News for Friday, 9 December 2005

Many readers from our forum have reported that the OSX Beta version of Google Earth is working fine, and should be release very soon by Google.
This application is really expected by mac users, but it seems that it requires OSX Tiger.

At the time of the European Video Perspective Conference (which was held in Biarritz, France, at the beginning of the week), Warren Lieberfarb, the old president of Warner Home Video, spoke about Sony.
He accused Sony of using the Blu-Ray format as a counter to Microsoft in the battle for the game console supremicy.
By marginalizing the HD-DVD format, Sony is ensured that the Blu-Ray reader of the PS3 will have a significant advantage if that format wins the battle with the movie studios.
Lieberfarb says that Sony is behaving like a Samurai, and it's marketing policy is inspired by the famous military collection, "art of the war."
In summary, he supports the use of HD-DVD in order to not let the giant Sony win.

Thanks to Patrice for informing us about a company which sells clones of the iPod nano on eBay.


The maximum capacity is 1 GB. But disregarding technical specifications, this product is a blatant copy of the nano, and is probably good enough to confuse a few uninformed people.

It is truly a change, Apple is taking much care of its developers as it was in the past. Hereafter is a message received by one of them :

Dear XXXXXX,
We sincerely value your ongoing support for Apple development tools and technologies.
Help us to meet your future development needs by taking a minute to answer five multiple-choice questions about transitioning your application to run on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs.
To access the questionnaire, log in using your Apple ID and password at the following URL:
http://developer.apple.com/click/questionnaire.html
Best regards,
Apple Developer Connection

We think that it is a good point, and that companies thinking of/or developing for the Mac and the future MacIntel will profit from such support by Apple. We only hope that this support will be maintained after the main applications will have been ported for universal binaries, or Intel-based Mac... and not last until the WWDC 2006 Steve Jobs keynote...

After solving server problems preventing us to make it available for some times, the Macbidouille Speedtest is back:

We have implemented the new version 5.1. It provides much precise analysis especially with Cable/ADSL internet connection.
But be careful, due to this news, our dedicated server will probably be overloaded, and the generated results will rather underestimate your real bandwidth. Repeat the test in a couple of days.

Thanks to Phil to have reported to us this job offer posted on Apple website:
https://jobs.apple.com...

The primary purpose of this role is to raise the profile in the marketplace of AirPort, Apple's Wireless networking solution. Achieving this by co-ordinating the opening of WiFi Hot Spots in high profile places, which Apple will support.
- Understanding and experience of implementing Microsoft Windows networks. Mac OS X knowledge a bonus, but not required.
- A track record of dealing with people at all levels of business
- Presentable, Intelligent, pro-active and self motivated
- Good interpersonal skills

Will Apple use those WiFi Hot Spots as a new marketing campaign to promote its products? it looks like...

Several months after the Windows version, DivX 6 is finally released for our favorite platform.

Compatability with Tiger and QuickTime 7 is finally fixed. The configuration interface of the encoder was improved and MP3 encoding is now integrated. Lastly, the playback performance is significantly improved.
Is should be noted that this new version has a new file format, ".dvix" instead of the normal ".avi" container. This format makes it possible to include several soundtracks, subtitles, and an interactive menu. It also allows film chapters.
This new version requires at least Panther (10.3) and includes a 6 month trial of the Pro functionality which allows finer encoding control.
You can donload it here: DivX 6