When Intel launched the Core 2 Duo, NVidia released a controller, aka GF 9400M, derived from a discrete GPU, it was much faster than any Intel GMA. NVidia had a great success wit this controller and its second generation is still found in all previous generation of MacBooks and iMacs from Apple. This controller, aka Northbridge, was working with Intel Core 2 Duo only, and when NVidia asked Intel to get a license for Nehalem chips, the founder refused; most probably to keep its competitor outside of the sandbox. This was a hard hit for NVidia, as it prevented the company to offer alternative to Intel controllers for Nehalem.
Nevertheless, NVidia does not seem to have dropped the project to release controller/chips for Intel Sandy Bridge and it is actively working on a solution. Even though there is no real need for Northbrdige anymore, most functions will now be integrated in the CPU, NVidia would be working on a chips that would hold remaining functions of the northbridge+southbridge (interface).
If they are actively working on such solution, it can only be for 2 reasons: they found a way to push Intel to sell them license for Sandy Bridge, or there are holes in patents protecting the same technology. It will be interesting to follow this story, as it could well define which controller and partner Apple will be teaming with for bringing Sandy Bridge to MacBook. 

All over the world, researchers are currently working hard, hoping to find and develop what will replace Flash NAND on the non-volatile computer storage market. As a reminder, Flash NAND is for now used in most storage devices: (USB flash drives, memory chips, SSD, etc.) and doesn't erase itself without electricity.
Among other potential successors, there is ReRAM. It is based on the memristor, which can change its resistance depending on the current and voltage passing through it, and that way, can hold 1 or 0. The technology has been known since 1971 but until now, no one has succeeded in mass-producing those memory chips.  Hynix and HP have decided to team-up in order to make that technology get out of the lab.
They are not the first ones to try. In 2007, Fujitsu had announced major improvement on ReRAM but it didn't lead to any new product.

If researchers succeed, we will have a much faster memory than Flash NAND, which will in the mean time consume less power to read but most importantly write data.

According to Channelnews, Paul Otellini CEO of Intel, apparently asked Steve Jobs for his opinion before deciding to aquire Infineon Mobile Division. Steve Jobs was apparently very happy to see Intel get that techonoly that is already in the iPhones.
We have to say that we are surprised, not because Steve Jobs was asked his opinion, but because Otellini confirmed it. It is rare for the CEO of a huge company to admit that he needed to be comforted in his choice. It looks like he needed Steve Jobs' approval to decide over that expensive purchase.

According to  Fudzilla, the upcoming Radeon HD6000, that already showed amazing test results, will not be based on a new technology but will rather be an improvement of the HD5000. Still, we're talking about some major improvement:

• 28 nm engraving, which explains by itself the rest of the list.
• More powerful card with probably a higher number of processing units and/or higher frequency.
• Higher efficiency per Watt, something AMD has just started considering as important.
• Possibility to have easily up to 4 Displayport screens per card.

We should know more in October when AMD will unveil the new products, but you probably already knew they were coming since Apple just started putting the 5000 series in the Mac Pro...

Several team members own a Mac Pro 2006 or 2008. So, in addition to Guillaume, several of us are trying to graft a flashed PC Radeon HD5870 in their Mac Pro. As previously described, we initially selected the XFX HD5870 1GB. Today, we tried to repeat the procedure with a Sapphire Vapor-X.

This card is slightly more expensive than the first one, but offers an improved ooling system. The procedure remains the same for flashing and installing such PC card in a Mac Pro:

1. Download the iso image of Freedos. The basic version will be more than enough. Burn the iso image on a CD with your disk utility.
2. Create a FAT32 partition on one the HDs of your Mac Pro. It has to be in MBR (and not GPT), otherwise Freedos will not boot.
3. Download the last version of ATIFlash and the ROM corresponding to your graphic cards (here: m5870sap.rom.zip) from Netkas site.
4. Unzip and copy all files to the FAT32 partition.
5. Load the iso image containing CD and siwth off your computer. If hte CD is ejected, insert it again just before the current is switched off.
6. Install the Radeon HD5870 instead of your current graphic card and plug different Molex plugs.
7. Reboot while holding down C key. When asked, using the numerical key pad, activate it (press on the key over the "7"), then press "1" and validate. You will have to press key "2" when asked o nthe second screen. Now you are running Dos. Be careful it is now a QWERTY keyboard. 
8. Type C: to move to the C: drive on which are located all files for the flashing procedure.
9. Type atiflash -s 0 orig.rom 20000 and press Enter to save the original ROM of your card in case of problem.
10. Type atiflash -p -fs -fp 0 m5870sap.rom and press Enter to flash the graphic card. There should be no other graphic cards installed in your computer.

That's it. Reboot by forcing the procedure (maintaining the power button down for more than 5 seconds), then you have to be patient till the card is recognized by the system:

To test the card, we have launched Starcraft II with all graphical rendering pushed to the max (2560x1600). we could detect some small slow down from time to time, butthe game remains fluid, something impassible with a Radeon HD4890 even with its GPU overclocked to 1 GHz.
Maybe with some luck, we could make this card natively recognized from booting, but it remains only a small feature when considering how it revives a 2 or 3-years old Mac Pro.

Following the release of ROM EFI from Netkas, we tested the procedure ourselves. The EFI part from the ROM found in Apple EOM cards (those shipping with Mac Pro or available from the Apple Store) were of EBC type (so compatible with EFI32 and EFI64), unlike EFI found in iMacs. So we decided to test it on a Mac Pro 1,1 4x 2.66Ghz October 2006. If the card works on such early Mac Pro model, all subsequent models should support such card too.

Our choice was the XFX HD5870 1Go DDR5 with the following reference XFX HD-587X-ZNFV. This card is relatively close to the ATI reference design so chance to have the EFI ROM working on it is high. This card is well designed, offering a crossfire bridge, Molex adaptors to PCIE6, a DVI-VGA adaptor and even for gamers a registration card to download Alien versus Predator. This card is not noisier than the HD4870 Gainward with dual fans, so in summary much more silent than the HD4870 available from the Apple Store.

This card is rather long, but fits well in the Mac Pro:

The flashing procedure is similar to the one described earlier for the HD 48700, so you simply need to put the application atiflash 3.79 and the hacked ROM from Netkas on a FAT32 partition on one of the HD of your Mac Pro. then you boot from FreeDOS. After having saved the original ROM from the XFX card, then flashed it with the hacked ROM EFI, you can reboot your Mac Pro, and wait for the booting "bong"... Then you see ... nothing. Good news. You will have to wait for few additional seconds to finally see the Login OS X window. The flashing procedure worked: 

Good news: all video outputs are active: both DVI, display port and HDMI! We could not test a setting with 3 displays, but DP+DVI or DP+HDMI work perfectly.

Regarding Open GL performance levels, there is nothing astonishing on OS X:

For comparison, below are values obtained by a MacBook Pro Core i7 with a GF 300M:

This is only a quick test, with the highest resolution common to both system (still relatively low), so it is not necessarily significant; but it works fine and Open GL performance are most likely impacted by OS X itself.

Microsoft announced that the development of Windows Phone 7, the last version of their mobile OS, and their only hope to get back on the mobile devices market is now done. It has been sent to manufacturers so they can make the last few adjustments. We should now see a whole lot of Windows Phone 7 devices coming on the market since every manufacturer will want to have a market share.
Of Course, to get to that point, Microsoft will have to prove that their OS is good, but also convince developers to work on it. We will see if all the advantages (money) they promised them will be enough to convince them.

This is the end of the battle opposing HP and Dell for the purchase of 3PAR, a company specialized in the cloud system. Dell let the deal go after HP offered not less than $2.4 Billion, more than twice the original Dell offer.
So it is HP that got the deal. However, that battle will have consequences for both competitors, since Dell will have to review their growing strategy, and HP clearly overpaid 3PAR.

As you probably know, ARM processors are very popular right now, way more than others that are on other markets. It is therefore not surprising that Global Foundries announced proudly having engraved the first Cortex A9 in 28 nm. As a reminder, Apple uses the Apple A4, which was developed from the Cortex A8, which has one core and is engraved in 45 nm. The Cortex A9 has two cores.
For now, these processors are mostly developed for their power, but during the year 2011, we will see coming new chips that will be very energy efficient. With those optimizations, the Cortex A9 in 28 nm shouldn't consume more than the Cortex A8 in 45 nm, while being more powerful and more flexibility in use.

Macintouch tested the fasted computer running Mac OS X and of course, it is a Hackintosh. Of course, because Apple has always refused to allow overclocking on the Mac.
The computer they tested is more or less the equivalent of a Mac Pro built around a motherboard hosting to Xeon Westmere. THey chose the most powerful processors, two Xeon X5680 running on 6 cores at 3.33 GHz. these processors cost as much as $1700 - each - so Apple limits the Mac Pro at 2.93 GHz. These two processors were then overclocked to 4.2 GHz.

The results are very impressive: 

It is truly the fastest computer running Mac OS X. Of COurse, everything is not as simple as on a real Mac, since compatibility can never be perfect. Also to have such processors frequencies, you have to accept a very noisy machine.
Even if it is a very nice technical achievement, we cannot publicly endorse the Hackintosh, even though we continue to think that there would be a market for a computer between the iMac and the Mac Pro that has become too expensive.

Apple has now made yesterday's Special Event full video available in the Podcast section of iTunes. If you couldn't watch it yesterday, now is your chance to catch up.

By the way, the live stream was a successful real-life test of Apple's HTTP Streaming protocol: it's probably the best live video I've ever seen on the web and it only stuttered a couple of times, and picked up right away. Pretty impressive stuff (I'd really like to get my hands on some hard stats about yesterday: peak number of people watching, taht sort of stuff).

Oh, and about CPU usage? Safari never went about 27% CPU usage on my late 2009 2.8GHz MacBook Pro, and it was around 8-12% most of the time. For sure, HTTP streaming is not playing in the same league as Flash streaming ;-)

As usual, we write this little review of the new products that came out, after yesterday's excitement.

Let's start with iTunes. The software changes mainly to integrate Ping, a new social network that feels like myspace, since it is dedicated to music. On that, we shouldn't fool ourselves, it is another means, just like Genius, to serve iTunes interest, that is to make people buy more music by making them discover artists and song. We'll see in the future if that social network really works.

About the iPods, Apple announced yesterday having changed all the product line. We however notice that the iPod Classic has been left out, which is not surpassing at all, the time when the higher capacity the better is over, what is important now is having a lot of features in the smallest size possible. Here are details about the new iPods:

• The new Shuffle takes a step back with the return of the buttons, which are always nice to have even with a very good voice recognition. Too bad however that the capacity is now blocked at 2GB.
• The new Nano is the most surprising and attractive one. Once you get used to the touch screen, buttons feel like they're from another time. Everything in it is great, save maybe for its price, $149 for the 8GB model, and $179 for the 16GB. Some will also regret the end of video support and the lack of video camera. It's the price to pay in order to have so much in such a small device.
• The new iPod Touch is almost like an iPhone. Probably because of the problems they encountered with the glass back of the new iPhone, Apple kept the old design on this iPod Touch. It however becomes thinner, with just over 7mm, features a Retina display, runs on the A4 chip, and has to cameras. FaceTime support is a real plus for that device on social networks, since all iPod 4G users will be able to have FaceTime conversations with iPhone 4 users if both are connected to Wi-Fi.
  Still, we wish the back camera's resolution were not limited and the Wi-Fi slower than on other devices such as the iPad.

We'll conclude this review with the Apple TV. It is smaller that the proviso version with just 1/4 of the size. However, it lack the little freedom that the first generation had. You absolutely need to have a Mac turned on to be able to browse its content, while we wish users had been able to browse the content of a Time Capsule for example.
It doesn't have any internal storage, so it will only do streaming. We could call this an iTunes Box since Apple's goal is to make users rent iTunes content, since like the previous generation, it will only support a restricted number of video formats. Clearly, Apple's strategy is now to make more and more closed products, again.

[Edit]: the article now contains links to the Apple Store through which you can help Hardmac.com!

Pushed out from the market of the audio walkmans where it reigned over many years, Sony has adopted a low profile for a long time, trying to impose in other markets. This period seems to be over. The company appears intent to set out again with a head on attack attack on Apple by proposing streaming of music and vidéos via its Playstation Network that will be then accessible via the PS3 and PSP before to extend to the other products made by Sony, walkmans, computers, television sets…
The acknowledged goal is to compete with iTunes. For that, they will rely on the purchase of Gracenote carried out last year and that has not given them much so far.

Following the example of Apple, the service is intended to support the sales of the in-house products in order to create a dynamic, something that ensured the success of iTunes thanks to the iPod then the iPod, iPhone, iPad thanks to iTunes.

Steve Jobs presented today the new Apple TV, which is about 1/4 of the size of the previous model.

it features renting of contents on iTunes, streaming on Netfix, etc. However, it doesn't have any internal storage, but allows to stream content from other Apple devices on your Wifi network. Here are the new rates on iTunes:

• Recent movies (in HD when available): $4.99
• Movies (the price goes down with time): $2.99
• TV shows episodes: $0.99

Some will regret the fact that this new product, the "one more thing" of the keynote (Steve Jobs called it "one more hobby") looks even more closed than the previous model...

iTunes 10 was also announced today.

It features the usual upgrades, a slightly better look, but it also confirms Apple's decision to compete with social networks (they also presented GameCenter on iOS) since iTunes now includes Ping... a new social network dedicated to music!

Ping allows users to follow other users (people they have added as friend), to see their photos, videos, music previews, and of course to buy that music. Ping is according to Steve Jobs a mix of Twitter and Facebook. We notice that it appears to be very much like myspace, which was not named among the other social networks.

Ping is included in iTunes 10, which is available today through software update, and also on the App Store for iOS devices.

Apple unveiled today a completely new line of iPods.

The new shuffle gets the buttons back but keeps the features of the previous version. It is available for $49.

The new nano doesn't have buttons anymor except for volume, hold and on/off. It now features a touch screen that covers the entire surface.

It sells for $149 for the 8GB model and $179 for the 16GB model.

Le new iPod Touch. Its design doesn't change much (it thinner than the previous model) and gets a video camera shooting HD videos, it also has a front camera for FaceTime, and last but not least a Retina display and runs on the A4 chip.

• 8 GB fo $229
• 32 GB for $299
• 64 GB for $399

Like in good old times, the live video of the keynote will be available online. Starting at 10:00 AM Cupertino time, you will able to follow the keynote on www.apple.com if you have a Mac running Mac OS Y 10.6 (Snow Leopard), an iPhone, an iPod Touch or an iPad running iOS 3 or later. For those of you who don't have the required hardware, you will be able to follow the keynote on our live page: http://keynote.hardmac.com/.

We can not hide from you our surprise when we learned that Apple again decided to offer a Special Event (before one called them Keynote) with on-line streaming. This reversal after years is certainly related to the desire of the company to make publicity of HTTP Live Streaming technology that they try to impose vis-a-vis Flash on the web. Incidentally, this also shows in a certain way the superiority of Apple, since only they support this standard fully. Only the products running under iOS (3 minimum) and Mac OS X 10.6 will be able to view these vidéos.

We also wonder if Apple seeks to avoid any intermediaries between what they say and what will be published on line. Indeed, at the time of the keynote of Antennagate, the majority of the sites relaying the reported remarks also gave hot commentary on them, often in an unfavourable way. Anyway, let us be happy to have this direct streaming. For French speakers, we will ensure a translation of the important points on the http://keynote.macbidouille.com page so that you do not lose anything during the spectacle.

Belgium is a very particular country in Europe, because it is forbidden to sell simlocked phones. A Phone bought there is therefore very easy to resell anywhere in the world. Belgium iPhone, a french speaking belgian website published a story denouncing a Mobistar reseller that allegedly gave some money (sometimes up to 500€) under the table to get more iPhone than allowed by his quota. In order to still make some money, he allegedly decided to sell only half of his stock to his regular costumers, selling the other half on the web through eBay or other websites. The extra 350€ he was making on each allowed him to easily get reimbursed of his "investment".

This story will likely start an enquiry at Apple and Mobistar, one of the leading carriers in Belgium.

According to a study, after hard drives, digital cameras and video cameras will cross the step quickly and will adopt USB 3.0. Especially the latter will find the biggest advantage to use this platform which will make it possible reduce transfer time to the computers.  This standard would become the default  except for the important obstacle represented by the refusal of Intel to accept it.
Firewire followed an identical route. Quickly adopted on Mac by the will of Apple, it was largely ignored in the PC world when the manufacturers of digital cameras passed to standard DV. In the months and years that followed, Firewire imposed itself.

For the moment, Apple seems to have decided to follow Intel and to only move to USB 3.0 after Intel takes the first step.