While the American military often focuses on buying the lowest-cost systems with the most software, recent security threats have prompted a new turn towards the Mac in the Army, according to a new report by Forbes.
The military branch began shifting away from a nearly Windows-only environment as soon as late 2005, when General Steve Boutelle warned that a homogenous operating system environment would expose the Army to large-scale hacking attempts.
However, these efforts will ramp up in February 2008 when a new program from Thursby Software gives Macs access to the military's Common Access Cards system, opening up use of the systems to a wider swath of the Army's IT network. About 1,000 new Macs are installed every six months at current purchase rates.
About 20,000 of the government body's 700,000 systems are Macs, including a selection of Xserve clusters; despite being hard-hit by cracking attempts, many of these servers simply 'shrug off' these attempts as the code is designed to break Windows systems, according to Army enterprise IT head Lieutenant Colonel C.J. Wallington.
Apple issues Security Update 2007-009 1.1
Just days after releasing the initial 2007-009 Security Update, Apple has introduced version 1.1 of the fix.
Available for Leopard (35.6MB) as well as Tiger in PowerPC-only (15.9MB) and Universal Binary (27.4MB) formats, the new iteration primarily resolves an issue with Safari crashing on visiting websites with specific code.
The patch otherwise remains the same as before and primarily mends issues with Adobe web plugins and web scripting.
UK talent show considering lawsuit for iTunes outage?
A reported outage for Apple's iTunes Store in the UK may have led to missed sales and a potential lawsuit, according to a claim by Britain's daily paper The Sun.
Although the music service is said to have coped with extremely popular releases in the past, with X-Factor talent show winner Leona Lewis having sold 50,000 songs within an hour after it became available, a flood of traffic to iTunes after Scottish singer Leon Jackson won the latest competition allegedly crashed Apple's servers just after midnight, preventing anyone from downloading music until it was resolved 15 hours later.
X-Factor co-host Simon Cowell, who also oversees shows such as American Idol, is purportedly "hugely disappointed" that Apple may have deprived Jackson of vital early sales and may file a legal complaint against the Cupertino, Calif.-based firm for its inability to cope with demand.
An Apple spokesperson has declined comment, The Sun claims.
Popular Apple/Macintosh rumor site In the months that followed, Intel went on to form an internal 'Apple Group' comprised of engineering and sales staff who serve to aid Apple's engineers in Intel-related product development, while pitching to the computer maker new technologies from its own internal skunkwork operations.�
By last March, the two industry heavyweights were admittedly on to something when Deborah Conrad, vice president and director of Team Apple at Intel, told a group of CNet reporters that Apple's way of looking at the world was making Intel "think different" about its own business.
"That's really what's interesting about Apple, is they look at our technology in a very Apple way," she said, adding that when it came to the prospect of future gadgets other than the iPod, her team got "very, very excited."
The pair's first foray into this extended venture appears to have been the Apple TV wireless set-top-box, which employed a down clocked Intel Pentium M "Crofton" chip at its core. But what's on tap next promises to push the envelope in a completely different direction -- ultra-mobile PCs.
People familiar with the matter tell AppleInsider that Apple will soon emerge as one of the largest supporters of Intel's "Menlow" Mobile Internet Device (MID) platform -- the same platform the Santa Clara-based chipmaker has been harping about for the past several months.
More specifically, those same people say, Apple has taken a liking to the upcoming 45-nanometer (nm) "Silverthorne" chip, agreeing to use it in not one but multiple products currently situated on its 2008 calendar year product roadmap.�
Introduced at this year's Spring Intel Developer Forum (IDF) with availability slated for early 2008, Silverthorne is aimed specifically at cell phones, ultra-mobile PCs and other MIDs. The chip is expected to be as fast as the second-generation of Pentium M processors, but use only between half a watt and 2 watts of electrical power -- about one tenth as much as a typical notebook chip.
For his part, Intel chief executive Paul Otellini has gone on record in placing the advancements due with Silverthorne in the same light as those delivered by the original Pentium microprocessor way back when.
"The importance of the new Silverthorne chip is only comparable with the 8088 processor or Pentium,� he told the German-language Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in a June interview. Otellini added that his firm plans to deploy a whole "product family" of 45 nm Silverthorne chips in the near future aimed at capturing the "top 10 to 20 percent of the cellphone market.�
While those people familiar with Apple's product roadmap did not specify in which products the company planned to utilize the Silverthorne processors, two seemingly apparent contenders appear to be the second-generation 3G iPhone and the much rumored Newton successor / ultra-portable slate computer.
Silverthorne side by side with a penny.
That's because, in addition to its extremely favorable power envelope, Silverthorne can fit onto a scant 74mm by 143mm motherboard -- paving the way for lighter, sleeker industrial designs. What's more, Intel in September announced plans to offer ultra-mobile PC builders such as Apple the option to build WiFi, 3G, and WiMAX technologies into their Menlow-based chip packages, such as Silverthorne.
While embedded support for these features threatens Apple's ongoing relationship with several component makers like South Korea-based system-on-a-chip (SoC) supplier Samsung -- whose chips power both the iPhone and new iPod touch -- it presents several cost- and space-saving opportunities for iPhone-like gadgets going forward.
Speaking at the Spring IDF, Otellini said Silverthorne focuses more on cost-efficiency than any of his company's recent designs, which should help Intel boost margins while simultaneously making ultra-mobile computing more affordable worldwide.�
A Silverthone wafer based on Intel's new 45nm Hi-k low power microarchitecture.
"Silverthorne is the most cost efficient processor since the 286," he said, wielding a 300mm wafer containing a whopping of 2500 of the 45nm processors. "But it is about 100 times faster."
Otellini promised that the average price of a Silverthorne-based product would be approximately $100, which in itself suggests numerous inexpensive devices for Apple. However, several pricier products are also expected to sport the technology alongside added features.
It remains unclear whether Apple will be ready to divulge details of its own Silverthrone-based products at next month's Macworld Expo, or if those announcements will be reserved until a later date to coincide with general availability of the Intel chip.
Nevertheless, Apple's decision to adopt the Menlow platform further suggests a longer-term strategy that would indeed see the electronics maker step up to that platform's successor, Moorestown, in 2009 or 2010.
Intel shows off iPhone-like concept device running on Moorestown platform | Image courtesy of DailyTech.
At the most recent Fall IDF, Intel executives flaunted an unnamed Moorestown processor, describing it as the 'chip the iPhone would have wanted.' Similar to Silverthorne, the 45nm design bundles an integrated memory controller, video encode/decode engine and graphics processor all on a single SoC.
During an ensuing demonstration, executives whipped out an iPhone-like ultra-mobile PC in apparent homage to Apple, explaining that the Moorestown-based device could run constantly for 24 hours between charges.
"It is true that Mr. Steve Jobs of Apple Inc. and our president (Masao) Nakamura held a meeting," an NTT DoCoMo spokesman told the Agence France-Presse, declining to reveal the timing or content of the discussions.
Kyodo News in its own report said DoCoMo is Apple's first choice to market the iPhone to Japanese consumers. However, the carrier may be reluctant to accept Apple's demand for a share of subscriber revenue, the news agency added.
The Wall Street Journal had reported earlier this week that Jobs met with Nakamura, but that Apple has also been talking to Japan's No. 3 operator, Softbank Corp.
A subsequent report by way of Reuters suggested the iPhone maker was playing the two Japanese carriers off of one another ahead of a deal to launch the iPhone in Japan sometime in 2008.
