Thursday June 07, 2007
- Divx Pro 6.6 Free! Only Today! - Lionel - 16:38:32
DivX offers DivX Pro 6.6 for free, instead of US$19.95.
To benefit from this offer, simply go the following website:
http://www.divx.com/dff/index.php?lang=en&version=mac
Enter your email address, and while you download the application, you will receive an email with the activation code.
Enjoy.
[translation by Linathael]
- Apple to Drop HFS? - Lionel - 10:23:24
Source : MacRumors
About a year ago, the information leaked that Apple was really interested by Sun's file system, known as ZFS.If we believe information reported by Jonathan Schwartz from Sun, Apple could use the ZFS as the default file system in Leopard.
If you want to know a bit more about ZFS, hereafter is the news we published last January about it:
Next version of Mac OS X, aka Leopard, will support Sun file system, known as ZFS for Zettabyte File System. What will be changed for Mac users?If the ZFS looks really promising, its default integration might be a new transition to be handled by Mac users.
First, ZFS is independent of HD storage space… quite almost has it supports up to 16 exaBytes HD, in other words 16 millions TB. Each file can use up to 16 exaBytes too. To compare with the current HFS+ file system in Tiger, we are "limited" to 16TB HD or a file while HFS+ support tops to 16 exaBytes too.
ZFS allows users to easily create ZFS storage pools (zpool), in other words disks are concatenated (something similar to LVM for Linux), or RAID-1 (mirroring) or RAIDS-Z volumes.
RAID-Z is an integrated redundancy scheme similar to RAID 5 (so an improved RAID 5, (see this page for more details about RAID-Z and RAID-Z2).
Another feature of ZFS that can be linked to the forthcoming Time Machine, is the support of snapshots. A snapshot is a copy of a set of files and/or directories as they were at a particular point in the past, so it makes "undo" or search of older version easier. Indeed, it uses the Copy-on-write functionality, making all modifications of a set of files written on a different location than the older version on the HD.
Another interesting feature is compression, a ZFS volume can automatically compress data (on-the-fly), adding extra storage space for users.
To conclude, managing zpools is relatively easy thanks to command lines as described in this article. One can expect that Leopard will allow users to manage zpools directly via the GUI of Disk Utility.
Of course ZFS is not perfect, there is currently no support for encrypting data, and journaling is not as easy as with HFS+. In addition, it is currently not possible to boot from ZFS volumes, even though they are working on this feature, when Apple releases Leopard, ZFS support might be initially limited to external volumes (non bootable) or might even limit this feature to OSX Server.
[update] Thanks to Dominik (from German website http://www.opensourcemac.de) for additional links and information below:
Concerning encryption when the zfs support is final:
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/zfs-crypto/
There are also some ppl working on the zfs_boot project.
Look at: http://blogs.sun.com/tabriz/
[translation by Linathael]
- A New Driver to Read and Write on BR-RE - Lionel - 10:20:55
The company SAI will release on June 15th a Blu-ray driver for Mac OS X.
It will allow you to read and write data on-the-fly on a Blu-ray media, treated as a removable HFS+ storage unit.
Toast 8.0 includes already such feature, and we tested it in our dedicated article describing how to burn BD media on a Mac
We were a bit disappointed by the performance level, with data transfer speed below 2MB/s. We will of course test the driver from SAI as soon as it will become available. The driver will be priced US$49.95 and will be compatible on Intel and PPC-based Macs.
[translation by Linathael]
- OCZ: FireWire Key Strikes Back - Lionel - 10:20:20
During the CeBit in March, OCZ unveiled a flash memory key featuring the FireWire interface. One could have though that it was maybe only a marketing coup. Nope.
During the Computex, OCZ unveiled additional information, and even listed the FireWire drive on the top of its new exciting solutions being presented in its PR. The FireWire drive/key will have storage capacity ranging from 2 to 26GB, with record data transfer speed reaching 45-50MB/s in reading mode and 40-45MB/s in writing mode
Such FireWire storage unit will be available in Q3 2007, and would most likely be an interesting product to follow, especially for Mac users with computers not supporting USB2, but also for its performance. The price will strongly influence its success.
[translation by Linathael]
- New MacBook Pro: Additional information - Lionel - 10:17:28
Gizmodo obtained additional information about the new MacBook Pro:
- The new power management found in Santa Rosa as well as the use of LED backlighted LCD display extend the battery lifetime by 30 minutes to 1 hour! This remains to be confirmed, but it would be a huge improvement.
- Apple improved the bass audio rendering on the MB Pro.
- If the 17" model does not have to option of LED backlighted LCD display yet, it will come later when such panel will be technically and commercially available.
Concerning of LED backlighted LCD display in notebook, LED are located on the vertical sides of the panel and the homogenous backlightening is obtained thank to components, located behind the panel and ensuring an even diffusion of the light. For the 17" panel, the system needs to be optimized as the panel is larger, it should only be a matter of months.
[translation by Linathael]
- Woz on Pomcast - Lionel - 10:16:14
Pomcast had the chance to meet Woz, and the 30 minutes interview is available as a podcast: http://www.pomcast.fr/
[translation by Linathael]
- MacBook Pro: First Benchmarks - Lionel - 10:15:46
Primate Labs tested their Geekbench application on different models of MacBook Pro and compared previous revision with freshly introduced units. In summary, integer and floating point benchmarks evolved linearly according to CPY clockspeed, the "old" MB Pro 2.33GHz is faster than the new MB Pro 2.2GHz, but behind the 2.4GHz model.
However, memory and stream benchmarks respectively increased by 10% and 20%, illustrating the gain obtained from a faster FSB (quad pumped 200MHz=800MHz) found in Santa Rosa platform.
The new MB Pro features a specific version of Mac OS X 10.4.9, known as 8Q1058, probably required to adapt new hardware components with OSX.
[translation by Linathael]
