News for Tuesday, 16 May 2006

Our friend Branislav Milic, currently in Chicago, has found some time for a short visit to the AppleStore. He of course took some photos of the last Apple's hardware model.

Additional photos are available from his website:
http://www.milic.com/photos/chicago2006/index.html
The keyboard seems to be quite different than the iBook's one. Need to be tested.

With the Xserve, which is kind of an outsider in Apple's range of products, the Powermac G5 is now a survivor amongst its Core Duo peers. However its heir should come out quite soon.
Intel Xeon Woodcrest CPU will come out next month. And one month later, Core 2 Duo will take the place of Pentium IV.
Here at Hardmac, we'd bet that Apple is gonna go for Woodcrest. Contrarily to the Core 2 Duo, indeed, this dual core CPU can be made to work with one of its siblings on the same board, and here you get four cores! This is Apple's only solution, or its new machines will be overshadowed by the mythic Quad (and bye bye the "4 times faster, amaaazing!"...).
Based on the Core technology, this Xeon has all the markings of a very good product. It is said to run 50% faster than its predecessor with a lower power consumption. Its frequency will surf on the 3GHz wave and its bus speed will skyrocket to 1.33 GHz.
A quicker than expected end of the transition is to be expected with, as the fleet commander, a 3GHz Core Quad Xeon Powermac with dual channel 667 or 800 DDR2 RAM and less noise for the same price, because 80W is enough for a 3GHz Xeon dual, vs 100W for a 2.5GHz G5 Dual.
While we're at it, if Apple listens to us (if only they were also hearing!), some customers would love to have... more than two hard drive bays and, oh... two optical drive bays and PCI-X alongside PCI-Express.
Oh yeah...

Christophe sent us this screen capture from the French iTMS.

If that's really titles from Yves Duteil that have been added, the picture is that of another Yves, Montand...
This minor mistake proves that, if French people work at the iTMS, they're surely on holiday...

The MacBook Pro 15" makes its own revolution. The configurations frequencies increase with a top level model reaching 2.16 GHz and 2 GHz for the entry level model. The latter drops to €1,999, while the 2.16 is now worth "only" €2,499.
The cost is now in line with the 17" model.
PS: it would now seem the 12" disappeared for good.
PS2: it is now possible to chose between a normal and a glossy display. The latter could still work as mirror on the plane :)
PS3: the special pricing offer for French students known as MIPE hasn't been updated yet. Pricing is still high for the 15", and there even are still G4 iBooks for sale...

While the Radeon X1600 of a MacBook pro 15" seems to be set by default at 300 MHz for the GPU and 300 for memory, it seems that on the 17" model, the first reaches 400 MHz and the second 450. Those values are close to the specifications of ATI for this video card.
It would seem that the bigger battery and perhaps a better cooling system in the 17" allowed Apple to make no compromise at this level.

The MacBook is there, already displayed on Apple front webpage, even though AppleStores are not back on line yet.

So as expected the MacBook has a 13" display, starts at 1099$ for entry-level till 1499 for high-end model, featuring respectively a Core Duo 1.83 and 2.0GHz.
All MacBook models feature an integrated iSight and unfortunately an integrated GPU chipset with shared memory, the (in)famous GMA950... :(
The high-end model is available as a white or black case.
The shortest link to the AppleStore:
French Apple Store
UK Apple Store
German Apple Store

All European Apple Stores are currently closed.
Be patient the expected MacBook will be there ;)
[update 14h15 CET] US Apple Store is now close too.
Say hello to the ....

You may be surprised to learn that on most PCs - but not on Mac - it is quite easy to overclock the RAM, by tuning either the frequency or the timings.
NVidia wants to have that process automated on mainboards using its chipsets, provided that it also uses compatible RAM.
Every single RAM module comes with a small EEPROM chip allowing the computer to recognize it and use it accordingly with its specifications. Currently it is only about base information such as the available frequency/timing couples. Corsair will be the first to sell modules with EEPROMs providing more in-depth data, most importantly the maximum frequencies.
Taking into account the other components' tolerance threshold, the chipset will then automatically overclock the RAM.

All updates are available via Software Update panel or from Apple Support Website.
iWeb 1.1 (95.3 MB)

This update to iWeb adds comment and search support for blogs and podcasts published to .Mac. It also addresses a variety of usability and performance issues for all users, including image management fixes to improve site load performance.

iPhoto 6.0.3 (14.1 MB)

This update to iPhoto addresses issues with Photocasting of Smart Albums, sharing iPhoto libraries, and creating calendars and books. It also addresses a number of other minor issues.

iMovie HD 6.0.2 (7 MB)

This update to iMovie HD 6 addresses issues with PAL audio and displaying iLife Sound Effects automatically in its iLife Media Browser. It also improves overall stability and address a number of other minor issues.

iDVD 6.0.2 (5.6 MB)

This update to iDVD addresses issues with burning some 16:9 projects and improves overall stability.

GarageBand 3.0.2 (32.2 MB)

Addresses issues with video handling, podcast exporting, and importing QuickTime markers. It also addresses a number of other minor issues.