News for Sunday, 6 August 2006

Marin, one of our readers from Croatia has sent us a report that might be useful for some PowerBook G4 users experiencing unexplainable Kernel panics:

I recently came upon a funny bug on 15-inch SuperDrive PBG4 (revision April 2004). It is a fine machine, well kept and nicely running Tiger. Then, suddenly, after being out of use for three days, it wouldn't start up - it just gave Kernel Panic announcement. I ran the usual string of Hardware tests and reboots (RAM, PRAM and the like). After backing up the disk (which was accessable through Target mode) I reinstalled the operating system, trying with both Panther and Tiger. Still the same thing. Funny thing was, computer would boot normally in the Safe mode (Shift+power). Then, one day, running it in Safe mode, for the fun of it, I wanted to send a file to it from another Mac via Airport - I was just avoiding restarting it in Target mode. And I found that Airport is not present in the System profiler at all. I pulled out the battery, opened the airport compartment, pulled the card out and then back in, and everything worked like a charm! PowerBook boots normally and everything works as it should. My PB went into Kernel Panic because there was to Airport present, but the hardware test does not check that part.
My new PowerBook, the last PPC 15-inch one, does not have access to the Airport card. So, presumably, this kind of error cannot happen.
I hope this information will help somebody and save then the anxiety of having to send your computer to a service.

Another reader, Pedro, has sent us some additional information:

The bug you reported is not so unusual
it can happen on the first 15'' Alu and on the 12'' Alu. The Airport
card get's out of place and the powerbook starts to act weird. Apple
knew that and at least on the 12'' they started to lock the airport
card with 2 small plastic tabs.

update
Another reader, Altero, has also reported a similar bugs on his website here.

Thanks to Mickael for this info.
Transgaming has announced a software portability engine called Cider, allowing game developers and publishers to easily extend their portfolio to MacIntel without any effort or delay. Mac gamers could have access to video games coincidental with the Windows release. Cider works similarly to WIN by emulating on-the-fly Windows API without having the requirement to run Windows (as WINE on Linux)
As usual with such announcement, one will have to seriously evaluate the real impact of emulation on performance levels.

Anandtech has released a comparison between a Core Duo (Yonah) and a Core2Duo (Merom). Both CPU were clocked at 2.33GHz; and in summary while being less power-consuming than the Yonah, the Merom is 10 to 20% faster.
The biggest performance difference is obtained during a H.264 video encoding test with QuickTime (Windows OS).
To read the article, follow the link: http://www.anandtech.com