News for Friday, 11 June 2004

We just finished testing an AluICE Firewire 800 using an Hitachi 400 Go disk. This HD will be available (in France) by the beginning of July.
the AluIce at Macway
Our test in English :
Exclusive AluICE test

Here's DrGeo speaking

I wanted to let you know I've finished the port Dr. Geo 0.9.13 (a free Interactive geometrics software) under mac os X as a multilingual application which works under X11. It will enable you: - to buid geometrical interactive figures that may be manipulated in a class or with a projector. - to export those in pdf, png, jpg, latex, formats... and include the images in your documents or mathematics exercises. - it is free to use from children classes to University. - it included many examples and its documentation (fr, It, us, ..)

The compressed archive weights 35 Mo, X11 must be installed on your mac: Dr. Geo 0.9.13 This version was released after a work from Hilaire Fernandes under Linux, for the OFSET association which is working on a free school CD under linux ( http://www.ofset.org)

Thx to Emile for the info.

The computer park of the French speaking belgian school has been gifted with Xserves G5 "piloting" Window 2000 PCs, quite the big thing actually. I for one saw this hybrid thing at work. Glad that the Education department made that choice, yet I don't really understand this option from a technical point of view, as it is surprising or even impossible to understand. Most of those PCs are almost 5 years old, which looks like there's a Ferrari engine in an electric car.

Now time will come for replacing 5 years old PCs themselves by Macs...

Thx to all those who sent us informations about very professionnal softwares ported on Mac.
From Jérôme

To show the ability of Macs in the research area, here's a news which will prove interesting for labs and other X-ray instrument makers ! Magneticasoft, a French firm, developed a soft, unique in this area, which analyzes and calculates magnetic films using Mathematica. It is possible, after registering, to try it for a month (http://try.magneticasoft.com/login.php) . As its target seems to be the international reasaarcher community, the site is in English : http://magneticasoft.com

From JL

We don't often get to read about design on Mac. I'm not talking about "artistic" creations under such applications as Maya, but of real volumic 3D, from shape creations to industrial applications. For instance making injection molds that cost 100,000 € apiece for plastic components. This area is widely dominated by PC softs : Catia, Pro-Engineer, solid-Works, Etc. But a small irreductible team has been conceiving and realizing mass products on Mac applications since 1989. First with Mac-Bravo (and Mac II ci), then Ashlar-Vellum , Vellum-Solid, Cobalt, and now the latest metamorphosis : Concept-Unlimited. I wanted to tell you a complete version was available for free download on Cadsoft site. It's a time limited beta which is upgraded on a regular basis. It is ok : my team uses it every day at work. France : http://concepts.ediware.net US : http://www.csi-concepts.com/conceptsunlimited/

From Hervé

I wish to let you know Alias Sketchbook Pro for OSX has been released. A demo version may be downloaded on Alias site (the editors of the 3d soft Maya) More info there: http://www.alias.com/eng/products-services/sketchbook_pro/index.shtml http://www.alias.com/eng/press/press_releases/20040603_sketchbook_mac.shtml This is the sign the Mac is back into the design world! Now we just have to wait for Alias to port Alias Studio on our platform ! (Which I'm eager to see!)

From Jean-Daniel

Being a newcomer in the Mac world I'm currently programming in C++ on my machine (Alubook 15"), particularely with a very interesting library of image processing called CImg (Cool Image), developed by David Tschumperlé, from INRIA. As this library is made for Linux and X11, I tried it under MacOS X but unfortunately it wouldn't work. With a bit of work and helped by a friend I managed to make it compatible with MacOS X and David Tschumperlé inserted our modifications to his library. CImg includes very performing functions which are quite esay to use for images and matrices processing, using ImageMagick and Lapack calculated libraries (natively available under X.3). This templates based library is under GPL licence and uses C++ language. It is updated on a regular basis by its author. Here's the link to CImg site: http://cimg.sourceforge.net/

All those efforts show that the Mac still has its place in many areas. It's up to us more than Apple to let people knew, a hard task indeed. Apple communication is too flat, too élitist and often made for those who already know.

FNAC, the one of the biggest It, music, video distributor in Europe, has officially announced that its online music shop, FnacMusic, which was originally planned to open this month will be active only in September. FNAC is currently discussing with other companies to replace OD2 which is the one currently in charge of the project. We hope that the FnacMusic service will be Mac compatible, it is always positive to have some competition...

Using their recognized expertise in the domain, the folks at Mac et Vidéo (in French) have released MovieGate, a software that allows to create DVD extremely easily.

MovieGate

Thanks to E.A. for the tip.

Apple has silently added a killer tool on the version of OSX shipping with the new G5 machines. The new steup assistant allows you to import ALL settings and files (user accounts, apps...) from any other Mac running OSX connected to your new machine through FireWire. And all that in one click and without screwing up your new system. We want it for all the macs NOW!

We have had lengthy discussions about whether or not we should post the poll that you can see on the right side of this page. Can we throw a brick at such 'monument'?
We still do not know the answer to that question. However, the results on the Macbidouille page (the French version) are crystal clear.
For the majority of people that have voiced their opinion, they will not gullibly swallow whatever promises Steve Jobs will come up with next.
We confess being extremely curious about what kind of crowd will welcome mister Jobs at the next WWDC. The success of the iPod and the iTMS will certainly not blind in awe the programmers community, that awaits from Apple more than just shiny things.
[upd] The French page of the poll has had much more votants than the English page so far, thus the above refers mainly to those.[/upd]

In a rather quiet fashion, the admin of the CDR-Info website has published on his forums a screen capture showing a successful 4x burn process of a DVD+R9.

No other detail has been disclosed, other than the fact it has been performed on a Lite-On burner.

Seagate has announced a bunch of new products:
-In 3.5": The 3rd quarter of the year will see the arrival of the DB35 models at 7200RPM. Those will be declined in 250, 300 and 400 GB in both ATA and SATA.
-In 2.5" for laptops : Again, in the 3rd quarter, will come the Momentus 5400.2 in 60, 80 and 100 GB. The same drives will be available in 7200RPM a few months later.
-The SCSI scene will also see some new models in 10000 and 15000RPM.
And, the best part for dessert:
- A 500 GB SATA disk will be available in 2005.
- Seagate will also venture in the 1" drive market in PC-Card enclosures. Those are Microdrive like, since that name is patented. They will offer capacities of 2.5GB and later in the 3rd quarter, 5GB. Apple might then be able to offer 5GB iPod mini.