AMD's mainstream Phenom II processors should rekindle the competition with Intel for clock speed, according to a collection of reports of an AMD demonstration session. Based on the recently unveiled Shanghai architecture being used for new Opterons, the quad-core desktop chips should make a modest leap to 3GHz in official clock speeds but will have room for overclocking previously only available ...

Apple released iPod touch Software 2.2 early Friday morning, along with iPhone Software 2.2. The update for the touch screen iPod added the ability to download podcasts when away from your computer

In tandem with the release of the iPhone 2.2 firmware, Apple has published the iPod touch 2.2 update, a separate download through iTunes. The software contains most of the upgrades of its iPhone equivalent, such as auto-correction toggle, mobile podcast downloads, and improvements to Mail. Also present are a variety of security and stability fixes, for components like Safari, Office Viewer and W...

A new Mac OS X malware application, dubbed OSX_LAMZEV.A, has apparently surfaced, and computer security company Trend Micro claims it has the potential to allow hackers to take control of infected Macs. The malicious application is not, however, a virus, and requires users to launch the app so it can install its payload, and it even goes so far as to ask which firewall port it can use

Apple slipped out Pro Applications Update 2008-004 late Thursday night. The update for the Final Cut Studio 2 app suite includes Final Cut Pro 6.0.5, Compressor 3.0.5, Color 1.0.3 and Shake 4.1.1, and the terse release notes simply state...

Verizon today marked the official launch of the BlackBerry Storm on its network. The device matches the $199 contract price of the rivalling iPhone 3G at AT&T and is widely regarded as Verizon's best alternative to the Apple handset in features and focus. The Storm has a similarly-sized 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen meant for finger input but relies on a unique click action that requires a phy...

Clusterball Arcade is a lot of fun and very challenging, although I had some quibbles with it that hold it back from being a great game

Apple released iTunes 8.0.2 along with iPhone Software 2.2 early Friday morning. The update for the multimedia management application improved accessibility with VoiceOver, corrected issues when connecting to the iTunes Store through proxies, improved quality when making MP3s, and fixed...

Apple released iPhone Software 2.2 early Friday morning, sporting previously rumored features like Google Street View and the ability to download podcasts when away from your computer

It's here. Google Street View, over the air Podcast downloads from iTunes and much more.

It's a bit strange for an Apple software update to land around midnight. Nevertheless, iPhone OS 2.2 is upon us, and it brought most of the changes we've heard about over the past couple months, as well as a handy new Home screen trick.Read More...

Goulwen, one of our team members, received a bad news yesterday when checking for the shipping status of his Apple DisplayPort-Dual Link DVI adapter. As indicated in the email below sent by Apple France, he will have to wait till mid-December, in best case:

This adaptor is required if you want to use the Apple 30” Cinema Display with the new MacBook models. So, you might have to wait till Christmas to hope getting such adapter in shops, or at least from the Apple Store… Maybe Apple is acting on purpose to push owners of the new MacBook models to purchase the new 24" LED Cinema Display...
If you consider that this is the only display which can work natively with the MacBook models, while all other displays (including previous Apple Cinema display) will require adaptors. We are still waiting for the missing adaptor: Mini DisplayPort -> DisplayPort (or HDMI) which will allow the new MacBook models to be plugged to HDMI peripherals...but none of them is branded by Apple, so why would you expect such adaptor to be developed by Cupertino...
[translation by Linathael]

iTunes update 8.0.2 is available via the software update and comes in at 60,3 MB.
Here is a list of changes
iTunes 8.0.2 improves stability and performance and provides a number of important bug fixes, including:
• Addresses a quality issue creating MP3s on some computers.
• Fixes a connectivity issue with the iTunes Store when using some Internet proxies with Mac OS X.
• Improves accessibility with VoiceOver.
[translation by crispin]

Apple on Thursday unveiled the long-awaited iPhone 2.2 update, offering users a number of enhancements and additions to maps and mail, as well as several improvements to stability and reliability. The v2.2 update provides the Maps app with Google Street View, and public transit directions. Dropped pins will now show addresses, and users can share locations over email. The Mail app itself had alleg...

Apple on Thursday released new updates to professional video and audio suites, including Final Cut Pro 6.05, Compressor 3.0.5, Color 1.0.3 and Shake 4.1.1. Apple says the Pro Applications Update 2008-04, a revision to Final Cut Studio 2.0. addresses general performance issues and improves overall stability. Final Cut Pro 6.0.5 addresses specific issues such as improved rendering of still images an...

In the interests of all those readers who need to unlock their iPhone 3G?s for use on different carriers andtested an iPhone 3G unlock that really seems to work. While the iPhone Dev Team plunder the secrets of the mysterious baseband in search of the ever elusive software unlock, some of us regular users just can?t wait.

Given the slowness that we have seen this year for the first SSD disks worthy of this name to arrive, we thought that it would still take a very a long time for this market to mature.
But it seems that this market has become wrapped up. Samsung who already have a 128 GB SSD disk that is used in the new portable range of Apple have announced that they have started the production of new models with double this capacity. But the best remains to come. The data flow announced for these products (containing memory MCL) are 220 MB/s for reading and 200 MB/s for writing. Samsung thus will join Intel which has only the excellent 80 GB disk with such mind boggling performances, and who have announced a still better160 GB.
The price of these products will remain certainly very high (probably above 600€), however their acceptable capacity and their performances that far surpass the traditional hard drives should open a top-of-the-range market to them. Manufacturers of less powerful disks will then have no other choice than to exploit the prices.
[translation by crispin]

Practically everyone has a mobile phones these days. While some people prefer the top of the line, latest gadget, others prefer less expensive, simpler phones. If you fall into this latter category, then you might be interested in the Samsung Propel SGH-a767....

It might be considered as useless, but it brings interesting information about the integration of components in the new MacBook when looking at it under X-Ray (Brought to us by http://www.theaftermac.com):

One can see how the battery is installed and the location of the HD. It illustrates also how technology can be packed; we might find some space for a Firewire controller…
[translation by Linathael]

Apple on Thursday unveiled iTunes 8.0.2, an update to its multimedia player that offers users a more stable platform, and improved accessibility. iTunes 8.0.2 resolves a quality issue some users experienced when creating MP3 files, as well as increased accessibility with VoiceOver. The update also fixes a connectivity issues with the iTunes store, when a user would connect to the store through a p...

Now available at your favorite iTunes, Apple gives you iPhone OS 2.2
It brings a number of enhancements and bug fixes, including
*Enhancements to Maps
-Google Street View
-public transit and walking directions
-display address of dropped pins
-share location via email
*Enhancements to Mail
-resolved isolated issues with scheduled fetching of email
-improved formatting of wide HTML email
-improved stability and performance of Safari
*Podcasts are now available for download in iTunes application (over Wi-Fi and cellular network)
*Decrease in call set-up failures and call drops
*Improved sound quality of visual voicemail messages
*Pressing the Home button from any Home screen takes you to the first Home screen
*Preference to turn on/off auto-correction in Keyboard Settings
It weighs in at 246MB and be carefull if you have a jailbroken/sim-unlocked iPhone as this update might turn your iPhone to stone and kill puppies.
Oh yes, and the update also brings some security fixes, including the infamous possibility to call ANY phone number when the phone is locked by using the "Emergency call" button:
Passcode Lock
CVE-ID: CVE-2008-4228
Available for: iPhone OS 1.0 through 2.1, iPhone OS for iPod touch 1.1 through 2.1
Impact: Emergency calls are not restricted to emergency numbers
Description: iPhone provides the ability to make an emergency call when locked. Currently, an emergency call may be placed to any number. A person with physical access to an iPhone may take advantage of this feature to place arbitrary calls which are charged to the iPhone owner. This update addresses the issue by restricting emergency calls to a limited set of phone numbers.
About time...
[translation by moose]

Mark/Space on Thursday launched Fliq, a social networking application for Mac. Fliq allows users to transfer photos, contacts and notes to other members on the same network. Previously only available on the iPhone, the Mac version integrates Address Book and iPhoto content for additional capabilities. A drag function can be used to move text and images from anywhere on the computer and then drop t...

Tech Radar has had the chance d' to have a prototype in hand of a Xeon mother board equipped with two Nehalem processors running at 2,8 GHz. The machine was equipped in addition with 24 GB of 1066 MHz RAM DDR3.
They could not make and publish large tests, however they launched SPEC CPU2006, a test often used by the foundries to give the raw power of their processor.
The machine obtained a score of 160. This figure does not mean much by itself, however we know that a configuration similar to our Mac Pro and equipped with two 3,4 GHz Xeon obtained 90 points with this test.
Thus the difference is enormous, and one could deduce from this simple test that the next Mac Pro has a high risk of blowing away the current model.
Note that this result is due mainly to the memory bandwidth (with the controller integrated into the CPU) which reached 35 GB/s.
[translation by crispin]

EZQuest has introduced the Thunder Pro Triple series of A/V RAID storage devices. Each unit offers two FireWire 800 ports, a FireWire 400 port and a USB port. The three-drive arrangement ships pre-configured as RAID 0 for the highest capacity and speed. The Oxford-chipset Hitachi SATA II drives run at 7200RPM with up to 64MB buffer cache. EZQuest claims data transfer speeds up to 80MB per second, ...

Apple has conceptualized a means of displaying icon-like status indicators on the iPhone's displays even when the handset is locked and the backlight turned off, a new company filing shows.

Apple has taken its embracing of third parties in the iPhone platform up a notch by introducing an "iPhone Your Life" section to its iPhone 3G product pages. Various third-party apps and tips are recommended in categories like work, play, and everything in between.Read More...

German company Ultrasone has released the smallest headphone in its HFI line, the HFI-15G. The open-back supra-aural design features a decentralized driver position that is claimed to widen the sound-stage by directing the waves to the outer ear, instead of straight into the ear canal. The company lists a frequency range of 20Hz to 20kHz, with a sound pressure level of 96dB. The 40mm Mylar drivers...

Orb Networks on Thursday launched OrbLive 2.0, the latest version of its media application for the iPhone 3G and iPod touch. The original version was created before the App Store was opened, and required users to jailbreak their phones. The new (official) app allows the mobile devices to access media that is available on a home PC, including videos, music, live television and webcams. OrbLive work...

Currency Converter
($2) is a tool for converting more than 200 currencies including all of the trading currencies of the world plus some legacy and even unofficial or virtual currencies. The application uses a conversion table interface that is constantly updated as you type. The currency data is updated automatically from the web every hour or users may choose to manually update it to ensure the...

SnapTell Explorer is a handy iPhone app that lets you look up various products on Amazon, Wikipedia, and more by snapping a photo. We took a spin and liked the functionality; we just found ourselves wishing it would identify more products.Read More...

Calories 1.3 ($19) is a nutrition tracking and analysis utility for Mac OS X. The application allows users to select foods from the applications database and then sort them into breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack categories. The update has added several new localizations including German, French and Spanish and now the names of week's, days and months are localized based on your system preferences...

The Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology in Germany has allegedly discovered an iPhone vulnerability that allows a maliciously crafted website to force the phone to dial a number, according to Spiegel. The researchers claim that a programmer would only need to know basic programming, with just three lines of code required to exploit the issue. Clicking the link to a malicious sit...

The updated Google Mobile iPhone app is reportedly using Apple's private APIs (application programming interfaces), according to Daring Fireball. The voice search feature can be initiated by lifting the phone to the ear. The automatic process requires moving the phone and triggering the proximity sensor. Allegedly, there is no public API that supports the particular combination and order of events...

Popular consumer information company Zagat Survey, in collaboration with Handmark, has launched an app for the iPhone and iPod touch, Zagat To Go. The application offers reviews and ratings for over 40,000 hotels, restaurants, nightspots and shops in over 100 countries. With a combination of photos, menus, Google maps and click-to-call capabilities, users can find establishments around the world a...

An exploit has been discovered in the Safari Web browser on iPhone that could allow a maliciously-crafted Web page take control of your iPhone and force it to dial any phone number, for instance a nice, expensive 1-900 number that could cost the user dearly

Thanks to a new application called Vocito, anyone who's lucky enough to be using Google's GrandCentral service can now make GrandCentral phone calls right from their Mac desktops.Read More...