News for Wednesday, 28 April 2004

The "recent" QuickTime 6.5.1 update, necessary for the iTunes 4.5 update, requires you to update all iLife applications to version 4.0.1...am I not clear in my explanation???
to make it simple you will be asked to update all Apple applications related to iLife, QT and iTunes. For additional info, follow the
link

Today is Apple's audio and music day!! After numerous Apple software updates, Apple France is proposing iPods on the Refurb Store with a 25% discount!!
You should check your local Apple Refurb Store!!

A couple hours away from the phone conference of Jobs, for the first anniversary of the iTunes Music Store, our friends of Macgeneration have interestingly noticed that Apple was about to release a new version of iTunes, and to update their Music Store.

Under this banner, that appear when a new service of the iTMS is clicked, are presented the new features of the Music Store and iTunes:
For iTunes Music Store :
- iMix : publish your playlists so that your friends can know your musical tastes
- Music Video : a section dedicated to video clips
- Movie Trailers : explicit enough
- Radio Charts : displays the most played songs on american radiowaves (to make sure you listen to and buy the same as the others)
For iTunes 4.5 :
- Party Shuffle : a dynamic playlist mixing songs for you
- CD Insert Printing : to print directly in iTunes colorful covers with your playlists
- Wish List : to save the references of the songs that might interest you
- Import of WMA to convert it into AAC or MP3
- A new encoder, dividing the size of the file by 2, "with no loss of quality"
- The tags of your songs will allow you to go straight to the related page on iTunes Music Store (page dedicated to the artist, for instance).
[Maj]
iTunes is now availlable in version 4.5 on Apple's website :
www.apple.com/itunes/download
[MàJ2]
The iPod software is updated to, in order to be fully integrated in the new iTunes.
www.apple.com/ipod/download/

Thanks to eFraid for this news.

Hello Lionel. I attended the concert of I Monster, a British electro-rock band last Saturday night. A French band currently playing in the UK, The Lovers, was opening for them. Their performance was backed by two 12" AluBook (one on each side of the stage), running iTunes. So, yes, the professionals work on the Mac, but they also dare to launch their loops with a software which is is more "standard" user oriented! Here are some pictures of the group, plus one of the PowerBook. I Monster is very famous for their version of Daydream in Blue [Trans. : this music was used for a famous commercial for dairy products, in France] For your readers interested by this, I wrote a rather long article on the blog I've been managing with a couple friends for a while, entirely made with a mac, from the design to PHP programing, the whole running on SPIP. Just to say "Sure, it works!"

Http://www.entreblog.com/

Thanks MAcDiver for the heads up.
Online store CDiscount is introducing one-time view DVDs. For 2.49 Euros, you can buy such medium which, 8 hours after being played, simply becomes unreadable.
The very attractive price tag might hurt the videostores business. These DVDs will be available starting May 7th.
http://cdiscount.com/

For starters, we learned that even the G5 presently sold come pre-installed with Mac OS X 10.3.3 7G31. So, the latest DVDs from Apple are of this revision. (Thanks Florian)

Furthermore, we learned from resellers "FNAC digitale", who carry a stock of the newest iBooks, that those machines come pre-installed with an even more recent build : 7G33.

Sony ain't the mighty wealthy giant that it was in the days of yore. The last financial results from the company revealed that net profits were down 23%.
The Japanese giant hopes to get back 13% with the sales of flat screens TVs.
In the recent past, Sony missed the train on 2 major technology shifts :
- MP3 players, mainly because the subsidiary Sony Music was not so hot for it and they were pushing their own compression format ATRAC.
- Plasma TV (they are currently using Samsung matrix)

Nothing official, though in an internal circular, Apple informed its tech centers that iPod mini are supported all over Europe, but France. More on this later.
To sum up, if you have a problem with an iPod mini bought in the United States, and that you get in touch with Apple Care :
1) They will advise you to send it back to the US for repairs
2) If you push a little, they will exchange the defective unit for an identical replacement. So this won't be the opportunity to get another color, for instance.
In France, this service is not yet available. There was no comments on this from Apple except that it was due to some regulations. This might be because the volume of the iPod mini is not limited to 100dB.
Note that if an unhappy French customer insists on having the unit serviced (i.e. repaired), Apple will offer reimbursement of the price of the iPod mini. Since the mini is such a rare item, the best bet would probably be to cross the nearest border and get it serviced there.
We cannot stress that enough : this information is not official and will not be until the iPod mini is sold outside USA. Meantime, you guys have the premium info.