New and Noteworthy: Intel unveils new chips; iLife '06 and iWeb; '06 will be a "bad year" for Microsoft; more

Intel formally unveils new line of chips Intel officially announced the pricing and branding for a host of processors this week, making the details available on its website. PC Advisor reports: "New on Intel's pricing list were four dual-core mobile Yonah processors ? the T2300, T2400, T2500 and T2600 ? and one single-core chip called the T1300. All the following pricing mentioned here is for sales of quantities of 1,000 units to direct Intel customers. The single-core T1300 costs $209 (about £120), while the T2300, T2400, T2500 and T2600 are priced at $241, $294, $423 and $637 (£139, £170, £245 and £369) respectively. All five chips are produced using a 65-nanometer manufacturing process and include 2MB of Level 2 cache. Clock speeds range from 1.66GHz for the T1300 rising to 2.16GHz for the T2600. The chip giant also introduced four more Pentium D dual-core chips: the 920, 930, 940 and 950, with clock speeds of 2.8GHz, 3GHz, 3.2GHz and 3.4GHz respectively, and pricing from $241 (£139) for the 920 up to $637 (£369) for the 950. All four chips were produced using the 65-nanometer manufacturing process." More.

First laptops using Intel's new Yonah Dual Core ship In what may prove to be a foretelling of announcements Apple will make at next week's Macworld Expo in San Francisco, Lenovo has announced two new notebooks, the T60 and X60. The X60, which comes with two flavors, either Tablet or a thin and light model, and the T60 will get Intel's latest Pentium M CPU. The new Centrino CPU Duo will feature true parallel processing when running multi-threaded applications or multiple applications. It will also come with EV-DO option, running on Verizon's BroadbandAccess network. More.

iLife 06 and iWeb to be introduced at Macworld? TUAW reports on an image posted to the right of Apple's Garageband podcasting page that lists iLife '06 (though the link just goes to the iLife page) and a mysterious application called 'iWeb.' "iLife '06 seems like a no brainer, since I am sure Apple will be releasing this suite every year at Macworld." More.

HP drops iTunes, goes with Rhapsody MacNN reports that Hewlett-Packard today is expected to announce that it will stop bundling Apple's iTunes software with its new PCs and laptops, in favor of RealNetworks' "Rhapsody" music subscription service--one of Apple's leading competitors in the digital music industry. More.

Firefox takes almost 10% of browser market; Safari now #3 ComputerWeekly reports that the open-source Firefox browser now has almost 10% of the browser market, and is still taking market share away from Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. The article notes "Apple's Safari browser, which it distributes on the Mac platform, is now the number three browser in the market, with a 3% share, after overtaking Netscape on just 1.2%." More.

Corante: "2006 will be a bad year for Microsoft" Commenting on Microsoft's introduction of the MTV co-branded "URGE" music store, Stowe Boyd writes: "2006 will be a bad, bad year for Microsoft. This will be another fizzle, since the iTunes/iPod dominance can't be shaken up by partnering with a tired TV channel. On other fronts, Microsoft's partnership with Palm has led to a annoyingly designed Treo (see David Pogue's review: A Marriage Not Made In Heaven) for another place where Microsoft partnerships come up with a mule, not a racehorse. The imminent Kaliedoscope (the souped up Mac Mini that will become the entertainment hub for the living room) is going to sideswipe Microsoft like a velociraptor tearing into the side of a much larger, less agile T. rex." More.

iPod video Film Festival Announced The Flux will be holding an iPod Video Film Festival, an online film festival/competition of content formatted for the iPod. "Visitors to the site can download the films for playback on their computers or iPod video, then vote for their favorite video. Prizes will be awarded in four categories: student film, indie film, family clip, and best music video. [...] Submissions must be less than ten minutes, and formatted for the iPod. Flux partner site R Cubed Productions will offer conversion services to properly format films for iPod playback for a small fee. Submission deadline is January 25th." More.

Previously on MacFixIt

• Bluetooth Firmware Updater 1.2 (#2): Bluetooth no longer working; crashes; not necessary for some listed Macs; more
• Apple releases AirPort Extreme Firmware 5.7; Express Firmware 6.3 -- First Intel-compatible releases
• 2006 MacFixIt Toolbox Awards

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