PC Drivers » mac os x

OS X Leopard from Mac and Solaris from Sun Gets Better with Chelsio Software Driver

Ty — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:20:05 +0000

Chelsio Communications, Inc., the name behind some of the market’s most popular ASIC solutions and Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) adapters, had launched its first software driver for the Mac OS X “Leopard” from Apple. The addition of the company’s Unified Wire adapters is only one of the various things that have made Leopard’s enterprise data centers continuously expanding.

The NIC driver is multifunctional, able to support MAC OS X version 10.5.2 and other subsequent versions. Users can also look forward to more Unified Wire components like iWARP RDMA and offloaded iSCSI initiator as well as EFI support in future updates.

According to Chelsio president and CEO Kianoosh Naghshineh, their Unified Wire adapters “Have been proven to be the highest performance interconnects for enterprise data center environments utilizing Mac OS X.” He further stated that their all-in-one products are “future proofing Mac OS X environments and enabling low cost fabric convergence.”

The executive VP at Apace Systems, Jeanclaude Toma, certainly agrees. “Chelsio is a leading provider of 10Gb Ethernet connectivity and its support for Mac OS X expands the ecosystem of high performance interconnect options for our enterprise data center customers. (Its) ability to deliver high-bandwidth connectivity across a wide range of network environments will be a great benefit to our Mac OS X customers.”

New Software Driver for Solaris
Earlier, Chelsio Communications, Inc. had also announced the successful and complete certification of its software drivers for Sun Microsystems’ Solaris™ Ready Program. Now, 10GbE adapters from the company will come with Solaris Ready logos, able to support PXE Boot, iSCSI Boot, and is multifunctional also with its NIC driver. Future updates will, similar with Chelsio’s software drivers for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, offer iWARP RMDA and iSCSI initiator too.

About Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
First impressions of the Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, the descendant of Macs OS X 10.4 Tiger, had been generally positive. There were a lot of things to enjoy. iChat gave users the freedom to share access to their respective desktops, CoverFlows allowed for visual file browsing, and workaholics were granted more expansive workplace via a virtual desktop.

The 10.5 Leopard version, however, was not perfect. After some time, users reported minor difficulties with certain applications and installation. New features like geotagging would have been great, if users could just figure out where to access them. And of course, older Mac versions were incapable of running the newest OS.

Chelsio Delivers Software Driver for Mac OS X

ShareThis

FastMac Unveils Three Slimline USB Blu-ray Drives

Ty — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 23:58:24 +0000

FastMac introduced three Slimline USB Blu-ray drives for as low as $99.

The APP-6907 DVD±RW / BD drive is very cheap at $9 and it a Black External Slimline USB 2.0 Blu-ray (BD-ROM) Optical Drive With SuperDrive Multi Functions. It has a maximum of 8X CD-RW Writing speed.

Next is the 299 APP-6963 1x BD-R drive that has the following read speed: 24X CD-ROM; 8X DVD-ROM and 1.6X BD-ROM.

Last but definitely not the least one the line is the APP-6964 4x BD-R drive. It is tagged at $399. It has Write speed of 4x BD-R up to 16x CD-RW and Read speed of 4x BD, 24x CD and 8x DVD.
Just before you rush into things, you might be interested to know that Apple’s QuickTime software does not support the decoding and playback of encrypted Blu-ray movies. It means that watching commercial Blu-ray movies using Mac OS X is still impossible.

Source: Engadget

ShareThis

Limited Printer Drivers on Apple’s Snow Leopard

Ray. — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 05:02:20 +0000

Apple’s Snow Leopard is due for release in the next few months. The latest Mac OS X release will have limited printer drivers installed on it as opposed to before. Snow Leopard will only have a select number of printer drivers that will be installed. It will only install drivers for printers that are currently attached to the computer or previous printers that had been installed on the same Mac computer using older versions of Mac OS X.

This move of Apple will considerably save you or your Mac valuable memory space. Usually, printer drivers eat up several gigabytes of space since all drivers are being loaded into the computer even though the user don’t have or will not use the specific printer that the loaded driver was for. But with the Snow Leopard this will not be the case. Only printer drivers for devices that already exist will be loaded. The Mac user can load more printer drivers in the future though if needed. Also Software Update can be used to obtain new drivers that are needed should it be the case. According to insiders the Software Update will also search for new drivers online if a new printer is attached.

Source: AppleInsider

ShareThis

SanDisk Releases USB Drive Fully Compatible with OS X

Ty — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 15:28:53 +0000

If you’ve been whining about the lack of extra peripherals for your Mac then this news will surely solve your problem.

ScanDisk Cruzer Enterprise released the supposedly first secured USB drive that is fully compatible with OS X.

Manufacturer of the USB drive boasted that their device was designed to meet unique USB security / compliance needs by implementing a “hardware-based 256-bit AES USB encryption solution that puts mandatory access control on all files as protection against theft or loss of the drive.”

If all of these are true, ScanDisk sets record for making a cross-platform peripheral that literally doesn’t include the entire device driver problem that many small devices carry.

According to the press release, the company had the billions of Mac and Windows users and businesses in mind when they conceptualized the product. The difference of specialization that PC and Mac workstations offer makes up for the need of a cross platform device such as this one.

The USB drive is now available in 1,2,4 and 8 GB options. It’s price range is between $60 to $300.

Source: Scandisk

ShareThis