News for Thursday, 7 October 2004

Thanks to Guillaume for this info

Hereafter is a screenshot which might interest some of us. I am a regular MacBidouille reader living in the US. On NBC, immediately after the presidential discussion - in order to evaluate “live” reactions - journalists had interviewed a democrat and a republican analyst. Of course they could not find ant common point of view... except maybe for one point... quite a nice commercial ad for Apple, for free and on "prime time"!

It seems that in the US if you want to look serious, reliable and fashion, you should own an iBook :)

Patrick Leleu, CEO of the French Internet Cable network provider "Noos", has announced that in 2005, they will propose internet via cable network with data flow rate up to 30 Mbits/s. They will at the same time promote VoIP telephony and well as HDTV.
For once, cable might deliver data flow rate superiors to those available via ADSL2+ which will saturate around 24 Mbits/s.

Two of our readers who had contacted AppleCare for the iMacG5 PSU Replacement Program, havereceived the new PSU today.
Patrick is telling us about it:

Today is a big day: I have finally received the replacement PSU for my iMacG5... it was about time!! :)
From the very first boot, I have noticed this slight and sometimes annoying noise! But reading from your web site that this was due to a defect PSU, and was a recognized issue by Apple, I called immediately AppleCare as soon as I received my iMacG5 (last Friday). After talking to a hardware support representative, they accepted to send me the replacement PSU via UPS, after asking me if I could perform the replacement operation myself. After reading Macbidouille for years, it should not be an issue!! :)
Today (Thursday), I have received the new PSU... quite fast actually!!
Physically, it looks like the old one, except a sticker which clearly states that it is a "delta" one. I removed the old one, according to the "do it yourself" procedure (it is not really a piece of cake!!), all parts are tightly fixed and you sometimes have use force...reverse operation to install the new PSU.
Then I plugged the power cable, boot, and... ah!!! such a silent computer!! almost silent, because it is a G5-based computer, so you can hear a bit the fans, but nothing compared to the treble noise due to the defect PSU!! It is really a pleasure to work with this computer, even when I was disturbed by the noisy PSU, the quality of the iMacG5 was so good that I would forget about the inconvenience.
Now, I only have to send back the old defect PSU, and that's it!

It will take you 20 minutes to perform the replacement operation. If you have an AppleCare contract, apple will send you a technician to perform the operation.
But now, Apple is facing another problem, not with end-users, but with the certified AppleCenter, they did not receive any replacing PSU. According to the database, 100 pieces are ready and 200 additional ones should be sent, but with a delivery date of October 19th (earliest). There are already 297 requests for a new PSU, and the number should continue to grow... (numbers only for France!! the problems affect all iMacG5 working with 220V power voltage, so affecting at least all Europe)

Last but not least, Apple Switzerland has not officially acknowledge the PSU issue, and of course this is a problem for Apple resellers, because the end-users are then immediately contacting AppleEurope.

Thanks to Phivos fir this info:

a story from the Fnac online Music Store.
You can buy the following complete album from online Fnac Music Store (with all limitations due to their DRM) for 9,99 €.
But you can also buy the real audio CD, from Fnac ((physical store or online store, fnac.com) for only 6,99 €.

In summary, before buying music online, make sure that there are no promotions on the same audio CD album...

Last month, we ran a newsbit about the sudden change of PR policy of Quark. Things are moving very fast !
Yesterday, our chief editor Lionel was invited, along with a few other journalists, for a tour of Quark's new French HQ. For those not in the know, and to make things clear, Quark France didn't exist, it just opened. Before that, Quark had no representation in France.
Back on the "grand opening" party: we had the opportunity to meet with the team. The introductions were fast and easy, since most of the guys are ex-Apple France folks.
It's been hard to believe that Quark's policy could change so radically, but it did happen. Not so long ago, Xpress users were simply considered as walking wallets. But now, there is someone to talk to and to give feedback to.
We run a thread on our forums about this very subject here (in French).

This is not exactly fresh news, but this tip from EDW4RD will surely be useful to the folks who don't want to part with the ISP that doesn't support Mac OS X:

For all of you that were using the dial-up AOL service and that are now on DSL, here's how to use your mail account :
- In Mail.app's preferences, select "accounts"
- Add a new IMAP account, feed it with your AOL address : loginname@aol.com
- for the incoming mail server, enter : imap.aol.com
- for the outgoing mail server, enter : smtp.aol.com
- make sure you correctly fill your login name and password, and be sure to uncheck the "add password to keychain" option.

Laurent has one of the infamous noisy iMac G5, so he called Apple Care :

...a simple ring to Apple's tech support in Cork, explaining that my iMac's PSU is as noisy as a Maxtor hard drive ;)
The tech searched in the KB, acknowledge the problem and said he will send me a DYI kit to change the PSU.

Apple told him the spare PSU would reach him by UPS in 7 days. We'll give you an update by then.

Samsung, back in March, had switched part of its production capacity to the then profitable NAND chips (for usb keys and the likes). They have switch back to DDR and of course DDR2.
Demand for this type of RAM has finally taken off, although a few months later than analysts had predicted.