NEWS IN BRIEF

Taiwan chips get further boost The Wall Street Journal reported that Philips has teamed up with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) to build a $1.2 billion fab on the island. Yesterday, TSMC bought the DRAM division of Nippon Steel, as reported here. ® Mack joins Datrontech Alan Mack, ex MD of Ilion and a long time channel veteran, has joined Datrontech. He will be commercial director of the company, executive director Mark Mulford said today. ® Apple readies latest OS release Apple will release the next version of the MacOS, 8.5, on 17 October. The update sees the Mac's system software finally become fully PowerPC native (we've only been waiting four and a half years, guys...) boosting system performance by up to 30 per cent, and network performance by 300 per cent, according to independent tests made with the beta release. ®