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July 8th through 15th Archives

Monday, July 14th 2003 12:57 CDT

TidBits

• Check out this custom painted PowerBook G4 titanium. It's been airbrushed with a dragon design.
• There's some details over at Apple AirPort Weblog on 3rd party 802.11g wireless cards and AirPort 3.1.
• According to this story, the iTunes Music Store should be available for Canadian users in the fall.

Final Word on 3rd Party 802.11g Cards

A reader sent in this info anonymously:

Here's some info on the Airport 3.1 driver and 3rd party cards. Basically, Apple stopped trying to filter out 3rd party devices based on the same chipset, since people kept patching the driver anyway, but they're not doing anything to actively support them.

Airport 3.1 supports any device using the Broadcom BCM4306 802.11g chipset, which is used in PCI cards for desktops and CardBus cards for PowerBooks. In a PowerBook, if you leave the card inserted it acts just like an Airport Extreme module and disables the internal Airport module (you can't use them simultaneously). If you eject it, the internal Airport module remains disabled until you reboot. It also can confuse the Network preference pane, which may keep creating new network interfaces, all named "Airport", each time you bring it up.

For free it's not bad, but there's still room for 3rd party drivers to make 802.11g cards a smoother experience. At least one 3rd party developer is actively working on such a product.

Jozwiak to Speak Wednesday

Apple's VP of Hardware Marketing will be giving his keynote address at Macworld Creative Pro in New York on Wednesday at 9:30 AM, according to the expo site. We don't think there'll be a webcast but we'll post a link if we find one.

Wednesday, July 9th 2003 14:37 CDT

7200 RPM Travelstar Performance Report

A reader sent in this minireview of the new Hitachi Travelstar 7200 RPM drive that is now available:

If you want to share any feedback with your readers, here's what I've experienced with the drive so far. I ordered one the day I saw the plug on your site for Trans Intl and it arrived the next day. I put it into my PBG4 667 and so far it's been amazing. All programs seem to run much faster--especially those that access the hard disk frequently like Safari, Entourage, etc. I actually feel like I am using a desktop as simple things like window closing and directory listings are much snappier. I had previously upgraded the 4200RPM stock drive to a 5400RPM drive but this was a much better improvement. That's my 2 cents.

What's Happening at MWNY--er--Macworld CreativePro?

The faithful still hope and pray for a PowerBook made of aluminum with AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth built in that's not tiny or huge. The faithful can pin their hopes on next week's Macworld New York Lite, or as IDG has named it, Macworld CreativePro. The keynote will be given by Greg Jozwiak, Apple's VP of Hardware Marketing, leading us to believe one of two things. First, and frankly the more likely of the two options, Jozwiak will just rehash the introduction of the G5 PowerMac at last month's WWDC show. However, one could also think that someone in charge of hardware marketing would be in a position to unveil a new model of PowerBook as well.

It should be stressed at this point that no one--not us, not any rumor site, no one--knows about the release schedule of an updated 15" PowerBook, or even if one is in the works. It seems logical that an update to the mid-range model to match its bigger and smaller brethen and next week's keynote may indeed be a logical time to unveil that model.