News for Friday, 24 December 2004

Microsoft bought the silence of almost all the plaintiffs which sued him in Europe. Only Real didn't withdraw, and this has sufficed.
Microsoft ask for a suspension of all the sanctions against them before the final judgement, but this demand was rejected.
Except if the decision is appealed, Microsoft will have to provide Windows without Windows Media Player, in order to give a chance to its competitors.

Both Macbidouille and Hardmac teams would like to wish you a Happy Holidays season.
For Mac Addicts, Santa's arrival should be delayed to January 11th around 18pm : the next Keynote of Steve Jobs. Let's hope Steve is going to bring us plenty of new things, to keep us dreaming.
We do not know whether the event will be streamed live, but anyway, and once again, we'll try to update the news as fast as possible.
But before that, we wish you a nice Christmas evening, be careful both on the road and on the snowtracks !!
The Macbidouille and Hardmac teams.

NeoOffice, the native port of OpenOffice on OS X has finally gone beta.

Now, all the menus are Aqua style, support has been added for scrollwheel mice, and many bugs have been squashed.
http://www.neooffice.org

One of our 15 faithful readers sent us the following info :

Apple has informed us that as of now, certified apple repaire centers won't be able to send the defective units to the Center in Netherlands. It has not been specified whether the Netherlands Center will be closed down. Below is the official communiqué.
"20 DEC 2004
Apple Refers Portable Computer and Display Repairs in Europe to AASPs, SSCs Applies to Europe
In an effort to take better advantage of the expertise available in the Appleservice channel and to further improve customer satisfaction, on Tuesday, December 21, Apple will instruct customers in Europe to contact local Apple Authorized Service Providers and Self-Servicing Customers for all repairs of portable computers and displays. Please provide these customers with the same quality service you provide all customers who seek repair through your service location.

Other sources have confirmed the shutdown of the Center in the Netherlands. The consequences are certainly going to be felt throughout Europe, but it is too early to speculate on them yet.

A New version of OD4Contact is now available. OD4Contact is a full featured contacts management tool. With version 2 comes a totally new module, labelled "Communication Center", that allows to "pair" any type of communication mean to your contacts : Mail.app, Bluetooth, modem, fax, etc., in one organized place.
It is now also possible to create meta-contacts, for instance a company, under which can be found the company's members. Rendezvous and Bluetooth compatibility have both been improved.
http://www.objective-decision.com

Thank your Pierre-Yves for the heads up.
http://www.ipodmyphoto.com/ offers (for a fee) to "iPod" a picture.

The results are pretty nice, but we think the fee is kinda steep : $19.95...
And there is a high probability that Apple Legal will get handsy, since those guys are on fire these days.

Kudos Ludo and atshoom for the news.

Changing one's iPod firmware to boot Linux.
Installing Linux on your iPod boosts its hardware and software features: more games, more photo features, sound recording, extra sound codecs, a console (iLog?) and any other tweak you can code yourself... Since the vanilla iPod OS is still there, you can dual-boot your iPod (how geeky can it get???) and choose between an iTux or an iPod ;)

This alternative firmware works on 1G, 2G and 3G iPods*.
Get it here: iPod-Linux Installer
[* no 4G iPods? so what about the "extra photo features" mentionned?]