Despite Apple's historical secrecy surrounding new product releases, industry watchers are looking to Intel's roadmap as well as the flash memory market for clues to what the future may hold for the Cupertino-based company. Intel, which produces all of the processors found in Apple's new Mac models, recently introduced its Santa Rosa platform officially known as Centrino Pro. The new chips combine a 64-bit Core 2 Duo processor with a new Intel 965 graphics chip and an 800MHz front-side bus (FSB) alongside 4MB of level 2 cache, which could find its way into a later revision of Apple's MacBook family of portable notebooks. What's more, Intel's new integrated graphics chip would offer a boost to MacBook graphics capability, which currently underperform -- especially for 3D games -- according to eWeek.com.

Santa Rosa systems could ship as early as May, according to some sources, which would coincide with Apple's traditional nine-month product upgrade cycle.

The Mac Pro desktop could also see a predictable bump in performance, as the pricey top-end Mac workstations have utilized two dual-core Xeon 5100-series processors since their introduction last year. Intel recently began shipping its quad-core Xeon 5300-series chips, which some enthusiasts have already placed in their systems prior to any official update from Apple.

The company might also elect to wait until Intel unveils its first family of 45-nanometer processors codenamed "Penryn," which is being tested on computers running Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, according to Intel.

NAND Flash storage?

One industry analyst believes Apple is working to release a NAND flash-based subnotebook in the second half of 2007, but is waiting to properly time the launch with low flash prices. Apple could also choose to use hybrid notebook drives, such as those produced by Samsung with 128MB or 256MB of flash memory to automatically cache important system information and speed access while cutting load times.