Wednesday March 19, 2008

- Update of Time Machine and of Airport 1.0 - Matrix - 22:16:01

Apple has just made available by software update or by direct download, an update for Time Machine and Airport (10,2 MB for X10.5.2 only).

The text of the description is typically laconic

This update is recommended for all users and includes compatibility improvements for using Time Machine with Time Capsule, as well as AirPort driver fixes..

[translation by crispin]

- Adobe wants to force Flash into the iPhone - Lionel - 22:03:19

Source : MacGeneration

Lately, nothing goes well between Adobe and Apple. The bone of contention is the Flash player that Apple refuses to implement in the iPhone. Apple considers, among other things. that Flash is too heavy onthe resources of the iPhone and would harm the battery life of the device, these arguments have been refuted by Adobe.
Adobe has decided to bypass this indiction and intends to propose the flash player using the iPhone SDK and the AppStore.
Using this simple route, this mode of distribution is in fact a way of forcing Apple's hand. If Apple refuses to put it online, Adobe will be able to shout about the scandal, with the laws protecting competition....
It will be interesting to follow this business within the loud contest between the two companies over the last few years. Note that a Player Flash distributed separately will make it possible, for example, to reach small software developers such as games, but will make the task complex.
Also, applications developed using SDK are not allowed to run as a background task. Thus It will not be possible to launch an animation from a Web site, which will notably reduce the use of the Flash player developed from SDK.

[translation by crispin]

- TSMC invests $5 billion in a new processor fab - Lionel - 21:18:30

AToday two things determine the quality of a chip:
-- its design, in summary the performance of its architecture.
-- its etching, in a nutshell the design implemented in silicon. The latter is now largely determined by the minitization of the etching, but also by other processes providing products that consume more or less and/or will be able or not to escalate the frequency.

The price of the fabrication facilities has become so important that many smelters are called Fabless, they do not have a plant and deal with specialists.
TSMC and UMC are two giants in this field, and are content to make the factories and produce processors ordered by their customers.
TSMC announced that it would spend $5 billion for the establishment of a new manufacturing plant as well as the R&D for etching in 32, then 22, then 15 nm.
The goal is to satisfy its large customers like ATI/AMD, NVidia or Sun who are very demanding, who constantly need to put out ever more powerful products.
Currently, apart from TSMC and UMC, only Intel has the financial means to build such plants. AMD is in a delicate situation it has become increasingly difficult for it to do the same, which partly explains their difficulty and delay in their move to 45nm. It must be said that in the field of manufacture of processors, AMD has lost its expertise, for the most part delegated to IBM, which also marking time.

[translation by jeremy]

- Iomega has been bought up (almost) - Lionel - 21:13:20

Source : Digitimes

External storage has always had a love affair with Macs. One remembers (at least us old guys) the Syquest, an external disk hat was a 'must have' for the professionals.
This company then disappeared, killed off by Iomega and its Zip drive (which had already gained the war against Nomai). Quickly Zip became a standard and was impossible to bypass, so much so that Apple had at one time suggested that they became an in-house of the Powermac G4. But Iomega became a victim of a technology which it under-estimated, the CD engraver.
Quickly, Zip and Jazz have been swept away by the engravers, since they allow storage of data at a much lower cost.
These various solutions again run up against the external Firewire disks. However, Iomega has survived due to solutions based on NAS.
It is now been learned that the company will be purchased by EMC. After many hot discussions on the price an area of agreement has been found.
EMC, is the world's number 1 of storage. However the Iomega mark will still exist since it still has a certain aura.

[translation by crispin]

- Hulu.com to Be Compatible with iPods? - Lionel - 13:41:09

According to Macrumors, the popular website Hulu.com could announce tomorrow a new version of its site now compatible with Apple iPod Touch and iPhone.
This announcement could be made simultaneously with Apple which could be involved in promoting the site. Technically, this should not be a big issue as all videos available from Hulu.com are already encoded in H.264.
Politically, it might be a bit different, as Hulu.com was born from NBC’s wish to become independent of the iTunes Store to offer an online shop for videos and shows. So, one can imagine that NBC could get support from Cupertino only if the TV channel accept to bring back its catalog on the iTunes Store. Both parties would win, and Apple could even use such dual offer as a proof for not building an iPod/iTS ecosystem for video as some analysts claimed it.

[translation by Linathael]

- GeForce 9800 GX2 Are now Available - Lionel - 13:26:49

The new high-end graphic card from NVidia, aka GeForce 9800 GX2 is now available and has captured back the flag more the fastest card dedicated to the consumer market.
For developing such card, NVidia merged 2 GPU 9800 on both side of a huge cooling system but on a single board with a PCI-Express port. Performance are of course quite impressive, as such card can allow you to play all available games with all visual and graphical settings pushed to the max (2560x1600, etc...)
Unlike SLI solutions requiring a NVidia chipset as well as two identical graphic cards (so 2 PCI-Express slots), the GeForce 9800 GX could be used in any computer, and in a Mac Pro too. Unfortunately it would work with BootCamp only, as for Mac OSX one would need to have dedicated drivers which will most likely never be developed by Apple...


[translation by Linathael]

- The market of the Blu-ray readers for portables is poised - Lionel - 12:58:47

Source : Digitimes

Now that the war over formats has ended, the makers of readers and engravers are ready to pounce on the blue laser market; they will hope for margins higher margins than those enjoyed by the DVD engravers sold at bottom prices.
The market for portable computers continues to explode, and it should not be forgotten that the production of slim Blu-ray readers and engravers will rise very quickly
Thus, LiteOn passed its production of 10 000 units at at the end of 2007 to nearly 50 000 today.
In the same period, Quanta Storage, who are subcontractors, obtained from Sony very large orders for 3 different models.
Competition helping, the price of these products should drop slowly. To get a significant drop in price, it is necessary that the price of the blue laser should fall.
However, today, there are no real obstacle preventing the Blu-ray readers and engravers invading the computers, starting at the top end of course.

[translation by crispin]

- The Airport Express base station 802.11n is available in Europe - Lionel - 07:32:25

With a little delay compared to the US, the Airport Express Base Station is now available from the European Apple Stores.
This costs 89 euros; for a product compatible with wifi N - this is an interesting price.
@Airport Express N at the Apple Store

[translation by crispin]

- SSD disks are not reliable? - Lionel - 07:28:43

Source: News.com

The news spread like wildfire on the Web. The first generations of SSD drives suffer from a serious problem of reliability. A failure rate of 10 to 20% is very high, or 10 to 20 times more than a conventional hard drive.
It would be nice to find reasons for these problems, they remain unacceptable given the prices. It remains the case whether or not this figure is verified, which is not (yet) the case. But you know, the Internet is a huge sounding board for any problems. Until now, cases of failures of SSD. Of course, sales of these drives are still confidential, but not zero and, for example, no Mac site, to our knowledge has reported a failure of a MacBook Air SSD disk - something that would cause some noise without a doubt.
The article also speaks of another phenomenon, more credible, the returns of SSD disk by users disappointed with of their price vs performance.
This is more understandable. The SSD disks have low reading access times compared to a regular hard disk. It is their biggest advantage. However, the currently marketed products have yet to show blazing speeds. In fact, the difference is felt in some circumstances, but not in others where it may even be negative . The main failing of SSD discs is their much too high price, which raised hopes of wonders and amplifies any disappointments.

[translation by jeremy]