Skype talks iPad and VoIP over 3G

9to5 Staff

Interesting. Skype today posted a video regarding updating the application to enable it to work over 3G.  This, shall we say, “flies in the face” of what they said a few weeks back when they blamed Apple for not allowing them to do VoIP over 3G.  Here’s Skype’s Peter Parkas:

Many of you have also been asking when we’ll release a version which allows you to make calls over 3G – the holy grail of Skype on the mobile, if you like. We’ve had a 3G-capable version ready for some time now, but Apple’s current restrictions mean that they won’t allow us to make it available on the App Store for the moment

Apple enabled VoIP over 3G over a week ago and VoIP application providers like Fring had Skype’s service working over 3G almost immediately.  Skype is still delaying their service and says it will be available “soon”.  But there is some good news: For the latest iPod touch and iPhone users (with faster ARM processors) Skype is enabling the SILK audio codec which allows CD-quality sound to be used on Skype-to-Skype calls.  We’ve made some SILK calls and the quality is night and day from normal calls.  This will work from iPhone3GS to iPhone3GS over 3G

Nehalem Mac Pros take 20% performance hit when playing audio?

9to5 Staff

You hardcore Mac workstation users might want to cut the music when it’s time to start rendering your big projects if the latest Ars tale is to be believed.   According to the story, Mac Pros exhibit a strange behavior when using iTunes, Quicktime or keeping USB audio interfaces plugged in:

The problem manifests as what has been described as excessive increases in power use and processor core heat when playing songs in iTunes, watching videos via Quicktime, or even when keeping USB or FireWire-based audio interfaces plugged in and active. While hardware monitors only report a small percentage of processor use, it can still cause performance decreases of up to 20 percent for other tasks.

The problem only affects all 2009 Nehalem-based Mac Pros. Strangely, booting affected Mac Pros into Windows 7 also eliminates the problems, leading one user to suspect the issue is related to power management kernel extensions.

A young hacker involved in the hackintosh scene believes the problem is related to the driver that controls newer features of the Nehalem Xeons, including SpeedStep and Turbo Boost. He generated a hacked power management kernel extension that disabled these features, which eliminated the high heat and power draw issues while playing audio. With SpeedStep disabled, however, the CPU drew more power at idle.

It might be best to wait for Apple to release a software update patch for this one, however.  In the meantime, listen to your iPod.

Audio archeology for Apple users

9to5 Staff

A quiet weekend on the Apple news front saw an unusual report explaining where iPod and iPhone users can find rich sources of historically interesting music online.

The report offers a whistle stop tour of some of the websites which make digitised versions of 78rpm and cylinder recordings available to download – and these are free and legal as the recordings are out of copyright.

Of course, you may be on the hunt for more modern music, and for that why not take a look at