MacNewsBlog

Just a few quick news items this morning:

• One of the first Express Cards ships today! 2-Port NitroAV FireWire800/1394b Professional Express Card (34mm) Interface Adapter (MacBookPro) is available here for $89.


• Apple announced Final Cut Express HD 3.5 today. Universal Binary priced at $99 for current owner or $299 new


• SuperDuper 2.1.1 is out and features disk duplication, creation of bootable copies, creation of restorable images compatible with ASR, Safety Clones, Smart Update, AppleScript support, and more. This release adds the ability to automatically mount and unmount backup volumes during scheduled operations, along with other improvements and bug fixes.


• Onyx 1.7 for Mac OSX 10.4 was updated today. Onyx is a great tool for maintenance and optimizing and its FREE! Donations accepted.


• Macintouch has some interesting Cinebench stats of their MacBook. Of note is the higher OpenGL Software score probably due to optimization of OSX 10.4.6


• From Digitimes: In line with the latest launch of Apple Computer’s Intel Core Duo-based MacBook, Asustek Computer has camped out its design team specializing in Apple products at the company’s manufacturing facilities in Suzhou in preparation for volume production, according to sources at Taiwan notebook makers.


• From Information Week: Apple Fixes Firmware, Leaves Users Confused - Although Apple said that the update was to System Management Control (SMC) firmware, it was up to MacBook Pro users to figure out that SMC is the specialized controller that manages thermal and power conditions, and is in charge of running the portable computer's fans.


• From News.com Blogs: It appears that one casualty of Apple Computer's move to Intel chips could be its open-source Darwin core. According to InfoWorld magazine (free registration required), Apple won't release code for the Intel version of Darwin, the open-source Unix core that forms the base layer for Mac OS X.

More a little later in the day!