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Origin Stories: Sonnet Technologies
Sonnet Technologies has been around for 26 years, and was founded by a former Apple engineer. I've long been a fan of their products, first with a PPC daughtercard upgrade for my 8500 years ago. In this Origin Stories I talk to Greg LaPorte about the history of Sonnet. As a bonus, check out the additional videos around some great Sonnet products. Here's a video of some of Sonnet's advanced Thunderbolt products: And here's a video of some more great stuff, including a USB 3.0 media reader and a Tempo SSD card for performance junkies:
Apple adds staff, boosts R&D spending in FY2008
The Associated Press' Jessica Mintz notes that Apple increased its payroll by 48 percent this fiscal year, with most of the new employees starting at Apple retail stores. The data came from Apple's 10-K filing, an annual financial document required by law for public companies (Apple has not produced a 'glossy' annual report in several years). A direct link to the PDF is available here. Steve noted yesterday morning that Apple reported sales of $3.3 billion via the iTunes store in the filing. Apple employed 32,000 full-time employees, and 3,100 temps and contractors as of September 27, up from 21,600 and 2,100 (respectively) a year ago. Of the 11,400 new additions, 8,000 went to Apple's retail segment, while the others started elsewhere in the organization. The filing also said that Apple spent 40 percent more on research and development this year, compared to 2007: $1.1 billion. Electronista also notes that Steve Jobs was paid $189,000 for the use of his personal jet, a gift from Apple several years ago.
iStat nano updated with support for Intel Mac CPU temp
iStat nano, a handy system monitoring Dashboard widget, has been updated to version 1.51b with support for CPU temps on Intel Macs. The one catch is that you'll have to install SpeedIt, a System Preference pane and kernel extension that allows this kind of functionality (and much more). We've heard nothing but good things about SpeedIt and the features it provides (such as controlling CPU whine by regulating voltage), but we'd understand if the thought of installing kernel extensions has already made you skip this post in your newsreader.If you're still reading this, however, it seems both iStat nano and the SpeedIt kernel extension are provided free, so have at it.[thanks Aaron]
CoreDuoTemp 0.8
CoreDuoTemp, the handy little app for monitoring your Intel Mac's temp, CPU usage and frequency, has been updated to version 0.8. New features include: window position saved menu extra indicator new panel prefs correction of the English translation German language added You can grab your own copy here.
Widget Watch: iStat pro and nano updated
Two of my favorite system monitor widgets have been updated: iStat pro 2.3 and iStat nano 1.5. The main new additions are drive filtering, as in: CDs, DVDs and .DMGs will no longer appear in the drive list, and support has been included for MacBook Pro batteries. Unfortunately, it looks like the temp and fan monitors don't support the MacBook Pros just yet.Both of these widgets are available from iSlayer.net, apparently for free, as I can't even find a donation link. Also: their download links do point to these new versions, so don't pay any attention to the versions listed on their site, as it seems they haven't updated it to reflect these new additions just yet.
Did the SMC Firmware Update cripple some Intel Mac clock speeds?
A thread in Apple's support forums discusses complaints of crippled clock speeds after installing yesterday's SMC firmware update on Intel Macs. Upon an apparently successful update, some users checked their min and max clock speeds with CoreDuoTemp to find that their max has been limited to 1000 Mhz, even after using utilities to force their machine to work as hard as it can.I just used CoreDuoTemp to check my own MacBook Pro's clock speeds to find that it's max is set right where it should be, at 2000 Mhz. However, if your Intel Mac's speed is suspect after successfully installing yesterday's SMC firmware update, check out this forum thread to see if something is really afoot in the land of Intel Mac clock speeds.[Thanks Aaron]
