News for Tuesday, 19 September 2006

Following last week announcement from Hitachi and its expectation of 3.5" HD with 2TB storage space, Seagate fired back today by releasing its prediction for 2009: 2.5TB on a 3.5"HD.
So according to those 2 manufacturers, 2009 should be the HD's year...
Despite big announcements only released for marketing reasons, it would also be important for customers to have HDs available in shops... after CPUs and GPUs, HDs are currently also affected by the ghost syndrome: officially available, but in reality not on the shelves.

Six months after launching the product in US, and even before launching it in Europe, Toshiba has announced the future availability of the HD-DVD Second
Generation. The HD-XA2, flagship of the HD-DVD standalone player, will feature 1080p video output (1920x1080), while the entry-level model will only support 1080i. Both models will benefit of the recent HDMI 1.3 format allowing 36bits color management. Their respective price should be 1000 and US$500.
One will now need to find the compatible HD TV... and of course expect a larger collection of titles available in this format.

Well, Apple is not explaining officially what was causing the well-known "Random Shutdown" of the MB, but it has sent the information to the certified Apple centers.
It was an incompatibility problem between some motherboards and some cooling systems.
To solve the issue, the certified Apple Center will have to change the simultaneously the motherboard and the cooling system.
The repair parts sent by Apple to maintenance centers have already been validated, so you can send your MB for repair if it is shunting down randomly.
However, it might have to stay for some days due to the relatively large number of affected notebooks.
For those willing more details: The previous cooling system was expanding more than expected when draining the heat from the CPU, and as a consequence was creating a short-circuit of one of the temperature sensor leading to the emergency shutdown of the notebook.
The cooling system (heat pipes and heat sink) has been modified, including a new connector to the motherboard, that's why one should have both the motherboard and the cooling system exchanged.

The Paris Apple Expo is not over since 3 days that the web is already boiling about rumors of the forthcoming update of MBPro<
As usual every details are "analyzed" and used for some "top-notch" predictions...
A reader from d'XLR8yourmac has reported that is impossible to get a MacBook Pro before September 19th... amazing... it is today...
From Macbidouille Forums, Zoufboss has reported that his 2 MB Pro recently purchased will not be shipping before October 2nd (That looks more serious).
So will the new MB Pro be released today or in one month?
Apple might simply prepare everything to get it announced during the Photokina Event on September 25th. Will it feature HD display to go along with the Apple's marketing campaign "All-HD"?
It is clear that the MBPro has to evolved, the iMac has already evolved to Core 2 Duo Merom, and so the Pro notebook model from Cupertino has to be updated.
The more interesting question is related to MB: will they also be updated, if yes only speed bump or Merom CPU? Apple might use the strategy as with the recent Mac mini upgrade (speed bump and/or lowered prices).

Hereafter are 2 photos showing how Apple is influencing our life, without having to deal with computers.

The first one has been taken in New York by Alexis (Brooklyn)
The second one, taken in a shop in Paris, demonstrates how the iPod has now been turned into an icon for describing a device or a tool (Thanks Nicolas).

Gizmodo reports a story and photos about an IBM notebook that burst into flames recently in Los Angeles Airport.

If it goes on like that, notebooks will soon be forbidden in airplanes. As reported by http://news.zdnet.co.uk, and following Qantas decision, Virgin Atlantic has defined rules for working with a Dell or an Apple notebook: it MUST be directly powered via the local plug present in the plane, and battery removed.