News for Wednesday, 19 October 2005

As with the PowerMac, no changes to the exteriors of the new PowerBooks. On the other hand, unlike the PowerMacs which have had a significant internal overhaul, the new PowerBooks remain fairly evenly matched. The major difference between them is the screen resolution which has been increased on the 15" and 17" models. The latter two models also now come with DDR2 memory, which has now become standard, optical digital audio inputs and outputs as well as the traditional audio-line input and headphone outputs. Finally, Apple claims an improvement in the battery life to 5hrs30 for the 15" and 17" models and 5hrs for the 12" model.
Here's the line-up:
12" 1.5GHz : 1,599.00 € (VAT included)
Delivery times: 24 hrs
Screen Resolution: 1,024 x 768
RAM: 512MB (DDR PC-2700)
Hard Drive: 80GB / 5,400 rpm
SuperDrive: 8x single layer
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200 (64MB DDR)
Ethernet: built-in 10/100BASE-T
Expansion: 2 x USB 2.0; 1 x FireWire 400
15" 1.67GHz : 2,078.99 € (VAT included)
Delivery times: 2 days
Screen Resolution: 1,440 x 960
RAM: 512MB (DDR PC2-4200)
Hard Drive: 80GB / 5,400 rpm
SuperDrive: 8x double layer
Graphics Card: ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 (128MB DDR)
Ethernet: built-in Gigabit
Expansion: 2 x USB 2.0; 1 x FireWire 400; 1 x FireWire 800; PC Card slot
Back-lit Keyboard
17" 1.67 GHz : 2,599.00 € (VAT included)
Delivery times: 2 days
Screen Resolution: 1,680 x 1,050
RAM: 512MB (DDR PC2-4200)
Hard Drive: 120GB / 5,400 rpm
SuperDrive: 8x double layer
Graphics Card: ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 (128MB DDR)
Ethernet: built-in Gigabit
Expansion: 2 x USB 2.0; 1 x FireWire 400; 1 x FireWire 800; PC Card slot
Back-lit Keyboard
As far as upgrade options go, although they're limited to RAM upgrades and a 100GB/5,400 rpm hard drive upgrade for the 12" model, for the 15" and 17" models, the following are available:
- for 209 €, you can opt for a 120GB/5,400 rpm or a 100GB/7,200 rpm hard drive.
- for RAM, Apple's perennial weakness, it'll cost you 110€ to upgrade to 1GB (or 220€ if you want a single 1GB stick instead of 2 x 512MB), and 550€ to upgrade to 2GB.
There are no upgrade options for the graphics cards.
The pricing has only dropped only slightly as against the older models, which is a shame because the components, except the RAM and the screens on the 15" and 17" models, are now outdated. The wait for Intel processors just got longer ..

Apple has announced Aperture, an image processing programme optimised for native RAW files.
With Aperture, you can now manipulate and retouch RAW images as easily as you can JPEGs.
Aperture also includes a virtual light-table - a new feature called "Stacks", which can automatically group images by the time interval between shutter clicks.
The workspace takes up the entire screen, and the user can use several work areas to group multiple images together. Aperture also allows you to compare 10 or 12 images side-by-side and to zoom up to 800%. Aperture also includes the usual anti-red eye, page layout and contact sheet functions, as well as online print ordering and .Mac integration.
We suggest you visit the Apple website to see for yourselves.

Aperture seems only to be available in English for the moment, with a price of 499 euros in the Apple Store.

Gamoul, one of our forum members, has just released an article online showing how to overclock a PowerBook.
Macxtrem

He has actually pushed the clock speed of his 15" 1.5GHz PowerBook to 1.83GHz.
Take great care if you set about overclocking a laptop. It's a very delicate job, the effects of which might impact on the reliability of the laptop.
http://www.macxtrem.com/articles.php?article=124
[Translator's Note - note that the article is in French. If we can get permission, and can find the time, to translate it, we will try to do so. In the meantime, good luck with Babelfish!!]

Third event for Apple this month, focused on the pro market.
David Moody, president of worldwide product market, is on stage.
I. The Powerbook are upgraded.
The 15" offers now a screen display with a reolution of 1440x900 (such as the current 17") and the 17" is now offering a resolution of 1680x1050.
They are available today:
US$1,499 for the 12"
US$1,999 for the 15"
US$2,499 for the 17"
Both 15" and 17" can drive an external 30" monitor.
II. The PowerMacs are upgraded with dual core processors. The architecture supports 16 Gb of DDR2 at 533MHz RAM memory. It supports also up to 1 Tb of internal SATA storage. PCI-express is also available.
They are named PowerMac G5 Quad.
The NVidia Quadro FX4500 is ready for these new G5 and of course can drive the dual 30".
The new PowerMac uses 8 floating point units, 4 velocity engines, 4 1Mb level2 caches and can reach up to 76.6 Gigaflops.
Mono-proc (bi-core) 2.0 GHz: US$1,999
Mono-proc (bi-core) 2.3 GHz: US$2,499
Dual-proc (bi-core) "Quad" 2.5 GHz: US$3,299
III. New prices for the Cinema Displays
The 23" is now at US$1,299 (previously 1,499) and the 30" is aet US$2,499 (previously 2,999).
IV. Rob Shoeben, application marketing manager, is now on stage. He talks about the new challenges of the professional photographers : retouching, managing memory cards while keeping their delivery time as short as possible.
Apple presents Aperture, a software for managing RAW images. You can now manage and retouch your RAW images as easily and quickly as a JPG.
Aperture offers a feature called Stacks which automatically groups the images accordingly to the apertures. The workspace takes the entire surface of the screen and offers many work layers to put several images on screen. A multi-images viewer allows to visualise the images by 10 or 12 and zoom up to 800%. Aperture offers also classic features, such as red-eye removal, page layout, contact sheet, online printing and publishing on .Mac
The AppleStore is now reopen.
The Keynote is finished.

Everyone is now aware of the iPod nano capacity to be scratched (whatever Apple say). While those scars won't impair its qualities and functioning, they really are irritating.
iPodLife just rolled specific silicone protections.

There are two protections in the box, one of them being made to receive a cordlet, to put the nano around your neck.
Price is 29.90 Euros.

Flash memory has become the philosopher stone of the computing industry. Always faster, its energy consumption is very low and it won't be wiped when the power is off.
Intel wish to use it as a base for their "Robson" technology.
They'd add to their computers (laptops, first) a certain amount of Flash memory, from some tens of Mo to some Go. This Flash would stock the first elements required to boot a computer, which will use it until the other components will be ready to function. This memory will then be used when the computer is operating in order to accelerate the launching of applications and to save energy by working as a disk cache. To end up with it, it will allow a deeper sleep, which will cost less energy.
This solution with Flash and a dedicated software will be some kind of intelligent cache, doing its best to anticipate the machine uses.
Intel probably used the works made on predictions that the CPUs have to do to accelerate calculations in pipelines.

Thx to Gérard for the interesting trove.
On Apple site, there's an interactive demo of the iPod functionalities: http://www.apple.com/ipod/features.html
If you watch it carefully, you'll see this image:

It's from the demo of the new video iPod. But if you watch it closely, its capacity is exactly that of an iPod nano. It's probably a mistake, unless Apple prefered to deactivate this function at the last moment to differentiate the two lines, or keep it for a day when the nano capacity will be higher.

Ludwig, an English reader of macbidouille/hardmac, had the chance to test the integrated iSight in the new iMacG5 and to compare it with an external iSight.
What he has sent us cleared all our doubts regarding the quality/performance of the integrated iSight. As stated by Steve Jobs during the Keynote, the iMacG5 iSight is at least as good as the external model, and even better for image definition and contrast.
So it might pave the way for the introduction of a new external iSight... iSight 2?

Due to the launch of the new models last week, the Refurb Store is full of iMac from the previous generation.
26% off for the iMac 17" and 20% off for the 20".
Also available, iPods 3G 20Gb at -50% and Xserve at -20%.

Freddie Geier is not really known, despite being the CEO of Elgato, and a Mac pioneer and a reference for many of us. He is the guy behind Toast software. He has also worked at Apple Software Divisions on many projects, including some iApps.
Freddie will become the new Head of Apple Germany. Knowing his skills, he will be successful. Maybe we will see him getting more involved in apple Europe Management in a near future.

Following the excellent article written by Gotchi on RAID (only available in French for the time being), and its success, a Canadian reader has sent us additional information.
He has tested Megaraid cards that are identical to those ones provided by Apple, but not officially Mac compatible; but IT WORKS!
The MegaRAID SATA 150-4, also identical to Apple's one, works without problem in Mac and cost only 289$ (VAT excluded)!
Even better, the SATA 300-8X card sporting 8 SATAII ports is also working perfectly as the SCSI-320 (SCSI 320-2X) card.
To get more information related to those tests :
http://www.hmug.org
PS: If a reader interested by one of this card and with good programming skills wants to create a GUI to manage card drivers, it would be perfect :)

Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology has developed a new generation of LCD display dedicated to portable computer.
The prototype that we will be demoed in a near future will have a 1366x768 resolution for 11.1" (a bit difficult for the eyes); but by adding directly the LCD electronic management system directly behind the panel, they have divided the thickness by 2 folds. In addition, the weight is reduced by 35% and the power consumption is also reduced.
In a near future, it will be possible to save on power consumption not only at the CPU level, but also for the LCD and many other components.