News for Sunday, 20 July 2003

Thanks to Thierry for this info.

I have just had a really nice surprised after a horrible stress : Being really happy to just received the last album from the band Guano Apes (a band which should be more known!!), I can not resist to insert this CD in my G4 and perform the small import into iTunes 4... Ouch! A big sticker on the jewel case indicates that this CD can not be played on a computer, I look on the back : editor BMG (like for the last album from Robbin Williams), there are indeed two sessions on the CD, the sound and the anti-piracy protection. anyway, I insert the CD in my G4 and iTunes displays the following screen as expected The first six tracks are readable and can be imported, but not the other 6 songs (track 7), and iTunes blocks trying to read them. I go back to the finder, and open the CD window. Get info on track 7 indicates 22 min 18 sec, instead of 15h 33 min in iTunes. I copy the 7th track on the desktop, and open it with QuickTime 6.3. Miracle!! The 7th track is in fact tracks 7 to 12 collated one after the other!! After a small series of copy - new - paste, I finally end up with the last 6 tracks in an AIFF format. Final result : the album is now complete, after imports into iTunes and AAC encoding!! Info : On the back of the CD jewel case, it is written that to read this CD it requires : PC : min Win 95/64MB RAM, Pentium II 233 Mac : CD not recognized Others : CD not recognized There is sometimes advantage to be part of a community which represent only a small % of the computer market, that way they did not test their CD protection under MacOSX!! This mail is dedicated for users who have enough not to be even able to make a private copy of a CD that they have legally purchased. I also want to point out that my CDs are not available on P2P network. I know many musicians that are trying to life from their skills, and I am the first support them and I am not releasing my music tracks to the web pirates!!

We also want to mention 2 important things:
1) This tip described here is not a reason for hacking or so!
We also find that it is simply not normal to not be able to import a music track on a computer in order to be able to transfer it on an iPod.
2) Those anti-piracy protections are actually the topic of a justice procedure started by the main french consumer association ("60 millions de consommateurs") which we expect will be received and accepted. anyway, even the so-called "protected" music CD can be found on the P2P networks so at the end only honest consumers are the victims of the majors.
[Follow up] Thanks to François for this additional info.

A small additional info concerning the article where Thierry describes how to rip a CD from BMG. He says that the last album from Robbie Williams is also distributed by BMG, which is wrong. Robbie Williams has a contact with Capitol and he even extended recently the contract for 3 or 4 albums. Capitol uses another protection system. concerning this point (I am working in musical press), Capitol (ex-EMI, + Virgin, Labels, etc.) is applying an anti-copy protection on all CDs at the European level , except for the UK (are the British more sceptical !!!). Jewel case are in addition covered with a sticker, sometimes affecting the design (the last album from the Bangles has a quarter of its case covered by different warnings). However, Sony has recently decided to stop using anti-piracy systems, because they are probably thinking that it is too late for the CD, and that only the SACD is the solution for the music majors regarding piracy protection.

Thanks to Merlone for the info.
A serious DoS risk affecting a wide range of Cisco routers and switches has been discovered. It could have been possible to block those routers remotely.
This was a quite important issue, since Cisco aims 80% in this business sector. A massive attack could simply block the entire web.
Applying the patch already released by Cisco and available online to secure this risk, will anyway already induce problems concerning web data flow, since it will have to be applied to millions of routers and switches.
[Follow up by taz]
This security risk is "only" affecting Cisco routers and switches running with Cisco IOS using the IPv4 interface (around 99% of the materials used by the web providers).
More info here.

We still have around 600 000 banners to sell for September, so if you want to be present on our web site during the Apple Expo in September, you can contact us at the following address
pub@macbidouille.com

Fred is bringing us additional info regarding the Magma device that we have already talked about yesterday

Concerning the new Magma device, the real new point is that it is a 64 bit/66MHz device, that was not the case for the previous model because it is quite difficult to get a high bandwidth with their interconnection ( this is a completely new connectic in the new model which allows up to 500 MB/s of bandwidth). Concerning the PCI-X, this is not ready yet... This is anyway an excellent solution for many users who need to preserve many extension slots, but not a higher bandwidth (due to proprietary bus such as for Avid, Digidesign, Creamware, Media100...)

CDR-Info published a test of the new multi format A 06 burner.
It doesn't only add support for +R/RW, but also improves the burning quality for all medias thx to a better precision and a new device that alleviates the support vibrations.

Philippe made an interesting discovery with Panther:

Small discovery with Panther (tested version is Build 7A202). I connected an IBM disk, formatted in NTFS, and there a surprise, as opposed to Jaguar which refused to mount it, Panther doesn't have any problem doing it. Disk Utility identifies the format as : "Winows NT Filesystem"!!!

There is a bug in the soft as shown on this screenshot:

Here is a screenshot sent by Psone which shows us the formats Mac OS X 10.3 acknowledges.

Note that NTFS is in reading version only, and that it might be deactivated in final X.3 version.

MCE just announced they'd sell iBooks 900 12 and 14" where the original Combo is replaced with a 1x Superdrive.
They even accomplish the prowess to sell their DVD-R machines without increasing the price !
The 12" 900/DVD-R version cost $1299, the 14" 900/DVD-R $1499.
We don't know how they manage to get this miraculous result.
A very important last word about it: iDVD doesn't work with G3s !

here are some news of Panther Beta.
A beta 2 will soon be available to developers. The CDs are currently being burnt and shall soon be sent to them.
It won't be available for donwnload.
It is a 7Bxx compiled with GCC 3.3. Some little add-ons were made, but no big news yet, as Steve wishes to keep some surprise for the release.

Thx 2 Patrice 4 this info.

I recently bought the famous LiteOn home DIVx reader LVD2001. When I activated the hidden menu to remove the macro and regional protections, the window felt like a déjà vu... Mac OS X buttons can be seen on top right of it, yet they are not functional. Someone in LiteOn seems to be fond of Macs... :-)

Microsoft decided to use a new packaging on their Office v.X. Beginning in August, there'll be different versions :
- complete version, for students and teachers, will cost $ 149 and could be installed on 3 different Macs
- a Pro version will include, on top of the classic suite Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage, VirtualPC 6.1 for $499
- une version standard comme celles qui sont vendues jusqu'à présent mais avec une baisse de prix significative (de 499 à 399 $)
- Virtual PC 6.1 will also be commercialized separately
This 6.1 version will bring nothing new as compared to VirtualPC 6, except Microsoft logo when booting the application. Let's hope they won't have the nerve to charge for this "update".

Apple and MGS recruit 10 Mac gamers for a five day mission.
During Apple Expo 2003, which will take place on 16th to 20th September, we'll organize a Mac video game dedicated animation.
[If you speak French and are interested in this announcement, check French MacBidouille site. Transl. Kalomir]

Emmanuel sent us a funny true story.

Our consumer relation service received a call from a client of a FNAC [major cultural goods reseller in France] in Paris, who couldn't install Windows XP on his new Mac !!! As this client wanted to buy an eMac, the shop assistant advised him to take Windows XP Pro, because any computer can use it, and it works better than Mac OS !!!

Some do still need a bit of formation !!

D-Link more reknowned for its network solutions, just announced the release of a hub with 3 FireWire ports and 4 USB 2 ports (USB 1 compatible). This should be the ideal hub for PowerMac G5, the 1st Mac ever to use USB 2.0, but it could also be fit for any Mac using USB and FireWire. Its main interest would be to enable one to relocate its USB/FireWire ports on a desk for example, to make them easier to reach.
It's a shame FireWire 800 isn't concerned, aand an external power source is still needed.
This hub should arrive in August in the States first, for a price of $49,99.

On the US Apple Store, education prices drop. Thus, a dual 2 GHz G5 Bi is now $300 less expensive than for the general public.
Let's hope european stores will follow.

Thx 2 Gérard for this news:

Wallnut Creek Apple Store (San Francisco) has opened last Saturday. There was a group of fans who camped all night long in front of the shop, in order not to miss this opening, surfing with their portables on its already activated Airport newtork. I was lucky enough to find them on Staurday morning sxo I could havee a video chat with them, live from Wallnut Creek sidewalk... great. I kept contact ever since, via iChat, with one of them peoplee who gave me the address of a personal page where one can see a lot of photographs and even a film of this event. If you wish to have a look: homepage.mac.com/dctallen/Personal20.html

Bacman sent us an Xbench test of a dual 1.42 G4. We took the G5 test from Cammac.it in order to compare. Sorry if it's a bit hard to read, but our Italian friends didn't seem very concerned with that issue.


This comparative is interesting:
- As for CPU test, G5 is definitely inferior to the G4 for some tests such as Altivec Basic, but it regains advantage for floating point calculations.
Yer in the overall, G5 doesn't frag the G4 at all.
- On the other hand, memory tests show that DDR is now fully addressed by G5s, which wasn't the case with G4s. The G5 bandwidth is roughly double, except for the "fill" test where it is quite surprisingly divided by 2.
- As expected Radeon 9800 Pro is faster than Geforce Ti 4600, but only by 25%.
- The disk test looks disappointing, as Serial ATA seems to be of no impact.
- The User interface test, which we consider as the most important, reveals a 15% gain only. It allows us to have an idea of the G5 overall reactivity under OS X.
One has to be careful though, as Xbench isn't really reknowned for its reliability with results and their reproduction. But here's the first conclusion one could draw from this first test : the owners of dual 1.42 G4s shouldn't feel frustrated by the G5 arrival !
In our views the G5 will show its true potential only with Panther (OS X.3).
[Upd] Here's Fabrice interesting comment:

As I have quite a thorough experience with AltiVec, the results given by XBench do not surprise me much. The G5 units aren't as high-performant as G4 7455, at least in bold results. I suspect XBench test uses L1 cache (on the G4), which would explain the performance rating. The G5 probably works with its memory in regard to this test, which would explain its poor performances. Memory performances in AltiVec streaming on the other hand seem to augurate of the overall performances of a G5 as compared to a G4 when working with memory in real everyday use... So. Don't take this test too seriously. :)

Here are some informations about future Apple portables, from a very reliable source.
New Powerbooks are due to arrive at the end of next month. They've been delayed because of... Motorola once again. They faced problems producing PPC 7457. The 12" will be 1133 MHz while the other ones will be 1,25 and 1,33 GHz. USB 2.0 and Firewire 800 will be available on the entire line.
Yet we had no information about a 15", but we should know soon.
As for the G5 protables, they shall arrive at the beginning of 2004 (perhaps February). There's still much work to do on the motherboard controller that dissipates too much heat. They'll have to engrave it in 0,09 Microns.

Here's Rémi experience of flashing a Radeon 7000.

Having read the 2 articles on flashing a Sapphire 64 Mo card, based on ATI Radeon 7000 chip, I decided to join the adventure. After receiving my card from Computer Universe and downloading the flashing kit on Falkmedia, I installed my card in my office's PC, saved the original ROM, replaced it by Mac ROM, reinstalled the card in my UMAX S900, then launched based install (ATI Radeon 7000 Installer 1.0), then used ATI's october 2002 2.08 update. Everything went well, no bug. Tested under Mac OS 9.2.1, proven to be qite faster than my former Rage 128 ;-) Yet the S-video output didn't work. I then tried the same install under Mac OS X and activated Quartz Extrem. Although it works well isn't quite as noticeable, perhaps a bit of fluidity with the screen saver. And still no S-video output (useful for DVDs or Divx) . As this card came from Germany, I wondered if this output signal would perhaps be different from'Y/C. So I used a peritel adaptator, coming from my digital camera, that allows one to switch between Y/C and CVBS and then the miracle happended :-() I've got a 2d screen on my TV. Let's go for DVDs and Divx on a 16/9 device !!! Video copying also works well, only sometimes the mouse pointer stays on my 21'' computer display instead of moving to the TV screen. Here's the boost my old machine required (UMAX S900, XLR8 G4 450, 272 Mo/80 Go ATA 133 and SCSI 2, USB and firewire cards, USB bluetooh Acer key) to go on helping me while I get the money to buy a G5.

Hear Ronald's call:

I contacted Mr. Dave Koziol from IOXperts, Inc., an american society specialized in creating drivers for Mac OS X, to ask them to create one for the Creative Sound Blaster Live for Macintosh. It would be great if everyone who haven't renounced their SBL Live yet wrote to him to demonstrate people still believe in this sound card potentialities ("support@ioxperts.com"). It would also be relevant to write to Apple (http://www.apple.com/fr/macosx/feedback/) to ask them to create a generic drivers for sound cards which would give base support for every sound card. With two sound cards supported (the other one being M-Audio Revolution 7.1), our chances to get higher quality games on Macintosh would increase. Especially since many PC games use AEX protocol for sound, the port of games would be made easier.