Brand: MacNews

ATI has announced its next generation Radeon processors, which will power the company’s future video cards. At the heart of the family is the Radeon 8500, which ATI claims delivers “up to 33 percent higher performance than the nearest competitive graphics processor.” The 8500 features ATI’s TruForm and SmartShader technologies, which improve image quality. The Radeon 7500, meanwhile, is a less powerful version of the 8500 but nonetheless delivers a performance improvement of up to 60 percent over the current Radeon.

MacMinute sources report that Mac OS X Server 10.0 is not yet fully compatible with the new QuickSilver Power Mac G4 systems. Gigabit ethernet is apparently not supported, and issues exist with file transfers and other network activity. While Apple has not yet officially acknowledged the issues, they are apparently aware of them, as last-generation’s G4 servers with Mac OS X Server are the only available server option at the moment.

An article in the St. Petersburg Times, as noted by MacSurfer, discusses Apple’s retail store plans in the Tampa Bay area, where a store is expected to open next month.

Microsoft today announced a keyboard designed specifically for use with Office, which offers several convenient features, including: a scroll wheel; single-touch buttons for copy, cut, and paste; application/window toggle button; back and forward buttons for browser navigation; 12 hot keys; and more. The keyboard also features an ergonomic wrist rest.

ADS Technologies today introduced USB Instant DVD, a device that converts video from analog video sources to full resolution DVD format on a Mac. The product uses MPEG-2 compression and coverts the video to 720×480 NTSC or 720×576 PAL formats. While the product is billed as Mac and PC compatible, it ships only with Windows software for editing and burning DVDs. USB Instant DVD will ship in September for US$229.