News for Wednesday, 8 December 2004

Within the last few days, several IBM-related announcements seems to prepare the way of some serious change in the IT world:
- first, last week with the Power.org consortium official launch, IBM is making its play to open up the Power Architecture. It came more or less at the same time than the report regarding excellent Cell processor performance for the future PS3.
- then this deal with Lenovo which will gain rights to manufacture IBM-branded computers, for 5 years, and IBM will hold an 18.9 per cent equity stake in Lenovo. (a quite complicated agreement with some unknown or not-clarified options for sure)
- then comes The Register The Register with an "opinion" article where Cormac O'Reilly is suspecting IBM to get closer to Apple, despite being able to acquire the Cupertino-based company.
All together, one can think that IBM is preparing some strategies and/or revenge regarding PC business. What will be its weapon? Well, we all know it: the PowerPC. IBM will probably do the maximum to compete with Intel and gain the CPU leadership. They have already helped AMD as much as possible without playing all their cards, and they have convinced Microsoft to install a PowerPC in the future Xbox2.
They are also promoting their PPC970-based server solutions as well as all servers using the recently launched Power5 processor running under Linux.
What is missing? A finalized and powerful OS running on PowerPC. Something that most of us know, OSX-like could be it. This is probably from that side of the story that the rumor related to a possible IBM-Apple closer relationship is coming from. Now regarding Apple side, short-term future seems bright; Apple is surfing on the iPod and iTMS waves which are generating much more "switch" than any dedicated ad campaign before. So Steve will not let Apple be acquired by IBM, especially it might be quite costly with Apple shares being over 60$; but one can really imagine that IBM could be more involved regarding Mac manufacturing/development.
Currently, IBM is already quite deeply involved for the development of all G5-based Apple's computers, even though Apple is taking care of the manufacturing parts. Facing difficulties to deliver computers according to the time schedule and announcements, Apple might see a solution to give IBM the responsibility to develop and manage manufacturing and production, while Apple will keep what it has made its strength for years: design (esthetic and hardware) and OS/software. In return, Apple might provide IBM servers with a dedicated server OS specifically for IBM needs and markets.
The future will tell us if we were right or not, but for sure current IBM position is interesting and might opened up our vision; Mac users might see their status evolved from "original" to "forerunner".

Apple should propose from December 10th, a 3CD-pack full of OpenSource software dedicated to teachers and primary school education field. In this pack, software will be compatible with Linux, OSX and Windows. This pack is dealing with multiple topics, and is edited in collaboration with the French Regional Centers for Pedagogical Information from Paris and Versailles.
It is a smart way from Apple to remind and to coomunicate towards teachers and education-related people after the success of ITICA (Apple Communication and Information Meeting dedicated to Education people) and MIPE.

The RefurbStore is/was full of iMacG5 this morning. One could also find iBook, AppleCinema display and even PMG5. Apple is also indicating that the RefurbStore will be opened till December 24th. Machines presented on the RefurbStore being in stock, this can be the real opportunity to get one for Christmas.
Refurb Store

No need to call the Blue Man Group (haha - rimshot) for this one, but as ATI hit the jackpot with supplying the next generation Xbox and Nintendo consoles, NVidia was awarded with the PS3. Well, actually, Sony will be manufacturing the GPU under NVidia license. It will work in team with the very promising PPC 970-derived CELL processor, which will be multi-core, 64bits and running at speeds allegedly over 4.7GHz.

Gigadesigns is now also offering upgrade cards based on a 1.7GHz G4. Once again, no L3 cache. They also carry dual processors 1.7GHz upgrade cards for the SDR G4, save the cube.
As a side note, they do offer a 1.6GHz fanless upgrade card for the cube.

Cube Owner managed to get their hands on more info from OWC about this 1.7GHz Sonnet card. It allegedly is a PPC 7447 without L3 cache. Our first comment on performance loss seems to be conclusive : a 1.7GHz card without L3 cache should reach about the same level of performance as a 1.4GHz card with L3 cache. So we're now eager to see those chips equipped with some L3, or better yet, some 7448 upgrade cards !

Source : Clubic (in ze French)

The Hollywood corporate machine will most likely try to push the HD DVD format to reduce piracy. However, that calls for consumers to change their equipment, or that they offer the movies on two different formats, which is far from being cheap.
Toshiba and Memory-Tech have announced a hybrid media that can be read as 4.7GB on a DVD player, and as 15GB on a HD DVD player. Sort of a SACD format for video, if you will. It is yet uncertain how editors will be able to fit 2 different resolutions on one media, but hey, at least now they have the option.