News for Thursday, 24 August 2006

When acquiring a MacPro, Apple advertises that you can install up to 4 graphic cards, such as the nVidia Geforce 7300. This card can be associated with another identical one to be used as a SLI system developed by nVidia (running WinXP); 3D performances are then strongly improved.
One of the question was: is it possible to built an SLI system in the MacPro?
So far, SLI requires the nVidia chipset nForce4; even though some rumours are circulating concerning the opening of SLI to other chipset manufacturers, such as Intel.
A reader from Apple's Forum reports to have modified a nVidia driver and successfully setup via WinXP a SLI system in his MacPro. Results of the provided 3DMark2006 benchmarks shows a doubling of video performance.
Now, will we be able to make a SLI system while running Mac OSX?
PS: We will provide a in depth analysis tomorrow regarding this topic.

After Dell's recall of 4 millions notebook batteries, it is now Apple's turn to initiate a exchange program for 1.8 millions batteries based on SONY cell technologies.

The affected batteries were sold worldwide from October 2003 through August 2006 for use with the following notebook computers: 12-inch iBook G4, 12-inch PowerBook G4 and 15-inch PowerBook G4.

To record our recalled battery, go to the following webpage: https://support.apple.com/ibook_powerbook/batteryexchange/index.html (as expected, it is completely overloaded for the moment).
With such a large time frame of affected models (October 2003 to August 2006), this recall will be a good opportunity for some users to get a brand new battery for free after having used their original ones for months or even years.
This recall comes couple of hours after the announcement from Apple to join Dell and Lenovo to develop and define battery standards in order to ensure higher quality levels for our notebook batteries.
On the other side, once more, Sony finds its name associated with a rather embarassing event...

As you probably remember, Creative had initiated legal action against Apple concerning the iPod user interface.
Well, since big money is involved, both companies have negotiated an agreement to settle this dispute somewhere else than in front of a court.

Apple will pay Creative $100 million for a paid-up license to use Creative's recently awarded patent in all Apple products. Apple can recoup a portion of its payment if Creative is successful in licensing this patent to others. In addition, the companies announced that Creative has joined Apple's "Made for iPod" program and will be announcing their own iPod® accessory products later this year.

This settlement stopping the 5 on-going legal actions opposing both companies around the iPod UI; is a good deal for Apple and Creative: the first one can continue using the UI, and Creative can enter the lucrative iPod accessories market.

With the end of the NDA yesterday, many websites have published tests and benchmarks of the last ATI flagship graphic card, the Radeon X1950 XTX.
The GPU frequency remains almost unchanged (650MHz vs. 625MHz for the X1900 XT), only the usage of GDDR4 memory is a real new feature for this graphic card, providing a theoretical 60GB/s memory bandwidth.

But as one would have expected it, adding such GDDR4 modules to a "aging" GPU does not turn it into a 3D games killer. Performance gains are minor, but high enough to give ATI back the pole position of the race between manufacturers of the fastest graphic card.
This new updated version of the Radeon XT1950 XT should not be available for Mac.
A special message to ATI executives: It is about time that you update your current Mac Edition graphic card retail models, because it starts to look like a perfect Museum for old graphic cards exhibiting aging relics.

According to Digitimes, Apple has just ordered large quantities of flash memory from Samsung and Hynix: twice as much as what was purchased during April-July. This strongly suggests an increase in the iPod's capacity.
Apple is such a major player in the market of flash memory that this kind of massive order actually has a significant effect on the price of this component.
JCJ