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Submission + - The end of iFixit? Thank Apple (ifixit.com)

Submitted by assaf07
assaf07 writes: I got an email this morning from iFixit letting me know that they had been purchased by Apple. As happy as I am that the owners of iFixit are making some money for themselves, I can't help but fear the end is near for impartial teardowns of my favorite mobile devices. From the press release "Why “fix it yourself” when you can upgrade? No need to waste time repairing your Apple device. Upgrade it instead. With iFixit’s help, there will always be a newer, better device for sale."

See below for the body of the email.

We’re pleased to announce that iFixit has been acquired by Apple.

iFixit is the industry leader in the global repair movement. With more than 10,000 repair guides and millions of community members worldwide, iFixit has become the most trusted source for “before-you-buy” reviews of consumer electronics and “after-it-breaks” repair documentation.

Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and generally does not discuss their purpose or plans. And financial details have not yet been disclosed. But, we at iFixit feel we ought to explain ourselves to our loyal community.

“Everyone has a number”, admitted Kyle Wiens, iFixit’s CEO. “I didn’t think there was a reasonable number that would make me say, ‘You know I was going to change the world with repair documentation but here’s a number.’” In the end, Apple gave us a number that we couldn’t refuse.

But it isn’t just a number for iFixit. As part of the deal, Apple made a commitment to produce the most replaceable electronic devices and personal computers on the market. This is a clear win for the whole iFixit community.

Apple is working hard to make devices last long enough to be upgraded or irrelevant, making repairability an antiquated notion. iFixit will become a key player in the future of Apple device development, starting with the new iFixit Replaceability Index.

It has been an exciting adventure for all of us at iFixit, and we can’t thank our dedicated community enough.

Let's start our next chapter together!

Submission + - 500GB To 1TB On An mSATA Stick - Samsung SSD 840 EVO mSATA Tested (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Shortly after 2.5-inch versions of Samsung's SSD 840 EVO drives hit the market, the company prepared an array of mSATA drives featuring the same controller and NAND flash. The Samsung SSD 840 EVO mSATA series of drives are essentially identical to their 2.5" counterparts, save for the mSATA drives' much smaller form factor. Like their 2.5" counterparts, Samsung's mSATA 840 EVO series of drives feature an updated, triple-core Samsung MEX controller, which operates at 400MHz. The 840 EVO's MEX controller has also been updated to support the SATA 3.1 spec, which incorporates a few new features, like support for queued TRIM commands. Along with the MEX controller, all of the Samsung 840 EVO mSATA series drives feature LPDDR2-1066 DRAM cache memory. The 120GB drive sports 256MB of cache, the 250GB and 500GB drive have 512MB of cache, and the 750GB and 1TB drives have 1GB of cache. Performance-wise, SSD 840 EVO series of mSATA solid state drives performs extremely well, whether using synthetic benchmarks, trace-based tests like PCMark, or highly-compressible or incompressible data.

Submission + - Intel Outs Haswell-E and Devil's Canyon CPUs, Ready Mode Technology (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Intel used the backdrop of the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco to make a handful of interesting announcements that run the gamut from low-power technologies to ultra-high-end desktop chips. In addition to outing a number of upcoming processors—from an Anniversary Edition Pentium to a monster 8-core Haswell-E—Intel also announced a new technology dubbed Ready Mode. Intel's Ready Mode essentially allows a 4th Gen Core processor to enter a low C7 power state, while the OS and other system components remain connected and ready for action. Intel demoed the technology, and along with compatible third party applications and utilities, showed how Ready Mode can allow a mobile device to automatically sync to a PC to download and store photos. The PC could also remain in a low power state and stream media, server up files remotely, or receive VOIP calls. Also, in a move that's sure to get enthusiasts excited, Intel revealed details regarding Haswell-E. Similar to Ivy Bridge-E and Sandy Bridge-E, Haswell-E is the "extreme" variant of the company's Haswell microarchitecture. Haswell-E Core i7-based processors will be outfitted with up to eight processor cores, which will remain largely unchanged from current Haswell-based chips. However, the new CPU will connect to high-speed DDR4 memory and will be paired to the upcoming Intel X99 chipset. Other details were scarce, but you can bet that Haswell-E will be Intel's fastest desktop processor to date when it arrives sometime in the second half of 2014. Intel also gave a quick nod to their upcoming 14nm Broadwell CPU architecture, a follow-on to Haswell. Broadwell will be the first Intel desktop processor to feature integrated Iris Pro Graphics and will also be compatible with Intel Series 9 chipsets.

Submission + - Crucial Launches New M550 Series Solid State Drives (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Long-time memory maker Crucial, a division of Micron, is launching a new line of solid state drives today, dubbed the M550 series. The Crucial M550 is targeted at performance-minded, but budget-conscious enthusiasts and will be offered in array of form factors, including mSATA and M.2 flavors, with capacities at 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB. The drive is built around Marvell's 88SS9189 SATA 6Gbs controller and is outfitted with 20nm IMFT MLC NAND. The drives are rated at 550MB/s max read and 500MB/s max write performance and in the benchmarks they perform right up there with the latest offerings from Intel and Toshiba's OCZ Technology Group high-end products. Better still, at .67 - .77 per GiB, the M550s are some of the most affordable SSDs on the market currently.

Submission + - Asus Chromebox Based On Haswell Core i3 Tested (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: The Asus Chromebox is a tiny palm-sized machine similar in form and footprint to Intel's line of NUC (Next Unit of Computing) mini PCs. One of the higher-end Asus Chromebox variants coming to market employs Intel's 4th generation Haswell Core series processor architecture with Integrated HD 4400 graphics. The machine is packed with fair number of connectivity options including four USB 3.0 SuperSpeed ports, HDMI and DisplayPort output, a microSD Flash card slot, 802.11n dual-band WiFi, and Bluetooth 4.0. It also sports a 1.7GHz dual-core Core i3-4010U processor with Hyper-Threading for four logical processing threads and 4GB of DDR3 1600MHz memory. Finally, the onboard 16GB SSD storage might be appear a bit meager, but it's backed up by 100GB of Google Drive cloud storage for 2 years. In testing, the device proved to be capable in some quick and dirty browser-based benchmarks. For the class of device and use case that the Chromebox caters to, Google has covered most of what folks look for with the Chrome OS. There's basic office productivity apps, video and media streaming apps, and even a few games that you might care to fire up. The Asus Chromebox handles all of these usage types with ease and it's also barely audible while consuming only about 18 Watts under load.

Submission + - NVIDIA Unveils Lineup of GeForce 800M Series Mobile GPUs, Many With Maxwell (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: The power efficiency of NVIDA's Maxwell architecture make it ideal for mobile applications, so today's announcement by NVIDIA of a new top-to-bottom line-up of mobile GPUs—most of them featuring the Maxwell architecture—should come as no surprise. Though a couple of Kepler and even Fermi-based GPUs still exist in NVIDIA's new line-up, the heart of the product stack leverages Maxwell. The entry-level parts in the GeForce 800M series consist of the GeForce GT 820M, 830M, and 840M. The 820M is a Fermi-based GPU, but the 830M and 840M are new chips that leverage Maxwell. The meat of the GeForce GTX 800M series consist of Kepler-based GPUs, though Maxwell is employed in the more mainstream parts. NVIDIA is claiming the GeForce GTX 880M will be fastest mobile GPU available, but the entire GTX line-up will offer significantly higher performance then any integrated graphics solution. The GeForce GTX 860M and 850M are essentially identical to the desktop GeForce GTX 750 Ti, save for different frequencies and memory configurations. There are a number of notebooks featuring NVIDIA's GeForce 800M series GPUs coming down the pipeline from companies like Alienware, Asus, Gigabyte, Lenovo, MSI and Razer, though others are sure the follow suit. Some of the machines will be available immediately.

Submission + - Intel Launches Overclocked SSD 730 Series Enthusiast Class Solid State Drive (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: The new Intel SSD 730 will be the company's latest flagship consumer-targeted SSD. The drive, however, features technology gleaned from Intel's experience in data centers, and is actually quite similar to the DC S3500 series. Intel is doing a few things to set this drive apart, though. The SSD 730's controller and NAND components are have gone through additional qualification at the factory and the drive's firmware is tuned for high performance. The Intel SSD 730 series will initially be offered in 240GB and 480GB flavors and in the common 2.5" form factor. Intel is binning the parts used in the SSD 730 series to ensure maximum reliability, high-performance and low latency. To that end, the controller's clock speed has been boosted by 50% and the NAND is clocked 20% higher as well. You'd think that boosting the clocks might affect the long-term reliability of the drive, but Intel is offering a full 5-year warranty and rating the drive for 70GB writes/day. Performance of the new Intel SSD 730 series is top-notch, with the drive scoring at the top of the pack versus leading SSDs on the market currently with the best overall performance.

Submission + - Intel Debuts Merrifield and Moorefield Designs at MWC (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Intel is announcing its new tablet and smartphone designs this week at Mobile World Congress, alongside a major push to drive adoption of its 28nm XMM 7160 and XMM 7260 modem technology. It's been two years since Intel launched its first serious Atom-based smartphone platform, codenamed Medfield. The chips that will power these efforts are the Z34 and Z35 families, known as Merrifield and Moorefield, respectively. The new Merrifield core will use a 4G-capable XMM 7160 modem, a 1080p camera capable of 60 FPS capture, and the same Bay Trail CPU that was previously released. While it lacks Hyper-Threading, the addition of out-of-order processing means that the dual-core Bay Trail will be significantly faster than the older, in-order Atom parts. Merrifield also uses a PowerVR GPU core based on Series 6 (codenamed "Rogue"). This new GPU core is substantially more powerful than the older cores Intel used in the past and contains four separate compute clusters. Historically, Intel's tablets and smartphones have targeted "acceptable" graphics rather than fielding anything genuinely first rate, but that may change in 2014.

Submission + - Intel Announces 15-Core Ivytown Xeon E7 v2 Processors (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Intel has announced new 15-core Xeon E7 v2 series processors for the enterprise, big data and data center servers. The Xeon E7 processors Intel is replacing with this update are based on the old Westmere core, which first debuted in consumer products back in 2010, and have separate I/O hubs on the motherboard with a QPI link port dedicated to each of them. The new Xeon E7 v2 moves those hubs on-die, which means the system's remaining three QPI links are still providing a significant bandwidth boost — up to 8GT/s, from 6.4GT/s. The old Westmere-EX platforms had up to 72 lanes of PCIe 2.0 connectivity provided per socket while the new Xeon E7 v2 offer 32 PCIe 3.0 lanes per socket. The entire structure of the last-level cache has been reworked, with a comprehensive ring bus incorporated across all 15 cores. Intel also implemented the 37.5MB of L3 in 15 slices, which allows each core a dedicated interface to the L3. Intel claims up to a whopping 450GB/s of bandwidth per socket with the new Xeon E7 v2, counting both the quad-channel memory controllers and the L3 cache.

Submission + - Intel Announces 15-Core Ivytown Servers For The Enterprise (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Intel just announced new 15-core Xeon 8000 series processors for enterprise, big data and data center servers. The Xeon E7 processors Intel is replacing with this update are still based on the old Westmere core, which first debuted in consumer products back in 2010. Westmere-EX, the old 32nm chip, still had separate I/O hubs on the motherboard, and a QPI port dedicated to each of them. The new Xeon E7 v2 moves those hubs on-die, which means the system's remaining three QPI links are still providing a significant bandwidth boost — up to 8GT/s, from 6.4GT/s. The old Westmere-EX platforms had up to 72 lanes of PCIe 2.0 connectivity provided per socket; the new E7 v2 cores offer 32 PCIe 3.0 lanes per socket. The entire structure of the last-level cache has been reworked, with a comprehensive ring bus incorporated across all 15 cores. Intel implemented the 37.5MB of L3 in 15 slices, which allows each core a dedicated interface to the L3. Intel claims up to 450GB/s of bandwidth per socket counting both the quad-channel memory controllers and the L3 cache.

Submission + - Lenovo's Revamped ThinkPad X1 Carbon With Haswell And Adaptive F-Key Row Tested (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Carbon series cuts through the traditional ThinkPad's stuffy corporate facade, offering something for the conference room or coffee shop with a sleeker physique. The original ThinkPad X1 Carbon was initially released back in 2012 and at the time, its carbon fiber-infused chassis offered a combination of build quality and light-weight durability that Lenovo could still call a "ThinkPad," though the original X1 Carbon felt a little bit flimsy in spots. New for 2014, Lenovo has completely revamped the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, from the 4th generation Intel Haswell Core series processor under its hood, to its higher density carbon fiber-filled polymer skins, a higher resolution 2560X1440 display and some major upgrades to the keyboard area. One of the hallmark features of the new X1 Carbon design is Lenovo's adaptive function row display strip above the keyboard. This is actually a liquid crystal display that allows for various icon patterns to be displayed even in bright lighting conditions. Lenovo achieves this with an electroluminescent layer behind the display. Though some of the functions offered are more of a novelty, other functions like Brightness, Volume, Screen Snip, Search and some of the browser functions, are valuable additions for accessibility and usability with Windows 8.

Submission + - You Can't Make This Up: 'Goat Simulator' A Real Game Available For Pre-Order (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: For the record, Goat Simulator was never meant to be a real game. It was just a silly bit of code that spilled out of the brains of the game developer staff at Coffee Stain Studios. But then the Internet caught a glimpse of the rough simulator and viewers unanimously agreed that this had to happen. And so it has. Goat Simulator is exactly as it sounds — you're a goat and you run around doing naughty goat-like things. Judging by the trailer, you also have the ability to defy physics for more goat mayhem than you thought possible. We're talking giant leaps off of trampolines with some crazy acrobatics. When it comes down to it, though, the real fun is wreaking havoc on humans.

Submission + - Big Cable Tries To Outlaw Google Fiber, AT&T Attacks Net Neutrality (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Two events in the telecommunications and cable world this week have highlighted why, exactly, we need net neutrality and stronger protections for consumer rights. First, on the cable side of the business, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Eagle Communications, and Comcast have collectively introduced a bill into the Kansas legislature that prevents any city from rolling out any broadband infrastructure unless said area is completely cut off from the grid. It would bar the use of eminent domain for the purpose of providing better service to a city's citizens. And not incidentally, it makes Google Fiber effectively illegal. The bill would outlaw public/private partnerships, open access approaches, and the partnership that brought Google Fiber to Kansas City. It doesn't have a single sponsor, but was proposed by John Federico, president of the Kansas Cable Telecommunications Association. Meanwhile, AT&T has been quietly assembling a patent portfolio for itself that simultaneously attacks net neutrality and consumer rights. The company applied for a patent titled "Prevention Of Bandwidth Abuse Of A Communications System" in October 2012. The abstract reads, in part: "A user of a communications network is prevented from consuming an excessive amount of channel bandwidth by restricting use of the channel in accordance with the type of data being downloaded to the user. The user is provided an initial number of credits. As the user consumes the credits, the data being downloaded is checked to determine if is permissible or non-permissible."

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