Our Unscientific Look at the Latest Flash for Mac Build

Let's try to make something positive of this oil leak/spill/disaster, shall we? While watching footage from the leak, and simultaneously having Activity Monitor open, I thought it would be a good time to check the CPU usage decrease promised in Flash 10.1 

Here's what we go on a 2007 MacBook Pro:

First, with the last version of Flash (10.0):

And then, with the latest release candidate of 10.1:

It is indeed a noticeable difference, with the bigger notice being the lack of the MacBook Pro fans that usually kick on in the first few minutes of watching a stream, as you longtime TDL viewers can attest.  

New xServe! You've Been Waiting For It, Right?

And so, we've made it through another "we'll be back shortly." The Apple store was down this morning, but now it's back with... The Nehalem-based xServe we mentioned on last night's TDL Live. In the server space, this chip will make a lot of difference, but beyond the chip, Apple has also added an interesting option for a 128GB solid-state drive that works as a boot drive, and doesn't occupy any of the drive bays. $2,999 gets you the low-end model, while our fantasy xServe topped out at $14,649.

It's still strange to see the Promise VTRAK RAID option where once the mighty xServe RAID stood. We'll miss you, even if we never saw you in person.