Machine speculation, redux

A couple of recent articles about Intel's new quad-core Core 2 offering coming early (in late 2006 rather than early 2007) from SFGate and the Washington Post reminded me that I didn't really act upon my previous machine speculation.

I had posited there was an outside chance that they'd update the laptop line for WWDC '06. It was much more likely that they'd release an Intel desktop, and they did. (I had given it a release date of December +/- 6 months, so it definitely came in on the early side.) Nonetheless, I was (and am) holding out for the low energy versions to get put into the machines for better battery life (and less cooking of the lap), and hoping that they'd be able to cram in a second two-core processor in. Well, with the announcement that availability of quad-core chips this year, with low energy versions "early next year", I might get (effectively) both. Unfortunately, since there's usually some lag time between chip availability and adoption, I may end up waiting another nine months until they could get put in the MacBook line. Ultimately, this comes down to when Apple updates the line and what they're going to do with it. I've got my fingers crossed.