News for Tuesday, 5 October 2004

Thank you stephane for the info
Hewlett-Packard, Matsushita, Philips, Samsung and Sony have just formed an alliance to secure a DRM compatibility between there products . InterTrust is the company that will take care of the locking of the files.
As could be expected, Apple has declined taking part in that alliance.

If it was difficult to find iMac G5's in french shops enumerated by Apple, it seems that Bangkok had a different situation.
Eduardo, who is overthere, has sent us pics taken in the Pantip Plaza. The two resellers had iMacs in display.




As a fact, Apple has sent 10 machines in this country, no more no less.

Whereas Music Majors keeps on launching legal actions against P2P users, audio CD market in the Us has increased by 5% for H1 2004. One could have think that they are both correlated, but another recent study has shown that the number of P2P network users have raised by 50% within one year.
On a similar topic, some people estimate that millions of movies are exchanged via P2P network in France, but at the same time, number of cinema entries jumped by 21.7% since the beginning of this year.
We are not probably having all info in our hands to properly analyze the current situation in the middle of contradictory reports; but for sure it is the same for Music Majors and other anti-P2P groups whatever they can claim.
[translator notes: the main problem remains how you define a study or a poll!! For example few years ago, a medical study showed that smokers were less affected by Alzheimer disease... but the study was biased because most of the smokers, at the average age of Alzheimer patients, already died due to other disease (lung cancer and cardiovascular failure)...]

DVD+RW Alliance, with Philips as a leader, has defined specs for DVD+RW 8x. It will double the current burning speed. But as usual recently, we will quickly see DVD+RW 8x enable DVD burners in our favorite computer shops, but we will have to wait for month before getting certified DVD+RW 8x media.

The high oil prices do not only concern vehicle drivers. Industries that require big amounts of plastic have seen as well the price of their base material increase.
Hence, CMC Magnetics decided they'd increase the out-of-factory prices of their blank CDs from $ 0.01 à 0.15. Those media prices, that is to say, are incredibly tense. DVD prices should stay stable for now, as manufacturers keep big enough benefits to absorb the rising prices of polycarbonats.

Thx to Reiner for the info.
Waiting for a machine ordered on the Apple Store to arrive is far from uncommon.
Instead of navigating Apple site, then the transporter, it is possible to simply go to the next page:
http://www.apecode.com/appletrack/
Enter tracking number and you'll get the information.

From fashion object, the iPod is now becoming a cult icon. After all speakers and Skin manufacturers developped their specific line for the music player, fashion creators also proved their interest in it. MCA thus created very fashionable cases.


Their modeles for iPod 3G (10 and 20 Go) and 4G will come at a 25€ price, while the ones for the iPod mini will cost 14.90€.
Those products are sold on fnac.com and kabiloo.fr [in France, though you may tell us of resellers in other countries].

In an interview, Steve Balmer, Microsoft CEO, boldly declared iPod users were nothing but common thieves.
Of course, this allegation which will definitely make him lose what credit he might have had left, is related to a DRM issue. According to him, only Microsoft perfectly masters right management issues and the ways of protecting artists.
Of course, the future of embarked music will be theirs, he says.
We're deeply shocked that the CEO of one of the world's biggest companies might expres this way his impotence as for a phenomenon Microsoft once again wasn't able to anticipate. As usual, they'll now use their money and such declarations to try and invest this activity forerunners have been developping.

A journalist from thee Boston Herald tested VPC 7 on an iBook (no more config details). He was quite happily surprised of the emulation overall good performances, even finding that Office PC was more reactive in emulation than the native Office Mac.
This test sounds quite different than what we saw during Apple Expo.
As soon as this software will be officially released, we'll make a test on various configurations.

Check your Software Update panel, a new security update has been made available :

Security Update 2004-09-30 delivers a number of security enhancements and is recommended for all Macintosh users. This update includes the following components:
-AFP Server
-CUPS
-NetInfoManager
-postfix
-QuickTime

more info on this update here :
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n61798