Wednesday April 23, 2008

- Apple acquires PA Semi - Lionel - 16:43:31

Source: Forbes

This news has triggered deep fascination and speculation on the Internet. Apple announced that it has purchased PA Semi, a company that specializes in the design of ultra-low-power processors. The company has 150 employees but no production plant, PA Semi has recently announced a dual-core processor at 2 GHz consuming less than 15W.

Of course, everyone wonders what Apple intends to make of this company and its employees. Among many things, it signals a potential processor for the iPhone and a return to the Power PC platform, on which the chips are based. In any case, a stroke of genius for Apple to be launched back in to the press after many weeks of dormancy.

[translation by CliveAtFive]

- Apple to start selling the iPhone? - Lionel - 10:45:04

The disappointing iPhone sales in Europe appear to have undermined the economic model that Apple has sought to impose. It was based on two points, 1) no subsidy from the operator on the purchase of phone, Apple has always refused to sell its products, and 2) Apple gets a percentage of subscriptions, the operators have found it difficult to digest.
Since then, this model was undermined, first by T-Mobile in Germany, which has subsidized the phone, then by O2 which did the same thing.
If Orange denies wanting to do the same thing, it seems they are preparing something and renegotiating the percentage of the subscription returned to Apple in order to decrease the price.
There is a rumour in Italy where that the phone will be sold much the same as other phones: with a subsidy and much less strict rules about sim unlocking.
Is this the end of the iPhone as we know it? Certainly not, it is most likely a second wind to take its place in the wider mobile market and escape its current niche market.
It must be said that Apple has found another way to earn money for the iPhone from the AppStore. Well managed, and widely supported by developers, it could create an economic model much more viable than the trickle from subscriptions while allowing Apple to keep the iPhone exceptional, the only product compatible with thousands of pieces of software that will create a mobile platform unparalleled in its class. But to prevail and become financially viable, this model requires that you have a very broad base of devices in circulation, requiring a change in Apple's current marketing startegy.

[translation by jeremy]

- New video cards from AMD in a couple of weeks? - Lionel - 08:17:19

Source : TGdaily

Though AMD marks time vis-a-vis with INTEL with its processors, it is behind with its video cards compared to NVidia.
They could however take the lead in this field as of May.
Their new card, the Radeon 4800 based on the RV770 chip would be already in production and sounds promising. Indeed, the frequency approaches the GHz for the first time in the series. The graphics processor itself will integrate more texture memory units. To go further, this card will be the first equipped with GDDR5, a new generation of memory that runs around 2 GHz and ensuring a flow of almost 140 GB/s on a 256 bits bus.

Now that Apple for the first time has made an effort to propose new cards on Mac Pro rev1 and to even lower the price of these products, we hope that they continue in the same way and progressively market new cards for these machines as they are released.

[translation by crispin]

- Flash NAND rescued by Entry level Portables? - Lionel - 07:31:27

Source: Digitimes

The market for flash memory has long been overproduced This has resulted in huge reductions in the price of chips forcing many manufacturers to sell their produce at a loss.
If there seemed no way out of the impasse, their salvation could come from entry-level laptops such as the EEE. Indeed, manufacturers have decided to get around the deadlock on hard drives, and their preferred storage is flash memory. Given that each machine has on board a few GB of memory and PC manufacturers hope to sell 20 million units by the end of the year, it would represent an increased demand of 6 to 8%, which certainly will see the prices of chips rise.
However, it is unclear whether this new market is sufficient to cause the price of NAND memory to boom, a few manufacturers have decided to further increase production capacity, hoping to find lucrative opportunities with SSD's.

[translation by jeremy]

- The last 56K modem ? - Lionel - 07:20:06

Source: Tom's Hardware.fr

If ADSL and Wi-Fi, in particular, have almost killed the analog modem, it remains the case where the latter is still useful in areas not covered by more modern technologies and to send or receive a fax.
Apple offers for 55€ a USB modem. There is now an alternative to their product.


Proposed by U.S. Robotics, the USR065637 supports all analog standards (including those compatible with the Minitel, another dinosaur) and supports Modem On Hold to take an incoming call without disconnecting.
It will be marketed €50 during the month of May.



[translation by jeremy]

- The mysterious problem of the fast clock on the Mac Pro rev2 - Lionel - 07:16:11

According to readers in the Forums , some Mac Pro's are experiencing a strange problem. Their internal clock is too fast, time is shifting ahead about 5 minutes per hour.
This might not sound dramatic, but it is worrying since it disrupts the date-of-creation of files and certainly the storage backups of Time Machine.
Currently Apple has not commented on this issue. But knowing that the Mac Pro clock is on the motherboard, it will take at best an updated EFI and at worst a change of the latter to overcome the problem.

[translation by jeremy]