News for Sunday, 20 November 2005

We've been hesitating a long time before putting these findings online, but since plenty of sites have published articles about the installation of OSX X86 on branded PCs without facing censorship, here they are:

I just wanted to tell you about a hack I experimented on my PC (I didn't really know what to do with it since I bought a Power Mac). It was surprisingly simple:
I installed OSX86 and then Darwine. These are both simple operations. Now if I double-click on "Notepad.exe", it just runs !
This is how it works:
Now that OSX runs on Intel (or even on AMD as far as I'm concerned...), it is possible to run Wine - a soft coming from the Linux world and whose aim is to provide a Windows environment - WITHOUT emulation. Thus an application such as Notepad.exe, which is compiled for '86 CPUs, can be run as long as the calls to Windows services are supported (opening a window, a menu, managing the mouse...). An obvious exemple is Microsoft Office (the Windows version - Microsoft hasn't compiled it for a Linux environment, of course...), which runs with Linux thanks to CrossOffice, a commercial version of Wine.
Same story for OS X in a few months. Darwine is the OS X86 port of Wine. The fact that I could make my "Mac-Intel" notepad-compatible with basic versions of Darwine in 10 minutes means that, within a few months, most small Windows applications which have no equivalent on OS X will be runable without emulation, that is: with speed.
The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that the Intel transition will have big consequences on Windows market share and that Apple is well aware of it. From there, we could even suppose that the transition has nothing to do with problems about the PowerPCs, but is indeed a step to implement a hegemonic system able to run OSX, Windows and Linux application.

To tell the truth, this concept is sure sexier than having to set a MacIntel on DualBoot. It opens wide horizons for those who have to stick to Windows because of some specific soft. Some will argue that this would mark the end of the develoment of native OSX applications. But indeed, it would be such a relief not to have to bother wether or not such app exists on OSX... At the end of the day, this whole business might even be more a threat for Micrsosoft than for Apple.
PS: We won't provide information about how to install these softs on a PC for an obvious reason: it's illegal! So please don't ask...

HP had made 2 requests to the Blu-ray Disc group in order to implement 2 additional functions. The first one, the "mandatory managed copy", gives the right to copy a Blu-Ray media to a local file server in order to share the content over several computers.
The second request, iHD, was related to the interactivity level of the Blu-Ray contents.
The Blu-Ray Disc group was not very interested by the first request, and totally ignored the second one.
As a result, HP was probably upset, and has decided to take a more neutral position in the war between the Blu-Ray and the HD-DVD.
For sure the Blu-Ray consortium has lost a major supporter.

Intel has already sent sample of its new desktop processor, Presler, to motherboard manufacturers. This new processor is a dualcore model using 65nm engraving process.
Motherboard manufacturers have reported many stability issues. So the first Presler samples are not really ready for large scale production.
Thankfully, the Yonah, available early 2006, also produced at 65nm does not seem to have similar stability issue, and should find its way in the first iBook x86.

Thanks to Barry to report a small application : Front Row Enabler 1.0.1
It allows to install FrontRow on any Mac running OSX.4.2 or more.

Since our last news related to battery issue with brand new PowerBook 15", we have received numerous reports from unfortunate users.
What seemed to be initially a small problem, might actually be a larger scale issue. All PB featuring the defect battery model have a manufacturing serial number starting with W8541. But knowing that the battery can also be associated independently to the PB manufacturing number, it can also affect other series.
Apple should start replacing the defect batteries this week.
We still do not know if Apple has also decided to call back models being in stocks in AppleCenters or large resellers.