News for Sunday, 27 July 2003

The following info will probably be a déjà vu taste. But since there are from another reliable source, we can consider them as confirmation of what we have published before.
Motorola had promised G4 7457 processors in quantity for last May. But at the current date, Apple do not have enough of those processors to launch it new PowerBooks line.
Tired of that problem, Steve Jobs gives, in private, to Motorola a nickname "scum-a-rola".
Apple had planed everything to get the new Apple portable computers ready for September and its corresponding new school year, but it seems that we will not see them before middle September... then Apple will probably lose part of its normal early September sales.
For the PowerBooks G5, Apple could in theory use the 1.4GHz G5. But the motherboard controller chipset has to be produce with the 90nm process, and will not be ready before 6 month. The only good news, it should start at 1.8 and 2 GHz with the first 90nm G5.

Jérémie just sent us some info concerning the G5 test with Logic Audio.

To give you another point for comparison, a G4 Dual 1.42GHz can not produce more than 15 Spectral-gates; with a G5 the result allows a gain over 400%. Up to now, to obtain such a capacity to treat audio data you had to invest at least 20,000€ (without the computer) in a ProTools HD3. In addition as you wrote it down in the previous news, MacOSX 10.2.7 is not optimized as well as Audio Logic 6 which is still a beta for the G5. So the results should even get higher when MacOSX and Audio Logic 6 will be optimized for the G5. So far it is only quickly recompiled versions.

Counterfeiting is a growing activity!
There could be all over the world packs of DVD-R (spindle of 25, 50 and 100) and having Maxell brand name .
We do not have additional information regarding that news, but it will be a disaster in our country to buy those low quality DVD-R by spindle of 100...indeed in France, we have an extra tax on recording media : 1.6 €/DVD in addition to the normal cost....

We have received dome information concerning G5 tests in progress somewhere in the US.
Those tests have been performed on a G5 1.8 GHz and Dual 2GHz.
Non optimized MacOSX 10.2.7, as well as a Panther beta, have been used in this test.
Both G5 had a Geforce FX 5200 graphic cards and a SATA IBM Vancouvert HD.
The reference computer is a Dual G4 1.25 GHz with 2MB RAM per processor.
Our source mentioned that the G5 Dual 2GHz had many kernel panics at the beginning and this was due to the RAM. This computer seems to be quite sensitive to the used RAM.
We did not get the full detailed list of the test, but it was covering a large panel of applications.
G5 @ 1.8 GHz was 19% faster than the G4 Dual 1.25 with MACOSX 10.2.7 and 27% faster with Panther beta.
G5 Dual 2 GHz was 43% faster than the G4 Dual 1.25Ghz with MACOSX 10.2.7 and 59% (!!) with Panther beta.
We let you conclude from those data.