The demo of the 22nm Haswell running on a tiny solar cell at IDF was impressive, but it didn’t really give us any idea what shipping products might look like. Well, a few slides popped up over at Chiphell that give us a few more details about how the tock, to Ivy Bridge’s tick, is shaping up. For one, were looking at three new on-die GPUs, dubbed GT1, GT2 and GT3 — the latter of which may be a higher performance part than we’re used to seeing out of Intel. We also know that Haswell will have three variants: desktop, laptop (both of which are two-chip solutions with a separate controller hub) and ultrabook, which packs both the CPU and the controller in a single package. If you’re in the mood to dig a little deeper hit up the source links.

SOURCE via Chiphell

Get ready to fire up iTunes and plug in that iOS device, because Apple’s just released iOS 5.0.1. The release notes are identical to the two beta releases, which include fixing bugs relating to battery life and document syncing, while also re-enabling app switching gestures that developers previously had access to on the original iPad. And for those down under, voice recognition has apparently been improved when dictating with an Aussie accent. Those not interested in the 790MB download from iTunes, can look for a 44.6MB delta — including only the changes — from their device Settings. Yes boys and girls, update over the air!

The Kindle Fire itself may still be a week away from release, but users of other Android tablets and phones can now get a small taste of what’s in store courtesy of version 2.0 of the Amazon Appstore. That update began rolling out late last night and, as you can see above, it brings with it a refreshed UI that moves the app more in line with the Kindle Fire’s steely grey interface. The update also adds support for in-app purchases and parental controls, as well as a number of other tweaks and performance improvements. There’re still no sign of those big-name apps that are promised for the Kindle Fire, though.

SOURCE via CNET

Iridium, (which was a catastrophic failure just over a decade ago as Motorola’s $5 billion satellite went down in flames and was sold to an investor for just $25 million), has established itself as a solid business. The network has grown under our radar to more than 500,000 subscribers over the past 11 years and posted $146.1 million of revenue and $11.7 million of profit for the third quarter.

For the satellite phone industry, this is a stunning result. It is not exactly the 10 million people user base that was predicted by Dataquest for the original Iridium back in 1999, but it is more than many times the user base Motorola was able to attract back then (about 30,000). It is still not a consumer service as Iridium says that it has around 451,000 billable subscribers in the commercial space (and industries such as maritime, aviation, oil and gas, mining, leisure, forestry, construction, transportation and emergency services) and 49,000 billable government users, which leaves about 8000 users for the non-billable space and the consumer market. According to Iridium, an average government user spends about $140 per month on Iridium voice services and $19 on data services. The commercial space spends about $50 and $19 on voice and data per user, respectively.

Even if Iridium cannot boast a user base as typical cellular providers, it just lifted its subscriber growth forecast for this year from 20 percent to 25 percent. Revenue growth is expected to be between 10 and 13 percent. At $1000 per handset and about $1 per minute calling cost, Iridium’s service is still way too expensive for the consumer. However, it seems as if it is just a matter of time until Iridium will expand into a much bigger consumer market to follow the vision Motorola once had.

DigiTimes reports that desktop PC vendors seemingly turned their nose up at Google’s Chrome OS during executive chairman Eric Schmidt’s speech in Taiwan on Wednesday. He was reportedly promoting Chrome OS as a high-profile option to Windows 7 and Ubuntu, focusing on the software’s fast boot time, a lack of virus issues and the fact that it will be offered free of charge. He urged vendors to give Chrome OS a try.

But unnamed vendors on Wednesday said that if Google really wants to cut into the PC sector, then it will need to provide more resources and support than it has with the current crop of Chromebooks. As it stands now, there has been very little demand for Chromebooks since Acer and Samsung launched their versions back in June. The former company reportedly only sold 5,000 units by the end of July, and the latter Samsung was said to have sold even less than that in the same timeframe.

According to the unnamed vendors, the problem Chrome OS faces is that it’s still too idealized. Consumers and businesses have yet to fully embrace cloud computing, storing documents and media locally on their physical drives. Popular applications are just now shifting over into the cloud by way of HTML5, but most highly-used and long-standing applications like Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite are still installed locally and used offline.

The vendors also indicated that Google is mainly pushing Chromebooks in the enterprise market, yet its cloud-based Google Docs applications doesn’t meet the needs of enterprise users. On a consumer front, Chromebooks become problematic for users who have a poor connection to the internet, or don’t have a connection at all — the “lite” cloud-based advantage suddenly becomes a huge disadvantage.

That said, it’s no surprise that vendors aren’t too keen on using Chrome OS as a major desktop platform. While many services and applications are indeed moving up into the cloud, the majority of the enterprise and consumer base hasn’t quite shifted away from physical media even though cloud computing is the “trend of the future.”

If you like to live on the bleeding edge of Nvidia driver freshness, then you will be happy to know that the GeForce R285 beta driver is now available with even more optimizations for Battlefield 3. Nvidia also promises that it adds SLI and 3D Vision profiles for Skyrim and other new titles.

Here’s the full list of new features in version 285.79

Includes several bug fixes and performance improvements for Battlefield 3:

• Fixes cases of irregular performance (stuttering) primarily seen on DirectX 10 GPUs. The fix improves the performance of both DX10 and DX11 GPUs.
• Fixes shadow map corruption seen with DirectX 10 GPUs.
• Fixes cases of black corruption lines/triangles with DirectX 10 GPUs.
• Fixes black screen during playback using Windows Media Center.

Added or updated SLI profiles for the following games:

• Aion v3.0
• Anno 2070
• Assassins Creed: Revelations
• Bastion
• Need for Speed: The Run
• Payday: The Heist
• The Adventures of Tintin
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Added or updated the following 3D Vision game profiles:

• Airline Tycoon 2 – Rated Fair
• Assassin’s Creed: Revelations – Rated Good
• Batman: Arkham City – Updated Rating To 3D Vision Ready
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution – Rated Excellent
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Rated Excellent
• FIFA 12 – Rated Good
• Hard Reset – Updated Rating To 3D Vision Ready
• inMomentum – Rated Fair
• The Lord of the Rings: War In The North – Rated Good
• Smash Cars – Rated Fair
• Two Worlds II: Castle Defense – Rated Good
• Zombie Driver – Rated Excellent

Click here to download the GeForce 285.79 beta drivers.

Amazon has cranked up its Kindle Fire orders to more than 5 million units to meet the holiday season demand. Unnamed sources from upstream component suppliers report that Amazon has increased its Kindle Fire orders to more than 5 million units to be sold before the end of 2011 thanks to strong pre-orders. Amazon raised its order volume once already during the middle of Q3 2011, cranking up the number of units from the original 3.5 million to 4 million units.

According to the sources, Amazon increased its volume to more than 5 million because it believes demand for the Kindle Fire will become even stronger by the time Black Friday passes and customers are in full Holiday shopping mode in December. Amazon’s upstream partners, which include Wintek, Chunghwa Picture Tubes (CPT), LG Display, Ilitek, Quanta Computer, Aces Connectors and Wah Hong Industrial, will benefit from the short-term orders.

Wednesday Amazon said that the Kindle Fire tablet will support “thousands” of apps right out of the box. The tablet will sport a customized version of Google’s Android 2.3 “Gingerbread” OS, meaning that most of the apps hosted by Amazon’s own Appstore for Android will be compatible with the device. Owners will also be greeted with a free app each day thanks to Amazon’s current Free-App-Of-The-Day promotion.

Launching next week for $199.99, the Kindle Fire will sport a 7-inch IPS display with a 1024 x 600 resolution and 169 pixels per inch. It will also come packed with a dual-core Texas Instruments OMAP4 SoC clocked at 1 GHz, 512 MB of RAM, 8 GB of internal storage (but no SD card slot), 8 hours of continuous reading with Wi-Fi turned off, and more.