News for Friday, 8 July 2005

[UPD] We removed the Pictures and the news of the July 7th media gathering due to Apple Request

Here's Emmanuel talking

Those days on NRJ 12 (TNT) you'll see an ad against online music stealing (a pirate is a loser, you'll start this way and then you'll rob banks...). This is most gratifying for people like me who regularly buy music on the iTunes music store ( or other ones). Yet the music stealer they show holds a nice white iPod, that looks like an iPod photo on top of that (displaying a 3D pirate's head on the screen). So you may wonder: who's lying here ? Is there an anti-Apple lobby ? I am not a reporter, so I'll let others investigate on those who financed or created this ad.

This is a paradoxical way to comment Apple's claim they sold half a billion songs on the ITMS - each of them being on iPods.
So, either Apple won and the iPod became a general name for "MP3 player", or majors would like that Apple's monopoly be broken. Which is quite possible, as many majors seem to be upset at Apple's way of considering them carelessly.

Steve Balmer especially made the trip to Paris to sign a partnership with France Télécom. Their goal is to offer a convergence of telephone, cell phones and Web devices.
Steve Jobs will be glad to learn that FT project name is... NEXT.
After they were late for VoIP, FT probably wishes to become an early investor on the market of telephone by Internet, that softwares such as Skype use.

All the owners of 1st revision 12''Alubooks will tell you their machine runs with quite much more noise now than when they bought it. It looks like from one update of Mac OS X to another, Apple reduced the max temperature level for the machine, which results in a faster start for the fans. Actually this machine was heating too much... Remember those photos:



But if you prefer heat to noise, MAc OS X Hints found a way to step back.
To sum up, just download on Apple's site the 10.2.8 update, and there get the extension "AppleADM103x.kext" by using Pacifist. Then, install it (logged as root) in the extensions folder of 10.4.1.
On boot, the machine will (again) become as silent as hot.
Beware though, as Apple didn't change those parameters for the only sake of disturbing your rest. Cooler components will have a higher lifespan.

The European Commission hopes they could establish a unique license for online music resellers as soon as next October.
Thus, by obtaining this license, a site such as the iTMS would be allowed to sell their songs in any of the 25 EU countries.
This would be a most welcome simplification, as for now it is necessary to negociate with each country to get full access to the majors catalogues. But how will those majors national representative accept to comply to this loss of some of their prerogatives?

Thanks to mattt for letting us now an info was published by the free newspaper 20 minutes, that suggests Apple could offer on the iTMS a fixed sum system for listening to music. Here it is (in French:

As always when it concerns Apple, such information are to be considered with great care. It is quite exceptional that Apple people would let journalists know of anything confidential, and even rarer those information may be confirmed by other sources.
[T's note - Anyway there's no way to be sure there are any journalists at all at "20 minutes"...]

Here's Onizuka interesting experience

As my mp3 player (an archos) stopped functioning last week, I decided I would go and buy an iPod in the FNAC, shortly after reading your news item about FNAC and Apple relationship.
First thing when I come at the FNAC, almost no iPod is to be seen, so I ask the MP3 counter responsible if they have the 60Go version of the iPod. As she says they have it, I'm about to buy this iPod.
I wish to buy a sheath and and a remote control. There she goes saying Apple is only a brand, and a brand that costs a lot. She offers me to get an Archos AV480 instead of the iPod, I let her know its price (though I like the Archos too) is superior to my bugdet, so there without hesitating, she offers to sell me the Archos (799 euros) at the same price than the 60Go iPod (470 euros). I get that huge, "commercial rebate" + "a 20 euros gift certificate rebate" + "6% rebate on the arrival price" + "the opportunity to buy it in 10 times with no extra cost"...
So I finally got the AV480 but was quite astonished how the FNAC was ready to do anything to sell any other MP3 player than those from Apple.

Here's a commercial policy that will hinder for sure the iPod market share in France.

Apple should announced its results for the last Quarter (Q3 2005) next week. According to Market Watch, results should be very good.
Apple should post earning of 31 cents a share on $3.33 billion in revenue. For comparison, last year, results were 9 cents per share on $2billions in revenue.
It is estimated that the iPod is responsible for those excellent earning figures, with over 5.4 millions units sold. Mac computers also increase with +25% shipped units. Financial results for the next quarter will inform us if the “Intel Transition announcement” would have impacted Q4 2005 earning figures.

A minor update of DVD Playback is available for download.

DVD Playback Update 4.6.1 addresses a disc validation issue some users may encounter when attempting to play a disc for the first time with DVD Player 4.6. This update is recommended for all users of DVD Player 4.6.blockquote>MacOSX 10.4.2 should also arrive soon.

Many of readers are dreaming of working for Apple
Well, Apple is heavily recruiting worldwide. There are currently 15 opened positions in France, from temporary ones to web designers.
https://jobs.apple.com/
Then click "Find Jobs at Apple worldwide" and choose your location