Apple adds Sony Ericsson K790 support in OS X 10.4.9

This is old news for some of you, but I just tried to sync my phone again for the first time after the 10.4.9 update. Apple has finally added support for my Sony Ericsson K790a to iSync in OS X 10.4.9, as well as for several other phones. The full list is here:

Motorola K1 Bluetooth + USB
Motorola K1m Bluetooth + USB
Motorola V3m Bluetooth + USB
Motorola L2 Bluetooth + USB

Samsung D600 Bluetooth
Samsung D900 Bluetooth

Nokia N80 Bluetooth + USB
Nokia E61 Bluetooth + USB
Nokia E62 Bluetooth + USB
Nokia N71 Bluetooth + USB
Nokia N72 Bluetooth + USB
Nokia N73 Bluetooth + USB
Nokia N91 Bluetooth + USB
Nokia N93 Bluetooth + USB
Nokia 6102 Bluetooth
Nokia 6103 Bluetooth
Nokia 6131 Bluetooth + USB

Sony Ericsson K610i Bluetooth + USB
Sony Ericsson K790i Bluetooth + USB
Sony Ericsson K800i Bluetooth + USB
Sony Ericsson Z525a Bluetooth + USB

Remember to remove your old plug-ins though, or else you'll get this iSync message:

8-core Mac Pros imminent

Thanks to Apple Insider for pointing out another leak at the US Apple Store indicating new Macs will have quad-core CPUs. The same leak is present at Apple Store Canada. The text reads:

Every new Mac features powerful dual-core or quad-core Intel processors, the world's most advanced operating system, and more. Build your Mac to your exact specifications, or start with our recommended configurations that are optimized for Creative Suite 3.

Current Mac Pros have dual dual-core CPUs. It has been widely speculated that future Mac Pros will have up to two quad-core CPUs (for a total of eight cores), and this leak seems to confirm the speculation (again).


And to think, it was only two years ago when we thought Quad G5 cores was a big deal.

G4 7448 now available... finally

We first started talking about the Freescale PowerPC G4 7448 CPU way back in 2004, and fully expected to see them in the wild by 2005.

Boy were we ever wrong. It is now almost 3 years later and only now are we finally seeing those 7448 upgrade cards available for purchase. The max speed is 2.0 GHz for single-CPU cards, and up to 1.8 GHz for dual-CPU cards. Unfortunately, no Cube-specific upgrade cards are offered.

As expected, these 90 nm chips are cooler running, and thanks to their 1 MB L2 cache (double that of the 7447A) and improved Altivec execution, they are also much faster clock-for-clock compared to previous G4 chips. xlr8yourmac has the first review.

While a huge improvement over previous G4s, it's too little, too late. The US$679 dual 1.8 upgrade card is still significantly slower overall than even the low end $599 1.66 GHz Core Duo Mac mini.

Apple TV, Dissected

Anandtech has gotten its hands on an Apple TV unit and dissected it for our benefit. Some of its innards:

1) 40 GB 2.5" laptop hard drive
2) nVidia GeForce Go 7300 64 MB, with Turbo Cache support
3) Intel 945G chipset
4) ULV 1 GHz Pentium M Dothan?
5) 256 MB RAM

I wonder if Apple is utilizing the GeForce Go 7300 for H.264 decode assist.

TechRestore also has some pictures.

DVD Jon says Jobs is full of it

DVD Jon, the Scandavian hacker famous for defeating CSS on DVDs, thinks Jobs is full of it:

Steve Jobs is claiming that licensing FairPlay is not feasible and using bogus arguments to support his claim. Licensing FairPlay is quite feasible, it’s just that Steve doesn’t want to do so.

That seems like a fair assessment.

Jobs' blog: Thoughts on Music

Steve Jobs has published on Apple's website a long blog called Thoughts on Music, about the iPod, iTunes music, and digital rights management (DRM). It seems this blog may have come about because of repeated calls by others in the industry and by various governments to open up iTunes' proprietary FairPlay DRM technology, to allow iTunes music to work with other personal music players. He concludes by saying that Apple would welcome DRM-less music distribution.

While I agree with this stance in principle, I am suspicious of Jobs' motives for making this statement. Jobs clearly does not want to open up FairPlay (and says as much right in his blog), but it seems he has felt the criticism of Apple's proprietary iPod/iTunes DRM, and has attempted to redirect that criticism to the music companies. I wonder if Jobs would have had the same opinion about Pixar's movies on iTunes when he was CEO of that company. Actually, there is no need to wonder. We already know Jobs' stance on DRM for video content: He wanted Pixar to have nothing to do with advanced next generation hi-definition video discs (Blu-ray and HD DVD), until they could be proven to be hack-proof.

It's a rather complete about-face on DRM, methinks.