Monthly Archive for February, 2006

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Apple bumps up the speed of the MacBook Pros

Published on Tuesday, February 14, 2006 in Apple, Noteworthy and Technology. Closed

The Apple Store Online went down earlier today and the speculation began again, but however Apple had updated the site quite quickly. As a special Valentines Day gift Apple has made the Mac Book Pros even faster. The 1.67GHz model is now at 1.83GHz and the 1.83GHz model has been replaced with a 2.0GHz model. On the top model (2.0GHz) you can add an optional upgrade to 2.16GHz, but it will cost you $300. This speed change has yet to be made on the UK and other online Apple Stores. All of the orders of the MacBook Pros will be updated to the newer, faster, versions. This is probably why there was a delay in the shipping of the MacBooks.

Xbox 360 ‘hacked’ – File transfers to/from HDD

Published on Monday, February 13, 2006 in Gaming, Microsoft, Noteworthy, PC, Software and Technology. Closed

The Xbox 360 has been ‘hacked’ so that you can transfer games saves to and from the Xbox 360′s hard drive and to and from the memory card (by effectively turning the memory card into a flash drive). Using a free program that is now available, Xplorer360 can access every single part of the 360 hard drive. Features:

FULL Read/Write to 360 HDDs.
FULL Read/Write to 360 Memory Units.
Physical and Logical drive access.
Support for opening of dumps of both devices.
Backup/Restore dump options.

I don’t think that anyone from the public has tried it yet, so we don’t know for sure how well it works. To add or remove data from the hard drive, you have to take it apart and put it into your computer via a SATA controller, and the memory unit has to be taken apart too. So don’t try this if your worried that it might break, because it might and Microsoft won’t fix your box.
“Also interesting – this tool will allow you to move over your old Xbox 1 gamesaves to your Xbox 360 (they will probably have to go somewhere in /partition3/Compatibility/Xbox1/ or /partition3/H2/), something that was impossible up to now.” This seems like an interesting feature, that I wish MS could have incorporated it into the 360, because I will not try this out as I don’t want to ruin my box (nor the warranty from MS).

An iPod rescue story…

Published on Monday, February 13, 2006 in Apple, Shorts and Technology. Closed

I was bounding down the stairs into the subway, three steps at a time, hoping to make the train. I had my iPod and was experiencing everything dreamily. To say it was a new iPod was only half of it. I had sent it in for repairs. It had stopped working just before the warranty ran out, a very modern kind of good luck, given that some iPods seem to stop working just after. It had been delayed in its return. This was only its second day in action. I took the last few steps in a giant jump, sidestepping a man in a wheelchair who was shaking a cup of change. Then I felt a brief tug on my ears, and silence. The iPod had fallen through a hole in my coat pocket and skidded across the platform like a bright white hockey puck.

Read the whole story to find out what happened. I hope I won’t run into anything like this.
read more

New 1GB nano’s are ‘scratchproof’

Published on Sunday, February 12, 2006 in Apple, Noteworthy and Technology. Closed

scratchproof nano Apple may have done something to the new nano’s that they have put out (more photos after the link):

Anyway, once I got everything out the first thing I did was put my crytal skin on. It DID NOT work. There is a slight indentation that run all arround the ipod on the edge. So ~1mm from the edge the face for some reason slightly dips down and it causes a long thing air bubble down all of the edges of the ipod when you apply the crytal film(it goes down too low for the film to cling to).
As guessed bellow, this is NOT a defect, this is how ALL new ipod nano(atleast the 1gb… for now are) The Crystal Film is now useless for the front so don’t bother!

So Apple has responded in an unusual way to that nano scratch lawsuit. It seems like an interesting idea, but if you put your nano into your pocket or bag with other items in it, it will still scratch. This is only usefull when laying it down on a table, and I don’t think that is how the majority of the scratches were gained. Either way it can still be an annoyance, Apple should have made a statement or something to ‘warn’ people.

Watch a 500kV powerline being disconnected

Published on Sunday, February 12, 2006 in Random Stuff and Shorts. Closed

You need to watch this video, amazing (on Google Video). [digg]

PS3 Hands-on Review: “barely superior to Xbox 360?”

Published on Saturday, February 11, 2006 in Gaming, Shorts and Technology. Closed

At this point in the game Sony’s been so intensely tight-lipped about the goings on of the PlayStation 3 that we’re becoming increasingly skeptical about information that’s starting to leak — not even because we think it’s dubious (which it usually appears to be), but because we are starting to think they’re further behind development on the console than they are actually letting on. Either way, Kikizo claims to have some details and working experiences from “three PS3 developers in multiple territories” that supposedly got close-to-final hardware from Sony recently (which does not jibe, sir, with what we heard from that supposed PSM leak that said the hardware’s gone final). According to Kikizo’s report … there’s apparently not enough room for a 2.5-inch drive in the PlayStation 3 mockup box they’ve been showing off all over the world (the question of the internal drive certainly does keep getting raised), that the PlayStation 3 is “a machine barely superior to Xbox 360,” and that launch titles will look something akin to “nice Xbox 360 material.” No, there’s no mention of their Xbox Live killer, either. [Engadget]

So the PS3 will have a hard drive?

Published on Friday, February 10, 2006 in Gaming and Technology. Closed

ps3 It looks like the PS3 may have a hard drive. But what is strange is that Ken Kutaragi, the big man at Sony, said himself that there will be no hard drive for it because “no matter how much [capacity] we put in it, it won’t be enough.” And because of this statement, all information points to the fact that there will be a hard drive, but it will be an optional accessory. However a BusinessWeek article said that the console will have “a huge hard disk to store photos, music, and TV shows.” This may not seem credible, but it was written by a Japanese reporter, Kenji Hall, who has links inside Sony. Kenji seems to know what he is talking about because he mentions that the failed PSX (only launched in Japan) had a hard drive, so it is weird that this would be a mistake. So the PS3 hard drive mystery has still not been settled.

Intel Core Duo really 64-bit?

Published on Friday, February 10, 2006 in Apple, Noteworthy, PC and Technology. 1 Comment

intel logo

So Intel has been lying to us! It has been found out that these consumer ‘Yonah’ processors are 64-bit compatible. The pro-grade Sossaman chips are 64-bit, which Intel openly admits, however what they don’t say is that this chip is identical to the ‘Yonah’ model. The Intel chip inside the new Mac’s could potentionally boot Windows XP 64-bit edition (as it has support for EFI).
I think Intel has to get working on a fix for this, otherwise people will come down hard on them. This is really bad on Intel’s part, because if they released it as 64-bit then Apple could launch Tiger for the Intel Mac’s as 64-bit and not have to downgrade it to a paltry 32-bit version. They have some serious explanation to do.

A real video iPod coming soon?

Published on Thursday, February 9, 2006 in Apple and Technology. Closed

Think Secret seems to think so with their inside information. However they have been wrong in the past, a lot of time.

Think Secret can confirm recent rumblings that Apple is nearing completion of a completely revamped video iPod that will shed the ubiquitous mechanical click wheel for a touch screen and will sport a 3.5-inch diagonal display. This video iPod, which has been in development and on the table since before Apple released the 5G iPod last year with video playback, will feature a display that will occupy the entire front face of the device. Sources who have seen the device report that it features a digital click wheel, one that overlays the touch-sensitive display and appears when a finger touches it and disappears when the finger is removed.

They also go onto say that it will be available at around April, which I think is too soon to the release of the 5G iPod. I think that they will definitely do a true video iPod which has a bigger screen, but it will be released later this year at around October or November and they will continue to provide the 5G iPod for those who don’t want to watch video that much and want a real click wheel. This way those who wouldn’t use the video function that much won’t suffer from the virtual click wheel, the battery life because of the big screen and the size because of the battery.

The Mac mini Portable

Published on Thursday, February 9, 2006 in Apple, PC and Technology. Closed

One inventive Mac mini owner decided to make aportable system, complete with a thumb keyboard, a trackpad, 8″ LCD screen and a re-chargeable lithium battery. But for what reason? We don’t know. To me it doesn’t look very portable, and the thumb keyboard would be ideal… for a phone and not for a computer. You might as well mod an iBook to work as a tablet. That is more portable and would be a hell of a lot easier to carry around.