Looks like Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulah conducts his business via an iPad 3G. Does the magic even exist there yet?

A fairly undocumented feature in the new iPod touch is the ability for the device to vibrate like the iPhone. It seems this vibrate function was designed with the deaf in mind, as its primary use is vibrating when a FaceTime is received. Apple markets FaceTime as the perfect way to have a phone call using sign language, and vibrate helps hard-of-hearing users know when a call is incoming.

No word on whether this vibrate function can be used in games and such like on iPhones but hopefully we’ll find that out soon. Another change in this year’s iPod touch is the absence of the plastic WiFi antenna strip. It will be interesting to see if it has any affect on signal strength.

That’s an iPad testing next-gen firmware in the field and those settings are for video call debugging. You may recall iPhone 4 field-test devices having a similar menu.

Update: Apple changed the September 8th launch date back to “Coming Soon” on both the UK and France iPhone software update websites. Release date changing? Was Sept. 8th a mistake? Who knows?…

According to both Apple’s United Kingdom and France websites, iOS 4.1 for the iPhone and iPod touch is set to publicly launch on Wednesday, September 8th. For those counting down, that’s just 5 short and magical days away. In case you haven’t heard, iOS 4.1 ups the ante with Game Center, HDR Photography (awesome btw), $.99 TV Show rentals, iTunes Ping support, WiFi HD video uploading, and all the bug fixes Jobs told us all about via e-mail.

Apple did not officially announce a set launch date for iOS 4.1 but did state it would launch next week complementing the launch of their new iPods. Maybe the new kit will hit retail on the 8th too? Who knows? In case you’re wondering, iOS 4.1 is already out for those with the new 4th gen iPod touch… pity that doesn’t apply to many of us.

Remember El Steve mentioning that one of the board members would use their new nano as an iWatch? Remember Seth’s genius thoughts? Well the above completes it all.

When Intel launched the Core 2 Duo, NVidia released a controller, aka GF 9400M, derived from a discrete GPU, it was much faster than any Intel GMA. NVidia had a great success wit this controller and its second generation is still found in all previous generation of MacBooks and iMacs from Apple. This controller, aka Northbridge, was working with Intel Core 2 Duo only, and when NVidia asked Intel to get a license for Nehalem chips, the founder refused; most probably to keep its competitor outside of the sandbox. This was a hard hit for NVidia, as it prevented the company to offer alternative to Intel controllers for Nehalem.
Nevertheless, NVidia does not seem to have dropped the project to release controller/chips for Intel Sandy Bridge and it is actively working on a solution. Even though there is no real need for Northbrdige anymore, most functions will now be integrated in the CPU, NVidia would be working on a chips that would hold remaining functions of the northbridge+southbridge (interface).
If they are actively working on such solution, it can only be for 2 reasons: they found a way to push Intel to sell them license for Sandy Bridge, or there are holes in patents protecting the same technology. It will be interesting to follow this story, as it could well define which controller and partner Apple will be teaming with for bringing Sandy Bridge to MacBook. 

All over the world, researchers are currently working hard, hoping to find and develop what will replace Flash NAND on the non-volatile computer storage market. As a reminder, Flash NAND is for now used in most storage devices: (USB flash drives, memory chips, SSD, etc.) and doesn’t erase itself without electricity.
Among other potential successors, there is ReRAM. It is based on the memristor, which can change its resistance depending on the current and voltage passing through it, and that way, can hold 1 or 0. The technology has been known since 1971 but until now, no one has succeeded in mass-producing those memory chips.  Hynix and HP have decided to team-up in order to make that technology get out of the lab.
They are not the first ones to try. In 2007, Fujitsu had announced major improvement on ReRAM but it didn’t lead to any new product.

If researchers succeed, we will have a much faster memory than Flash NAND, which will in the mean time consume less power to read but most importantly write data.

According to Channelnews, Paul Otellini CEO of Intel, apparently asked Steve Jobs for his opinion before deciding to aquire Infineon Mobile Division. Steve Jobs was apparently very happy to see Intel get that techonoly that is already in the iPhones.
We have to say that we are surprised, not because Steve Jobs was asked his opinion, but because Otellini confirmed it. It is rare for the CEO of a huge company to admit that he needed to be comforted in his choice. It looks like he needed Steve Jobs’ approval to decide over that expensive purchase.

According to  Fudzilla, the upcoming Radeon HD6000, that already showed amazing test results, will not be based on a new technology but will rather be an improvement of the HD5000. Still, we’re talking about some major improvement:

• 28 nm engraving, which explains by itself the rest of the list.
• More powerful card with probably a higher number of processing units and/or higher frequency.
• Higher efficiency per Watt, something AMD has just started considering as important.
• Possibility to have easily up to 4 Displayport screens per card.

We should know more in October when AMD will unveil the new products, but you probably already knew they were coming since Apple just started putting the 5000 series in the Mac Pro…

Several team members own a Mac Pro 2006 or 2008. So, in addition to Guillaume, several of us are trying to graft a flashed PC Radeon HD5870 in their Mac Pro. As previously described, we initially selected the XFX HD5870 1GB. Today, we tried to repeat the procedure with a Sapphire Vapor-X.

This card is slightly more expensive than the first one, but offers an improved ooling system. The procedure remains the same for flashing and installing such PC card in a Mac Pro:

1. Download the iso image of Freedos. The basic version will be more than enough. Burn the iso image on a CD with your disk utility.
2. Create a FAT32 partition on one the HDs of your Mac Pro. It has to be in MBR (and not GPT), otherwise Freedos will not boot.
3. Download the last version of ATIFlash and the ROM corresponding to your graphic cards (here: m5870sap.rom.zip) from Netkas site.
4. Unzip and copy all files to the FAT32 partition.
5. Load the iso image containing CD and siwth off your computer. If hte CD is ejected, insert it again just before the current is switched off.
6. Install the Radeon HD5870 instead of your current graphic card and plug different Molex plugs.
7. Reboot while holding down C key. When asked, using the numerical key pad, activate it (press on the key over the “7″), then press “1″ and validate. You will have to press key “2″ when asked o nthe second screen. Now you are running Dos. Be careful it is now a QWERTY keyboard. 
8. Type C: to move to the C: drive on which are located all files for the flashing procedure.
9. Type atiflash -s 0 orig.rom 20000 and press Enter to save the original ROM of your card in case of problem.
10. Type atiflash -p -fs -fp 0 m5870sap.rom and press Enter to flash the graphic card. There should be no other graphic cards installed in your computer.

That’s it. Reboot by forcing the procedure (maintaining the power button down for more than 5 seconds), then you have to be patient till the card is recognized by the system:

To test the card, we have launched Starcraft II with all graphical rendering pushed to the max (2560×1600). we could detect some small slow down from time to time, butthe game remains fluid, something impassible with a Radeon HD4890 even with its GPU overclocked to 1 GHz.
Maybe with some luck, we could make this card natively recognized from booting, but it remains only a small feature when considering how it revives a 2 or 3-years old Mac Pro.