Back in January, when NVIDIA claimed that the 8800 GT cards will become available for older Mac Pros "in a few weeks," I wasn't expecting for such a long wait, and I am sure those in need for a video upgrade to their older Mac Pro almost lost their hope since then. Well, the good news is that, finally, NVIDIA kepts its promise, so...


...less than a day ago, the long-awaited upgrade for older Mac Pros was released to the public! With 512MB of GDDR3 memory, the PCI Express NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT upgrade is capable of driving one or two Apple Cinema HD displays, thanks to its dual-link DVI ports.

All that you need is a Mac Pro with a bus speed of 1.33GHz, and a free PCI Express slot, of course. Priced at $280, this new video card for older Mac Pros can be acquired as a standalone item, or a build-to-order option for Early 2008 Mac Pros through the online Apple Store.

Despite the fact that the MacBook Air or the iPods are more popular than the Apple TV, this one may have a hidden potential, estimated to be huge by the analysts. I guess you probably heard about this already, but let me remind you that Apple's latest digital video recording patent filling is boiling hot, as we speak. Do you see the link?


Basically, the third generation of the Apple TV is expected to have DVR capabilities, so for only a small difference in manufacturing price, Apple's niche media hub business may turn into a solid source of revenue, some say it may worth even a few billion dollars annually!

American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu said the DVR features that may arrive in the next generation of the Apple TV can help moving from just a "hobby" to serious business:"We estimate AppleTV to be a very minor contributor today at ~0.3-0.4 percent of revenue or $100-125 million annually. We believe adding the ability to watch and record live TV could turn this into a billion dollar, if not multi-billion dollar business."

Since these are only rumors based on a patent filling, there's still a pretty long road to the DVR-enabled Apple TV, but I think this must happen by the end of the year. If you have a different opinion, please feel free to share it with the rest of us, don't be shy!

While the ATI Radeon 2600 XT is no longer a last generation video card, it seems Mac Pro computers using it had a lot of issues because of them. Please don't get me wrong - from a hardware point of view, those cards are OK, but Apple's video drivers didn't quite fit them well, so mass system instabilities were noticed(nothing special with that, I got into such a thing lately on my Windows PC too, after updating my video drivers). These being said, it's obvious everyone having a Mac Pro with a 2600 XT video card was expecting a software update...


...which finally arrived less than a day ago, when Apple announced the update for the Mac Pro computers using the Radeon HD 2600 XT video card. Basically, this update is about solving the previously reported system freezes, but Apple didn't specifically listed which problems are being solved by it.

The 792KB update can be downloaded from here, where some additional information is also available. Unfortunately, I don't think "It updates the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics card firmware on all of the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics cards in the Mac Pro to improve system stability." is enough when talking about "useful information", but I guess we'll have to live with it...

After a few delays, Apple's Time Capsule is finally here! It took a while, but let's hope all previous problems that caused the delay have been solved, and everyone will have a smooth ride backing up their data on this handy wireless network-attached storage device. Just think about the fact that the Time Capsule was introduced in Steve Jobs' keynote speech on the 15th of January, so it's good to see it shipping, after almost one month and a half, don't you think?


If you don't remember about the Time Capsule, then let me refresh your memory a little... Basically, we're talking about a 802.11n AirPort Extreme router that has a built in server-grade hard drive. This device works with Apple's Time Machine software to help you perform automatic wireless backups of one or multiple Macs running Mac OS X Leopard.

Currently, on Apple's site you can find the 500GB Time Capsule, priced at $299, as well as a 1TB setup, sold for $499. To find out more about the device and, maybe, order your own, feel free to visit the official product page, here.

Fortunately, it seems Bubble Bash wasn't quite Apple's surprise for this Tuesday, and I say it this way because, to be honest, it was simply something too small for them. The good news arrived less than a day after the game for iPod, as the new MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops, something everyone has been waiting for a while already...


Basically, it's all about moving to the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors, so you won't get to see any MacBook or MacBook Pro as thick as the MacBook Air, but there's plenty of time for this to happen. These being said, let's check the technical specifications of the latest MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops, shall we?

The MacBook has the same pricing, starting at $1099 for the non-Super Drive white base model, and $1499 for the BlackBook, but processor speeds start at 2.1GHz for the base model, and 2.4GHz for the $1299 and $1499 ones. The storage solutions used are 5400rpm "classic" hard drives, starting at 120GB for the base model, and going up to 250GB for the BlackBook. At last, all models get 2GB of memory, apart from the entry-level MacBooks, still having 1GB of memory in the default configuration.

The MacBook Pro got a few extra features, when compared to its younger brother, with processor speeds starting up at 2.4GHz, and up to 2.6GHz. The new 2.5GHz, the default one installed on the 17-inch models, has 6MB of L2 cache. The 17-inch MacBook Pro has a LED backlit screen option, hard drives range between 200GB and 300GB, and the video adapter is using the NVIDIA 8600GT chipset, starting at 256MB of video memory. Last, bot not the least, the new MacBook Pros have a multi-touch trackpad like the one available for the MacBook Air users.

The MacBook Pros are priced between $1999 and $2799, but these are the prices for standard configurations. If you want to go higher, I am sure that's not a problem...

All MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops are shipping with Mac OS X Leopard and Apple's iLife application suite, adding some extra value to your purchase, as it always happened with Apple's desktop and portable computers.