News for Thursday, 14 October 2004

The softwareNetOp will be launched in a near future, and will join already existing solutions, such as VNC and Timbuktu, for Mac-Remote Access. NetOp will work according to the Client (for windows) - Server (for Mac). So it will not be possible to take control of a Pc from a Mac.

The market for portable digital music player is really hot. Almost everyday, we are seeing new products being introduced.
Today, 2 "big" competitors are launching new "iPod killers":
Archos is introducing Gmini XS200.

This portable music player is smaller than an iPod, has a 20GB HDs and cost 300€.
Dell is launching 2 new products:

A 20GB HD-based model to compete with the iPod, also priced 249$, and a competitor for the iPod mini, with a 5GB storage capacity for 199$.
Apple keeps with its "click-wheel" the simplest and most intuitive navigation system.

Both music Majors' lobbies went to the highest Court of the United States , and were refused.
They wanted to get the right to force ISPs to provide them personal informations from their customers downloading illegal files. Therefore, they'll eventually be obliged to lodge against X [Trans: not very sure of the translation... Basically, the idea is to lodge for a damage from somebody you don't know. Not that useful in most of the cases.]. Of course, such individual prosecutions are much more expensive, and their virtue is to prevent excesses.

Apple has posted its Q4 results. Apple is posting a net profit of $106 million against $44 million a year ago.
Apple has shipped 836000 Mac units, an increase of 6%; and over 2 million iPod.
Some of us will probably argue that if Apple could have delivered all pending orders, the total number of sold Mac units might have been over 1 million...

Thanks to Marc fo this info.

It is now known for sometimes that iTunes Store Europe is located in Luxembourg. Some Macbidouille's readers have argued that the address in Luxembourg was corresponding to a company responsible for generating Luxembourg-localization for other companies.
Hereafter is a job offer published on www.monster.lu definitively proving that Apple is going to open a real Office in Luxembourg since there are looking for people in this country using services of a career network company:
Want to join the new iTunes Music Store team in Luxembourg?
Our client Apple's iTunes Music Store is establishing a new office in Luxembourg.
Apple is leading the digital music revolution with its market-leading iPod line of portable music players and iTunes online music store. Open 24/7 on Macs and Windows PCs, the iTunes Music Store has become a smash hit with music fans, professional musicians and the entire music industry.

http://emploi.monster.lu/

Thanks to this new article originally posted on Macbidouille.fr by
STRYK - and translated by our auxiliary DJ Eric - you'll know how with
this simple, wonderful USB device, a Mac laptop may change a DJ's
life. The name is Serato Scratch, you'll know of it thanks to hardmac.
[As soon as this article is available, which, due to a technical issue, shall be in a few hours only]

XLR8yourmac has published comparative benchmarks of a Dual 2.5 GHz with a 6800 against a Dual 2GHz with a 9800 Pro.
To be fair, we've only looked at the tests in the highest resolutions, where the GPU chokes before the CPU does: in Quake 3, the 6800 is 50% faster than the Radeon 9800 pro.
Barefeats also published some tests: The 6800 is 15% faster at 1280*1024 in UT 2004. It would probably fare much better at 1920*1200.

"Hollywood" would like to say a few words.

FNAC, where I ordered a 17" 1.6GHz iMac G5 about a month ago, just phoned me to say I won't receive it before December!!! Because Apple gives a higher priority to the USA than to France !!!

We didn't have any confirmation of that statement, we simply hope that the salesman was just being overly pessimistic.
In somewhat related news, one of our readers has been waiting over 123 days now for his Dual 2.5GHz G5. For that, Apple should give it to him for free, but as he is unlikely the only one in that situation, that ain't gonna happen...

NIL, the Pioneer burner wizard, has made beta 4 of the zone free firmware 1.14 for the Pioneer DVR_108 available for download.
It also uncaps the burning speed on supported medias.
A PC is still needed for the patching process :
http://forum.rpc1.org