By Katie Marsal
Published: 03:05 PM EST (12:05 PM PST)
Just as soon as one rumor has suggested trouble in the relationship between Apple and NVIDIA, a conflicting report now claims that the two are still on good terms.
The supposed discussion
with NVIDIA insiders on Friday follows earlier concerns that the electronics giants were
at odds with each other over their long-term partnership for developing Mac graphics technology.
After its investigation,
Fudzilla was convinced that the two were "doing just fine" and that Apple is still snapping up system chipsets and other components as it has in recent weeks. The relationship is believed so strong, in fact, that NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang personally has "a lot of respect" for Apple and subsequently gets that respect out of the company as a whole.
Murmurs of a spat began on Wednesday and centered on possible fallout over the chronic graphics failure problems that affected the GeForce 8600M in 2007 and early 2008 MacBook Pros, gradually "cooking" the notebook graphics chips until they either display corrupted video or none at all. In the now disputed account of events, Apple had alleged that NVIDIA wasn't being honest regarding the quality of certain parts and was reputedly arrogant in what it thought it could negotiate from the other firm.
A reversal of Apple's attitude would be a sharp one as NVIDIA graphics are fundamental to its current Mac lineup. All MacBooks, the Mac mini and the iMac use a GeForce 9400M to provide better-than-average integrated graphics without damaging battery life. It moreover provides hardware acceleration for H.264 video and will eventually give even low-end systems acceleration of non-visual tasks using the OpenCL standard found in Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
Neither Apple nor NVIDIA has stepped in to settle the question.
