News for Sunday, 24 August 2003

Microsoft just signed an agreement with OD2 so they can offer a 200.000 music title selection downloadable directly thru Windows Media Player, for a 99 cents of euro fee apiece. It is the first time in Europe musical titles are available for donwload without subscribing to a service first. Microsoft's clearly aiming to come before the iTunes Music Store, which is still not available yet in Europe.
It is iTunes Music Store example that has decided Microsoft and OD2 to initiate an "à la carte" service, as OD2 CEO has openly declared :
"We analyzed Apple's iTunes service results, which sells around 500.000 titles a week, and we estimated we were able to sell that amount in Europe".
Which means with their "classical" subscription systels OD2 couldn't reach that amount.
This invoice system will also be available thru Tiscali and MSN portals.
(Thx Eric)

The few benches made on G5s using XBench 1.0 were quite disappointing. The software's author, contacted by xlr8yourmac, announced a new version that wouldn't rely as much on theG4 architecture. XBench 1.1. is thus optimized for IBM new CPU : compiled with gcc 3.3, worked on Altivec and floating point tests, and some bugs fixed.
Be careful though, it is not possible to compare tests with XBench 1.1 with those from the olfer version.
We thus eagerly expect the first tests made on G5s.

The big power breakdown that hit a part of Canada and six states of the United States might cause some delay on G5 delivery schedule.
Actually, IBM's East Fishkill plant, where PowerPC 970s are mainly made, is located in the New York state. It thus had to be shut two days.
Applehad announced the first deliveries for August, yet it might happen, according to the articleon the link below, those machines would only begin to be delivered on September, or aslate as mid-October for some.
See here eWeek article.