News for Wednesday, 18 January 2006

Up to recently, phishing was almost entirely restricted to Bank internet services. After an initial success, users have become cautious, and pirates have decided to target another online service: iTMS.
An e-mail is currently massively sent to iTMS customers and is trying to abuse them to obtain their login and password in order to use their iTMS account (and credit card) for illegal purpose.
So be really careful.

The iPod Shuffle, maybe due to its simple design, has become the main target of counterfeiters in China. And iPod shuffle fake numbers keeps increasing.
We have already mention a month ago, that some people tried to sell them worldwide via eBay.

One can ask how is Apple planning to react to those counterfeit. Is it worth it, knowing that the fight will cost massive amount of energy and money? Since the iPod nano is much more difficult to copy, would not be simpler to drop the Shuffle and update iPod nano, with a entry-level model that would cost almost the same price of an iPod Shuffle?

Since the release of iTunes 6.0.2, the web is boiling about this option of the iTunes Ministore located on the bottom part of iTunes window.
This miniStore will display, according to the current track being played, similar products available from the iTMS. to be reliable it will access the net and send data via the web.
If you close this ministore window, there is not more information sent by iTunes to the dedicated server.
Apple seems to avoid misunderstanding and communicate around the ministore option, this this morning when opening the ministore, on can read a similar message:

The ministore is not activated by default, and the information sent are not stored.
it is a pity that this explanation comes only today...

WinTel 2.0 is released.
It is a Windows emulator able to use most of Windows versions and Linux distributions with MacOSX. WinTel is compatible with both G4 and G5 processors al well as with the last Intel-based Macs.
In addition to the CPU, it emulates an audio card, the USB ports and a SVGA video output, so do not try to run Windows games on it.
It costs only 25$, rather inexpensive but we hope that the second version is better than the first one, which was not really convincing.

Seb, a courageous reader from Boston, has decided to install a Raptor 150 in an iMacIntel.

If you want to perform a similar operation, you should know that he had to disassemble almost entirely the computer, motherboard included!
A step-by-step procedure is given hereafter:
http://web.mac.com/srevest/iWeb/Site/Library.html
PS: Do not try such modification if you are not skilled for disassembling and even more re-assembling of computers. Do not hesitate to take picture after each steps.
[update] The webpage is not available anymore, we will try to recover the photos in order to publish and support Seb's procedure.

Many readers have been requesting the development of a compatibility database for Rosetta in order to list all compatible applications and software that are successfully running with the emulator.
we have decided to develop support this idea, and with your help we will make this database available to all of you.
Please send your report to the translator of this news.

Nec tries to reconciliate both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD supporters by developing an universal player supposed to be available in one year.
The drawback of this compatibility will be the price of this device :between 650 and 700 euros.
The price can be justified by several optical mechanisms allowing reading of all formats; if the technology exists on paper it is not yet available, that's probably why the availability is only announced for 2007.