Thursday April 12, 2007

- Leopard delayed till October! - moose - 23:03:11

Apple just announced that Leopard will be delayed until October... The reason? They says that they had to borrow key devs to wrap up the iPhone's software...
DOH!

iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard's features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October.

How disappointing!

- Samsung Announced a 200GB 2.5"HD Spinning at 7200rpm - Joe Le Boss - 21:06:39

Source : www.samsung.com

Over the last year, the storage capacity of 2.5"HD dramatically increased, making it feasible to have a notebook as an all-in-one hardware for most consumers. With the development of perpendicular recording, Toshiba was the first manufacturer to release a 200GB 2.5" HD; however performance were rather low as it spins only at 4200rpm.
Samsung unveiled a new 2.5"HD, SpinPoint MP1, featuring 200GB of storage space, as the Toshiba model, but with a much higher rotation speed: 7200rpm with a SATA II interface! If this drive is primarily designed for enterprise applications such as workstations, 2.5" HD-based RAID servers, and blade servers; one could think of installing it in a MacBook. One will have of course to ensure that it does not vibrate too much, or that the HD fixing system in MacBook can stand it.
The SpinPoint MP1 will be available in 80, 120, 160 and 200GB capacities with a supporting 8 or 16MB cache memory. If the price range remains unknown mass production is scheduled for May.


[translation by Linathael]

- Fujitsu: To Stop 1.8" HD Development to Concentrate on SSD - Lionel - 13:06:31

Source : Reuters

To compete with other HD manufacturers, Fujitsu had planned to begin production of 1.8"HD models targeting subnotebook and digital media players such as the current iPod.
Following the recent development of flash memory-based HD, or SSD, Fujitsu Ltd. announced to have halted current plans to make the 1.8"HD, and to concentrate on NAND-based storage units.

Even if the currently available SSD are still very expensive, their future is bright, and the market should explode in a really near future, as soon as a major company in consumers electronics decides to use them in one of its key product. It could of course be Apple in its rumored subnotebook model, or in a true video iPod, as the NAND-based storage unit will save a lot of power making it possible to increase the size of the display, especially if the panel is back lighted with LED.

For sure flash memory manufacturers will strongly compete with the current HD manufacturers on the market for storage units, and especially for notebooks or handheld devices.


[translation by Linathael]

- A Dual Core Processor for less than US$75 - Lionel - 09:54:24

In its battle with Intel in the mainstream segment CPU market, AMD decided to dramatically cut the price of its desktop processors to better face the pressure generated by the Core 2 Duo CPU models.
While the transition period for CPU architecture and design is behind for Intel, AMD is still working on it, and the new generation CPUs are not expected before H2 2007. The Texan semiconductor company is now offering the cheapest desktop 3.0GHz dual core processor (3600+) for US$73. By cutting prices, AMD intend to compete with Intel for desktop CPU found in entry-level and mid-range computers, leaving high-end models to Intel and its Core 2 Duo E6600, E6700 and Q6600 processors.
Usually, Intel should respond to AMD decision by lowering the price of its CPU too. For Mac users it does not really matter, as Apple unfortunately decided not to use any desktop CPU from Intel. Prices of server and notebook CPU should not decrease before the mid Q2 2007 with the release of Santa Rosa and the mass production of Xeon 5355 and 5365.

[translation by Linathael]

- washingtonpost.com to Launch HD Podcasts on iTS - Lionel - 09:53:51

In a short press release, Washington Post announced the availability of high-definition (HD) podcasts on iTunes. Designed to be viewed on HD TV or computer, documentary videos created by the washingtonpost.com are announced to be conform to the highest specifications for the new Apple TV.
It seems that news network have already seen the potential opened by the Apple TV, and we could be at the beginning of a new revolution for news and information networks, similar to the iPod and the way music industry had to evolve.
It could be a legal alternative to YouTube or similar video content depository websites which have recently been facing a raising number of legal actions for violating copyrights.

[translation by Linathael]

- Philips Unveils a New Video-dedicated Watermark Technology - Lionel - 09:46:57

Source : TGdaily

Philips unveiled at the NAB 2007 a new video-dedicated watermark technology entitled VTrack. As equivalent watermark system from Thomson, the VTrack is embedded into the video signal and used as a unique identified allowing copyright holders to track down potential pirate of video contents.

If this technology is primarily targeting set-top boxes and integrated digital TVs it could also interest online video stores, as Philips claims that the digital tagging can not be separated nor altered from the original video content even after cropping, compressing, re-encoding or even camcorder copying. So the first purchaser of the video supposed to be the one to be the first the share illegally the content on P2P network could be easily identified thanks to VTrack. This technology is compatible with the most popular video high-definition video formats (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264/AVC and VC-1).

This technology is much less restrictive for consumers than the standard DRMs as it is mostly there to track down illegal sharing of video contents than to limit the ease of use of a video purchased online.

[translation by Linathael]

- Samsung Unveils a LED-based 24" LCD Display - Lionel - 09:45:55

Source : Digitimes

Samsung announced to have started the production of a 24" LCD panel using LED for backlighting. Able to render 111% of the NTSC spectra, the panel resolution features 1920x1200, perfect for watching HD video.



If the price remains unknown it is expected to be high based on the relatively high number of LED required to homogeneously backlight the entire 24" panel.


[translation by Linathael]