News for Wednesday, 28 September 2005

Apple has officially confirmed an issue with some iPod nano screen, but this affect only a very small number of units :

This is a real but minor issue involving a vendor quality problem in a small number of units. Our figures show this issue has affected less than 1/10 of 1 per cent of the total iPod nano units that we've shipped. It is not a design issue.

In addition Apple has revealed that the iPod nano was manufactured using the same high-quality polycarbonate plastic as the fourth-generation iPod.
Complains about the iPod nano being easily scratched are probably affecting mostly the black model since it is easier to spot them.

Dan, who contacted us already to report that Apple was working hard to fix the known problem of the PMG5 1.8GHz SP with Tiger, has sent us a new mail to inform us that the patch is almost ready, and should be available for download soon, maybe even this week.
This will be a real good news for PMG5 1.8GHz SP owners.!

CMO (Chi Mei Optoelectronics) has developed a 56" LCD TV featuring 3840x2160 pixels, in other words 8.5 millions pixels.
It is not really useful except as technology breakthrough.
But one could dream of plugging such LCD panel to his Mac in order to replace the existing 30" Cinema display. One would need to use simultaneously 2 DDL connectors from a GeForce 6800 Ultra.
Apple could introduce such a high resolution display for professional applications, such as HD video. One could watch HD video in full definition while having still enough space on the display to have all tool panels.

Toady, one can find a Powermac G5 dual 2.3GHz at 1.825 Euros (-20% discount of original price) on the Refurb Store .
This model is equipped with a 250GB HD, a x16 DVD burner DL, a Radeon 9600 and 512MB of RAM.

Despite the fact that most of the DVD burner available or integrated into computers are now supporting DVD DL media, the market for such media remains marginal.
However, the request of DVD DL media should be multiply by 4 in 2006, from 50 millions media sold this year to 200 millions media next year.
One can expect that this increase should contribute to lower the price of such media that remains far too expensive for most customers.

MacNN has published new repots from users having received Mac mini 1.5GHz. In addition, the Mac mini Service Manual is now officially mentioning this model even though Apple did not make it official yet.
Hereafter is a summary of the new features:
- 2 models available based on G$ CPU running at 1.33GHz and 1.5GHz
- faster HD
- The GPU does not change (Radeon 9200) but the 1.5GHz model has 64MB VRAM GPU vs. a 32MB VRAM GPU for the Mac mini 1.33GHz. But be careful, this does not change anything regarding CoreImage which is still not supported by the Radeon 9200.
- The SuperDrive is now a DVD 8x burner and the Combo drive a CD 32x burner
- Apple integrates now directly Airport and Bluetooth capabilities into a single combo extension card, as it is the case for the last iMac models.
To conclude, this news is not a rumor but an information available for all AppleCenters.
It is possible that Apple will try to empty its stocks before making the new models officially available.