Owners of new Apple iMacs, equipped with an ATI Radeon HD 4850 video card, are reporting problems with freeze ups during normal usage, forcing them to reboot the machine. The problem doesn’t appear to be caused by software running at the time of the freeze in Mac OS X, and some users have noted that the problem persists using Windows in a Boot Camp partition where drivers or Mac software wouldn’t be an issue.
Threads have popped up on Apple’s support forums about the issue and the company is aware of it. Some users report being told that a fix is expected to be rolled out with the Mac OS X 10.5.7 update while others have been offered replacement systems when a troubleshooting session has been unsuccessful.
This isn’t the first experience of this kind of problem for Apple systems. In March, some users of MacBook Pro machines reported graphics issues during use, related to the NVIDIA 9600M and 9400M GPUs. Back in 2007, when the aluminum iMac machines launched, another freeze issue surfaced. That time, it allowed some programs to continue running, whereas the latest issue freezes up the entire system.
Result for: boot camp
EZQuest has launched its latest Mac-based product, the internal Phoenix Blu-ray Super Drive 6X Rewriter.
The drive can play and record to CD, DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray. The “device features a 4MB buffer for writing, and uses integrated buffer under-run protection. Files, folders, movies, or other content can be dragged and dropped directly from the Mac desktop to be written on the 50GB capacity discs,” says the product page.
To be able to watch commercial Blu-ray or HD DVD discs on Macs however, the company says you will have to use Windows through Boot Camp on your computer.
Write speed for BD-R and BD-RE discs is 6X, HD DVDs is 3X and standard DVDs are 16x.
The EZQuest Phoenix is currently available for both the Mac Pro and Power Mac for $480 USD while a bundled version (with Toast Titanium) is priced at $550 USD.
Result for: boot camp
MCE Technologies has announced it is bringing a 6x Blu-ray burner to Macs that can playback DVDs at 16x as well as read both Blu-ray and HD DVD.
The drive also has LightScribe compatibility and will allow professionals to author Blu-ray movies using Adobe Premier Pro CS3’s Encore software. Non-professionals can use Roxio’s Toast 9 Titanium (with the Toast HD/BD plug-in) to author more simple BD movies.
The bare drive is meant for Mac Pro or Power Mac G4/G5 running Mac OS X 10.4 or higher and can only use the HD DVD and Blu-ray playback if using Windows XP/Vista through a Boot Camp partition.
The drive will retail for $500 USD with an external model selling for $750 USD.
According to the specs, the new “Blu-ray drive works with all DVD and CD media, and writes to both 25 GB and 50 GB BD-R and BD-RE (rewritable) Blu-ray disks. Speed specs for the new drive are 6X for 25 GB BD-R, 4X to 50 GB BD-R and 16X to DVD±R. It also burns at 4X speeds to DVD±R DL, 5X to DVD-RAM and 40X to CD-R media, among others.”
For an extra $100 USD, MCE will bundle the drive with an installation package, software for Windows Boot Camp playback of both Blu-ray and HD-DVD and Toast 9 with the plugin. For $1300 MCE will ship the drive with the Boot Camp package, Toast, and Adobe Premier Pro CS3 with Encore.
