Intel's Core i7 (Nehalem) processors officially launched on November 17th, 2008. The company has extensively tested the chips in an effort to avoid previous show stopping bugs.
It has been speculated that Apple will be migrating the Mac Pro to these Nehalem Xeon processors which are due to be updated at Macworld San Fransico in January 5th-9th 2009.
Apple is also amongst several vendors awaiting the release of three new low-power desktop CPUs due in January. 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) Apple is reported to have decided to launch the new chips in it's iMac line which has been rumored for a revision at Macworld 2009.
