About this (Quad Power) Mac

I don't know if this is a fake or not. However, even though it would be easy to fake this (especially since it says DDR and not DDR2), I wouldn't be completely surprised if it's a real screen capture either.

We have all been predicting the quad Power Mac for just about forever now. It's about time it finally shows up.

New Apple trailers site - HD galore

Apple is pushing HD H.264 in a big way, and has put up a new QuickTime trailers site with lots of 720p and 1080p HD trailers. It's too bad Apple's new iTunes TV show store however does not even use 480p standard definition video.

iTunes 6 is out, now with TV show downloads

iTunes 6 was released along with new iPods that support video playback. Included in iTunes 6 is support for video purchases, including TV shows. Unfortunately, the selection of TV shows is small, and they are not available in places like Canada. Unfortunately, the videos are only 320x240, which although (barely) acceptable for now, are only about one quarter (or less) of the resolution of 480p DVD quality video. One can only hope that once this technology matures, internet bandwidth increases, and H.264 decoding speeds of the iPod improve, Apple will offer 480p downloads and the selection of available titles will increase.

Also, as expected, iTunes refuses to manage DivX files, but that shouldn't impact most customers. Unlike the past with MP3 music files, these formats of video files are not that important overall to the general paying public.

[Update 2005-10-12]

The biggest size H.264 videos the iPod can decode is 320x240 at 768 Kbps and 30 fps, hence the 320x240 size limit at the iTunes Store. I hate to say it, but I hope Apple decides to orphan these iPods in a year or two, by releasing a new widescreen iPod line that can decode 720x480 H.264 at 2 Mbps and 30 fps (and resize it in realtime to fit-to-screen), along with video content to match.

I just downloaded the Pixar Luxo Jr. short, and although it was watchable, it definitely wasn't pretty at that low resolution on my 20" iMac.

Is this the new iPod video?

I don't know where this originally came from, and I don't know if it's real, but we'll know very soon.

[Update 2005-10-12]

Indeed it is absolutely real. :)

Apple reports stellar quarterly performance, and the stock drops like a rock

Apple yesterday released its 2005 fiscal Q4 and fiscal numbers. Despite the stellar numbers, AAPL dropped like a rock in after hours trading, by almost 11% to US$45.99.

Sales of iPods were up 220% to 6.451 million units since the previous quarter last year, and sales of Macs were up 48% to 1.236 million units. However, the numbers, particularly for the iPod, were evidently simply not good enough for the investors. It seems the street believed the analysts' unrealistic rosy predictions for iPod sales and when those numbers were not met, decided to lock in profits. That is reasonable I suppose though, as gains on AAPL have been astronomical since last year. As they say, buy on rumours and sell on news.

Before the Apple financial conference call, I had made a (somewhat) flippant prediction at Ars Technica of 1234567 Macs and 6543210 iPods sold during the quarter. Ironically, that prediction beat all the analysts. ;) Sometimes it pays not to think too hard. :)

The big news for today however is what's on deck for Apple's One More Thing event, scheduled for 10 am in San Jose. I had predicted new Power Macs and PowerBooks, but just about all the rumour sites now state I am wrong, and this is about iPods. Perhaps, but even if so, we should expect new Power Macs and PowerBooks sometime soon.

Yonah is a power hog?

CNET News has published an article about the power output of Intel's next generation dual-core Yonah chips. It suggests that early predictions of Yonah power utilization as implied by Intel's Thermal Design Power (TDP) values (see diagram) may be somewhat optimistic:

The "T" class of Yonah chips, which are expected to be fitted in most business notebooks, will come with a maximum power consumption of between 25 and 49 watts. Right now, single-core Pentium Ms top out at 27 watts.

If true, that's not entirely unexpected given that these chips have two complete and independent cores, but it is still disappointing. Historically, Apple has preferred CPUs with a max power utilization under 30 Watts. However, the specifications published by CNET indicate that dual-core 2+ GHz Yonah chips are far above that 30 Watt barrier.

It does make one wonder how Apple will deal with this issue. Will Apple will choose to use Intel's fastest and hottest Yonah chips in some PowerBook models, or will Apple choose to use only slower and/or low voltage (LV) chips to save power?

[Update 2005-10-13]

The DigiTimes echoes CNET's article, but goes on to suggest that these numbers are actual TDP values, and not absolute maximum power utilization values. (TDP is a better representation of what would be expected as an effective maximum with real-world software, but it is lower than the absolute maximum power utilization possible, with say a power virus.)