IBM's Power.org & IBM ships 1 millionth G5 970FX CPU

In Beijing yesterday, IBM launched Power.org, to promote its POWER/PowerPC architecture.

In their press release today they describe Power.org as a "community meant to promote advances in Power Architecture technology and make those advances available to a wider community, accelerating open standards for this customizable technology" and go on to describe some of the companies involved and current projects.

Of direct interest to Apple users is also the mention that IBM has now shipped over 1 million of its 90 nm G5 PowerPC 970FX CPUs, which is used in current iMacs, Power Macs, and Xserves. The original G5 Power Macs shipped with the 130 nm G5 PowerPC 970.

Special Apple Canada pushing the G5 Power mac to Canadian businesses

Apple Canada is continuing its G5 promotional website, www.g5testdrive.ca, that it started last year.

Last year they gave away stopwatches. This year they are giving away an Apple keychain to anyone who registers and test drives a G5, and they are also having a draw for a G5 Power Mac with 20" Cinema Display. Also, this year they have a Productivity Calculator for businesses to assess the feasibility of adding G5 machines.



In addition, Apple is offering 0% 24 month leases to eligible businesses. The terms are as follows:

24-Month, 0%, Fair Market Value Lease

Through December 31, 2004, when your business enters into a qualifying 24-month lease agreement, you will pay 0% interest through Apple Financial Services.

Promotion Details:

Eligible equipment includes iMac, iBook, PowerBook, Power Mac G5, Xserve, Xserve RAID, and Apple Displays.

Soft costs (software, services, etc) are limited to 10% of total lease amount. If soft costs exceed 10%, they must be covered under a separate lease agreement.

24 equal monthly payments on a minimum transaction of $5,000.

For qualifying commercial accounts only.

For most businesses, this should represent the most interesting aspect of the promotion, and will stimulate more interest than the Power Mac draw and the keychain giveaway. The keychain is pretty nice though. ;)

The Canadian iTunes Music Store is now up

The Canadian iTunes Music Store is now online. Steve Jobs missed his stated November deadline just by a day, but given that the price of songs is 99 cents Canadian, I think we can forgive him. :) That makes Canada the cheapest iTunes Music Store localization in the world.

To access the store, iTunes is required. You can download the latest version of iTunes from www.itunes.com.