Wednesday January 30, 2008
- Motorola thinks of leaving the market of the mobile telephones - Lionel - 22:36:37
Source : http://www.electronista.com/
During the past years Motorala has been a pillar among the constructers of mobile telephones. Many of you will remember telephones made by Motorola being among the best of their era, such as the Startac 85 which had revolutionized the market with its price (around 1500 euros) but especially with its miniscule size at that time.These last years have been difficult for the company, especially 2007 when their sales dropped leaving them with 13% share of market against 23% previously. This division is the most at a deficit, leading some to predict that Motorola should quickly separate, especially as they have not satisfactorily negotiated the turn towards more technically advanced devices.
In this enormous but terrible market of mobile telephony, Nokia and Sony-Ericsson have taken the lion's share with models that cover the full range needed by the consumer. Apple and HTC have the appearance of small players trying to find a place.
For Apple to take a significant market share, it would be necessary, as they did with the iPod, to design several models of the iPhone so that they can be bought by people having different budgets. However this will be difficult without giving up its ecosystem of sharing the remuneration earned by the operators.
[translation by crispin]
- NVidia: Dual GPU Graphic Cards in the Pipeline - Lionel - 17:12:20
As AMD/ATI yesterday with Radeon HD 3870 X2, NVidia has a Dual GPU graphic card in the pipeline, and one can expect it to be released in a near future too. It will be powered by two G92 GPUs similar to the one found on the GF 8800 GT. Unlike ATI/AMD, NVidia decided to associate tow graphic cards into one, with the cooling system sitting in the middle. Both printed board are connected via a SLI bridge and will be connected to the computer motherboard via a single PCI Express slot.
As for the Radeon HD 3870 X2, the NVidia Dual GPU graphic card model will sport a total of 1GB VRAM, and is expected to be roughly 30% faster than the current high end model from the company, the GF 8800 Ultra.
As usual, we remind our readers and Mac users that they should not dream of seeing such 3D accelerators in their Mac as Apple does not want to release SDK in order to allow third parties to develop dedicated drivers or more Mac compatible graphic cards.
[translation by Linathael]
- A Slew of Technical Notes on the MacBook Air - Lionel - 15:55:12
Source : XLR8yourMac
Apple has published a number of technical articles related to the MacBook Air:MacBook Air: 3D graphics applications less responsive when CPU has been in heavy use for prolonged period
MacBook Air: Built-in camera may produce jumpy video
MacBook Air: Optimizing AirPort performance while using Bluetooth
MacBook Air: About the battery diagnostic
MacBook Air: Troubleshooting DVD or CD Sharing
MacBook Air: Cannot play DVD movies or ripped CD media using DVD or CD Sharing
MacBook Air: How to use Remote Disc to share DVDs or CDs on a Mac or Windows-based computer
MacBook Air: DVD or CD Sharing "Ask me before allowing others to use my DVD Drive" feature
Ejecting optical media with Windows and Remote Disc
MacBook Air: External ports
MacBook Air: How to use Migration Assistant
Resetting an Apple portable's System Management Controller (SMC)
Apple USB Modem: Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
In one wave we learn that the machine will shutdown a core if operating in hot conditions for a prologed period; if your bluetooth is affecting Airport performance try switching to a 5Ghz 802.11 network instead of 2.4Ghz or try switching Airport channels; if the Sleep Indicator Light flashes 5 times it means there's a problem with the battery; there's only one USB port, and that you can't watch copy-protected DVDs or game CDs via remote DVD/CD Sharing.
[translation by msmith]
- First MacBook Air Are Shipping - Lionel - 13:15:49
MacWorld reports to have received confirmation that the first MacBook Air are shipping. As usual, the first batches to be sent as the default model (1.6GHz, 80GB HD). It seems that the first SSD-based MacBook Air will only be shipping later.
Currently, the delay between the order and the shipping for a non-BTO MacBook Air model is estimated to 3 weeks, so the new notebook might be selling quite well.
[translation by Linathael]
- Power consumption of the new Xserve - Lionel - 11:48:13
When installing a server in a datacenter, the power usage is an important factor to take into account.
Apple has published the usage of the new Xserve in a technote.
It states that an Xserve mono 2.8 GHz, accompanied a 80 Gb HDD, 2 Gb RAM and a Radeon X1300 graphics card consumes maximum 247W, and 204W under low workload.
On the other hand, a machine equipped with 2 CPU's (8 cores at 3 GHz), 3x 300 Gb SAS 15000 rpm storage, 32 Gb RAM and the same Radeon X1300 consumes 409W when fully loaded, and 300W when 'idling'.
These numbers give us a pretty good thought about the power consumption of an equivalent Mac Pro,
knowing the 3.2GHz CPU's require 120W each, against 80W for the other models.
[translation by xavier]
- Here is the Key: 18 84 58 A6 D1 50 34 DF E3 86 F2 3B 61 D4 37 74 - Lionel - 11:01:13
No, our servers are not getting nuts one more time. This key sent by anonymous users to our forum is the key used by Apple to sign some procedure in iPhone OS/installation.
We do not know how such information has been released on the internet; especially that Apple will likely modify it before releasing the SDK.
So why publishing it? Hereafter is our position:
While we can understand that Apple wants to keep an eye on third-party application to ensure that they do not affect stability of the iPhone and iPod touch OS, we are also concerned with the fact that Cupertino might voluntary prevent and limit the range of freedom application development on such devices, and by extension define what is politically correct or not.
We think that the iPhone is a fabulous product, and one should have the freedom to fully enjoy it once having purchased it. We are not speaking about SIM unlocking or even jailbreaking (it becomes useless with the key), but simply the freedom of using the device as you wish to do it (while respecting the legal aspect), and not as you are limited to do it. A bit like while buying a DVD player, the manufacturer would prevent you playing some movies…
[translation by Linathael]
- iWork '08 update - MacEnsteph - 07:34:18
Apple has just made available (via the usual Software Update) a small update of its productivity suite iWork ' 08.
Keynote will be updated to version 4.0.2, Pages to 3.0.2 and Numbers to 1.0.2.
The official statements accompanying these updates are somewhat laconic, one learns for Pages and Numbers as these correct problems of compatibility with Mac OSX, while that of Keynote primarily addresses performance issues while playing or exporting presentations.
[translation by crispin]
