News for Friday, 6 May 2005

As always, let's have a better look at the newly released machines.
Let's start with the eMac. This machine, dedicated to a fairly specialized market, has seen its sales cannibalized by the Mac mini. But the eMac is now back in the race. In fact, if you don't have aesthetical imperatives or space constraints, the latter is more interesting:
- Its video card is way better than the one of the Mac Mini.
- Its uses 3.5" hard drives and 5.25" Optical drives. Both Better performers than those of the Mac Mini (and cheaper components to exchange).
- The eMac is less expensive than a Mac Mini plus keyboard, mouse and display.
Now that it has been updated, its place in Apple's Lineup should allow it to find a new market.
The iMac represents an important share of Apple's sales. Even with a CPU frequency increase of only 200 MHz, the new iMac is much more interesting than the one it replaces. In Fact, setting aside the FireWire 800 connector [TR: and the dual digital display output], it has nothing to envy the PowerMac line. It even manages to include the Bluetooth 2.0 update its bigger brother lacks.
If the Radeon 9600 cannot be considered a proper video card for the PowerMac G5, it has its place in this family-oriented machine with limited screen resolution. On top of that, Apple has had to entirely redo the motherboard in order to integrate this new video card. This, we hope, will solve once and for all the past problems encountered with iMac G5s.
On that level, the iMac becomes a real alternative to the PowerMac G5. Evolutivity is limited indeed, especially in terms of integrated video card, but one can wonder about the ability to find, two years from now, a faster mac-compatible video card that would still be in AGP 8x format...
Conclusion: the evolutions of the iMac seems very satisfactory to us, in just the same way the PowerMac G5 evolution left us unsatisfied.

Currently, everything can get illegaly copied, even blank discs. E-Net Europe, distributing Datawrite, is facing a tide of counterfeited medias branded Datawrite. The affair is so important that E-Net Europe offers a reward of 150 000 Euros to anyone leading to the counterfeiters' networks.
If you want to know more: www.datawrite.co.uk

September '04, Apple introduced with iMac G5 a new maintenance system: Do It Yourself. Thanks to this process, each final user could repair his own machine. Though many reports from our readers were very positive, it appears that several Apple Certified Resellers received Macs partially repaired, or even definitely damaged.
This must be the reason why Apple decided to stop this system with the new revision of iMac.
Except for fancoolers, it won't be possible to get parts directly from Apple. The computer must be repaired by an Agreed Apple Center.

This is the name of the last iMac G5 revision. ALS stands for Ambient Light Sensor.

As it is the case for PowerBooks, the new iMac will be able to modify the front LED's light according to the ambient Light. The button switching on the diagnostic LED has been removed and replace with a new procedure.
And finally, probably upset by the high number of returned iMacG5 from October 2004, Apple has splitted its components. It is now possible to order the LCD panel without reordering the complete module. This procedure will for sure decrease the price of services performed after the end of the warranty. But for sure the price will remain high enough to convince user to buy a complete new machine instead of repairing an old model.

Verbatim has finished validation process of DVD-R DL 4x media with burner manufacturers and software developers. So DVD-R DL media production can start, and first batches should be available on the market within few weeks.
In the time being, many DVD burners will have updated firmware released.
Let see if Apple which very recently started support for DVD +R9 media will also support DVD -R DL format.

In its excellent review on Tiger, ARS Technica gives details on Quartz 2D Extreme. This Tiger-specific feature allows 2D to be managed by the GPU and not the CPU anymore; and published tests prove that performance can be improved up to 236 fold!
But for an unknown reason, Apple did not activate this function by default...
I you wish to play with this feature, it is possible to force its activation with the application Quartz Debug which is part of Developers Tools.
The result of the activation of Quartz 2D Extreme is really impressive. On a PMG5 Dual 2.5GHz equipped with a GeForce6800, moving quickly a window on the desktop was generating up to 33% of CPU usage dedicated to "WindowServer" process. Once Quartz 2D Extreme is activated, the dedicated CPU usage drops to 13%.
It saves a lot of CPU usage, and will for sure much more appreciated with computers based on less performing processors.
If you have not faced any troubles after your test, you can force Quartz 2D Extreme to be active by default by entering directly in the Terminal the following command line:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver \Quartz2DExtremeEnabled -boolean YES

Your administrator password will be required.
If later on you have problems or artifacts, then you can inactivate this feature by entering the same command line with modifying YES to NO.

Many readers were puzzled regarding the new iMacG5 and Tiger specs. Indeed, according to Apple Core Image requires at least a Radeon 9600 XT.
In fact a Radeon 9600 is perfectly compatible with Core Image. It is the same for the Radeon 9600 Mobility which is also absent in Apple's listing.

To ensure that your GPU is supported, you simply need to open System info and look for the Tab Monitor and GPU.