News for Thursday, 20 April 2006

Google has recently bought from GeoInformation Group high-resolution satellite photos of Paris and its surrounding region in order to integrate it in Google Maps and its well known application Google Earth.
So, it's now possible, as was already the case for Americans to, virtually fly over Paris with Google Earth. Let's hope that other French and European cities will follow soon.

Note : Google Earth is available here in beta version for Mac OS X.3.9 or later.

Our dear old Paul Thurrott, famous windows evangelist and whose Windows SuperSite is like the Gospel according to Gates, regularly reviews the beta versions of the next Windows avatar, aka VISTA (at MS they call these beta CTPs or Community Technical Previews).
He has been following Vista with high hopes since its announcement back in 2003 (a long time ago, in a galaxy far away...) and he is going from disappointment to disillusion.
His latest post, a "Windows Vista February 2006 CTP (build 5308/5342) review" -no joke, they do have some good creative people for naming products- is harshly subtitled "Where Vista Fails".
You can read some great lines like:

The graphics subsystem is substantially improved, if a little obviously modeled after that in Mac OS X. Heck, half of the features of Windows Vista seem to have been lifted from Apple's marketing materials.

Read the whole thing here: http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winvista_5308_05.asp

The French Internet service provider Free just officially released their latest Freebox. As the rumour had it, there are actually two boxes.

The one on the left, almost identical to the former Frebox works as a DSL modem and manages phone calls. It now has 4 Ethernet ports and works as a router. Note the 3 Wi-Fi antennas that enable connexion via the recent MiMo protocole. It will allow thee transfer of HD video between the two boxes at a sufficient speed.
The second box you plug on the TV is impressive.

It is able to deliver SD and HD contents. It will connect to the TV via the usual means and also HDMI and audio digital outputs. It contains a TNT tuner, and also audio and video inputs in RCA and S-Video.
To end up with it, this Freebox allows the use of a Wi-Fi/GSM phone to make your calls. As usual, this Freebox is proposed by default to new subscribers, and at a various price to older ones, depending on their ancientness. The price is still a monthly 29.90 euros TTC. Telephoning via Wi-Fi requires an activation that costs 9.90 Euros.

Branded as Kodak, a CD/DVD media manufacturer, KPM, will propose media with an extended warranty: 300 years for CD and between 80 and 100 years for DVD.
To support their claims, they have used high quality gold (24 carats) supposedly to improve the lifespan of products and especially damage generated by daylight. Of course such media are more expensive and will probably be used by corporations wanting to improve the reliability of stored data.
It is also an obvious marketing claim, and one would have to ensure that, in 80 years from now, drives able to read such media will still exist ... rather unlikely.

According to TG Daily, Intel has sped up its transition from the current processor models to the Core micro-architecture. Competition with AMD might be the reason.
So, the Conroe (desktop processor), the Merom (post-Yonah notebook processor) and the Xeon/Woodcrest (server and workstation processor) should be available for mass production in September. In other word, they should be available in small numbers in June (Conroe and Merom). Only 2 models will initially be available for the Merom, T5000 and T7000.
Apple might have to revise its entire computer models faster than usual in order to keep it up to date with Intel's processor offerings. Upgrading the MacBook and the iMac will not be difficult, since the Yonah and the Merom are fully compatible (pin-to-pin, chipset, hardware, architecture, etc...)

Eric sent in the following story:

I'm writing to you today about a problem which seems to be occurring in all the 20" iMac Core Duos to this day: the screen is filled with residual effects, which was supposed to have disappeared with the adoption of TFT LCDs.
Here is a small example:

This photo is a still shot from a video of the screen of my iMac while I moved a window. The turquoise bands at the top of the window and the grey band at the bottom of the window are NOT effects of the video: this is what actually appears on the screen when a window is moved!
Hopefully I've piqued your curiosity. Now a little history...
I ordered my first 20" iMac Core Duo from the Apple Store at the end of January. When I received it, I was immediately struck by the very noticeable ghosting effects around certain elements in the Mac OS X interface. But another problem monopolizing my attention: a dead pixel. So I returned it to Apple, and I got another iMac from the Fnac in Annecy - I didn't want to wait for another delivery. Not happy to find two dead pixels on my new iMac, I also noted that the ghosting was still present. So I exchanged it for my third iMac, finally free of dead pixels, but still filled with extreme ghosting!
Slightly peeved, I decided to go check many other 20" iMacs before asking for another exchange. Surprisingly the other 3 iMacs which I tested were plagued with the same defect! The first that I looked at was at the Fnac in Annecy, and on this day there was an Apple representative there. He was very annoyed when I showed him the problem. The second was at Fnac in Grenoble. And the third was in a store in Grenoble which specializes in Apples. There too, the salesman made a funny face when he saw the problem.
At the same store, we could directly compare a 20" Apple cinema Display and the iMac screen. The result: no problem on the ACD but very noticeable artifacts on the iMac.
Today, after testing six 20" iMac Core Duos all with the same defect, I am convinced that ALL the 20" iMac Core Duos have this problem, which is unacceptable in my opinion for a 1800€ machine!
But enough of the blabbering. Here are some small tests which clearly show the problem:
iWeb :
- Launch iWeb
- If the model does not show, create a new site
- Move the iWeb window and observer the "Cancel" and "Choose" buttons: You should see pretty white trails around the two buttons
iTunes :
- Select the last source, on the bottom of the list
- Reduce the size of the window a little in order to be able to easily move it around the screen
- Move the window: you should see pretty turquoise trails around the selected source and also around all the text and the exterior of the Sources table
iPhoto/Finder :
- Open iPhoto
- Select an album with many photos
- Open a Finder window (preferably an empty or mostly empty one)
- Move the window over the photos in iPhoto: you should see the photos remain over the Finder window for too long a time for a 2006 screen
iMacDisplayTester :
- iMacDisplayTester is an application I made solely to highlight this problem. It can be found on my public iDisk (eric.morand) or here:
iMacDisplayTester.zip
- Launch iMacDisplayTester
- Move the blue block to the right and the left: you should see a quite visible white trail following the movement
- Return the block to the center of the window and move the window: you should see the same trails around the block and around the exterior of the window
It seems clear to me that these screens have a real problem with ghosting. It is also very obvious in First Person Shooters (Quake 1, is the only one that I have...) although it does not seem to be clearly discernible in the videos

We would appreciate any input from owners of iMac Cor Duos that have a reaction to this story.
It is however possible that the problem is not directly related to the quality of the LCD, but with the multitasking of the system and the management of the LCD.

Intel has just announced two new "Ultra Low Voltage" Core Solo processors. Operating at 1.06GHz and 1.2GHz with 2Mb of cache, they consume only 5.5W.
One can imagine many possible uses for these processors, such as a portable with a very long battery life, or even a Tablet Mac, which has been a fantasy for many years.
However, their price remains very high at around $250, so they won't be found in low-end products.