Monthly Archive for October, 2005
Page 3 of 8
It looks like that in some Wal-Marts across the US (one confirmed in Albuquerque, NM) Xbox 360 demo units have begun showing up. These have playable titles in them including Kameo, Call of Duty 2, and King Kong. It was noticed that there is a separate external memory card slot for bonus content downloading. So far it looks quite promising from what I’ve heard, i can’t wait till this gets around in the UK. Joystiq have received comments from people who have been able to play on these units. Here is a brief overview.
The Good:
- Overall, the demos were enjoyable and one Joystiq reader even managed to beat the Call of Duty 2 demo.
- The power adapter isn’t as big as everyone thought, thank god!
The Bad:
- The ergonomics of the oddly-angled display may result in neck sprains.
- Bugs: collision detection issues were apparent in some of the games
- Mini boss battles with 6-year-olds who wouldn’t let go of the controllers. 
Along with the updated PowerBooks, Apple also announced the new 4-core (2 processors with 2 cores each) Power Mac G5. Now this is a beast. It can go up to 16GB of RAM, with 1TB of HDD space! Updates include: DDR2 SDRAM, PCI-Express, support for up to 1TB of storage and the long awaited multiple Cinema Display support – up to four 30-inch displays!!! Not too shabby, but we priced out a top of the line Power Mac G5 Quad and it came out to be about $18,000 without a display (granted, the thing had 16GB of RAM). The most expensive option maxed out at £12,873.02, and that is hardware wise without a screen. So it doesn’t include any extra software.
Apple Website (UK – Power Mac)
So at the PhotoPlus Expo 2005 Apple updates its PowerBooks, which are long overdue on updating. The 12-inch stays the same, except the price is now lower at £1099. Both the 15-inch and 17-inch PowerBooks got a one hour boost in battery life, yay! The 15-inch (£1399) gets a new 1440-by-960 display (up to 26% more pixels than the previous ‘Book), and the 17-inch (£1749) is 46% brighter and has 1680-by-1050-pixel resolution. For the high-end professionals who want to plug it into a big display, there is godd new for you. “Thanks to its built-in dual-link DVI support and 128MB of graphics memory, you even have the option of connecting your PowerBook to Apples breathtaking flat-panel displays, including the massive 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Display.” They also all feature Superdrives as standard! I sure would like that in a 12″ PowerBook, anyone have any money to spare? 
Apple Website (UK – PowerBook)
A guy in Florida, Paul, set out to buy a new hard drive. He went along to his local Staples and bought what seemed to be a new Maxtor 300GB HDD, but when he opened the box he fiund that all there was were 2 D sized batteries and an old yellow battery pack. Something must have gone wrong in the Staples warehouse, maybe an employee was taking his benefits a bit too far. Or maybe the guy was lying and just replaced the contents with his own batteries. I bet forensics could solve this…
read more (comments at Engadget)
My sister received an iPod nano for her name day. (It is like a birthday except you celebrate your name, every Hungarian name has a corresponding date in the calendar. E.g. Mine is February 3rd – That would be for all the Balazs’ in the world.) Anyway my sister let me have ago with it. It is really small, a lot smaller than I thought it would be. The hold switch is a little harder to push across than on the other iPods. The protective film is still on the iPod in the pictures below so it may look weird.
Courier Box.
iPod nano box open.
Contents of the iPod nano’s box.
Me holding the iPod nano.
The back of the iPod nano with the words “Live in dreams awake” engraved.
nano vs my 4G iPod, it is so damn small!
I just had to try out solitaire on a colour iPod. It is so much better than on my black and white screen, even if the screen is smaller.
As no-one at Engadget has the new iPod they couldn’t really take photos. But a kind reader, Garret M, has taken photos of his iPod that arrived this morning. More photos below.
The Box Open
The iPod in all its glory
5G vs 3G iPod, 5G clearly wins.
Steve Jobs showed off their latest iPod ‘silhouette’ advert at the ‘Special Event’ in San Jose. I say ‘silhouette’ because it is multi coloured and Eminem has shades so you can make out who he, otherwise you would think that the person is your average John Doe. Although I don’t like Eminem or his music I like the ad. Apple have gone to a length to make this ad considering how earlier last year Eminem sued Apple for using his music in an Ad without asking him. There have been reports from sites including The Unofficial Apple Weblog that Apple have taken the Ad from their website and it won’t be airing on the TV but I found it on Apple’s website and have download it. Just in case it disappears I have a link below to a smaller version.
iPod Ad [H.264 - 320 x 240 - 1.6MB] This requires Quicktime 7
Dr. Walid Elias Kai is a big fan of Google, he even states that “I adore Google services.” Dr. Kai recently had a baby with his Swedish wife Carol and in ispiration from Google, the baby was named ‘Oliver Google Kai’.
About this choice, Dr. Kai writes, “When we first knew that my wife Carol is pregnant, I said, ‘we will name our child Google.’ Everyone laughed and did not take me seriously. My brother said, ‘Yeah, name the next one yahoo fuji nikon.” And then, says Dr. Kai, the day came to make the baby official in the Swedish Registry. “I was with my friend Magnus Foss and my wife Carol, and I said yes, GOOGLE KAI. Carol knew how serious I am.”
There is even a website devoted to Google Kai. Lets just hope there won’t be any teasing in school (what are the chances of that?) Really, you would have to be a rather crazy Google fan for this to happen. I wonder how he persuaded his wife, did they even think about the adverse effects?
Last month I posted an article about the Xbox 360′s power supply and how big it was. Well there is even more evidence, the picture above and below only emphasise its size. The reason the AC adpater is external is to cut down the size of the 360. But now the wires will be even more messed up. It was also made xternal to address the “weight problems” that the original Xbox had. One comment on a digg story did say that “our testing unit has a much smaller power supply. So I think the shipping model will be even smaller“. I really hope it won’t be that big as it is quite a problem for me. I have tons of wires and AC adapters coming from my Mac, monitor and various other electronic equipment. I’d hate to think of all the electro-thingy build up that is surrounding those wires.
