News for Tuesday, 2 May 2006

Real Rlayer is now available in Universal Binaries for the iMacIntel.
You can download it from Real website: RealPlayer OSX.
Pay attention not all mirror sites deliver the Universal Binaries version yet.

During a meeting with some investors, Paul Otellini, Intel CEO reassured them despite AMD announcement that they'd accelerate the renewal of their CPU architectures, as well as the selling of the ones announced.
Hence, Intel will propose a new CPU architecture every two years, which is more than twice as much as the current cadence.
In a more concrete way, the release if the new Xeon Woodcrest will be due June, to balance AMD progress on the server sector.
The Conroe, replacing the Pentium IV will be available in July.
Merom, replacing the current, already sold Mac Intel Core Duo, will arrive as soon as August.
Under those conditions, Apple may have the CPU means to roll out by Apple Expo a full line of Intel paced machines.
At the same time, they could also be able to offer the second generation of MacBook Pro, Mac mini and iMac.
For the latter a question will certainly arise. Is it better to give it a Merom, a laptop CPU, or a Conroe, more powerful and cheaper, but dissipating more heat?
Whatever, this summer shall see a whole lot of new machines.

Harry bought in Thailand earbuds falsely branded Apple in order to test them.

The first one, sold $5 looks very much like the one we showed you last week. Note that its mini jack connector is too short to work on an iPod.

The second one is both more resemblant and functional.
There's even a counterfeit warranty certificate from Apple in the box.
As could be expected, those two products came from China.

As we reported you many big resellers displayed iMacs working under XP via Boot Camp and even offered its installation at a promotional price.
It seems Apple got angry at this, as those resellers received a phone call telling them to stop this.
For the moment we don't know if this "instant demand" from Apple will also be made to Apple Centers and smaller resellers also offering Macs with preinstalled Boot Camp and XP.

Apple has launched a new ad campaign entitled: "Get a Mac". One of our readers, Stéphane, has sent us a report.

Hello,
Here's the text of the ad that I watched this evening. It's related to internet security:
Mac: "Hello, I'm a Mac"
PC: "And I'm a PC (sneezes)"
Mac: "Gesundheit, you ok?"
PC: "No, I'm not ok. I have that virus that's going around. "
Mac: "Oh Ya"
PC: "You better stay back, this one's a doosy"
Mac: "That's ok, I'll be fine"
PC: "No, no, do not be hero, last year there were 114,000 known viruses for PCs"
Mac: "PCs... not Macs"
PC: "I think I gotta crash (falls over)"
Mac: "If you think that'll help...

There is 6 ads that can be downloaded from Apple website: http://www.apple.com/getamac/

This is the first time that Apple is featuring such a strong PC vs. Mac campaign, especially communicating the internet security message.

The main issue faced by APX owners is the sudden death of the wireless station without any prior sign, nor any chance to get it repaired by Apple. Nothing lasts forever but the problem with the APX is its tendency to die just after the end of the warranty: between 13 and 18 months... giving the APX one of the shortest half-life for a high-tech product...
As you might know, we were the first to report the problem and to start investigating it. Today, with over 200 reports of APX defects, we can draw some conclusions:
- as we originally suspected, it predominantly affects users living in 220/230V-based countries (98% of the reports).
- all defective APX have been manufactured by Foxconn during S2 2004
- as a result, all defective APX have a serial number starting with HS42, HS43 or HS44.
- most of the defective APX have a product number either A1084 or A1088.
We are still missing proof that the large amount of defective APX is based on a design or component failure, even though we also suspect a Samsung-branded fuse to be part of the problem.
In addition, Apple has recently changed the serial number of the APX, probably reflecting the change of manufacturer.
We keep collecting information so if you own a dead APX, please send all available information to: linathael at macbidouille dot com, indicating serial number, model number, voltage, estimated life of the APX, country.
We deeply regret that Apple does not propose, by default, a free exchange program for all defect APX, it is not acceptable to have a 150 € device working only 13 or 18 months. Does Apple really consider the APX problem or will they choose to keep ignoring it?? APX owners/users need to get a clear answer from Apple.