Here comes the new Intel Xeon moels available from the catalog of the founder. All CPU are engraved at 32 nm and feature 12 MB of cache instead of 8 MB for the unit powering current Mac Pro. Depending on models, they offer 4 or 6 cores:  With such choice, Apple has plenty of choice to update its current Mac Pro, giving Cupertino the opportunity to offer a large range of Mac Pro, from 4 core unit (single Xeon) to 12 core unit (dual hexacore Xeon). So far, Apple only used CPU with a TDP of 95 W for Mac Pro featuring dual CPUs, so it would mean that the fastest Xeon (2xhexacore) to be found in future Mac Pro would be clocked at 2.93 GHz. However, if Apple can find a way to manage a TDP of 130 W, we would then get either dual hexacore at 3.33 GHz or dual quad core at 3.43 GHz. Despite the entry level model, all Xeon supports TurboBoost, giving access to on-the-fly overclocking for mono-threaded tasks

Here the latest episode to date in the battle between Apple at Nokia. Nokia asked court to throw out the complaint of Apple in which they accuse Nokia of violating the antitrust law. Nokia indeed considers that this procedure and these charges are only to create a smoke screen hiding the true problem, that is that Apple violated their patents. Nokia have declared to the court: "Sometimes a patent dispute is just a patent dispute,", not wanting that this other procedure comes to disturb the principal one and especially since it can cause enormous adverse effect for them. While waiting, the ITC announced that the procedures launched by Apple and Nokia will only be treated during 2012. Be reassured,other things will come out to divert minds since this is a fight to the death between two companies who will fight without mercy.

According to Fudzilla, NVIDIA might price its future high-end model, aka GeForce GTX 480 around 450 €. If this is more expensive than the current high-end ATI Radeon HD 5870, it will be less expensive than some previous graphic card models launched at 600 € in the past.Let's hope now that Apple will refresh its catalog of graphic cards to be installed in Mac Pro, as plenty of Mac Pro are currently offered on the Refurb Store, while waiting the new models to be released... one year later...

The breaking news (not officially confirmed), it seems that Dan Dobberpuhl, the founder of Pa Semi who had joined Apple at the time of the purchase of its company (which made him a rich man) has been seen elsewhere. He will have left with at least another person from the company and now works for a StartUp. Technically, this is not surprising, the leaders are usually engaged to remain X months or years before being able to go elsewhere; thus we are not at all surprised. To have reached this position, it is necessary to have character and a sharp decisional spirit. It is difficult to make use of these qualities at Apple where all the decisions are centralized between the hands of few people who are not willing to share.

When couple of month ago Intel announced it would delay Larrabee introduction in 2010, many analysts thought it was the first sign for dropping the project. According to an anonymous insider, reported to be an Intel Larrabee engineer, the company has a whole product plan and roadmap still in place. While first "demos" of the system were not really astonishing, Intel seems to be still working on it and might simply decide when it wants to release it or not.  Of course, this information comes from an anonymous source, (controlled or not by Intel) and might not reflect necessarily the decision of the company. Larrabee might also not be the main priority of Intel as GPGPU while promising a lot since months (if not years) is not really there yet on the mass market. In other words, if we consider the current problems faced by NVIDIA with its first Fermi-based GPU, Intel does not really need to hurry up to release a competitive solution. In other words, when time has come then Intel will have enough engineers and resources to quickly release a GeForce killer. One should not forget also that GPGPU is associated with flexible graphics and data processing architectures and programmability, the later point being probably the key one as it would define a quick and broad adoption. Intel might want to see what type of solution would be really offered by ATI and NVIDIA (CUDA) in this field.

According to one of our source, Apple is annoyed after being rejected to be a Worldwide TOP Partners for the olympic games 2012. Indeed, Acer, after being the IT partner for Vancouver 2010, has been selected for the next even to take place in London in 2012. It seems that Apple executives did not really digest this decision and the main goal is now to kick Acer out for Winter olympics in Sochi 2014 and Summer Olympics in Rio 2016. As the selected IT partner, the company has to provide thousands of computers as well as network, infrastructure, engineers and resources to make the event a success.  For additional information about Olympic games sponsoring: http://www.olympic.org/en/content/The-IOC/Sponsoring/Sponsorship

There have been at least 2 major announcement for new USB 3.0 keys with data transfer speed reaching 100 MB/S and even more up to 300 MB/s  According to representative from Patriot, there are many difficulties for developing USB 3.0 storage keys, similar to the one we all have in our pockets or bags. The main reason is the USB 3.0 controller, a small component that is warming too much for such a small factor device. In order to reduce the amount of heat released, some manufacturers decided to underclock the controller, then add a second controller in order to create a RAID 0 volume to offer expected performance levels without the associated warming effect. But it seems to be a temporary solution, as having 2 controllers also increase the price of such device. Patriot wants to use the enclosure as a heatsink to offer the native performance levels of USB 3.0. Another option could simply be to wait for USB 3.0 to really kick off, and Intel and Microsoft decided to delay its full adoption/implementation to 2011. At that time we might have controllers with a thinner engraving allowing to better controller heat release.

Cindori who was already the author of ATI Flashing Tool, just announced the release of Zeus, a universal GPU flashing tool. This application is a real swiss army knife for our graphic cards, as you can modify the firmware or easily adapt a PC card on your Mac Pro: Compatible with most ATI and NVIDIA graphic cards Able to recover from his server the right version of patched QuickTime extensions required for some exotic graphic cards (not supported by Apple). Safer flashing procedure. Bug with injector fixed. For additional information: http://groths.orgTo download: http://groths.org/zeus/zeus.zip

At the release of the iPhone the media and of the customers had criticized the fact that it was impossible to change the battery of the device. Apple had responded by announcing an exchange program. They have just announced much the same thing anticipated for the iPad. This exchange of battery will in effect be an exchange of the iPad against a model equipped with a new battery and will cost $99 (plus $6,95$ for postage). According to Apple, this exchange should take less than one week.

Apple must be certainly very satisfied with the pre-orders of the iPad. During the first 24 hours, 120.000 units were ordered, and this is for a product that nobody has had in their hands. These sales would have been made on the basic model, without 3G and equipped with 16 GB of RAM. This is not surprising since that one still does not know very well what one will be able to do with this device.

One of the holdups to the fast deployment of fiberoptic is that it is necessary to make it pass inside the ground, by the sewers or other drains envisaged for this purpose. Virgin decided to try an experiment in small English villages by doing without the burial of the fibres. They quite simply will try to see the way in which a fiberoptic behaves if it is strung between telegraph poles to the same way as the copper wires of the telephone that one still finds in France apart from the agglomerations. If the solution proves viable, it will allow to high speed access more quickly in the zones of low density. It is amusing to see a company thus doing something new with very old technology, the first telegraph line dating from first half of the 19th century.

All Apple Stores are back online, and the Apple Store USA offers now to pre-order the iPad: It remains unclear today if this pre-order system will be also available in Europe in few weeks.

All Apple Stores seem down for maintenance or upgrade, but as we are Friday it would be surprising to get new models released. So, it might be a technical test to prepare the introduction of new products next Tuesday, our the preparation for today's introduction of the Mac Pro with Hexa-core as the NDA on this CPU ended few hours ago, or it could just be maintenance...  

Ah, it must be good to be a lawyer specialized in intellectual property in the United States. One day, they will be certainly be more numerous than the computer specialists.The company Wireless Ink announced to be suing Google and Facebook. It accuses them for violating its patent concerning the access to social networks from a mobile phone. They are aiming at the applications intended for the mobile phones. Wireless Ink wants to prove its precedence by the fact that they have offered such services since 2004 and have 75000 members. To arrive at the end of this procedure will at least have the merit of making them a known name.

Pink Floyd have just won a legal case against EMI, their music publisher. The conflict related to the fact that EMI authorized the sites selling online music, such as iTunes, to sell the individual tracks rather than the whole album. The history goes back to the signature of the contract between the group and EMI. It was clearly specified there that they did not have the right to sell the individual track in the format CD without the express agreement of the artists. With the arrival of online music, EMI has considered that this aspect was null and void. Of course, at the time of the signature the online sale or even pirating via the Internet were things difficult to envisage. EMI thus has just lost in court and will have to compensate Pink Floyd with 40000 pounds sterling. The major remains however happy with the judgement, the court having, at least for the moment, forgotten to prohibit them selling the albums of Pink Floyd in little pieces…

Couple of days ago, we were reporting about the issues affecting Airport and Time Capsule stations, known as "sim dual band", making it almost impossible to use 5 GHz frequency bandwidth, as data transfer speed are very low, frequent log out and the effective range limited to few meters. It seems that Apple fixed the issue as the problem does NOT exist anymore on NEW stations currently sold according to the report of one of our readers. So, we purchased a new Time Capsule, set it up exactly as the previous one we are already using and... indeed the difference is rather amazing: we could reach stable transfer at 7 MB/s while it was unusable before. The only difference between both Time Capsule units is the firmware: The one purchased in October 2009 hosts a firmware 7.4.2, the last one released officially by Apple. The new unit features a firmware 7.5.1: So, this new firmware seems to fix most of the symptoms, however Apple did not release it officially yet. Does it mean that Apple still wants to further validate this new firmware? It is unclear, but some unfortunate customers push hard enough to get their Fall 2009 Time Capsule units replaced by new ones.

In a recent interview to CNN, Jen-Hsun Huang, NVIDIA CEO, unveiled some details about its forthcoming Tegra 2 architecture. This chips should replace the current ones found in mobile phone, but more likely in tablets, the new grail for most players in the field. According to claims from NVIDIA CEO, the TEgra 2 would be a monster of performance, able to decide 1080p video, supporting multitasking while offering excellent battery lifetime. Of course, he confirmed that the Tegra 2 will soon be found in many devices but the iPad. He also claimed that he hopes that Apple will be able to release a better chips than the A4 as the Tegra is far better. While being partner for some products, Apple and NVIDIA might start competing strongly in others...

After talking about those new hexa-core CPU over the last five months, they are finally unveiled as the NDA ended today. We are still waiting for the Xeon version of this hexa-core series to find its way in the future model of Mac Pro that should now be released soon. Several websites offer first benchmarking of those new CPU, including the flagship Core i7-980X, and as expected this high-end model is a real performer while remaining relatively sober on the energy consumption point of view. According to ZDNet the new Mac Pro to feature 6 to 12 physical cores should be available next Tuesday.

Filemaker announced the future availability of the version 11 of the famous database application. The main feature of this version stands in one word: cocoa. The entire application has been rewritten in cocoa, as Filemaker is a subsidiary of Apple, it would be weird to have Apple complaining about Adobe not coding its application in cocoa... For the price list, there is the usual discount for upgrading from a previous version: Upgrade to FileMaker Pro 11, FileMaker Pro 11 Advanced, FileMaker Server 11 or FileMaker Server 11 Advanced from versions 10, 9, 8.5 or 8 at a special low price.  FileMaker 10 and 9 users: Upgrade today and chart a whole new course for your data. You'll get innovative new features in FileMaker Pro 11 such as FileMaker Charts, Quick Reports, Recurring Import, Quick Finds and more. FileMaker 8.5 and 8 users: Take advantage of this special offer and get 3 full versions of features at the upgrade price. Offer expires September 23, 2010. See a list of features. Replacement media and support services will no longer be available after September 23, 2010. For more details: http://www.filemaker.com

As we expected it as the 1 TB Western Digital Scorpio Blue is now available, a reader from XLR8Yourmac installed a unit in his MacBook Pro Unibody. This allows us to remind some readers that: Unlike previous models, one can install 12.5 mm thickness HD in a Unibody MacBook Pro.  Despite using the new 4 KB block formatting technology, this new HD is working perfectly well in a Mac OS X-based computer and offer performance levels corresponding to its 5,400 rpm and 8 MB of cache. Best integration could be the entry level SSD we were talking about and replace the optical drive by the 1 TB Scorpio Blue. 

The current trend on the SSD market follows the scheme we were expecting: one of side 100 € SSD models offering low capacity and one the other side models with more storage space and higher performance levels thanks to top notch controllers. While OCZ was mostly offering products belonging to the second category beside entry level model below 200 €, the company announced a future SSD model for 99 USD. Its name: Onyx. This SSD will offer 32 GB of flash-based memory, a controller Indilix Amigo, probably a castrated Barefoot controller. This drive will be for customers willing to adopt SSD in their computer, however, it will imply to have a second storage unit, as the system and applications will go on the SSD. Despite being an entry level model, the Onyx is covered by a warranty of 3 years.

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Thomson Licensing, Toshiba Corporation and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment decided to put all licensing right into a single "pot", making easier for companies willing to offer a products featuring a BD drive to avid running from one right owner to the next one to pay royalties. Toshiba will be the licensing office and a single procedure for client will give them the opportunity for licensing all BD linked technologies: media, player, burner, encoding/decoding, etc. Hereafter is the list of royalties for each product: Of course, this is higher than the current prices for DVD-linked technology, however for BD, companies still have to cash back investment in R&D. Apple might not have so many excuse anymore to further delay adoption of BD drive in our Mac, except the long lasting conflict with the ACSS LA...

It is now more than two months since Intel announced its new mobile platform and since that time Apple seems to have turned their noses up. Oddly enough, this is not the first time that Apple delays renewing its range of portables. But within our memory, this is the first time that they have taken so much time. During one moment, and perhaps even still today, we thought that they had decided to await the arrival of the Optimus technology of Nvidia, but unless there are still problems with this technology, the Apple portables should have been released by now. Some think that Apple is trying to empty its stocks of machines before releasing new models. If this excuse is true, it would mean that Apple did not plan enough in advance the arrived of new products or worse, than the sales slowed down so much these last weeks that it would be bad news even if it could just be an effect of people waiting for the release of new portables (the snake eats it own tail).One is thus still in total limbo having no reference mark to generate hope for the arrival of new MacBook Pros.  However one always lives in hope for next Tuesday midday…

Microsoft published seucirty update for the Mac Edtion of Office 2OO4 and 2008. It fixes a potential security breach affecting Excel. Direct link to the resources:Update Office 2008 (222 MB).Updater Office 2004 (9,7 MB) 

It really seems that NVIDIA is experiencing the darkest period of its history. After numerous issues and problems, the latest one being the delay for the production and the availability of Fermi-based graphic cards, a new story will again darken even further the image of the company.The last version of drives released last week for Windows (196.75) features a major bug: it slows down or even stops fans cooling down the graphic card, even though in full woking load. As a consequence 3D rendering artifact as well as the death of the GPU and the graphic cards have been reported This story has been identified by Beta testers of Starcraft II who initially blamed Blizzard before realizing that the failure was related to their graphic card and the last driver downloaded. To try to extinguish this new fire, NVIDIA explains on its website how to rollback to the previous driver settings. The company will also have to deal with users who fried their graphic cards due to this bugged driver...

Cisco unveiled yesterday new routing systems able to revolutionize the worldwide network edge: the CRS-3 Carrier Routing System. According to the company, the new system is designed to serve as the foundation for the next generation internet, and should support for the next decade and beyond the fast growing demand linked to online video streaming/download, mobile devices and new online services. Figures are simply impressive, and its price 90,000 USD per unit might not be a limiting factor for most players in the field. The Cisco CRS-3 triples the capacity of its predecessor and offers up to 322 Terabits per second... The CRS-3 would also speed up cloud services. AT&T recently tested successfully the CRS-3 for the world's first field trial of 100-Gigabit backbone network technology... You thought you had the fastest internet connection? nope. Maybe AT&T is eager on putting its hands on such system to improve the reliability of its mobile phone network... If Cisco will for sure not sell millions of CSR-3, most major ISPs and mobile phone carriers (often same companies) will purchase some units to boost their network and improve reliability of their offers. Let's hope that the price will not be put on customers' subscription plans...

Digitimes announced that the price of Blu-ray drives dramatically dropped over the past weeks, reaching a price range of 70 to 80 USD. It remains more expensive than the DVD burner drive; however it could help computer companies to integrate such optical drive more often in their models, of course for Apple one would need a slot-in unit for all hardware models but the Mac Pro. This will take time as the website considers that the current price of BD movies is too high to efficiently compete with the DVD version.  This is also true for BD burners, getting now cheaper as one can find some models below 150 €, however the main break to a real democratization of such drive is the price of media.

Hardly a week goes by without us criticizing the bad performances of the graphics chips of Intel that the foundery has now the bad idea to directly install next to the processor, removing any chance to be able to doing without it. In an interview, an senior executive of Intel justified the poor performance of these chips by declaring that the customers do not need powerful graphics chips. For him, people who play 3D games requiring a lot of power are a small minority.He even declared, an obviousness, that AMD had much better graphic solutions than them, immediately passing over NVidia. The worst is certainly that he is not very far from the truth, if not in spirit, then at least in the facts. Intel is today the biggest manufacturer of graphic solutions far in front of AMD and NVidia. It is not wrong to consider that only one small fraction of the computers are used to play really demanding games. On the other hand, it seems to forget that the 3D is increasingly present in the operating systems such as Windows 7 and also when Vista was released, the graphics chips Intel at that time could not support Aero in spite of the stickers saying that the machine would support this OS. While looking at further, Intel could also find itself in difficulties if Open CL really manages to penetrate. Agreed it is yet used much 6 months after the release of Snow Leopard, but all is not lost. This advertisement or rather declaration is probably also recognition of the chronic incapacity of Intel to manufacture powerful graphics chips. Even their famous Larrabee project wanting to be a killer of graphic boards resembles an arlésienne more and more.

If SSDs are clearly offering higher performance levels than disc-based HD, it is also clear than they remain too expensive for being true competitors when it comes to save large amount of data. LSI just introduced a new solution aiming to get the best from both storage technologies with new software coming bundled with their MegaRAID card. They use a SSD connected to the RAID card in addition to the standard HDs. The SSD works as a large cache to speed up reading and writing modes, but more importantly IOPS. This is entirely transparent for the end user and does not challenge security and safety as redundancy is preserved. This could remind you what Steve Wozniak said about SSD and the fact that both system will live together for years. 

The Mac community of gamers is getting excited as Valve, the famous game editor on Windows (for Half-life and counter-strike for examples) started a "teasing" campaign as the company will release games on Mac OS X in a near future. It seems quite clear now that Valve will be porting "Portal" on Mac OS X. however, do not rush as the expected release date should be at the end of the year. For Mac gamer, as well as Mac users, this is good news, and might indicate that beside the market for iPhone games, editors and developers finally enjoyed the SDK and might now consider also releasing games for Mac hardware. Since the first Mac Intel, many Mac users have been expecting a new wave of games for Mac OS X. We of course have the quick (and sometimes dirty) porting made via Cider, but sometimes it looks more like a marketing action than a real investment of editors in Mac games. The best example being the fact that Spore from Electronics Arts does not run on Snow Leopard, and now almost 6 months after the introduction of the new OS, there is no fix released by Transgaming or EA... Some other companies continued to offer real games, based on Mac OS X SDK and resources to offer Mac users a true immersion and entertainment, such as Feral and its game Bioshock, finally available on Mac, years after having been launched on PC. But better later than never. Now, it remains unclear if Valve will really develop a 3D engine compatible with Mac OS X (based on Open CL?), or will they use some virtualization tricks, heavily CPU consuming, to make their game running, at low cost, on our Mac? We will have to wait months before having a final answer. [update] Our friend Alex from the Mac gamer dissected the press release from Valve and we can indeed expect native support for Mac OS X as well as an entire cross-platform environement making Mac and Windows gamers joining the same arena. Offical PR from Valve: Valve announced today it will bring Steam, Valve’s gaming service, and Source, Valve’s gaming engine, to the Mac. Steam and Valve’s library of games including Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series will be available in April. “As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients,” said Gabe Newell, President of Valve. “The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services.” “Our Steam partners, who are delivering over a thousand games to 25 million Steam clients, are very excited about adding support for the Mac,” said Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Valve. “Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs, and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge. For example, Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac. We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play.” “We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac and in the end decided to go with native versions rather than emulation,” said John Cook, Director of Steam Development. “The inclusion of WebKit into Steam, and of OpenGL into Source gives us a lot of flexibility in how we move these technologies forward. We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360. Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. Furthermore, Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies, and so forth. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows.” Portal 2 will be Valve’s first simultaneous release for Mac and Windows. “Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step,” said Josh Weier, Portal 2 Project Lead. “We’re always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac.

This is a rather hot topic, as many EU customers are already complaining about the higher price of Mac on this side of the Atlantic, when compared to USA; especially considering that we are closer to the assembling lines located in China... The way our Mac get more expensive might not only be associated with the weird way Apple is calculating the USD/EURO rate, but also the distribution channel: Apple sells hardware to its Apple Europe subsidiary in USD.  Apple Europe resells in EURO (or Pounds for UK) to large distributors and generate a margin. Each distributor generates another margin by selling those Mac to APR. Profit generated by Apple Europe are then changed back in USA and sent back to Apple, to be included in the company's financial report. It is quite clear that this strategy with doubling currency change as well as adding one step in the distribution channel can be important when it is time to generate profit. This could be explain why Apple Europe systematically use a very conservative (and highly profitable) USD/EURO rate. With the recent tension in Greece, the USD moved from 0.67 Euro to 0.73, bringing the price of our Mac in Europe almost in line with the one in USA. Of course, this will have a strong (negative) impact on Apple Europe profit for the corresponding quarter, and might push them to revise prices of models as soon as they are updated. We can expect again a +10% additional margin over the average currency rate. 

Over the last past years, we have already been reporting about the tension between Apple and its APR (Apple Premium Resellers). They have been supporting Apple during the crisis ranging from mid-90 to 2002, and they did not really benefit from the "re-birth" of Apple. Cupertino has been reducing margins of APR years after years, making also distribution channel more complicated and defining rules and policies for presenting products in shops, etc. The success of the online Apple Store has been the first major competitor. While Apple pushed large APR to open new shops in cities to surf on the iPod/iPhone success story, this would have been a fait strategy if Cupertino would not install physical Apple Stores in the very same cities. We can understand that Apple will open physical Apple Store in large cities, but it should then rather deal with local APR to help hem to relocate to smaller cities, in order to further increase the network on APR to get them closer to ALL customers (increase coverage). In France for example, the opening of a physical Apple Store in a large city strongly affect the survival of the often long time local APR. As a consequence, most local APR can not compete, and close down while they often provide a better service and being in the field for more years than those young newly recruited dude in the physical Apple Store. Many large APRs are discussing to find a way to be heard by Apple EU, however, it is unclear how Pascal Cagni (Apple Europe director) would be able to contact Cupertino to discuss about the strategy of physical Apple Store deployment in EU... 

A Trojan horse (Windows) was detected in the software accompanying a USB Energizer DUO charger of batteries. It opens a port on the affected PC that makes it possible to be able to reach it easily from outside. Even though it is impossible not to throw the stone at the company that did not make any elementary checks before offering its software, there are others, and Apple springs to mind, who already know about this kind of mishap. In 2006 a small series of iPod had been put on the market with a PC Virus pre-installed on it…

Scientist from the University of Michigan reports to have found a weakness in the key encryption system used for almost all authentication process. They also describe the associated way to exploit it to crack the key in about 100 hours while it would have taken years by brute force attack. Most details are provided in this PDF file. In summary, instead of using brute force, they stressed the processor containing the authentication key by submitting it to voltage stress. Subsequent errors allowed scientists to reconstitute the key. This information comes couple of weeks after some scientists successfully cracked by brute force attack in 2.5 years a 768-bits encryption key. The way to avoid such stress-based attack would be to modify CPU to make them insensitive to such voltage variation. Now, the next protection level would be 2048-bist encryption...

Following other SS manufacturers (among them OCZ and OWC), G.Skill announced its future SSD models based on the SandForce 1200 controller: All models will arrive in April and will be slightly different than current models based on the same controller. If we will have choice between a 100 and 200 GB units, There will also be a large capacity model offering 500 GB of storage space. The price is currently not known, but this new high-end model will most likely cost around 1 500 USD. Regarding SandForce controller, G.Skill will not offer models based on the SandForce 1500 (high end controller). Indeed, if the 1500 model is identical to the 1200, its firmware is available for a premium price of 100 USD! a extra cost that many manufacturers will refuse to pay for mid-range SSD models. Maybe by making this controller so precious, the number of licenses will not be as high as expected and SandForce will have to reduce its price.

Grace of being the champion of the graphics cards, all at least for the moment, Nvidia excels at a practice that is heavily criticized, that to regularly rename their graphics cards that are rather ancient and sometimes go back a few years in order to give them again a new flush of youth. The foundry now tries to justify itself faced with the regular outcry that accompanies their advertisements. It is not their fault, but that of the manufacturers of computers that require the new models continuously and to oblige them they do this not very glorious practice. The manufacturers of computers pressurise Nvidia to help generate new marketing arguments and NVidia yields. Of course NVidia stay silence on the fact that they are obliged to rename their old products and to make of them pseudo new since they are unable to produce any true innovations.

A report from a reader of Overclockers.com illustrates how counterfeited products can be found in an increasing number of places, here the new target is the popular Intel Core i7: Retrospect, we could spot some weird details, otherwise the box looked identical to a true and valid one, and would not indicate the bad surprise found inside: One the content unpacked, there is clearly a counterfeited product, a fake fan, empty booklet and fake CPU. From its external aspect and its weight, the product looked real, however its is only fake contents inside. We could have not been so surprise if this would have been purchased from eBay or some exotic online shops, but here it was a product ordered from NewEgg, a rather serious reference in its field. For sure the website has been fooled as at least 2 customers have reports similar problems, so the original stocks must have been "contaminated" with counterfeited products.

If though the iPad seems to have production problems at the moment, it would be expected that 600.000 to 1 million units will be produced monthly. This represents enormous quantities of flash memory chip for the models: 16,32 or 64 GB.However this market already is very constrained because of the iPhone and others iPod which absorbs a good part of the world's production of these chips. According to Digitimes that quotes manufacturers of SSD, a success of the iPad will take a significant chunk of the Flash market and could delay the penetration of these SSD discs in the storage market, with the prices likely to remain high and the capacities likely to be stagnate. Fortunately, more and more of production lines are allotted to the Flash memory chips and the engraving size decreases that increases the capacities of the chips. Under these conditions, the delay taken by the SSD should not exceed in the worst case a few months; and this should be compared to a world without an iPad as a conqueror.

In a press release, Apple announced the launch of the pre-order campaign for the forthcoming iPad: Apple today announced that its magical and revolutionary iPad will be available in the US on Saturday, April 3, for Wi-Fi models and in late April for Wi-Fi + 3G models. In addition, all models of iPad will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK in late April. Beginning a week from today, on March 12, US customers can pre-order both Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + 3G models from Apple's online store (www.apple.com) or reserve a Wi-Fi model to pick up on Saturday, April 3, at an Apple retail store.  

As you might know, we have an insider source following the discussion between Apple and the AA CS LA regarding royalties for adding support for Blu-ray playback in Mac OS X. While discussion started in 2007, this source just let us know that there is currently not even the beginning of an agreement between both parties, and Apple might even have decided to drop the idea of bringing support for BD in Mac OS X. If we should summarize the last information provide by this source, the current question is not when this support will be implemented, but will this support be implemented at all. Retrospect, this is maybe not a huge issue, as most computers do NOT feature a BD drive, and current and future online video services/stores will deliver a file that every customers would be able to store on a HD. All those points might have push Apple to think twice about BD playback on Mac OS X.

As you might know, we have an insider source following the discussion between Apple and the AA CS LA regarding royalties for adding support for Blu-ray playback in Mac OS X. While discussion started in 2007, this source just let us know that there is currently not even the beginning of an agreement between both parties, and Apple might even have decided to drop the idea of bringing support for BD in Mac OS X. If we should summarize the last information provide by this source, the current question is not when this support will be implemented, but will this support be implemented at all. Retrospect, this is maybe not a huge issue, as most computers do NOT feature a BD drive, and current and future online video services/stores will deliver a file that every customers would be able to store on a HD. All those points might have push Apple to think twice about BD playback on Mac OS X.  

Sony seems to have leaned from its past errors. After having seen the market of the walkmans escaping from them, they do not want to leave the field free for Apple with the iPad. The Wall Street Journal  announced a product which would like at the same time an ultra portable, a reader of digital books and a PSP. Sony thus aims very exactly the same markets as Apple with the compatibility with the PSP as an undeniable advantage. Sony seems to want to make the maximum money from its PSP, by also manufacturing a smartphone that would be able to make run its games too.

After having prohibited all that could in any way being considered as software with some sexual connotation, Apple is now attacking with a new segment. They withdrew, without warning, all the software which used an undocumented API iniPhone SDK that made it possible to locate the Wi-Fi networks. Among this software one finds some that seek out all the networks and displays them in the form of a list with their security or not, and also others where this function was only an accessory. For example the case of the reality software Sekai Camera. This uses the GPS for localisation, but can also call upon the localization of the Wi-Fi networks to refine its position or to take over in places where GPS reception is poor. On a purely contractual point of view, Apple is correct. It is however a pity that they waited for such a long time for for closing this down and that they feel the need to attack on this front that in reality did not have any consequences in the majority of the cases.

A declaration by the Vice President of operations of Google is likely to light a fire between Google and the providers of traditional OS, Microsoft and Apple. He thinks that in 3 years time the desktop machines such as they are conceived today will be obsolete. The future would belong to smaller devices, in a word: the mobile phone, which would be connected to large servers, that one commonly calls Cloud.Of course, Google with Android, its servers omnipresent and the future Chrome OS which will just be a minimalist system supported by their servers would be then be the king of the world or almost. This is precisely the future of computing according to Google. Everything would pass through their servers, capable of brute-force computing and of data storage. Even though there is an undeniable advantage with these solutions, there are, of course, disadvantages that you will be able to discuss on the forums.

We just tested the new 200 GB OWC Mercury Extreme Enterprise SSD, and as described in our article, this model deliver performance levels to a new dimension. While waiting for a more real life benchmarking, you can already get the taste of this new product: Test of the New 200 GB OWC Mercury Extreme SSD

It has been a long time sice there has been such a festival of Mac minis on the Refurb.  There are 4 versions on offer. Attention, the model with 499 euros is less interesting than that to 469 (understand). Even the high-end server model equipped with two hard disks and Mac OS X server is on offer. Mac Pro are also very evident for some time. Apple seems to want to empty stocks of them.  @ Le Refurb Store 

Apple will market two versions of the iPad. The first will be able to be connected to Internet only via Wi-Fi while the other, a more expensive version, will be able also to do this via the 3G, using a dedicated subscription. AT&T is not very optimistic on the incomes that they will be able to gather from these 3G subscriptions. According to a representative of the company the owners of the iPad will prefer to use Wi-Fi, whether their own or one of the many open networks that one finds easily. This is not very surprising. In addition to the higher price of the 3G device, few people will want to have to pay a subscription for 3G data that would cost something in the neighbourhoods of the 30 euros per month, in addition to that of their telephone and a possible subscription dedicated to the modem mode of the iPhone. Apple may have an interest to allow those who have one of these tethering subscriptions of being able to use it for their iPad. It would allow access to Internet 3G to iPad via Tethering in bluetooth, but also with a computer when one wants to do something more serious.

Even hough HTC is directly targeted by the complaint of Apple accusing them of violating 20 of their patents, Google is also targeted via the devices that use Android and especially Nexus One manufactured by HTC. The two companies reacted to the announcement by Apple. HTC announced or rather declared to the Taiwan stock exchange that the company has for last 13 years been innovative in the field of mobile telephony, holding many patents and that they were going to defend themselves against the charges of Apple. They insisted on the fact that they had developed the interface "Sense HTC" in-house and of course without copying Apple. Note that the fact of not being inspired by another does not mean that one cannot violate a software patent. The latter describe concepts vague enough that they can be found by chance or even that they used them for the first time while others had the idea to patent them.  Google also reacted at the minimum probably not antagonize Apple too much while supporting HTC: We are not recipient in this suite. However, we respond to defend our operating system Android and the partners who helped us to develop it. Google will watch and they will not hesitate to defend HTC if the need arises, probably by threatening Apple in one way or another. 

Here are the first photographs of Geforce GTX 480 about which we spoke about yesterday.  The power supply is very prominent and equipped with 6 lines of regulation testifies to the power which will be taken from the machine to feed this monster that is, however, engraved in 40nm.

NVidia has presented the new version of its Ion platform intended to accompany the Atom processors of Intel. It is intended for the new Atom processors which like the Core ix also include an integrated video chip. Quite naturally, NVidia added to the ION the support of its Optimus technology that will allow the integrated video in the Atom to act as long as the required power is not too much. Then, the integrated video of the ION kicks in and would multiply, according to NVidi,a the 3D performances by 10. The Duo Atom ION then becomes an ideal platform for many ultra portables and multi-media devices, able to decode without problem full HD and even to use Open CL. So for a long time we had thought that Apple would use this pair to update its Apple TV, we have since given up on this dream. The company seems now more inclined to leave it in its present state or more probably to subject it to the 'iPhoniser' and graft onto it in the future the iPhone OS associated with an in-house ARM processor. For them this would certainly be the best way of giving it a second life and also stop the Hackers enjoying this Atom-ION platform.