Wednesday February 27, 2008

- Memory cards with 4X more capacity - Lionel - 20:29:57

Source : Dailytech

MetaRAM have announced that they have developed a technology called DDR2 MetaSDRAM, that allows them to double or quadruple the capacity of memory cards while keeping their compatibility.



To allow them to do this within the confines of constant space, they piled up the chips, which would have caused compatibility problem had they not developed a new component that makes the system believe that each pile is just a single chip of larger capacity. And this point is important since one knows that can not address an infinite number of chips on a card.
The interest in this technology is two fold. It will permit at the high end of the range to make cards of very high capacity, but also to propose lower capacity cards that are less expensive, since the price of memory chips rises more quickly than the capacity of the chips. However this second possibility will not become "standard" for some time given that the extra cost of this technology is between $200 and $400 per card.

[translation by crispin]

- A new 2.5" HDD - Lionel - 20:05:46

Source : Hitachi

Hitachi has announced the start of production of the 5K320.
This new 2.5" hard disk allows them to join the competition in the segment of the 320 GB market.
This disk will have two platters of 160 GB with a thickness of 9.5 mm - perfect for Apple portables.
The range will be produced in the following sizes: 320, 250, 160, 120 and 80 GB.
Competition helping, the price of the discs 2,5"of this capacity should quickly drop.

[translation by crispin]

- The Consolidation Quarter - Lionel - 17:57:29

After starting the year with a flourish of announcements (MacBook Air, Time Capsule, rentals on the iTunes Store) and excellent results for the last quarter of fiscal announced at the end of January, it seems Apple has decided to devote the current quarter for the consolidation of its products rather than departing from their current builds.

Indeed, if we look closely, all the physical changes have been relatively minor:
-- GB iPhone 16
-- Touch 32 GB iPod
-- 2 GB iPod Shuffle
-- MacBook Pro Penryn
-- MacBook Penryn

It should be noted that over the last two MacBook interations, Apple has done the minimum in R & D by not touching either's motherboard design, content to replace the processors, memory and hard drive.

The same can be said for all these new products, actually: Apple merely amended its component list for a few items. From an economic point of view, it helps to boost sales at a lower cost, even among more powerful successors now priced the same as previous models.

After a long period of forced progression, one can get the impression that Apple is on a break, and that is certainly the case. They can take the time to consolidate their gains thanks to the strong growth of their sales, while preparing the second wave of innovations promised by Steve Jobs. It would not be surprising that in the coming weeks the iMac and even the Mac mini also are entitled to a face-lift.

For major design innovations and developments, they will certainly wait until the Intel Centrino 2 in early summer. At that time (before the end of the summer on academic orders), we believe, the design of MacBook and MacBook Pro may evolve as well.

[translation by CliveAtFive]

- Jailbreak for iPhone 1.1.4 available - Lionel - 15:46:20

Source : Tuaw

For the first time in the history of the iPhone, Apple has not even tried to block jailbreaking the previous firmware.
Ziphone, a tool we've already discussed here before, still manages to unlock and activate an 1.1.4 iPhone.
Zibri will provide new and tested tools within 3 days. We recommend everybody to wait until then, since 1.1.4 only brings some bugfixes - so you don't need to hurry, hoping for new features.

[translation by xavier]

- Update iPhone 1.1.4 - bad_duck - 15:07:03

Apple has just released version 1.1.4 of iPhone firmware. There does not seem to be any obvious new features with this new firmware compared to version 1.1.3 but the tools for unlocking the iPhone will not work ... yet.

The update is available from iTunes (162.1 MB) as usual. If you have an iPhone desim unlocked or Jailbroken - we advise waiting some days to get the first reports from other users.

[translation by crispin]

- A blu-ray suitable for the MacBook Pro - Lionel - 10:00:48

Source: Optiarc

Optiarc, a joint venture between Sony and Nec devoted to the optical equipment announced that it would soon Blu-ray slot-in ultra-compact, designed for laptops.
The BC-5600S should be quite suitable for MacBook Pro and MacBook, which require slot devices not exceeding 9.5 mm thick.
It will be able to read the BD-R 2x, and burn the DVD 8x.

Seriously Apple should settle its problems with the AACS LA, and offer us this Blu-ray device for the Macbook Pro.

[translation by jeremy]

- Unsanity utilities software partially updated - Rabbit - 09:26:53

Source : Unsanity software

Unsanity.com creator of Haxies (practical utilities for the MacOSX) such as FruitMenu (cascading menus in the Finder), Windowshade X (various modes to hide the window), FontCard ( WYSIWYG in the font menu) and infamouus Application Enhancer, that provokes a blue screen when updating from Tiger to Leopard if the version of AE is older than 2.03, has just released beta versions of the above software.
They are compatible with Leopard 10.5.2 and also bring some improvements. The versions of Mac OS older than 10.4 are no longer supported.
The other utilities (Xsounds, shapeshifter etc) will shortly be updated.
The list of updated utilities are:
- APE 2.5b1
- Smart Crash reports 1.5b2
- FontCard 1.5.1b1
- MenuMaster 1.4.3b1
- Silk 2.1.4b1
- FruitMenu 3.7b1
- WindowShade X 4.2b1

These are beta versions are therefore take precautions when you use them:

In addition, Unsanity plans to impose a small charge when the official versions are relaesed, in particular caused by the fall of the US dollar against other currencies (the parity Euro-Dollar is thus a constant in the world of IT...!)

[translation by crispin]

- Changing SIMs in officially unlocked iPhones has been fixed... - andrew - 00:52:18

Great news for all users of officially unlocked iPhones (France/Germany). I previously reported that firmware 1.1.3 would refuse to allow you to use a different SIM card without first syncing it with iTunes. I felt at the time this must have been a bug as 1.1.2 did not have this issue.

I am glad to report that 1.1.4 has fixed this bug, and now one can change SIM cards in officially unlocked iPhones without re-syncing with iTunes.

Regards
Andrew