News for Friday, 29 October 2004

Most of Apple's activity in Europe is based in Cork, Irlande. That's where the Apple Care Hotline and the G5 assembly plant are located.
Yesterday night the city was flooded, as shown on those photos.



Many Apple Care employees were forced to sleep in Apple's offices because they couldn't go back home.
We do not yet if the G5 assembly lines were concerned. If it is the case, it is to be feared that any Powermac delivery will stop until everything is back in order.

Will, deprived of the iTMS in Switzerland, investigated.

As you wrote, the Swiss will have to wait the ITMS arrival a little longer. There haven't been much reactions - and most people believe it cannot be Apple's fault, but the majors' of music industry.
That's why I sent mails to Sony, EMI, BMG, and the IPFI and I got reactions.
Of course the music industry representatives do not want to be held responsible. The IFPI guy sent me two long emails, in which he talks of many other things... ;-)
But I also get an interesting mail from EMI. Their answer really makes me think it's Apple who's not too interested in openinf the ITMS in Switzerland. Unfortunatley the only thing I may quote from this mail is: "EMI is ready when Apple is..."
Well, it is hard indeed to find who's guilty in that game :-(

Gérald who's received his new iBook, sent us a xBench test of his machine.
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It doesn't have much to envy the Powerbook G4 12" 1.33GHz !
http://www.macbidouille.com/niouzcontenu.php?date=2004-05-04#8453

It's now 4 months that Apple have unveiled the dual 2.5 GHz G5 Powermac. At that time we wanted to calm those of our readers who were disappointed not to get 3GHz machines. Yet 4 months later, it seems we did underestimate the difficulties met by IBM and Apple.
- Though we just guess it, it is most probable Apple did overclock 2.2 or 2.3 GHz CPUs. The temperature of a full loaded 2.5 GHz CPU, despite Watercooling, reaches almost 90°C [K's note : my last year 1.8 seldom goes beyond 55° C] !!!
- Even worse, Apple do their best to dissuade their clients and resellers to order dual 2.5 and tries to have them buy dual 2 GHz instead. IBM don't manage, despsite all their attempts to say the opposite, to get enough processors of that frequency. Of course their production is supposed to rise by 40%. Yet if the proportion of CPUs eligible to highest frequencies doesn't progress, the shortage situation won't be solved. 40% more of not enough, doesn't make any better.
One really may wonder about the future of Apple's high machines, knowing that the G5 shall certainly not hit the 3GHz in the coming months either.
Will will get quadriprocessor machines instead?
Will we get dual Core G6s with more cache yet still stuck at 2.5 GHz or even less?
Will it just do the same as with 500 MHz G4s, which we were stuck to for over a year?
If the announcement of the G5 16 months ago gave us a new hope in the brand, we may now feel a bit more anxious again. The iPod sure is a very lucrative product and a very good one for Apple's image too, yet what MacUsers and potential switchers want above all, is computers.
Let's hope Steve Jobs will once more manage, by his announcements or promises, to give us a new hope in future.

Here is C.L. testimony:

Just a short e-mail to confirm that 30" Apple Cinema Display are available in Switzerland. Indeed, I got mine yesterday, and everything works just fine.
One tip for the happy few who have received their own display, and are in such a hurry that they don't read the installation manual:
Install the drivers for the graphic card BEFORE plugging the card inside the Mac. Then remove the former card and replace it with the Nvidia 6800. If you don't respect this order, you'll have to undo everything and redo it (what i did!)

Please note although that a reader of XLR8yourmac was successful in running UT2004 on his 30". To reach his goal, he edited the file UT2004.ini which is located in: Home/Library/Application Support/Unreal Tournament 2004/System/