News for Tuesday, 8 January 2008

TUAW reports that a reader received a DVD a tad early, planned for a January 15 release (hmm ain't that the opening date for the MWSF2008?). And when he popped the DVD in his Mac, he got an interesting dialog:

He was told that the "Fox Digital Copy File" requires iTunes 7.6 (not yet released)... and if you look at the other picture over at TUAW (from the DVD package), it lists a number of compatible PORTABLE MEDIA PLAYERS, like the iPod and the Zune...
Which means that Apple is probably going to announce next week that iPod compatible movies will ship on some DVDs along with the normal movie. Which is way cool and goes in the same direction as SONY's announcement at the CES that some Blu-ray discs will include a PSP-compatible version of the movie.
Now, that's going in the right direction.

Amazingly, while the new Mac Pro just been released couple of hours ago, Apple published TechNotes related to known issues affecting the new models:
- FireWire slow or unresponsive when using 64-bit Vista
- iMovie unexpectedly closes when dragging clips into project
- IRQARB Error reported in 64-bit Microsoft Vista
- Error message when using Send Registration Assistant
- NetBoot client won't restart with Mac Pro RAID Card
If those reports are only related to some details, it proves that Apple never stop testing a model even when it just been released, and also indicates how Cupertino cares about users purchasing Mac Pro for being used both with Mac OS X and Windows.

While I was away, and couple of days before the MWSF, Apple unveiled the new Penryn-powered Mac Pro and Xserve models. They all frature 8 cores, with frequencies ranging from 2.8 to 3.2GHz, with the entry-level Mac Pro priceed at US$2799.
They are all running on a 1600MHz FSB with DDR2 FB-DIMM 800 MHz. Apple offers 3 different graphic cards, from the Radeon HD 2600 with 256MB of VRAM, to the Geforce 8800 GT 512MB or the ultimat Quadro FX 5600 which can feature up to 1.5GB of VRAM!
All new models feature PCI Express 2.0, with 2 connectors at 16x and 2 at 4x.
If hte wireless Airport technology remains an option (amazing...), the BlueTooth 2.0 is now available by default as well as the Alu keyboard.
One can now install SAS HD spinning at up to 15,000rpm instead of SATA HDs only. If the default RAM installed is set to 2GB, one can boost it to up to 32GB!
For Xserve, specification are similar except for:
- only 3HDs
- only 2 PCI-Express 2.0 connectors
- Xeon clock speed tops at 3.0GHz
- different GPUs
According to information provided by Apple about the new MacPro some BTP option might delay the delivery by up to 3 to 5 weeks...
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