Apple M9590LL Technology Overview - Page 13

Technology Overview 13 Power Mac G5 Versatile CD and DVD burning The industry-standard SuperDrive writes to and reads dozens of CD and DVD formats. • Writes DVD-R discs at up to 16x speed • Writes DVD+R DL discs at up to 6x speed • Reads DVDs at up to 16x speed • Writes CD-R and CD-RW discs at up to 24x speed • Reads CDs at up to 32x speed FireWire and USB 2.0 One of the most versatile standards ever developed, FireWire makes it easy to connect high-bandwidth devices such as DV cameras, hard drives, and high-performance imaging peripherals. And since FireWire cables carry power, the Power Mac G5 can recharge a portable device's batteries, even while it's in use. FireWire 800 doubles the throughput of the original FireWire 400, from 400 to 800 Mbps.4 The FireWire 800 port can also connect to FireWire 400 devices using the appropriate 9-pin-to-6-pin or 9-pin-to-4-pin cable. What's more, FireWire 800 works over distances of up to 100 meters-perfect for remote devices. USB ports allow you to connect printers, scanners, graphics tablets, keyboards, microphones, iPod players, speakers, joysticks, and other industry-standard input and output devices. Each system has one FireWire 400 port on the front, one FireWire 400 port on the back, a FireWire 800 port on the back, and four USB 2.0 ports-one on the front and three on the back-plus two USB 1.1 ports on the keyboard. Wireless connections For wireless communications, an antenna is built into the Power Mac G5-just add optional AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth technologies. AirPort Extreme allows you to create an ad hoc network, share files with a wireless-enabled portable computer, or stream music to your stereo using an AirPort Express Base Station.3 Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) allows short-range wireless connections-at data rates up to 3 Mbps-to a variety of Bluetooth-enabled digital devices, such as cell phones, personal digital assistants, printers, and Apple's wireless keyboard and mouse. You can even synchronize contacts between Bluetooth-equipped cell phones, PDAs, and Mac OS X Address Book. For more information, see www.apple.com/airport and www.apple.com/bluetooth. SuperDrive with double-layer support The SuperDrive built into every Power Mac G5 reads and writes to a wide variety of DVD and CD media, including double-layer (DVD+R DL) discs capable of holding up to 8.5GB of data. While traditional single-layer DVD-R discs hold up to 4.7GB of data, double-layer discs have two layers of data, one of them semitransparent. The SuperDrive in the Power Mac G5 can read and write on either layer, almost doubling the storage space. This means you can author discs with over 3.5 hours of video encoded in standard MPEG-2 format on one DVD+R DL disc, compared with 2 hours of video on a standard DVD-R disc. This added capacity is increasingly important as you design DVDs with more advanced features-such as additional languages, multiple soundtracks, and supplementary video angles-which require even greater disc capacity. For professional photographers, double-layer DVDs make an excellent medium for storing large numbers of highresolution photographs.