It's marketing and partner management.

Nvidia is currently in a very bad place. Their products are beginning to lag behind, their chipset business is dying, they're feuding with the most powerful semiconductor manufacturer, they have manufacturing problems with their own next generation product, they got caught with their pants down (faking completed Fermi chips and demoing them).

Apple has a reputation for selling high end hardware. It's a win for Nvidia to claim that the reason behind this is because their stuff is the best.

Apple is also a huge partner for Nvidia, and if I were in Apple's shoes I'd be taking a long hard look at ATI right now. And if I were Nvidia I'd be scared shitless of this happening, and I'd be screaming reassurances of how much I love Apple and how we want to help them make the best product.

I've met Jensen and he's a great guy who is spectacularly enthusiastic about what he does. He's also so into gaming and overclocking that I don't buy for a second that he actually uses an Apple computer.

There's a couple of things that smell funny with this.

First off, he didn't post any actual benchmark results before/after indicating any performance gain. He posted a synthetic benchmark (Windows perf score) which for all we know blanket adds points if your card supports Dx10. Or in this case if the driver reports itself as supporting Dx10. He's strangely left all real before/after benchmarks absent, and refused to answer the question when people asked what his Vantage score was after the change.

Second off, he got a Dx10 driver working with a Dx9 device that's known to be at the very least related -- just because it works (so far) doesn't mean it's compatible. Tons of games don't yet fully take advantage of Dx10. The only "proof" he has that it is working is dxdiag reporting that a Dx10 driver is running. I can get a driver for an ATI 5870 running and reporting as working on my ancient Radeon 9600, but it doesn't make it so.

I grew up in Calgary.. Sure do miss it.

It's a Fluoro Shade floor lamp from Tom Dixon. Runs about $450.

And on that note, the chair is an Eames Lounger from Herman Miller ($3800 /w ottoman) and the rug looks like a Cuks (around $3100).

Amen to that. iTunes and Quicktime run beautifully on my Mac. They run like total ass on Win7. Every other app under the sun runs beautifully on Win7.

Sometimes I wonder if Apple intentionally makes their Windows applications bad to try to make a really childish point.

I have a ION nettop for a HTPC, with a dual core Atom 330. When it's in a codec and player that the GPU can decode, it'll do high bitrate 264 into 1080p, smooth like butter. When it has to decode in CPU, it's game over. Nowhere remotely close to decent 720p playback.

I heard all the stories from various friends that work/worked at Voodoo, and had lunch with the guy on one occasion. I am skeptical of any big claims he makes.

He has this story about a gold plated computer he made for a Saudi prince. The value of the computer climbs every time he tells the story, and in truth the thing sat in the back of their shop unsold for multiple years.

If I recall correctly, he also recently flunked out of some executive MBA program that HP tried to put him through.

In reality, he overpromised to HP, and underdelivered. Voodoo is a failure for HP, and the project is for all intents and purposes over. They're cutting the Voodoo brand, absorbing their remaining resources, and considering the whole thing a lesson learned. They will make their own Premium line instead of relying on a shop that bought ODM machines, painted them, and pitched them Billy Mays style to yuppies.

I can't believe they didn't add IR. It's a part that costs basically nothing, and there's enough demand that third party companies are selling $60 adaptors to compensate for Sony's myopia.

If they added IR and bitstream audio support I would be buying one right now. I will remain PS3-less.

Consider that Apple is the #1 retailer of music in the United States and that the market share as of 2006 was over 88%. Then read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coercive_monopoly

Guys, stop getting his hopes up.

NO. Flash does not have hardware acceleration. Hulu cannot take advantage of the GPU, so the processing is done on the CPU, as it is with an Intel Reference Atom. So it'll perform comparably for Hulu to your Dell Mini 9.