News for Friday, 5 May 2006

Le site BigBruin tested the brand new 750 Go from Seagate, using the Perpendicular Recording technology.
The results will clearly make it a new star for those requiring huge capacities and that can afford them.
Access times, flow rates, functioning temperature are above the average for high capacity HDs.
An obstacle remains, its price that's nearly of 500 dollars. This will surely be minimized in the coming months, as soon as their competitors will catch up with them at this capacity level.
By the past, we had the GHz run between CPU companies. The next battle will be between HDs manufacturers to offer the first 3,5" HD to reach a To.

Despite the manufacturers already selling "pre n" devices, the members of the IEEE 802.11 rejected the first draft of the 802.11n standard. According to Airgo Network who's part of it, it's not mature yet and lacks stability.
A battle may ensue between those who have already started selling products based based on this draft of a standard and those who prefered to wait. The first ones will do their best so the evolution will be minimal and allow their products to be upgraded. Their reputation is at stake, considering some big brands such as Linksys, Belkin or D-Link already took a chance on the draft standards.
Anyway, independent tests proved that the products are not only incompatible with one another, but also their performances are far from what's expected.
It will now take until mid-2007 for this standard to be fixed.
JCJ

Following the recent price cut for Aperture, Apple had launched an offer as a $200 e-coupon good on the online Apple Store to licensed users of Aperture 1.0. Licensed users of Aperture 1.0 Academic will receive a $100 e-coupon.
This eCoupon is finally available for Europe.

On April 13th, 2006, Apple released Aperture 1.1, the first Universal version of Aperture and a significant update to the revolutionary all-in-one post-production tool for photographers. In addition, Apple lowered the price of Aperture from £349 to £219 in the UK and from €499 to €319 in Ireland.
As a result, Apple is offering licensed users of Aperture 1.0 a £130 (UK) / €180 (Ireland) e-coupon which can be redeemed at the online Apple Store. Licensed users of Aperture 1.0 Academic will receive a £80 (UK) / €120 (Ireland) e-coupon.

UK: http://www.apple.com/uk/promo/aperture
DE: http://www.apple.com/de/promo/aperture
For other countries, simply add the local country code in the url: http://www.apple.com/xx/promo/aperture
Take note that. although Apple offers a similar coupon on both sides of the Atlantic, the exchange rate is not a valid excuse to make things more expensive in Europe as is usually the case.

According to The Inquirer, IBM has major problems producing its Cell processor that is planned to equip the future PS3.
The level of CPU defects during the pre-production stage is abnormally high.
The problems may simply be linked to the complexity of this processor, being simply too difficult to be manufactured fast enough in large quantities.
For us Mac users, IBMs problem to deliver CPUs on schedule is a well-known story, and was well illustrated with the PPC970/G5 roadmap...

The news has already spread over the web, and been amplified by many Mac and PC sites while originating from sprintpcsinfo.com.
What is it about?
Some MB Pro batteries with a serial number anterior to W8608, could be defective and not properly support charging.
Apple is reported to be aware of the problem and to proceed to battery exchange after an AppleCare diagnostic. It might not be a hardware problem but rather a battery firmware problem. But it is also quite surprising that the news spreads so fast while it is also impossible to find numerous reports about this problem nor serious post on Apple Forums. While the curse affecting the APX is well documented in Apple Forum, and Apple remains silent...
So let's make it clear, there is no Battery Exchange Program for the MB Pro yet. If you have indeed a problem with you MB Pro battery, let us know, to our knowledge it remains a very limited problem.

Following the yesterday's news on Speedit, as well as the instant allergic reaction affecting most Mac users when it's time to use Terminal, our friend Jonathan has created a small application that monitors the Core Duo temperature with a refresh rate defined by the user.

You can download it from the following address:
http://macbricol.free.fr

As part of the war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, the first movies to be available on Blu-Ray media will not be available before June 25th.
Why?? Well simply because SONY has also delayed the release of the first Blu-Ray player...
While the Blue Laser war is on going, with such delays from both sides, customers are for sure not ready to invest in the future DVD media/player generation.

Apple has just released a minor update for Aperture (version 1.1.1, 13.6Mb). This fixes problems with performance, stability, colour correction, and display compatibility.
Please note that you need Aperture version 1.1 and MacOS X 10.4.6

A new minor update for Logic Express and Pro is available, bringing it to version 7.2.1 (30mb, OS X 10.4.3 required). This update fixes various reliability and compatibility problems.

CDR Info has published a large test of recordable media. With at least 15 different substrates tested on 5 different burners!
To sum it up, not all discs are equal, but the results vary depending on which burner was used.