Applelinks.com Moore’s Tech Web Reader

Moore’s Tech Web Reader - Friday, June 8, 2007

By Charles W. Moore Friday, June 08, 2007.
Filed under: News � Tech-Industry �

827

Apple MacBook Pro 15" with Intel Santa Rosa Review
Sun CEO spills Apple Leopard secret
Apple to use Sun's ZFS in Leopard
Apple to Drop HFS?
Leopard May Dominate Jobs' Speech At Conference
How Big Will the iPhone Be?
Apple Up on Analyst's iPhone Prediction
CPU CRUNCHING:MacBook Pro "Santa Rosa" versus Others
How to Clone and Backup Your Hard Drive
PC Mag: Inside Apple: Get Ready for the iPhone & WWDC
PC Mag: Is Apple Opening the iPhone?
The Mac Night Owl: The Apple Product Report: Too Much Hype?

___

Apple MacBook Pro 15" with Intel Santa Rosa Review

NoteBookReview's Nicholie reports:

We'll be taking a look at Apple's MacBook Pro, to be specific the most recently updated model as of June 5th, 2007. The MacBook Pro line is aimed at the professional market, including those who do heavy amounts of video and photo editing. The MacBook Pro is best described as a mid-size desktop replacement, or performance laptop.

Before I go to far I should say this is not only my first laptop review, but also my first Mac computer. Thus, this review will be geared more toward people considering the MacBook Pro as an alternative option to a Windows based laptop, including some things that would seem trivial to the veteran Mac owner....

A big improvement for this generation of the MacBook Pro over the last is the introduction of the LED back-lit screen. LED back-lighting is touted to provide a more evenly lit screen with sharper images and colors without sacrificing battery life. All these I find to be true, the screen is without a doubt the best i've ever seen on a laptop, and better than a lot of desktop monitors I use...

Another situation where powerful laptops usually see a downfall is in generating a lot of heat. The HDD on the MBP can get pretty hot to the touch when under a heavy load such as a 30 gigabyte file transfer, but other than that the case remained mostly cool, only picking up a good bit of warmth when I did my benchmarking....

This is an excellent upgrade to the MacBook Pro, I'm extremely satisfied with it so far. I'm new to Mac computers, new to OS X, but I am one happy switcher.

For the full review visit here:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3747

Sun CEO spills Apple Leopard secret

Computerworld's Gregg Keizer reports:

Apple Inc. may have a jones for secrecy, but that doesn't mean it can keep its partners quiet.

On stage Wednesday in Washington, Sun Microsystems Inc. CEO Jonathan Schwartz revealed that his company's open-source ZFS file system will replace Apple's long-used HFS+ in Mac OS X 10.5, a.k.a. "Leopard," when the new operating system ships this fall. "This week, you'll see that Apple is announcing at their Worldwide Developers Conference that ZFS has become the file system in Mac OS X," said Schwartz.

ZFS (Zettabyte File System), designed by Sun for its Solaris operating system but licensed as open-source, is a 128-bit file storage system that features, among other things, "pooled storage," which means that users simply plug in additional drives to add space, without worrying about such traditional storage parameters as volumes or partitions.

For the full report, visit here:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9023878

Apple to use Sun's ZFS in Leopard

The Register's Austin Modine reports:

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz may have let the cat out of the bag on Apple's plans for Mac OS 10.5 Leopard's file system. While showing off the Zettabyte File System in Sun's 'Thumper' hybrid storage/server platform at a company event in Washington today, Schwartz let it drop that Apple too has big plans for the open source file system.

"In fact, this week you'll see that Apple is announcing at their Worldwide Developer Conference that ZFS has become the file system in Mac OS 10," Schwartz said.

For the full report, visit here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/07/apple_using_zfs_in_leopard/

Apple to Drop HFS?

Hardmac's Lionel says:

About a year ago, the information leaked that Apple was really interested by Sun's file system, known as ZFS.

If we believe information reported by Jonathan Schwartz from Sun, Apple could use the ZFS as the default file system in Leopard.

If you want to know a bit more about ZFS, hereafter is the news we published last January about it:

Next version of Mac OS X, aka Leopard, will support Sun file system, known as ZFS for Zettabyte File System. What will be changed for Mac users?

First, ZFS is independent of HD storage space - quite almost has it supports up to 16 exaBytes HD, in other words 16 millions TB. Each file can use up to 16 exaBytes too. To compare with the current HFS+ file system in Tiger, we are "limited" to 16TB HD or a file while HFS+ support tops to 16 exaBytes too....

Of course ZFS is not perfect, there is currently no support for encrypting data, and journaling is not as easy as with HFS+. In addition, it is currently not possible to boot from ZFS volumes, even though they are working on this feature, when Apple releases Leopard, ZFS support might be initially limited to external volumes (non bootable) or might even limit this feature to OSX Server.

For the full commentary, visit here:
http://www.hardmac.com/news/2007-06-07/#6851

Leopard May Dominate Jobs' Speech At Conference

MarketWatch's Rex Crum reports:

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs is expected to use one of his rare public appearances next week to tout the latest version of the product that made the company famous in the first place -- the operating system.

Much of the focus on Apple these days is centered on its popular iPod digital music player or the hotly anticipated iPhone, slated for release later this month.
But at the company's annual developers conference in San Francisco next week, most expect the attention to shift to Leopard, the company's newest operating system.

For the full report, click here.

How Big Will the iPhone Be?

BusinessWeek's Peter Burrows reports:

Few Stocks Trade On Emotion The Way Apple Inc. Does. Its Rip-roaring Initial Public Offering In 1980 Created The Template For Modern Tech Mania, While Making Steve Jobs A Gazillionaire. When The Company Fell On Hard Times In The Mid-1990s, No Amount Of Good News Could Pierce The Cloud Of Doom Hanging Over Investors. Now, With The Launch Of The Hugely Hyped Iphone In A Few Weeks, Momentum Investors Are Driving Apple Shares To Unexplored Territory. The Stock Has Doubled In The Past Year, To 122. Apple's Market Cap Recently Topped $100 Billion For The First Time.

Hard As It Is To Believe, All The Excitement Surrounding Jobs And His New Toy May Actually Understate The Impact Of This Device On Apple's Fortunes. Beyond The Hysteria Surrounding Its June 29 Launch, The Iphone Has The Potential For Adding A Totally New, $10 Billion-a-year Business Within Just A Few Years. If Apple Can Expand So-called Smartphones From A Luxury Carried By Corporate Road Warriors Into An Everyday Tool For The Masses - Combining The Functions Of A Blackberry And An Ipod - Apple Could Soon See A New Growth Tear.

For the full report, click here.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2007/tc20070606_154290.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_top+story

Apple Up on Analyst's iPhone Prediction

AP Business Writer Rachel Metz reports:

Apple shares raced upward again Thursday, fueled by excitement and anticipation over the soon-to-be-released iPhone and an analyst's prediction that the company could sell 45 million of them in 2009.

Apple shares gained $2.69, or 2.2 percent, to $125.33 in afternoon trading. Earlier, the stock jumped $3.97, or 3.2 percent, to an all-time high of $127.61.

In a note to clients Thursday, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster raised his price target for the stock to $160 from $140. Munster estimated the company will sell 45 million of the gadgets in 2009.

For the full report, visit here:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070607/apple_mover.html?.v=1

CPU CRUNCHING:MacBook Pro "Santa Rosa" versus Others

BareFeats' rob-ART morgan reports:

As we've said before, we are very excited about the new MacBook Pro with the "Santa Rosa" chipset (faster 800MHz frontside bus), faster graphics processor (GeForce 8600M GT), greater main memory capacity (4GB), and greater capacity 7200rpm hard drive option (160GB). In this test session, we focused on applications that push the dual CPU cores.

Mac Pro 4-core = Mac Pro 4-core Xeon 3GHz tower (8GB memory)
MacBook Pro 2.4 = 15" MacBook Pro "Santa Rosa" 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo (4GB memory)
MacBook Pro 2.33 = 17" MacBook Pro "Late 2006" 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo (3GB memory)
MacBook 2.16 = 13" MacBook "Early 2007" 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo (3GB memory)

The new MacBook Pro 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo with the "Santa Rosa" chipset is an incremental improvement to the previous high-end MacBook Pro C2D 2.33GHz when it comes to CPU intensive tasks. Our 3D Gaming tests showed more dramatic differences in the two MacBook Pro models thanks to the GPU upgrade.

For the full report, visit here:
http://www.barefeats.com/rosa02.html

How to Clone and Backup Your Hard Drive

MacInstruct's Stephen Korecky says:

When you need to clone your drive, or simply do a full backup, someone usually tells you to use Carbon Copy Cloner (Donation Recommended) or SuperDuper! ($27.95). Sure, both of these applications are great programs, but they aren't necessary. You can use Apple's own software that comes free with your Mac!

We're talking about Disk Utility ( User > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.app ) It's free, easy-to-use, and it does the job right.

For the full report, visit here:
http://www.macinstruct.com/node/147

PC Mag: Inside Apple: Get Ready for the iPhone & WWDC

With the iPhone "set" for a June 29th release, questions abound about what will happen at next week's WWDC. New Macs? Leopard?

To read more, go to:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2142940,00.asp

PC Mag: Is Apple Opening the iPhone?

"Even with a firm release date and FCC approval, much about the iPhone remains cloaked in mystery. We know that the phone will run what Apple CEO Steve Jobs calls "a full version of OS X," but the company has yet to reveal some very basic details about the phone's innards, keeping even its processor and architecture a closely guarded secret. That's in addition to a handful of outstanding questions about how the user interface will work, mind you.

Now, in the shadow of next week's Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC), there looms an even larger question mark: Just how open will the iPhone be to independent software vendors looking to develop programs for the device?"

To read more, go to:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2143044,00.asp

The Mac Night Owl: The Apple Product Report: Too Much Hype?

You know, wherever I look online, there seems to be a story about Apple. Of course, that's also what we do here, but even places where you expect to read about politics, the rush release of Paris Hilton from prison and other more traditional coverage, there's something about the iPhone. If it's not the iPhone, it's the alleged slip of the tongue from Sun Microsystems president and CEO Jonathan Schwartz, in which it was revealed that Mac OS X Leopard would include support for their ZFS file system.