst reasoned. Wu’s thinking could be flawed, accoording to Apple Insider. The site pointed out Apple acting CEO Tim Cook last week said desktop sales were “primarily iMac.”
The chip issue seems to confirm a Digitimes report which said Apple was waiting on Intel’s new quad-core to release new products.
Another potential delay, according to the analyst, is holding the iMac to coincide with the release of the upcoming version of OS X, code-named Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard “takes [the iMac] to the next level” with enhanced chip and graphics support, Wu wrote.
Wu also pointed to a potential delay as Apple modifies the iMac’s case to accommodate new cooling technology that would handle the increased heat generated by multiple-core processors.
