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| 01-31-08 / 02:03 AM : Factory : Vange like new age (cjed) |
 This new age song uses Analog Factory 2 demo sounds, as well as Kontakt 2 (rhythm loop) and Colossus (piano pad, bass and guitar) :Factory |
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| 01-28-08 / 12:39 AM : Best graphic card for MDD G4 (cjed) |
| The Radeon 9800 Pro is the most powerful graphic card available for MDD G4 (uses a dedicated power connector from the MDD power supply), and it provides stunning games performances compared with the stock Radeon 9000 Pro (without mentioning new compatible games and Core Image hardware acceleration). We can find the card for 239 euros at Macway (initially priced 399$ in 2003), or flash a PC version (60 euros from ebay, choose a 128Mo 256bits from Saphirre, GeCube, Club3D, or PowerColor). Flash it, from a PC, or from a mac, using a 128ko rom reduced to 64ko - found on these sites. However it seems that these cards do not work for a long time, due to heat dissipation problems in MDD : power supply, CPU heatsink, memory and GPU are very close from each other. |
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| 01-28-08 / 12:21 AM : MacPro 4 Core 2,8 Ghz : the best choice (cjed) |
| Macworld completed its benchs of new MacPro with results from the 8 core 3Ghz model and from the 4 core 2,8 Ghz model (built to order by removing one processor). Then we can compare the 4 core 2,8 Ghz (2049 euros) with the base configuration (8 core 2,8 Ghz, 2499 euros). As hopped, the 8 core model is only 7% faster on average, and notably doesn't speed games or common applications (gains are showed only in specific 3D applications and some encoding formats). Moreover the base Radeon HD 2600 XT of new MacPro is far more less powerful than the Nvidia GeForce 7300 found in the old generation. So the 180 euros for the GeForce8800 GT option are a must have, and not overpriced this time (2229 euros so for that configuration). |
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| 01-27-08 / 11:57 PM : MacBook Air benchs (cjed) |
| First benchs of MacBook Air are coming on Engadget (raw performance through xbench) and Gizmodo (real world performances). |
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| 01-25-08 / 11:05 PM : Apple and company mood (cjed) |
| Jens Alfke, an indie engineer that has been working at Apple for a long time (notably on the defunct OpenDoc project) explains on his blog why he finally left Apple. He gives his feelings about the company culture. The rock stars and easter-eggs times are gone, now engineers are anonymous. |
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| 01-22-08 / 11:57 PM : Apple Q1 2008 results (cjed) |
| Apple posted its results for Q1 2008 (ended December, 29). Despite a stunning growth in a year (sales and net profit) the stock quote decreased these days. |
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| 01-21-08 / 11:40 PM : DisplayConfigX / Samsung 206BW (cjed) |
| DisplayConfigX is an utility that allows to add resolution modes for DVI screens (these modes will replace old resolutions listed in the Monitors Preferences panel). Once registered we can install the new display settings (copied by the utility in System/Library/Displays/Override). The resolution entries also allow to specifiy porch values, that is defining the width of black bands to add around the centered image. By just installing the provided modes, the non stretched modes (non extended) for 4/3 resolutions keep the right 4/3 aspect ratio on a 16/10 LCD (height stretched to full display height, and compressed width - blacks areas on left and right -). With further editing we can also increase the porch values so that the centered image isn't stretched to fit the height, that is to keep the original centered resolution - "Synchronisation" must also be selected instead of "Extended". However the upscaling is very good on new LCDs like the Samsung 206BW, it allows to play games in 1024*768 with full height. |
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| 01-20-08 / 12:28 AM : Samsung SyncMaster 206BW / G4 MDD (cjed) |
| Here is a short feedback about the G4 MDD switching from a 17" IIYAMA CRT Vision Master Pro 410 (recent flashs 8 years of good condition - an internal wire in the tube must have suffer from hot, it is a known failure and can be fixed but...) to a Samsung SyncMaster 206 BW (20" wide) LCD : Problem with the DVI wire (Belkin) because its plug is too much tall, in fact the screen foot (just below the video inputs) doesn't provide the space needed for the DVI plug. So the wire is connected with only one screw. FIXED Problem with a fault power wire. It couldn't be put correctly inside the screen power slot (then there was electric noise and the screen shutted down time to time when touching the wire). I replaced it with the IIYAMA power wire and it could be set well. Very strange that the Samsung wire had a fault Colors calibration was very difficult, near impossible (the best settings are internet mode with light to 75, contrast to 50, gamma 1, normal, SyncMaster 206BW profile found on OSX Monitors control panel). ACCEPTABLE The VGA connection doesn't work with the G4 (input not detected, the source search remains). The native resolution is however not available in VGA from the Radeon 9000 Pro. In DVI the native resolution was found, and other resolutions were provided in the OSX monitors panel, some with both stretching mode on and off (640*480, 800*600 et 1024*768 are then listed in two modes). However, whatever the mode (stretching on or off) the stretching occurs ! (then with poor image and bad ratio with 4/3 resolutions selected). There is no black surrounding areas. Then it is impossible to play games (or you have to buy a new mac with great graphic ard, and recent PC games that manage 1680*1050). FIXED Besides bad color calibration compared with a CRT we can also notice that texts aren't easily readable, even with the OSX LCD font smoothing setting). It seems less bad on Leopard though. Movies playback with DVDPlayer is was deceiving, a strong noise in the picture, and very bad black areas (some bad patterns in it). At 2m distance it can be accepatble, and it depends from the DVD (not so bad with a Starwars movie). The good point is the screen display speed (no strong shadows, only light ones on windows tools icons when moving windows very fast). At 237 euros (plus 40 euros for the DVI wire) it is still two times cheaper than an equivalent Apple screen. However the latter could probably be better in color management, and assurely would allow to have black areas instead of stretching mode only. MVA LCDs (less fast than the TN found on Samsung) provide less noise in movies, and a better field of view, and 4/3 screens (Bélinea, etc.) could be better on the G4 MDD. Well, we can use the Samsung, but time has to pass to forget how good it was on the IIYAMA CRT. Finally I checked in the screen service hidden panel, and it is the worse screen origine (serial xIx-xxxx, CPT, so worse than CMO C screen - xDx-xxxx, being worse than A - xLx-xxxx and S - xAx-xxxx, the S being the factory good calibrated LCDs, A being good after manual calibration, and C couldn't be calibrated). The origine was Romania, perhaps there is only C screens now, as prices were down a bit. Would be better if we could pay much for real quality products.s |
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| 01-15-08 / 10:57 PM : Time Capsule (cjed) |
| Apple unveiled Time Capsule, that combines an Airport base station and a Time Machine backup station (includes a 500 Gb or 1 Tb hard disk, with automatic backup through wifi). The 500Gb version is priced 299$, and the 1Tb 499$. |
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| 01-15-08 / 10:45 PM : New Apple TV (cjed) |
| The new version of the Apple TV also presented during the keynote allows to operate without a computer (movies rental on iTunes through wifi, revamped interface), HDMI port, standard resolution (720x480 anamorphic) and HD resolution (1280x720) with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround (respectively 3,99$ and 4,99$ for a SD and HD movie rental). |
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| 01-15-08 / 10:16 PM : MacBook Air (cjed) |
 Apple presented the MacBook Air, the new ultra-thin laptop : 0.4 to 1.94 cm thick, 1,36kg, 13,3' LED screen, 5h of battery length, trackpad with multitouch (two-finger scrolling, pinch, rotate, swipe, tap, double-tap, and drag), backlit keyboard with light sensor, Core2Duo at 1,6 or 1,8 Ghz, 2Gb of memory (800 Mhz bus), GMA X3100 with 144Mo of DDR2, 80Gb Parallel ATA hard disk (4200tr/min) or 64Gb SSD disk, no optical drive (system and software installation can be achieved through wifi from a CD or DVD mounted on a remote computer), microDVI port, iSight, environment aware (aluminium, no mercury in screen). It is priced 1799$ ( euros (3098$ for the 1,8 Ghz model with SSD disk - these disks are for now too much expensive).We can add an external superdrive (USB connection), the new MacBook Air Superdrive at 99$. |
| 1 comment |
| 01-13-08 / 06:28 PM : GeForce 8800GT adviced for new MacPro (cjed) |
 Bare Feats confirms that the GeForce 8800GT option for new MacPro (200$ to replace the Radeon HD2600 XT) is a must have. It brings then two to three times the Radeon fps depending on games (x2 in Doom 3 as stated in the Apple description page). |
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| 01-13-08 / 06:09 PM : New MacPro benchs (cjed) |
| Macworld provides some benchs of new mac Pro 8 core 2,8Ghz (entry model), compared with the old MacPro entry model (4 core at 2,66 Ghz), the macbook pro and the 24' imac 2,8 Ghz. We also would have liked to see new mac Pro 4 core 2,8 Ghz results (2299$ by removing one processor). The 24' imac (2 core 2,8 Ghz) shows very honest performance, as many applications (except 3D apps) don't take benefit from all of the MacPro cores. It seems also that the Seagate (320Go) disk in new MacPro is fare more slower than the old Western Digital. |
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| 01-08-08 / 11:00 PM : New MacPro (cjed) |
| Apple presented new Mac Pro based on the new Quad core Xeon at 45 nm with 12Mb of cache per processor (up to 2 processors - 8 cores - at 3,2 Ghz). The bus is up to 1600 Mhz (800 Mhz memory) and graphics cards available are Radeon X2600 XT 256Mb DDR3 (standard), or GeForce 8800GT 512Mb DDR3, or QuadroFX 5600 1,5Gb DDR3. The standard hard drive is a 320 Gb SATA (3Gb/s). No Blu-Ray however. By removing on processor from the standard configuration (that is one Quad core at 2,8 Ghz) the price drops to 2049 euros. With an external 20" LCD screen (non Apple) it is around 2400 euros. An actual 20" imac (only Dual Core, at 2,4 Ghz, not 64bits, 4Mb cache, 1Gb memory instead 2Mb for the MacPro, Radeon HD2600 Pro instead of XT, half the bus speed) is priced 1449 euros. There is still to know if imacs will be revamped during the Macworld (QuadCore at 2,8 Ghz ?). Moreover a combi MacPro + external screen would allow to keep the G4 (and two inputs on LCD screens - DVI and VGA - so no switch required). |
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| 01-07-08 / 10:31 PM : SSE4 : benchs (cjed) |
| As Intel announced the avaibility of new Penryn processors (45nm, SSE4), we can look at a previous presentation and benchs from ArsTechnica about SSE4. The next macs revision expected for the Macworld in a week should introduce these. And an entry MacPro would be great. |
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| 01-05-08 / 05:12 PM : Blu-Ray mac sooon (cjed) |
| Macnn stated that Warner would have decided to migrate all of its movies catalog from HD-DVD to Blu-Ray format only. Then 75% of films will be Blu-Ray, and an Apple announcement about Blu-Ray macs (notably MacPro) would be logical at this January Macworld, if problems around HDMI licence are managed (Apple couldn't get the licence because they were asked as a controversial condition to add a copy-protection mechanism right inside OSX kernel). |
| 1 comment |
| 01-04-08 / 03:56 PM : Apple : hints on future peripherals (cjed) |
 Among newly published Apple patents are some leading to expect some new peripherals, as a new dock station (imac form factor, that can onboard a laptop, there is still to know if it will add touchscreen support over the macbook screen, otherwise it would be less useful - except for the rumored ultra thin macbook), and a new OLED fitted lit keyboard that would allow to display dynamic symbols and patterns (through individual keys or a whole group of keys). |
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| 01-02-08 / 07:48 PM : Leopard : genie effect less smooth (cjed) |
| On Tiger the genie effect starts once we clic on the minimize button, and the animation is smooth (and stays smooth during the session). On Leopard there is a significant delay before the minimize animation (close to one second on a MDD G4/Radeon 9000 Pro). During this step the window reflection on the Dock (if the window was near the bottom) is removed (however Dock icons reflections are keeped). Then the animation is less smooth than with Tiger (and it can sometimes becomes worse later in the session). It seems (see threads here and there) that Leopard graphic drivers development was difficult, so we can expect a fix on a further update. With a 2D Dock the genie effect animation is reported far more smooth, and even better than in Tiger. The effect probably uses Core Animation on Leopard. Despites Core Image operates in software mode in the G4 with Radeon 9000 Pro (hardware mode requires a Radeon 9600 Pro), we can suppose that Core Animation uses the graphic card on this configuration as CoverFlow is very smooth. Moreover the genie effect isn't smoother on high end macs on Leopard, whatever the graphic card used. Finally we notice that videos aren't played yet while in the Dock, leading to the idea that there is some limitation with the mirror effect (would use too much CPU), the other reason why the window mirroring in the Dock is removed when it is being minimized (however the window live content update is still here). |
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| 01-02-08 / 06:47 PM : OSX marketshare : more than 7% (cjed) |
| Net Applications reports that MacOSX marketshare on internet for December was high to 7,31 percent (less than 92% for Windows, decreasing, and 0,63% for Linux, with the iPhone - 0,12% - being very close and far more popular than CE and other mobiles systems). OSX gained a point in a year, so the 10 percent marketshare is a wise target. |
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| 01-01-08 / 09:45 PM : Software Core Image on MDD G4 with Leopard (cjed) |
| Up to Leopard Core Image didn't operate on macs without compatible graphic cards (Radeon 9600 Pro min). System Informations reported that on the G4 MDD (Radeon 9000 Pro) CI wasn't supported. With OSX 10.5 it now reports that CI is activated, through software (uses the main CPU, not the GPU). Then CI effects are available for example from GraphicConverter, and they are very fast (realtime preview). |
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