News for Wednesday, 18 October 2006

As far as we can remember, this is the first time that TechData distributor stock for Apple notebooks is null. There is not a single MacBook nor MacBook Pro.
Only the AppleStore claims a shipping date of 24h for the MacBook Pro, while distributors or resellers have received information announcing 4 weeks delay for notebook shipments.
For the MacBook, some resellers have received some units of MacBook 2GHz (white model only); on the AppleStore, 1.83GHz as well as the black model are announced within 24 hours or within 3 days (depending on the country); but again most of distributors and resellers have known in stock and no precise date for new shipment.
Last time we have seen such low levels stocks was prior a revision when the middle-range model was becoming the new entry level with the introduction of much faster models. So are the Core 2 Duo Merom-based MacBook/MacBook Pro around the corner?

A member of strangedogs forum has described the procedure to flash a Radeon X1900PC to make it Mac compatible.
The beauty of the trick: you do not need to solder any parts of the GPU, nor perform the flashing step in a PC, you simply need to boot a Mac Pro from ... DOS!
We have repeated the procedure with some changes, and indeed we could flash a Radeon X1900XTX (faster than the XT), via a modified firmware with Graphiccelerator. The graphic card is then clocked at 650MHz for the GPU and 750MHz for the RAM.
We will describe more in details the procedure in a near future in an article, but we can already mention that it requires a Radeon X1900XT or XTX with 512MB of GDDR RAM. Models featuring only 256MB of RAM will not work. In addition, this trick does not work with Radeon X1950XT or XTX.
So you need to get a Radeon X1900XT or XTX with 512MB of RAM; it is quite difficult as those models are EOL in Europe.
The price should be around 300 Euros for a XT model, and 100 Euros more for the faster XTX version.
PS: The firmware of graphic cards for PPC and MacIntel being so much different, it is impossible to flash a Radeon X1900 to make compatible with PMG5.

Microsoft has just published on its license terms webpage the details of licenses for each Vista version. It contains 2 bad news, one targeting directly MacOSX and Parallels users:
- it will possible to install Vista only twice, so you will be able to change your hardware only once; after you will have to buy a new license.
- One can not use emulation or virtualization solutions with Vista Home (Premium and Basic). Parallels and soon VMWare will not be allowed to make this Vista version running on their system. One will need to acquire Vista Ultimate or Business (US$399 and US$299 respectively) to make it possible. It will for sure limit the usage to Pro users, probably a way for Microsoft to prevent PC users to buy a Mac or even considering switching...
Microsoft, in its battle against piracy, might generate so much frustration among honest customers, that the end it will lead to the opposite effect: push honest customers to get their software to work the way it is supposed to work, or look for hacked versions...

In a TechNote, Apple is aknowledging that less than 1% of the iPod Video have been shipped with a Windows virus, identified as RavMonE.exe.
Of course Apple claims that it is due to its contract manufacturer that did not take enough attention to it. It can really be an issue for PC users running Windows without up-to-date anti-virus solutions.
This is not the first that such thing happens, last week, free players offered by McDonalds in Japan were also infected.
Official statement:

We recently discovered that a small number - less than 1% - of the Video iPods available for purchase after September 12, 2006, left our contract manufacturer carrying the Windows RavMonE.exe virus. This known virus affects only Windows computers, and up to date anti-virus software which is included with most Windows computers should detect and remove it. So far we have seen less than 25 reports concerning this problem. The iPod nano, iPod shuffle and Mac OS X are not affected, and all Video iPods now shipping are virus free. As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it.

Direct link to the procedure to clean infected iPod video: here

Following RIAA requests (not to say heavy pressure), Creative, probably the only real competitor for Apple in Europe, has removed one of the feature in its "Zen" model: one can not record music or news, nor radio on this player, as it used to be before.
This function is locked when performing the last firmware update.
Now, let's see if the RIAA will also be as efficient to lock the music sharing function found in the Microsoft Zune, many music majors or artists associations are already against such option.

The recall and replacement of millions of Sony batteries is causing an unprecedented shortage of this product. Sanyo, the biggest manufacturer of Lithium cells (Sony is number 2) cannot raise the supply up to the demand, hence an unavoidable increase of the prices, around 15%. Alltogether, close to 43 millions modules will have to be replaced on the very short term.
It is not known yet what the effect of this shortage will be on the replacement delays and on the new laptops market.
However, Apple should not be concerned with its MacBook and MacBook Pro given that these use Lithium Polymer batteries, which are of another kind and more performant.
PS: Sony recalled yesterday 300,000 batteries from its own laptops.