Apple Toaster

AMD has recently released their much anticipated (by me anyway) fusion processor/chipset for low power efficient all in one systems. The chip is the fruit of the purchase of ATI by AMD some years back and has the 6000 series GPU built into the processor. This chip from the reviews I have read is better than the Atom processor in nearly everything while using less power.

The first board that has my eye is the E35M1-I DELUXE from Asus and the board has just hit their website in the last couple days. The big feature to me is that this board is passive (fanless) and along with all the other things I do to the G4 cube this could be the ultimate upgrade to the Cube while maintaining the original fanless design. The system I built before out of another quality Asus board around the AM3 socket and lower power processors that turned out to still require fans and while it seemed like the fan noise level was tolerable I notice the fan a bit more than I would like so I am going to design a totally silent system around this board.

Also a plus on this board is the internal WIFI antenna connectors. Asus appears to have a completely new design from the previous boards I have had. Earlier onboard WiFi were based on a small USB card that connected directly to the motherboard and the jacks were external. This new board if you look closely has the wireless chip surface mounted to the motherboard with the leads going to the IO panel. It should be 100X easier to keep the duel wireless antennas internal to the G4 Cube then previous versions. last time I had to turn the brass connectors around and re solder.

One drawback I am seeing with this setup is that the AMD Dual-Core E-350 APU processor is mounted to the motherboard leaving you no upgrade path. This is very unlike AMD to do this as they have been very friendly with their sockets and backwards/forwards compatibility. I am sure they have a good reason it is just a pretty big drawback to me.

Unfortunately the layout of this board looks like it will also not be friendly with the location of the touch capacitance switch leaving this thorn in my side…No way to be 100% until I start trying to cram the board into the cube though.

First reports from Europe has this board as being 150 Euros (200$) or so. I am checking Newegg daily to be able to place my order…

Apple is out of control with the patents… A while back I saw a patent request for multi touch user interfaces. Did apple invent muti touch user interfaces? … I don’t think so. I have seen programs using mutli touch interface a loooong time ago. I hope they get denied and laughed at.

Now they are trying to patent having a volume control on an application (web browser in this instance) and I don’t think it should be patentable. The interesting function is making settings on a per URL basis but what else has settings for a per URL basis such as if the URL is trusted or encrypted? Or you can look at Windows as an application that lets you control the audio “streams” from multiple web sources independently.   I would say this patent should be thrown out but I am not a lawyer and think a lot of patents should be thrown out (such as the human genetic code).

Are they serious? I don’t know about these patents… Feels like Apple is starting a Rambus like approach to the future.

I need to put in my patent request for a though based user interface..

Apple eyes patent for web silence • The Register

Wow, this is pretty ambitious but definitely something that I could see Apple wanting to be first to have. I don’t understand why PC companies are not a ambitious as this, I mean what is to stop HP or dell to not have this done before Apple. If you have never heard of an OLED it is a technology that has been perpetually just around the corner for over a decade.

LG insider points to Apple OLED notebook • Register Hardware