Monday October 13, 2008
- Apple Changed the Location of the Airport Card in New MacBook/MacBook Pro - Lionel - 09:24:00
Source : Engadget
Apple released a TechNote describing how to change the Airport card in the new but not yet released/announced MacBook/MacBook Pro, to be unveiled tomorrow.
Apple has entirely changed the location of the Airport card which is now installed in the display case. If it is only a detail, it illustrates how the design of the new MacBook Pro has been modified. We are curious to see for what are the requirements that pushed Apple designers to change the location of this small component.
[translation by Linathael]
- Apple to Adopt DisplayPort Soon - Lionel - 09:23:20
Some Apple hardware models have not been refreshed over the past years: Apple Cinema Display. They look like dinosaurs, with old LCD panel and the lack of some technology requirements, such as HDCP.
One of our forum members noticed that a company Longwell is actively working for Apple by designing and manufacturing cable and connectors. In their last activity report, one can learn that beside cables and connectors for Apple iPhone, mouse and keyboard, they have recently worked on mini DVI to DVI and more importantly on a mini DisplayPort connectors which is tagged as being in production and shipping.
So it would not be surprising to find this new port at least on the new MacBook Pro, however it would imply that Apple has to refresh its current display offer.
[translation by Linathael]
- Nehalem to be Launched on November 17th - Lionel - 09:22:53
According to the last rumors available on the web, Intel should officially launch its Core i7 processors (branded name for the Nehalem) on November 17th.
Intel as well as users have high expectations for this new architecture which should bring a new performance jump thanks to its new bus QPI (Quickpath Interconnexion) as well as its large memory bandwidth, each processor hosting its own controller.
The first Nehalem-based Mac should be the Mac Pro, and Apple could quickly release them following Intel announcements.
According to the first tests performed with Core i7 samples, the gain of performance is around 30% for tasks requiring massive usage of RAM and CPU, as with Cinebench application.
We would not be surprise to see Apple deeply changing the Mac Pro case design to illustrate the switch to a new technology, as the current Mac Pro design is more than 5 years old.
[translation by Linathael]
- SSDs by Seagate in 2009 - Lionel - 09:21:53
Source : Cnet
If Seagate is officially battling to limit the impact of the SSD on the IT market, the company is actively acting to join the crowd of SSD manufacturers as soon as possible. According to some sources, the company has planned to launch its first SSD models as soon as next year. However, it remains unknown if it will target entry-level or high-end models, in other words a SSD for the mass market, or a high-performance model for Pro users.For sure, the list of potential manufacturers will not be endless extended, and with Intel already preparing its first SSD to be released in couple of months every competitor has to acquire the resources and know-how for this new technology. Intel does not plan to let the other eating most of the SSD cake, and is investing massively to make Santa Clara's giant one of the main player on this market.
[translation by Linathael]
- Micron will restructure to deal with the crisis in the flash memory market - Lionel - 07:42:23
Source : CDR Info
Whereas we now have an economic crisis without precedent, the market of the flash memory has already been there for a few years. Believing in a new Eldorado, all the chipmakers started an enormous increase their production equipments that has led to a total saturation of the market today, which obliges them to sell their products below the manufacturing costs. The future is very dark, Micron announced that they have decided to lower their production capacity radically by manufacturing 35000 wafers of chips less per month. This will be accompanied by a reorganization that will reduce by 15% the employees of the company.Knowing that the overproduction is significantly higher than this cut, the price of this memory should not climb significantly unless others decide to act in a different way.
[translation by crispin]
- Le GPGPU make the security of WPA an illusion - Lionel - 07:31:39
Source : http://www.scmagazineuk.com
It is relatively simple to break a Wi-Fi network equipped with a WEP key as we showed you once with a demonstration; the protections WPA and WPA2 are much more secure. Currently the only way is to recover a package of connection, which is easy, but then using a brute force approach that consists in trying all the possible codes until a good key is found. Technically this is possible, however these attacks take a very long time to realize.But now with the arrival of Cuda, where the calculations can be shared with the video cards, this is changed. Under good conditions, Cuda will allow an acceleration by a factor 10 000, which shortens the time to break a network to an acceptable level for those who have the motivation. And pirates are always there ready!
It will thus be necessary in the not too distant future to re-examine the standards in order to increase the length of the key. Note that this will be also valid in other fields of coding.
[translation by crispin]
- Something tasty 'till Tuesday - Lionel - 00:18:41
A lot of pictures have been posted on the forums of the Chinese's sitemacx.cn.
It could definitely be the upper parts of both MacBooks and MacBook Pros.
Here comes the ones for the MBP:
and the one's for the MacBook:
One can spend hours talking about it so please enjoy our forums if you feel so.
Important thing to note:
- the news notebooks will be open from below, and not from the top anymore.
- Apple moved the MacBook Pro Superdrive "à la Macbook", just behind the keyboard. This saves a lot of space, might it be to add one or two hard drives that can easily be removed without opening the whole computer.
[translation by Goulwen]
