News for Tuesday, 27 April 2004

Tomorrow, 5:30 pm (Paris time, i.e. 8:30 am in Cupertino), Steve Jobs will answer questions from journalists and analysts by phone. The topic of the tele-conference is the iTunes Music Store, which is one year old.
We expect answers to many questionmarks:
- Will the prices of the songs increase, as the Majors seem to wish ?
- What is the latest status on the shortage of iPod mini ?
- Is the iPod "Classic" going to evolve to avoid canibalization with "mini"?
- Will the iTMS finally cross US borders?

The biggest HD in the world, the Hitachi 7K400, is slowly getting available in some Japanese computer shops. It costs around 400 euros, it might look a bit pricey but the cost/Mb is similar to the one of a 250BG HD from the same supplier.
Maxtor will of course be unhappy since its biggest HD product, featuring 300GB storage @ 5400rpm, will not be in competition anymore.

Disclaimer: what is published below is a FIRST testimony. It might be countered later on, but we regard it as serious enough to publish it.

Hi, I work in a production studio in Montréal, where i do on-line video edition and cares about all the Macs. Excited like a child to hear about the new FCP release (4.1.1 to 4.5), i quickly updated my two G5 and the venerable Dual 800. Confident in Apple's promise that it would be fast, faster, the fastest (and in my case, it would -indeed- fix the "Edit to Tape" bug), i was very surprised when one of my directors rushed into my room, weeping that he would never be able to finish his project on time if Final Cut was so slow... SLOW??? - It is supposed to be lightning fast, now!!! Indeed, when doing modifications in the Timeline, it is slower than my Mom's 400 G3 iMac... Double-click an audio track to see its waveform: 4 to 5 seconds...

Thanks for giving feedback, so that we can finally know whether there is a real problem, or if this is an isolated case...
[Trans. : I can't believe it, after the Airport 3.4... There are finally sort of viruses on the Mac: Apple updates!]

The PCI Special Interest Group just released the specifications for PCI 3.0 format. As for PCI-X format, 5v cards will not be supported anymore by the new format.
For additional info :
http://www.pcisig.com

It is NOT a rumor, but simply a news sent to us by Arnaud who just received his eMac 1.25GHz with MacOSX10.3.3 Build 7G21...even if officially the last build is 7F44...hereafter is a screenshot

if you want a more readable format:
Bench_emac125.xbench.sit

Another update for Airport, the 3.4.1.
Same description as for the update 3.4.
There were big problems with the 3.4 (losses of hard drives, among others). Let's hope this update solves those critical issues.

Sonnet just released a new FM transmitter for the iPod 3G (only).

The PodFreq is much bigger than the iTrip. It has an antenna, and a LCD screen to display the frequency. It also works as a stand, with both USB 2 and Firewire on the side.
Because of its techspecs, it is much more expensive than the iTrip: 99,95 USD
http://www.podfreq.com/