News for Tuesday, 6 January 2009

Here it comes... at last. The only Hardware announcement from tonight's keynote: the new 17" MacBook Pro.

Has a LED backlit 17" display with a 700:1 contrast ratio and a resolution of 1900x 1200 pixels. What a joy to see that an anti-glare option is available or the cost of 50$.
It weights 6.6 pounds and is .98 thick.
Its new battery is non-removable but allows 8 hours of fun.
Video Cards are as the 15", meaning it gets the 9400M/9600GT duo.
Now get your bucks ready for the following:
Starting price is 2799$ .You can get a 2.66 Core 2 Duo wich is upgradable to 2,93 GHz (for 300$), a 320GB Hard Drive or a 128GB SSD for 500$, unless you really want no compromise between space and performance and get the 256 SSD option for 900$.
And if you still got shiny dollars left, get a 8GB upgrade for 1200$! WoW.
New MacBook Pro 17" will ship by the end of January 09.
We guess this wild baby will makes some of you Happy but have a special thought for the ones who were waiting for iMacs/MacMini/Displays Upgrade...

If you want to have details about the new MacBook Pro 17", we can go to the dedicated webpage on the Apple Store. Options are quite expensive: anti-glare screen options: 45€, 8 GB of RAM: 1088€ (gloups), 128 GB SSD: 450€, 256 GB SSD: 810€. The most expensive notebook on earth?
Expected shipping date is currently 3 to 4 weeks.

Phil spent most of the Keynote in demoing the new applications included in iLife '09. The most impressive new application is for sure iPhoto and its geotagging and face recognition.
If you want to have further details, do not hesitate to go back to our Live coverage or on the dedicated webpage on the Apple Store

One address: http://keynote.hardmac.com/
Press the refresh button as the auto-refresh seems not fully working. Let's hope our servers can still stand it...

According to Macfixit, the noise problem originating from the optical drive and affecting many early MacBook and MacBook Pro owners after the installation of the last 10.5.6 update of Mac OS X is linked to Growl. This software is used by other applications such as Adium, VLC, Transmit, etc. to send notification, and the workaround is to remove it till growl developers release an update to address the problem.

According to a report from PC World, Freescale, the now independent former Motorola Processor Division, is aiming to offer CPU dedicated to netbook devices. After writing the brightest and darkest period of the Power PC era with Apple, Freescale is now back to the electronic consumer market with ARM architecture-based CPU. With a combination of low power consumption/low price/ mid-range performance, Freescale i.MX515 might seduce manufacturers of those small netbook devices requiring more connectivity than real CPU crunching power.
Of course, due to the lack of x86 instruction set, such devices will have to use a Linux-derived OS or a proprietary system. Nevertheless, the i.MX515 is able to manage 3D video display with a clock frequency topping at 1 GHz. However, with the past history, it is unlikely that Apple uses such CPU in any Mac Tablet/Netbook-type devices, especially after the recent acquisition of PA Semi by the company.

According to Digitimes, Intel might postpone the release of its future mobile platform, known as Calpella, and based on Core i7 architecture.
It should be unveiled in October 2009 instead of July or august as originally planned. This is not due to a last minute technical problem, but rather a strategic choice in order to allow manufacturers to empty their stocks of current CPUs as sales slowed down.
For notebooks, Intel does not really fear any competitors and can therefore freely manage the release of its products.

As usual with such event, we will cover the MWSF 2009 Keynote to be delivered by Phil Scheller at 9h00 PST - 18h00 CET.
As usual now, we will take advantage of the live web service offered by Google and based on AppEngine. So let's meet just before 18h00 CET at the following address: http://keynote.hardmac.com/

Some news from our team member in his long way to SF:

That’s how we all felt in Paris, while we waited for 5 hours in the plane, taxiing from one runway to the next, getting downprioritized to hell.
All this for 3-4cm of white stuff.
Plus I must add I NOT (heart) American Airlines: terrible service (”sorry to be on your plane, madam”), old and crappy plane, even the movies on the inflight channel were, like, 5 years old.
So, we left 6hrs late and arrived in JFK Airport 5hrs late which meant I missed my connection.
Plus it took us about 90 minutes to clear immigration.
Welcome to the US of A.
Which means I’ll be flying to SF this morning, arriving around 10:30 so I’ll miss the Keynote, but I’ll be on the showfloor ASAP and try and grab some sizzling shots.
Stay tuned.

In the mean time we nevertheless reorganized our team and sources in order to provide a live coverage of the event.

As time passes, the number and size the updates of Mac OS X and the associated components (security updates, QuickTime…) increases. Even though one hardly pays attention to it when there is only one computer, things become complicated if one has several, or worse if one administers a network with many. In this case, it is preferable to download the updates in Combo form and then to put them on the individual machines via the network or a memory stick, and this is long and complex. According to 9to5mac, Apple could offer another more elegant solution via Time Capsule which could change to be a local Mac OS X server for these updates.
They would be downloaded first before being automatically offered to the machines present on the network. In addition to the considerable time-saver of remote downloading, this solution would bring a large saving in bandwidth for the Apple servers that slow down at the time of the large updates, an economy on the level of use of Akamai and there is no need to remind that for our Internet operators the bandwidth consumed elsewhere also costs money.
PS: While remaining on the subject of Time Capsules, it becomes more interesting than ever to buy the 500 GB model and to replace the disk. The difference in price between the 500 GB version and 1 TB is still 200€, and a disk of 1 TB costs today lsignificantly less 100€. For a little bit more one can even have a 1,5 TB model. You will find an article describing the replacement of its disk at the following web address:
http://www.hardmac.com/articles/79/