News for Friday, 27 May 2005

If you are used to drop your mobile computer and/or have faced the issue of destroyed HD after such a drop, the solution might be there.

M-Systems is selling a 176GB ultra SCSI 320 hard drive entirely based on flash memory storage units, not including a single mechanical part. If the data flow rate might seem rather low (40MB/s) but access time is similar to the one of RAM module than a classical HD. But do not rush... the price is still not known but should be around tens of thousand US$; such drives are initially designed to equip aircraft fighters.
But Samsung has announced its new flash memory-based hard drive featuring up to 16GB storage capacity. Such drives consumes up to 20 fold less energy than a standard HD, so they might represent a ideal device for ultra-portable computers.

A report from Nicolas:

Without giving too much details, there is a critical bug in Tiger which lead to "frozen system" problem with many applications.
The webmaster of osxfacile.com has created a dedicated page frequently updated where the problem is described and related info reported and described (in French):
http://www.osxfacile.com/bug.html
This problems seems to affect only PMG5 SP 1.6GHz sold from end of 2004 (Rev. B) and this bug is only present when using Tiger. It is currently assumed that this bug is software-based, and could be due to a programming mistake in OpenGL and/or in GPU drivers.
Unfortunately, Apple seems unable to find a fix rapidly.
We know that the PMG5 SP 1.8GHz currently available from the AppleStore are also affected by this bug with Tiger.

If you have a PMG5 SP 1.8GHz running Tiger, please let us know if you are also facing problems or not with Tiger.

The 128,000 batteries that Apple recalled had been made by LG Chem in South Corea. This company of course will take a hard blow because of that issue, as Apple's insurance policies will turn against them, and their clients will probably be reluctant to have their orders completed. Yet, as often seen, others will have less reasons to complain, as taiwanese subcontractors that Apple only used as secondary counterparts will get the orders LG Chem will lose.
For the MacUsers, whatever the manufacturer, so far as the product meets their expectations.

You can't buy a 65nm CPU yet. CPU makers though, as they have to get prepared, are already beginning to work on the next generation chips.
IBM hence got associated to Toppan Printing company in order to create 45nm engraving means.
The first 45nm CPUs are expected by mid 2007.

Skype, the software that allows audio chat between Mac as well as betweeb Mac and PC, should be video conferencing enabled in 2005.
As this sofwtare has always been available on the Mac, we may hope video conferencing between the two platforms will be possible without making it necessary for your contacts to get the not so famous iVisit.
It might be time that after iTunes, Apple will make iChat compatible with PCs. This could deal a blow to MSN, that Microsoft won't implement decently on the Mac.

The Cell processor which will be in the future PS3 is generating a lot of interest. And IBM is clearly expecting to promote thsi processor for other purposes than game consoles.
Selected journalists have been invited to see a prototype of a Cell-based Blade server featuring 2 boards, each of them equipped with 2 Cell processors.


As shown on the photo, the cooling device is quite big, something similar to PMG5 :)
The theoretical power of such computer is around 700GFLOPS.

ATI has presented a graphic card including a module able to decode H.264 format. There is not much information except that such module will be integrated in future Radeon GPU.
This is excellent news for Apple and Macuser. With such a H.264-compatible graphic card, it will be possible to decode HD video (1080i) even on a Mac mini.
If we look even further, Apple has built all its video strategy around this format, so we could postulate that such module could be the "entry-ticket" for an iTunes Video Store. Indeed, there is currently not much computer being able to play such HD video.