Barely out into the market, and the iPod 2G may already be showing early teething problems. praseodym of Appleinsider reports that he had a minor mishap involving the new iPod model, which was designed to be clipped to the wearer's waist. According to his report, as he was standing up, the unit fell to the ground, its aluminum clip bent out of shape.

Because of the way the clip was designed, he couldn't properly bend it back. While he could still run the iPod normally, the biggest problem was that the bent clip meant that the unit couldn't be plugged back into its original form-fitting cradle, which hooks up to the iPod via a multi-modal headphone jack.

If it's any relief, there's news that third-party manufacturer THOUGHT OUT is making plans to produce a USB jack just for this port, which allows users to hook their iPod 2G's up to PC's like normal MP3 players. Below is an image of the proposed USB jack design.

We really won't want to bother you with a lot of technical stuff concerning the 2.33GHz MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo latest update, but we thought you might want to know some of the highlights of the update. Thanks to bcavanau, we learned that there have been lots of improvements that'll make a lot of MacBook Pro users happy.

Apple made sure that it was still consistent with the old  model though, with some features hardly changed such as the case (except that it comes with a new FW800 Port) and with far less noise. Here's a quick rundown of stuff you may find in the upgrade:

• Hard drive (120GB) is Fujitsu MHW2120BH
• DVD Drive (6X-DVD-DL) is Matshita UJ-857D
• Airport reception seems to be consistent with previous model
• ATI X1600 Core clock is 418.50 and Memory clock is 450.00
• Screenshots of the About Window and the Hardware Overview in Mac OS X

The Atheros AR5008 802.11n chipset runs up to 650% faster and five times farther than 802.11g. This is a draft 802.11n wireless card found in the MacBook Pro. Other users found a different draft in the iMacs, which means Apple may intend to use another faster wireless card for the upcoming iTV. If this is likely, then we're going to be hearing from Apple soon enough, so keep reading for more news.

The new generation of iPod Nanos are now tougher against snoopy eyes and prodding fingers. Since Apple is known for aggressively suing people responsible for leaking information about its products, the company has bolstered its security up a notch.

In its new strategy, Apple has stamped three chips inside the Nano with the Apple logo to conceal the functions and specs of those chips, and the identities of their manufacturers. Why? Because sometimes, analysts and investors would dismantle various gadgets in order to find out what kind of machinery they could use for other products.

One of these three chips is said to be an audio processing chip made by Samsung Electronics. The other two chips' functions are un-identifiable, but some say it's for decoding files and power management.

With this new strategy, it seems like Apple is one step ahead of its competitors again, and is making sure to keep themselves at the head of the pack.

If we were all filthy rich and had magic bottomless wallets, we'd all be buying PC with the priciest, most ridiculously high-end CPUs. Such is not the case for most of us though. Performance must always be weighed against budgetary constraints. Also, the CPU isn't the only variable in the equation. We have to consider graphics cards, memory, storage... It's almost enough to drive people insane.

To help prevent an outbreak of foaming-at-the-mouth madness, ExtremeTech's David Case decided to take a look at the CPU side of the equation. Case compared 5 Intel Core 2 Duo processors (E6300, E6400, E6600, E6700, and Core 2 Extreme X6800) and 5 AMD X2 AM2 processors (3800+, 4200+, 4600+, 5000+, and FX-62) based on each processor's performance in 5 different tests, including media content creation and PC gaming. In the tests, the processors vary but everything else stays the same.

Final verdict? Let's hear it from the reviewer himself: "It's clear that Intel's Core 2 Duo lineup offers superior performance across the product line when compared with AMD's Athlon 64 X2. In some applications, even a lower-cost Core 2 Duo can outperform some of the higher-end Athlon 64 X2s."

In other applications though, it's not so clear. For a lot of users, adequate performance is good enough, especially when we factor in the prices. Says Case, "AMD's Athlon 64 X2 3800+ certainly offers great value, at under $160, and even the 4200+ can be found for under $200. However, the overall "sweet spot" seems to be the two midrange Intel CPUsÂ?the Core 2 Duo E6400 and E6600. The E6600 offers a higher clock rate and larger L2 cache, while the E6400 can be found for well under $250."

As for the the Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800, Case concludes that it "is simply in a class by itself. If you're willing to blow over $800 for a processor, then going a couple hundred bucks more doesn't seem quite so extreme."

Read the full review by clicking on the 'read' link below.

So you thought our Apple coverage was over? Far from it. We got pics from Engadget with their blow-by-blow coverage of Apple's big Showtime conference. And for now, we'll focus on something everyone's been at the edge of their seat for. And so, hold on to your precious Pods and Macs. 'Cuz Steve Jobs gives us:

 

You can probably just skip reading all the text in this article; maybe go on to the pictures and let them do the talking. Are you sure about that? Steve Job's keynote address states that the iTV (still a codeword) will be announced on the first quarter of 2007. As of now, we're just being given a sneak peek. Their point is that they've got all these media content up in their iTunes store. And their next gen of iPods can probably play much anything already. So. Where does the iTV come in?

Click the Full Article link below to find out...

 

The glass-made Apple Store located on 5th Avenue in Manhattan has been aptly dubbed as "The Cube" because of its structure. The pet name might have stucked very well to the mind of Apple higher ups and brought back memories.

Why? Because there are talks and speculations that Apple Cube is being resurrected. Not that site in Manhattan, take note but the real Apple Cube Power Mac G4. Based from these purported patent images, the new design addressed several issues its predecessor faced. It will have two removable sides for the easy access and upgrade of components such as hard drive, memory and PC cards.

The overheating problem was also not forgotten, ergo, the innovative heat sink mechanism. Here, you can opt to insert a separate cooling fan but you can also work without it in some cases.

Apple Cube was originally released in July 2000 and sold only around 150, 000 units.

 

Have you been having problems with your MacBook suddenly shutting down by itself? Well thanks to a certain German engineer who took it upon himself to break down and snoop around his MacBook, we now have a simple DIY solution to this predicament.

According to the German engineer, the cause for these shutdowns is the heat sensor cable found next to the CPU's heat sink. What happens is that when the heat sink expands as you use your laptop, the heat sensor cable touches the sink and melts its insulation. The result? Cable is shortened and MacBook is turned off. And after the heat sink cools down and shrinks, your MacBook can now be turned back on.

What to do: bust open your case and cover the affected areas of the sensor cable with some insulation tape. Now unless the tape also melts, you shouldn't have any problems with sudden shutdowns anymore. A little warning though, doing so may (or may not) void your warranty. Our "Germengineer" isn't sure about this so it's still best to get Apple to fix it for you. But if the sudden shutdown is majorly pissing you off, you can try this simple solution and see if it works.

If you're tempted to switch to Mac because of the new programs, such as Parallels and Boot Camp, you should always first consider the pros and cons (e.g. price, features). If you're already a Mac Pro user, you're probably looking forward to acquiring the Apple Premium, except that it really breaks the wallet. There are, however, some things you can do to relieve you of the pain of hefty purchase. An example is upgrading your RAM -- the do-it-yourself way.

Adam Pash tells us that it's possible to save $300 on a RAM upgrade. Apple, of course, being the manufacturer, can hack the entire thing in a second, but you can do the same, if you follow the steps in the tutorial that you can both view and download here. Pash's trick is to grab a 2 x 1GB sticks of RAM from Newegg that costs around $170. Of course, if you're purchasing the 2GB RAM upgrade from Apple, your MBP would cost around $500.

Download: [MacBook Pro RAM Upgrade Tutorial 1]
Download: [MacPro PDF Alert]

The iPod Nano has recently been the subject of PC Watch Japan's scrutiny, as they decided to  open one up to see the technology running behind it. The result of the inquest? Just as people have surmised, the Nano's flash memory of choice is manufactured by Samsung and its 4GB version actually has two 2GB drives installed in them, while the 2GB version only has one. A cost-saving measure perhaps? Afterall, would it be cheaper to just install two 2GB drives as compared to using single 4GB units?

However, as the source was in Japanese, it can't really be determined at this time if you can use the Nano's memory cards with other products, or if is even hackable. So, here's a picture of the dissected iPod Nano instead for the perusal of those who maybe able to unlock the secrets of this electronic guinea pig.

This lucky person certainly did get a new Mac Pro. Not only was this brand new Mac Pro owner kind enough to share his experience with the world, he also ran his new machine through a gamut of benchmarks and real world application-based tests to prove its mettle. I think the fact that this guy took the time to provide us with usable information about the new Mac Pro makes his post different than the average all photography and no substance box openings that populate the web.

This particular machine has two 2.Ghz Dual Core processors (2 Xeon woodcrest processors- for a total of 4 logical processors), 1GB of ram, a 7300gt graphics accelerator, and a 250GB Seagate hard disk. As unbelievably powerful as that machine sounds, the specs for the test machine are not anywhere near the top of the line for the Mac Pro. Keep in mind that this test machine has but 1GB of ram. 1GB of ram, inside a machine that has the capacity for an astonishing 16GBs of ram total, is not a whole lot. In fact, 1GB is the minimum amount of ram that you should have when using a dual processor system as powerful as this one.

Geekbench provides an entire page full of test results that indicate the actual performance potential of this particular Mac Pro. The generous new Mac Pro owner also ran a Photoshop test, a timed compressor test, a Rosetta test and an encoding test. Of course, this extremely giving person also blessed us with a variety of near pornographic shots depicting the new machine in intimate detail. I must admit, when I look at the pictures of our lucky Mac Pro owner opening that box, my heart begins to race and my mind wanders off to think of the things that I could do if I had one.


Photoshop Test:
Test 1: 80% memory allocation, 20 history states = 3min 52secs

Test 2: 90% memory allocation, 1 history state = 3min 4secs

Test 3: (more a test of raw CPU) Radial blur 100, best quality on Eagle Image in test
Mac Pro= 29 secs
Quad G5 = 42 secs


Compressor:
source: 5min HDV 1080i60 clip (export from FCP timeline)
output: Compressor default 16:9 120min fast encode
results:
G5 2ghz 2.5gb ram: 34min
Mac Pro: 12min


Handbrake:
h.264 main profile
1000kbps Average Quality
2-pass encoding
128kbps AAC audio
Donnie Darko disc (not image on HD) 65fps average.

Geekbench:
297.9


Rosetta test:
194.8