News for Wednesday, 9 April 2008

The developer of http://www.ziphone.org/ went deep inside the official Apple firmware delivered together with the iPhone SDK and spotted a line referring to a component which is not used in the current iPhone: SGOLD3.
This is the reference to an Infineon-branded chips for managing... 3G+ HSDPA. So, if it was quite obvious that the future revision of the iPhone will support 3G (for Japanese and European markets), we now have the proof. The iPhone revision 2 is expected to be released by the end of May according to different sources.

The ATI card was offered as an option then, but removed shortly later. This option has resurfaced again on The Apple Store (Singapore).

Generally, ATI has historically provided better performance (espcially for 'pro apps') over similarly powered NVIDIA cards. Barefeats has recently shown so too. The results are somewhat puzzling, but true. Be it ATI, NVIDIA or even Intel, we can only hope fervently that cohesive collaborations between themselves and Apple --- such will bring about optimized performances for us, mac users.
p.s. Interestingly, the NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT indicates GDDR4 memory, which if it is to be believe, is certainly a very welcomed improvement over GDDR3. 'Pro apps' users will also appreciate if the 3870 comes in the x2 edition.
[update]
Apple Singapore has since updated the details.

One of the most frequent causes of problems with software under OS X is the corruption of the preference file of the application.
This is the reason for the proposal to erase the preference file before restarting a problematic program.
Now there exists a program to verify the preference files in anticipation of problems. Preferential Treatment will scan the preference files used by the system and detect those which are corrupt and propose that you trash them. It is available at the following address and it is free:
http://www.jonn8.com/html/pt.html
Note also that in the case of instability, one can repair the permissions of the system (Disk Utility) and also empty the caches with Onyx, in particular those of the fonts.

Thanks a lot to Jack for alerting us of the opening of a museum of computing on top of the Grande Arche de la Defense.
We would certainly not be talking about it if the emphasis was not placed on an Apple.

The poster shows the Osborne portable computer which was introduced in 1981 (thanks John).
For more information:
http://www.grandearche.com/FR/espace_culture/ fiche_evenement.php? id = 42 (French)

Source: http://www.macworld.com/

The company Symwave has demonstrated FirePHY-1600 which lets you transfer data on the Firewire bus at 1600 Mbits/s.
This chip is the first to use the new Firewire standard which we have already spoken about. Of course, this chip is also compatible with the 400 and 800 standards , downwards compatibility is mandatory for success.
This product will be introduced this week at the 1394 Congress, which sets the Firewire standard .

Source: Seagate

Until now SAS drives were severely limited in capacity. It was not possible to exceed 300 GB In exchange, it was enabled very fast disks, spinning at 15000 RPM.
Seagate has announced a new range of products with SAS capabilities identical to their SATA products. The Barracuda ES.2 will be offered in 500 and 750 as well as 1 GB TB
On the other hand, no more 15000 RPM. These discs run at only 7200 rpm, the same as their SATA counterparts.
They bring the theoretical advantage of being more efficient, 135% compared to SATA model, and can be guaranteed for 24/7 operation.
They could attract those who have bought the Mac Pro with a RAID card and volumes already using fast SAS. This would be a significant increase in disk storage space.
[update]
Seagate has also added the following for servers and storage arrays.

Details about the Cheetah 15K.6 FDE Family of Hard Drives
Available in capacities of 450GB, 300GB, and 147GB, the Cheetah 15K.6 family includes Seagate PowerTrim™ technology which dynamically optimizes drive power consumption at all levels of activity. The Cheetah 15K.6 FDE family offers the highest 3.5-inch hard drive reliability in the industry at 1.6 million hours MTBF (0.55% AFR), a choice of Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) or Fibre Channel (FC) interfaces, and a five-year limited warranty.

John, a clearly well-informed reader (although it's still a rumor) has told us that Apple might resurrect a genie during the WWDC, the Windows compatible Yellow Box .
Start with a reminder:
After the takeover of Next, which was accompanied by the return of Steve Jobs, Apple relied on the development of this company to launch the project MAc OS X. They used OpenStep, which was renamed Yellow Box. At that time, Yellow Box was also compatible with Windows.
Since then, Yellow box has been used in the development of Cocoa.
But now back at WWDC. According to the information we received, Apple may have decided to propose its version 2.0 under Windows. The goal is clear, to enable developers working only with this OS to also produce applications for the iPhone, the SDK for the time being only compatible with OS X.
Knowing the place that Apple wants to give the new iPhone ecosystem, such a development would grab all the attention and bring sufficient credit to compel us to publish the details.
Those who doubt the very existence of the Windows Yellow Box need only remember that Safari is now also based on it.
This would be technically very good news. Indeed, developers who choose not to be interested initially by the iPhone, could then decide to use it to create software for computers and which would have the enormous advantage of being compatible with Windows as well as Mac OS X.
See you in two months to check the veracity of this rumor filled with potential developments.

Updates of the EFI bootloading program for the iMac Aluminium and the full range of MacBook are available since yesterday evening.
The CD utility for updating the firmware has also had a slight facelift ( version 1.6, 30 MB ).
• iMac Alu (EFI firmware update 1.3, 1.6 MB)

This update fixes various problems and improves the stability of iMac computers.
Once the program has been applied to your Mac, your ROM boot version will be as follows:
IM71.007A.B03
You can confirm the ROM boot version installed on your computer using Information System.
For more information on this update, see the following website: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303364-fr

• MacBook (EFI firmware update 1.2, 1.8 MB)

This update fixes various problems and improves stability MacBook computers.
Once the program has been applied to your Mac, your ROM boot version will be as follows:
MB31.008E.B02
You can confirm the ROM boot version installed on your computer using Information System.
For more information on this update, see the following website: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303364-fr

• MacBook Pro (EFI firmware update 1.5, 3.1 MB)

This update fixes various problems and improves the stability of computers MacBook Pro.
Once the program applied to your Mac, your boot ROM version will be as follows:
MBP21.00A5.B08 or MBP31.0070.B07
You can confirm the ROM version installed on your computer using Information System.
For more information on this update, see the following website: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303364-fr

MacBook • Air (EFI firmware update 1.0, 2.3 MB)

This update fixes various problems and improves the stability of Air MacBook computers.
You can confirm the ROM boot version installed on your computer using Information System.
Once the program has been applied to your Mac, your boot ROM version will be as follows:
MBA11.00BB.B03
For more information on this update, see the following website: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303364-fr

A small bonus to finish this series: an update 1.0 of the program's internal keyboard aluminium (1 , 5 MB).

This update of the program corrects a problem of unexpected repetition of a key when striking on the Apple keyboard and wireless keyboard in the aluminum Apple.