Archive for May 14th, 2011

During SID Display Week 2011 International Symposium between May 17-19, Samsung will officially unveil and demonstrate the first 10.1-inch display with 2560 x 1600 pixel resolution specifically meant for tablets. The industry-first display will offer a “ultra-high resolution” using standard LCD technology. According to Samsung’s press release, the display also relies on the PenTile technology, which allows for 40% less power consumption and two-thirds number of subpixels.

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According to Nielsen Soundscan report, US music sales have increased by 1.6% over the course of this year. The report gives the credit for the rise, unsurprisingly, to digital music sales, which in terms of albums was up 16.8% and in terms of individual tracks was up 9.6%. As for physical media, CDs were down by 8.8%, but Vinyl increased by 37%, although they only account for 1.2% of sales. Nielsen interestingly suggests the arrival of the Beatles on iTunes as a key reason, pointing to a dramatic increase  starting from when it was released on iTunes. As for the most popular genre’s, Rock had the greatest market share in album sales whilst Pop was the most popular for digital tracks.

The iPad’s cannibalization of the PC market may have slowed. New purchasers of the iPad are less likely to have foregone purchasing a PC. It found that of those who had purchased the iPad over the holiday season, 12% would have decided against a PC purchase when they bought an iPad. This is a 2% drop from the 14% of those decided against a PC amongst those who had owned their iPad for 6 months or more. Netbooks were saved the most, with iPad cannibalization falling by 50%, which actually led the netbook market to grow by 21% between September 2010 and March 2011. The report contradicts what analysts were calling the “iPad effect” in the first quarter of 2011 when US PC sales fell 10.7%.

The new 2011 iMacs — the ones with Thunderbolt, Sandy Bridge processors and better graphics — don’t allow you to use any other hard drive but Apple’s custom ones, which are running a custom firmware to provide temperature monitoring through a new 7-pin SATA connector.

For the main 3.5″ SATA hard drive bay in the new 2011 machines, Apple has altered the SATA power connector itself from a standard 4-pin power configuration to a 7-pin configuration. Hard drive temperature control is regulated by a combination of this cable and Apple proprietary firmware on the hard drive itself. From our testing, we’ve found that removing this drive from the system, or even from that bay itself, causes the machine’s hard drive fans to spin at maximum speed and replacing the drive with any non-Apple original drive will result in the iMac failing the Apple Hardware Test (AHT).

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