News for Wednesday, 22 December 2004

According to sportstrategies.com (charging website), Apple bid to become the main sponsor of this football club, and have its logo very visible on the team's shirts.
We'll have to get accustomed to this new communication policy, definitely different from what was done in the past.

The directive on software patenting should have been adopted yesterday. We were saved by the polish minister who ask for a delay regarding its adoption. Poland wishes some major changes in this text.
Lobbies, which were pushing hard to lock up softwares, report they are shocked by this decision.

In an article on news.com, Karl Freund, VRP of IBM's eServer pSeries, presents the processor succeeding the G5. It will feature a technology named "partitioning", currently available only on Power4 and Power5, and other very high-end IBM processors.
Though little details are available, this technology is presented as breaking the link between hardware and operating system in including a layer: a management console in charge of the transfers between hard- and software.
Apple should be interested by this technology, that should arrive during year 2005.

In Canada, as in France, when buying a MP3 player one has to pay an additional tax.
A Canadian federal court has ruled that this particular tax was simply illegal; and should not be applied anymore. As a consequence for customers, price for MP3 player will drop significantly, such as CAN$15 for an iPod mini and CAN$25 for an iPod.

Apple keeps loading the RefurbStore with products with an average -25% discounts.
Be the first to be served... it flies away from shelves, except for Apple Cinema Display 23" which is having a bad reputation after the "pink effect" problem.
Refurb Store

Belkin will launch next year a new device which for sure will be popular.
The device consists of a small Bluetooth transmitter sitting atop of the iPod and a receiver that connects to a home theater system or stereo sound system. The iPod can serve up songs as well as being used as the remote control.
Nothing is clear regarding price or an exact shipping date. Another question is the sound quality, since Bluetooth maximum data flow rate is 1.1 Mbits/s from as far as 10meters maximal distance.

In July (in French only), we were reporting about Steve Jobs' wish to demolish a historic house on his property. An old mansion whish was designed by George Washington Smith, the architect who created the look of Montecito and Santa Barbara.
According to News.com, Steve Jobs received the green light to start demolishing operation beside protest from some Californian residents considering this house as a historic monument. One should take picture because it might be part of history in few weeks.

According to our information, Oracle version 10g for Mac is almost ready.
Except if major issues appear, the current last version should be declared "gold master" within few days
It should be available for the end of the year.