News for Wednesday, 10 December 2008

Some MBP unibody owners have experienced problems with video when switching to the GeForce 9600. Apple knows about this issue, but did not communicate about it, as still looking for a complete investigation.
In addition to this news about video artifacts, another information is again affecting NVidia’s image. Officially, the new chips are using a new manufacturing process in order to avoid the defective production series faced by NVidia with the previous 8x00 GPU (well known by owners of the MBP whose video is powered by the GF 8600)
In order to check NVidia’s claims concerning this new manufacturing process, The Inquirer decided to purchase a new MacBook Pro unibody and to submit it to deep analysis in laboratories.

Results are surprising, and maybe not so good for us Mac users. The GF 9400M chipset is indeed manufactured with a new process, however the GF 9600 is produced with a material very similar for not saying identical to the defective one known to be responsible of the massive 8x00 GPU defect.
Facing such results, NVidia indicated that while the some GF 9600 might have a material very similar to the defective one in their manufacturing process, it would not lead to the same disaster issue known for the 8x00 series, and this material is also used in millions of GPU. If it would then be the case, why would then NVidia change this material for manufacturing the 9400M chipset?
So far, none of NVidia’s explanations or claims has convinced customers associations as well as IT websites or OEM, it will need time till we finally get a true piece of information, if it ever comes. In addition, at the end of the article, The Inquirer is simply recommending not to buy a MacBook Pro, simply based on unclear situation regarding the way the GF 9600 is manufactured.
Back, to the video artifact mentioned at the beginning of the article, it might well be due to an overloaded cooling system, as in the new unibody MBP, the CPU and the GPU share the same heatsink. As we have shown it already, the dual core CPU can heat till 100-105°C, if you add in addition a fully loaded GPU, you might end-up to the limit of the cooling system, leading to video artifacts.

As we reported it earlier this week, Apple started (yesterday) to change DRM-containing music tracks by their DRM-free versions. For example Neil Young albums are now available DRM-free, but the price did not change.
Apple will keep moving the entire iTunes Store catalog to the DRM-free version; this will take some times, considering it holds millions of songs…

Microsoft just released updates for Mac Office 2004 and 2008:
- For Mac Office 2004, more information here: La liste des changements
- For Mac Office 2008, more information here: La liste des changements

Recent rumors indicates that NVidia might soon offer a new version of its integrated chipset GeForce 9400M that would be compatible with Intel ATOM processor. If the idea of associating a high-end chipset with an entry-level CPU might look weird, for some devices it might well be the optimal solution:

First, the ATOM CPU is a true success for Intel, and figures are way above any optimistic projections, and the current economic slow down will most likely promote the use of entry-level CPU. Concerning potential Apple products, a 9400 M and a dual core ATOM could be the main components of the future revision of the Apple TV. With such hardware, it will offer higher performance levels (especially for 1080p displaying) while being cheaper to produce than the current specific system.
Other websites or Mac addicts might imagine that such components might be associated in a forthcoming Mac Tablet...

If you have a SSD in your MacBook Pro and want additional space, OCZ announced new USB disk in Express Card 34 format:

Those storage units featuring 8, 16 and 32 GB will not offer high transfer speed, with only 18 MB/s and 12.5 MB/S in reading and writing mode respectively, but if their price are low enough, it will for sure interest many MBP owners as the Express Card 34 slot is usually not used a lot. In addition, those disks will feature a mini USB plug to be used with notebook without Express Card 34 slot.

Open CL, the new technology launched and already adopted by Apple for Snow Leopard in order to better benefit from GPU computing power, has been certified in its version 1.0 Details specification are available from Khronos website.
The goal is also to help developers to get the most out of computer without having to worry about hardware environment (number of Core CPU, or graphic cards, etc.) as the optimization is directly managed by the API.
Freshly announced, Open CL 1.0 version has already been the subject of PR sent by ATI/AMD and NVidia. Both companies wanted to quickly inform OEM that they will adopt Open CL and support it:
- AMD will soon release to developers an Open CL SDK for new and past ATI graphic cards
- NVidia on its side considers Open CL as a real opportunity and will be supported in all their products.
If Microsoft does not compete and force developers to adopt its own set of API (a new version of DirectX?) as it did in the past with Open GL, the new Open CL might be a revolution in programming and optimizing applications for modern computers

Intel have announced that they have regulated the last technical obstacles that stopped them mass engraving of processors in 32nm. Now that the R&D phase in the laboratory is finished, they will be able to devote themselves to the manufacture and the tooling of the production line so that they can meet their time scale that envisages the marketing of 32nm chips during the second half of 2009.
As usual, Intel will not propose a processor with a new architecture, but will engrave more finely the chips that have already been produced in 45nm, namely those called Nehalem. At 32nm they will be able to be faster and to consume less power. Only in 2010 will this architecture be updated.
Intel wants then to pass to 22nm, but it will only be during 2013.

ExtFS is a file format more and more used under Linux. Like NTFS of Windows, this format is not fully supported by OS X.
Now Paragon proposes a total solution making it possible to automatically mount the disks formatted in Ext2 and Ext3 and manages the reading and writing of files in a completely transparent way.
The software with a time-limited demo is available and costs 39,95$.
More:
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/extfs-mac/