Type of Article: MacTech Blog

At a recent developer conference, Intel said its next-generation laptop chips based on the Sandy Bridge architecture will be able to play Blu-ray 3D movies while preserving battery life. Could this mean Blu-ray playback might finally arrive on the Mac? Probably, not but I’ll keep hoping.

You won’t need to buy a separate graphics processor to specifically view 3D content. Sandy Bridge chips are slated to go into production later this year, and computers with ’em could arrive in the first half of next year.

More U.S. households are watching online video and on a wider variety of devices now than two years ago, but we’re not sacrificing our TV viewing to do so, according to international research firm Parks Associates (http://www.parkassociates.com). At least not just yet.

The firm’s “Digital Media Evolution II” study found 40% of all U.S. broadband homes now regularly watch long-form video on a computer. However, service providers can allay their fears of cord cutting for now as high use of computer video doesn’t yet correlate with decreased TV viewing. “Yet” may be the key word here.

I still haven’t bitten the bullet and upgraded to a new iMac for a few reasons. One is that I was certain that USB 3.0 would be included, but wasn’t. At first I felt that another iMac revision might be coming sooner than expected (early 2011?) with USB 3.0 support, but now I’m not so certain.

The more I think about it, Apple likes to push the envelope, and it’s possible the company will forego USB 3.0 entirely and make the quantum leap to LightSpeed sooner than anyone expects.