News for Wednesday, 28 January 2004

A small french firm called Nupha has just created a Mac compatible Music Store , specialized in independent labels. You can buy music in the AAC (Mac) or WMA (Windows) format from any country including Europe and the USA. A simple kit to install enables iTunes to read the AAC file with nupha specific DRM. The advantage is that this kit works with OS 9 as well as OS X. The price is 0,99 € (tax included) for a song and 8,99 € (tax included) for a whole album; currencies accepted are the dollar, the British Pound and the Euro.
It should also be possible to transfer the musique to mp3 players, we imagine after conversion as it is possible to burn it on CDs too.
For now, the site is overloaded, but we'll tell you more about this service as soon as we'll have tested it.
It is thus the 2nd Mac compatible Music Store in the US after Apple, and the 1st ''for the rest of us'' (i.e. the rest of the World ;-). Let's hope that this will motivate the majors to help Apple launch the iTMS in Europe ASAP...

I just published an article explaining how to boost the G4 processor of a Titanium Gigabit from 550MHz (bus 100) to 667 (bus 133).
If you try this hack, do not hesitate to send feed-back on the forums !!
DISCLAIMER: As always, neither Hardmac.com nor me could be held responsible for the destruction of the Powerbook.

Before delving into the core of our subject, i shall begin with a little foreword. What follows is a rumour. It is in no case a change in regards to our decision not to publish rumours on Apple and its products. It does concern the Cupertino based firm only from afar, and cannot have any influence on the course of things either in the short, mid or long run. As for all rumours, this one could be wrong. But its content gives it enough interest so that we've decided to publish it.
IBM is nowadays very active in the ground of high research on processors. The firm has managed -thanks to its numerous discoveries- to secure a promising future. Its most achieved and beautiful patent is the SOI, which allows to quite easily gain 20% on processor frequency without any other major change. It is the SOI that has partially helped the G4 reach better frequencies and gain power. AMD and, more recently, Nvidia have obtained a license to use the SOI in their own products. Intel had chosen other paths which also seemed promising. Eventually they revealed to be less promising than expected. Since a few months ago, the CPU giant has ceased its frenzy race for faster extreme frequencies. True, the passing to 90 nm spurs temporarily the rise of frequencies, but in the long run and when passing to 65 nm, it will be in a bind.
Let's get back to the core of my discourse: Intel, just as AMD and Nvidia did, would have asked for an SOI license. Whereas the two others pay close to nothing, IBM would have asked Intel to pay US$ 500 Millions plus US$ 45 per manufactured processor. Intel has thus the choice between losing many months in research and development of another solution OR finding itself selling its processors at higher prices than... AMD.
We let you imagine the implications if this rumour revealed to be true.

Yesterday was the Macintosh 2004 Celebration day. It was a good occasion for Macbidouille team to meet famous mac guru who are for most of them unknown for the standard consumer.
During this event, Kriss was named "the Mac woman for the last 20 years, whereas Macbidouille Chief Editor Lionel was co-elected with Guillaume Gete as “Mac men of the last 20 years”.
“Even if I am really proud of this price, I feel a bit uncomfortable since there are so many men who really deserved to win too.
I want to thank those who have votes for me, and I am really proud to be co-winner with Guillaume Gete. We have a complete opposite point of view regarding Apple, he is more in the Apple's way, whereas I feel free to criticize Apple when I think it is necessary. So actually the co-winners are a good mix and a balanced decision...”

Since yesterday, we have had another identical case of burnt G5. This time, it burnt twice: First time 12 hours afer being operational, the second 24 after theirst repair.
Its serial nr. is: YM344XXXXXX
The point seems to be around the week 45 !
Bu don't panic if you bought a computer build in Nov. 2003. We're quite far away from the defective series.

André Sterpin had a problem wit his 5GB iPod.
He has decided to dissect it entirely, below are the description how to operate :
- long version(<360 KB)
http://www.sterpin.net/ipod5.htm
- "lite" version(<150 KB)
http://www.sterpin.net/ipod5p.htm

We have received a lot of messages from MacUsers deeply shocked by this picture

As you can see, a dual G5 was emptied from all its components to settle basic PC hardware.
Somehow, it's a tribute to Apple designers...
[trad: Buying a G5 just for its case... Who said PC assembling is cheaper ??]

Source : Clubic (in French)

LG has announced that, during coming ceBIT (March 18-24), they will present the first 12x multiformat disc burners.
Those products won't probably be available before the end of summer 2004.