Mac OS X Snow Leopard screenshots leaked

A new set of leaked screenshots of Apple's upcoming Mac OS X release, Snow Leopard, appears to confirm that the most sweeping changes to the operating system won't be visible.

World of Apple has screenshots up on its site, along with a video, of Mac OS X Snow Leopard Build 10A261, the latest version released for testing. When Apple announced plans for Snow Leopard in June, it said that Mac OS X 10.6 would focus more on improving the performance and stability of the operating system, rather than adding features.
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Behold 1GB 20 years ago and 1GB today

I remember the first time I ever heard the term gigabyte. Actually, I didn't hear it, I worked it out myself. It was the early '90s, and my friend Paul had just ordered a new hard drive for his 486. I remember how excited he was to get a 100MB drive, which was easily twice as big as the one he had at the time. I was astounded and said, "How big do they go now?"

"Next year, they'll hit 1,000 megabytes," Paul said.

I was even more awe struck. I said, "1,000 megabytes. That would be--1 gigabyte?"

Paul just looked at me and said, reverently, "Yes."

Now, of course, you can fit 4GB onto a microSD card the size of your thumbnail. But the above image, from ToxicJunction, really shows how far data storage has come in 20 years: it's 1GB in 1988 and 1GB in 2008.

Via CNET Crave

Windows 7 release candidate due in April

According to an internal leak aimed towards Windows blog Neowin, the first (and potentially only) Windows 7 release candidate will hit beta testers on April 10.

A release candidate is a feature-complete build of a piece of software that has reached its final stages of development. It's released to testers as the version that could be sold in stores, with the intention of ironing out any final bugs before hitting shelves.

That such a complete version could be ready by April reinforces the extremely positive rumor that Windows 7 could be on sale to the public, or at least released to computer manufacturers, by the year's end.

Via CNET UK

Purported Mac Mini video surfaces

Either Apple's about to launch a Mac Mini, or somebody is really determined to get into the Apple Rumor/Hoax Hall of Fame.

A day after a photo surfaced supposedly showing Apple's design for a next-generation Mac Mini--which was then debunked through some crazy spectral analysis or something--a video has surfaced in the forums of MacRumors claiming to depict a new Mac Mini. The computer shown in the video has the same five USB ports and MiniDisplay port that graced the Mac Mini shown in the photo.

An immediate discussion regarding the video's authenticity flared in the forums of MacRumors, as some fondly remembered the iHome video hoax of 2005. As you might have noticed, there is a rather large industry surrounding the dissemination and analysis of rumors pertaining to Apple. Some people crave the notoriety of releasing such rumors for the world to see, either as part of a contest among buddies on Apple's hardware development team to see who can get the most outlandish rumor printed or to actually shed light on the next moves of one of the tech industry's most secretive companies.
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TSMC exec: Chip industry to recover in three years

Things are gloomy all around, the global chip industry included. And as much pounding as the semiconductor market has taken, it hasn't hit bottom. The good news? It's "pretty close", Morris Chang, chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., told The Wall Street Journal in an interview.

"I think it will be 2012 before the total revenue of the semiconductor industry gets back to the 2008 level," said Chang, who has worked in the industry for more than 50 years. He founded TSMC, the world's largest contract chip manufacturer, in 1987.

Last month, TSMC reported a 64 percent drop in profit for the fourth quarter of 2008, compared with the same period the year before. Its sales were down 31 percent. The news came on the heels of Intel reporting a steep drop in profit for the fourth quarter. Lora Ho, chief financial officer of TSMC, said in a statement then: "The global economic recession continues to worsen. Customers...continue to pare their inventories aggressively, resulting in a further significant cutback of wafer demand."

The Journal story also said that Chang expects a "continued decline for companies that make both consumer products and semiconductors". Although of the companies that do both, Samsung and Intel are "in a strong position".

Via CNET News

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