News for Wednesday, 29 November 2006

As we already mentioned it in the past, Asustek is Apple's contractor for manufacturing MacBooks. According to a Chinese-language magazine Commercial Times, Asustek is expecting to ship 300,000 MacBooks, only for November, representing almost 50% of its monthly notebook production.
This number confirms previous reports about the big success of Apple Notebook models, and is probably a good start for Q1 2007.
We have to get prepared to welcome more visitors on our website and our forum.

Tom, one of our readers, has sent us photos of his freshly unpacked Intel Xeon Xserve. Configuration of his server is:

Dual Core 2Ghz Intel Xeon (quad)
2GB Ram
3 x 80GB Hard disk
Combo drive
ATI Radeon x1300 64MB

The box, featuring the Intel Xeon logo bottom right corner:

Then front view of the beast:

First look inside:

A closer look: copper-based heatsink covering both dual Core Xeon CPUs

The Alu-based heatsink is probably the one over the GPU.
One will also notice the RAM modules featuring a thinner heatsink system than the one found in Mac Pro (Could also be linked to lower clocked Xeon)

Intel announced to have produced at a factory in Oregon the first samples of a Core 2 Duo-like CPU.
As engraving process shrinks, such CPU will drain less power while supporting higher clock speed. First CPUs to benefit from this process should be next generation Intel mobile CPUs. They will integrate the SSE4 instruction set , quite similar to the past G4/G5 Altivec.

European Apple Stores are also organizing an American Black Friday-like event on December 1st.

However, it will be interesting to see if Apple will also offer similar price discount as it is the case in US. Indeed, in many European countries, discounts/sales are defined by the law. So let's see on Friday which European countries will offer the best deals.
Here is the link to the AppleStore near you: Apple Store

One of the most noticeable absence from Apple’s iTunes Store might well be the legendary UK rock band, The Beatles. After years of legal dispute between Apple Corps, in charge of band's rights, and Apple Computer, this conflict might be part of history in the near future.
In addition, Apple Corps may give the iTunes Store an exclusive right for online Beatles' music catalog.
Does Apple suddenly likes Apple, or it is only about the money?

After Pioneer, Sony and LG, LiteOn has also released its first Blu-Ray burner.

The LH-21BS drive burns 25GB BD-R and BD-RE at 2x, DVD+/-R at 12x, DVD+/-RDL at 4x, ... and CD at 32x. It is based on SATA.
This drive will not be compatible with double layer BD media, but it is not really an issue as one can not buy them yet; and price will probably be outrageous.
The LH-21BS will be available for 790€, a price really similar to competitors model. While LiteOn has always been known for its aggressive pricing, it illustrates how the lack of blue laser diodes impacts the all manufacturers.
It also demonstrates the lead taken by the Blu-Ray consortium concerning blue laser-based burner, and for sure HD-DVD drives and media will have to be much cheaper and available soon to compete with such leadership.

Apple has released a security update for both Panther (10.3.9) and Tiger (10.4.8). This update is available from the software update panel as well as from Apple website.
This update is recommended for all users and improves many security issues affecting:

AirPort
ATS
CFNetwork
Finder
Font Book
Font Importer
Installer
OpenSSL
PHP
PPP
Samba
Security Framework
VPN
WebKit
gnuzip
perl

For additional info regarding this security updates and previous ones, read the following TechNote: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61798