News for Wednesday, 26 October 2005

P.A. Semi, a startup from the Silicon Valley lead by the former leader of Dec Alpha development announced they got a licence for using the Power architecture by IBM.
Their future PWRficient CPUs familly (64bits, low consuption, multi-core based on Power) was characterized by a 5 to 13W consumption at 2GHz, much less than nowadays PowerPC 970. The 2GHz version might be sold by the 3rd quarter of 2006, in a dual core version supporting 2 DDR2 controllers, 2 10Gb Ethernet ports, 4 1Gb ports, 8 PCI-Express controllers and 2Mo cache. In 2007 a mono-core version as well as a quadri-core might appear. A 8 core version could be released in 2008.
Their market is that of network switches, gateways with firewall as well as that of Raid controllers and printing servers.

Here's Fabien, one of our readers who just receuved his Video iPod

Just to let you know I received my video iPod, ordered on the Apple Store.
I must say the display is of really good quality, I tried to load the iPod with an especillay encoded film and it works really fine.
I then plugged it on TV using an Apple RCA cable on tv, this time quality isn't that good yet I'll try and encode in a better resolution (ie 480*480, the maximum). I'll see what's the result, but I think there's a way to get a good one for TV.
As for other functionalitiess I haven't tried them yet, but I think everything looks fine.

[update : Eric]
One reader from UK (thank you Phil) sent us the following report, confirming that the iPod video is now shipping in Europe

Hello, just to let you know, I ordered an iPod video (60GB, white) on Monday afternoon, and it is listed as shipped as of just after midnight on Wednesday morning. I will let you know when it arrives! I ordered through the Apple store online, as the Apple store in London were saying that expected stock in 1 - 2 weeks.

According to macuser (reading requires subscription), unhappy consumers from San Jose (California) are about to undertake law action against Apple. The class action file reportedly concerns the iPod nano screen which, even under normal use, will get scratched so much, it might become unusable. If this action goes to its end, it would be the first time this matter often commented already would result in law action.
Even if they don't comment upon this particular file – plaintiffs require full refund for hidden default, which Cupertino will not acknowledge, – Apple recommends the use of protections.
It seems they don't know how long it took to find some for buying... which undoubtedly disadvantaged the first people who bought the nano.

Usually the design of such processor will require between 30 and 36 months, for IBM it took only 24 months to provide Microsoft with a final design. This gain of time on the development schedule will allow Microsoft to release its next generation game console before competitors on November 22nd in USA and beginning December in Europe.
But an interesting question is : how is it possible that IBM can design a triple-core 3.2GHz processor for Microsoft, but struggles to deliver a PPC970MP faster than 2.5 GHz to Apple?
Of course, those processors are not designed for the same tasks and purpose; but this also made possible by multiplying the number of manufacturers! IBM will be supported for Xbox360 processor production by Chartered Semiconductor.
In addition, if Bill Gates has asked IBM to perform the design of the processor, Microsoft remains the only owner of the design; so they can ask to any other processor founders to prepare such processor for them, if Xbox360 sales make it necessary…
Three Chinese companies are manufacturing the other parts of the Xbox360.
The big Xbox360 manufacturing and marketing machine is now in action, and its only goal is provide enough Xbox360 consoles for all customers.

Final Cut Pro 5 has been updated to version 5.03 :

Final Cut Pro 5.0.3 improves multiclip and multichannel audio reliability. For more detailed information, please visit:
http://www.apple.com/support/lbn/?product=FinalCutPro&version=5.0&language=z

Cinema Tools has also been updated to version 3.03 :

Cinema Tools Update 3.0.3 delivers improved reliability. This update is recommended for all Cinema Tools 3 customers.
For more detailed information, please visit:
http://www.apple.com/support/lbn/?product=CinemaTools&version=3.0&language=z

Apple has published on its homepage a picture to remember Rosa Parks. Her action has to remain alive in our mind; she was fighting for freedom and against segregation in 1955 in a country supposed to be a Democracy.

To learn more about Rosa Parks, her life and her fight against racial segregation please visit this page on apple website.

As every Wednesday, the RefurbStore is opened, and today one can find :
- "old" PowermacG5 Dual 2.3GHz with -26% discount (Radeon 9600 and 512 MB of RAM)
- Xserve RAID 1TB (4x250GB) : -20%
- Xserve G5 Cluster Node Dual 2.3GHz : -20%
- Xserve G5 2GHz 1GB/80GB: -20%
- iPod 3G 20Go : -50%
Xserve and Xserve RAID found on the RefurbStore are the current models found on AppleStore. So, this could be the first sign of a future revision towards dualcore-based Xserve models.