I work in IT for a large corporation and IBM gave us a presentation about the future of their pSeries and other systems today. Part of the presentation was about the Power processors. They talked about the Power 4, 4+, 5 and 5+. They also briefly discussed the blade servers running what they had listed as the Power 970. They mentioned the Vector unit but said it would not be used in their blade servers, it was for something else. I later asked the rep if the 970 was going to be sold to Apple and he said yes. He was sure of this, and seemed surprised that I knew anything about it. He said they (Apple) have them in their labs now, and that they plan to release them. He said the Vector unit (altivec) was for Apple and that IBM has been told to caution their customers that they have no plans to implement it in their Linux servers, or AIX versions of the blade servers. I told him I heard that Linux may support it in the future, but he wasn't sure about that. He said the Blades would be available Q3 but didn't know when Apple would release them. I later asked if the Blades would out before Macs and he didn't know. So it's possible we could see a 970 Mac at least as soon as the Blades come out, which would fit in with the timelines we've been hearing elsewhere.
Another interesting thing he talked about was the work they were doing on the Playstation 3. He said it was going to be a dual core chip, but one core would be graphics. He also said they were implementing something with a company called (or a technology called) Blossom that was a grid computing system for the PS3. It had something to do with multiplayer gaming, but allowed the processing power to be shared, at least part of it, on the grid. Then I remembered Apples XGrid trademark. I would say it's a safe bet that Apple intends to incorporate that sort of technology into future XServes.
Q3 Target date for the Blade's mean that IBM is on target with their 970 timetable.
Wednesday April 17, 2024 9:58 am PDT by Juli Clover
Game emulator apps have come and gone since Apple announced App Store support for them on April 5, but now popular game emulator Delta from developer Riley Testut is available for download. Testut is known as the developer behind GBA4iOS, an open-source emulator that was available for a brief time more than a decade ago. GBA4iOS led to Delta, an emulator that has been available outside of...
iOS 18 is expected to be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history. Below, we recap rumored features and changes for the iPhone. iOS 18 is rumored to include new generative AI features for Siri and many apps, and Apple plans to add RCS support to the Messages app for an improved texting experience between iPhones and Android devices. The update is also expected to introduce a more...
Tuesday April 16, 2024 11:33 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
The first approved Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) emulator for the iPhone and iPad was made available on the App Store today following Apple's rule change. The emulator is called Bimmy, and it was developed by Tom Salvo. On the App Store, Bimmy is described as a tool for testing and playing public domain/"homebrew" games created for the NES, but the app allows you to load ROMs for any...
Apple today said it removed Game Boy emulator iGBA from the App Store for violating the company's App Review Guidelines related to spam (section 4.3) and copyright (section 5.2), but it did not provide any specific details. iGBA was a copycat version of developer Riley Testut's open-source GBA4iOS app. The emulator rose to the top of the App Store charts following its release this weekend,...
Tuesday April 16, 2024 6:54 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Last September, Apple's iPhone 15 Pro models debuted with a new customizable Action button, offering faster access to a handful of functions, as well as the ability to assign Shortcuts. Apple is poised to include the feature on all upcoming iPhone 16 models, so we asked iPhone 15 Pro users what their experience has been with the additional button so far. The Action button replaces the switch ...
A week after Apple updated its App Review Guidelines to permit retro game console emulators, a Game Boy emulator for the iPhone called iGBA has appeared in the App Store worldwide. The emulator is already one of the top free apps on the App Store charts. It was not entirely clear if Apple would allow emulators to work with all and any games, but iGBA is able to load any Game Boy ROMs that...