News for Tuesday, 26 June 2007

Apple has published two PR providing additional information regarding iPhone Service Plans.

iPhone customers will be able to choose from three simple, affordable service plans when iPhone goes on sale on Friday, June 29. All three plans include unlimited data, Visual Voicemail, 200 SMS text messages, roll-over minutes, and unlimited mobile-to-mobile calling. In addition to a one-time activation fee of $36.00, customers can sign up for a new two-year service plan with AT&T for a monthly fee of $59.99 (for 450 minutes), $79.99 (for 900 minutes), or $99.99 (for 1,350 minutes). Family plans are also available.

In addition, one can purchase the 4GB model for US$499 or the 8GB model for US$599 then directly activate its account via iTunes:

When they purchase an iPhone, customers can use iTunes on a Mac or PC to activate their new phones in the comfort and privacy of their homes or offices instead of waiting for activation in a store. With iTunes guiding them through the simple steps of choosing a service plan, authorizing their credit, and activating their iPhone, they can complete the activation process in minutes. Following activation, new iPhone customers can again use iTunes to easily sync their phone numbers and other contact information, calendars, email accounts, web browser bookmarks, music, photos, podcasts, TV shows, and movies with iPhone.

One can now understand with such price and conditions, why Apple is still negotiating with key European carriers to set the best offer for all parties (Apple-Carrier-consumers).
[update]
Apple released a video illustrating the way to activate an account via iTunes

Via a Press Release, Seagate announced its first 3.5" 1TB HD. The drive will be available in both SATA and SAS format, deliver max transfer speed of 105MB/s while remaining rather silent (27dB). Seagate will offer 2 versions of its 3.5" 1TB HD: Barracuda 7200.11 (MTBF of 750 000 hours) and Barracuda ES.2 (MTBF 1 200 000 hours) dedicated to high-capacity and higher reliability enterprise storage.
The Barracuda 7200.11 should be available for Q3 2007 at a tag price of US$399,99.
With Hitachi and Samsung, we now have three HD manufacturers releasing 3.5" 1TB HD units for enterprise and consumer markets, so we should expect to see the price of such large storage capacity models as well as previous models to rapidly go down.

The Wi-Fi Alliance is facing an unprecedented situation with the 802.11n specification. While expected to be finalized only in 2008, many Wi-Fi Certified 802.11n draft 2.0 products are already available and should massively hit shelves for back-to-school purchases.
So the Wi-Fi Alliance decided to launch an official temporary certification for those new products based on 802.11n draft 2.0 which should ensure interoperability across wireless device manufacturers:

While products based on draft 2.0 are already available, the Wi-Fi Certified 802.11n draft 2.0-labeled products will be on our shops in September. Some 802.11n pre-draft 2.0 devices might be upgraded via firmware update, but this will vary from one manufacturer to another.

If we did not report procedures or information related to CPU overclock since the Intel CPU transition, it does mean we stopped investigating new possibilities.
Of course with Apple adopting the EFI, it is more difficult to modify CPU or FSB voltage; however one can still overclock Mac Pro Xeon via Windows as shown below. You can simply use SysTool allowing you to directly modify the clock generator:

SysTool can even force the clock generator to change its frequency without rebooting. As shown below, the Mac Pro generator is identified as an ICS932S401.

With SysTool and Apple memory modules we successfully overclocked the FSB from 333 x 4 (1333MHz) to 380 x 4 (1521MHz).

The test machine, a Mac Pro powered by two Dual Core Xeon clocked at 3.0GHz, is now an overclocked to 3.424GHz. The performance gain is proportional to the overclocked Xeon.
With Dane-Elec memory modules, we could push the FSB a bit further to 389 x 4 MHz, Xeon are then overclocked to 3.5GHz.
With both Apple and Dane-Elec modules, the overclocked limit is defined by the memory modules. Indeed, as indicated by SysTool, the CPU - Memory ratio is set to 1:1, and we did not find ways to desynchronize them.
However Apple seemed to have found ways to prevent users to perform such software-based overclock. Indeed when rebooting the overclocked Mac Pro, while the new frequency is saved in a volatile register, OSX refuse to boot and deliver a memory alarm. To bring it back to life, you simply need to switch it off and on.
It is currently not possible to perform such software-based overclock via OS X. The application Reggie SE from the CHUD Tools could have done it, but it has been locked by Apple, and if you attempt to modify registers it immediately generate Kernel Panics.
One will need to look further, or investigate other strategies. The Linux command line i2cget might be of help? We might need a way to directly access the clock generator ICS932S401 in OS X.
If you want to join our effort, do not hesitate to react on our forum: hardmac forum.

The company Brando offers a product which could be of interest for many nomad users.

This is a universal solar charger including a battery which will be refilled thanks to the solar cells panel. The battery capacity of 2500mAh / 3.8V should make it useful for most mobile handhelds and devices to be recharged.
This new concept of integrated battery is interesting as it allows users to get access to a power source without sun, while delivering a higher capacity than the solar cells panel can deliver.
You can also recharge the solar charger directly from the power line thanks to its integrated DC input, the output interface being a USB port. Thanks to 7 connecting charger heads you should be able to recharge your iPods, mobile phones, PDA, etc...
Its rather low weight (240g) should interest most users needing power while on the move.

Beside numerous announcements from different companies regarding SSD, there are not that many manufacturers which already started producing such solid state storage unit.
Samsung, the main worldwide flash memory manufacturer, announced the launch of SSD mass production for a 1.8" 64GB SSD. Such unit will be based on 64 Single Level Flash 1GB chips, allowing high data transfer speeds.

For sure Samsung has already secured some contracts with OEM, even though only couples of computer models are reported to have SSD as an expensive storage option. Prices of such SSD are still too high to be included in a potential iPod 6G despite their perfect 1.8” format. One can always dream of a SSD-based MacBook mini, but it should not arrive before 2008.