News for Wednesday, 8 November 2006

Microsoft has maybe learned from the iPod success story that it might be dangerous to let an innovative company such as Apple to launch a new product without monitoring its evolution. At least it could explain why Redmond's giant has decided to launch an online HD video store dedicated to Xbox 360 owners. From November 22nd, via the Xbox Live service, HD movies as well as TV series will be available for renting or purchasing. As usual with Microsoft, digital contents will be loaded with DRM (named VC1) while sound quality will be a standard 5.1 format. One would not be able to store so much HD videos on the Xbox 360 HD, as its storage capacity is limited to 20GB.
The good point for potential consumers is the HD format for video, a much higher quality that what is currently available from the iTunes Store.

You might remember the mess generated concerning Apple notebook repair service in Europe when ADT went bankrupt about a year ago.
After this event, Apple had a new contract with a UK-based company, named Celestica; and so far the service was according to Apple renowned for consumer support.
However, according to several sources, Apple has stopped using Celestica service, organizing notebook repair/support thanks to its network of certified Apple Centers. Why? Part of the answer might be found in the following news: http://www.shropshirestar.co.uk/2006/10/loss-of-600-jobs-confirmed/:

The redundancy risk to the whole workforce - 340 permanent staff at the site and a further 325 agency workers - was announced in the summer after bosses said the company lost one of its biggest contracts. The company has since been unable to secure further contracts to save the jobs during a 90-day consultation and now the site will close.
....
Celestica took over the site in Priorslee in 2000. Its workers run an electronics manufacturing service to make printed circuit boards. The other side of the company focuses on repairs to electronic products.

According to our information, the large contract lost was the one for Dell Notebook repair. One could easily imagine that afterwards Apple had not choice than finding a new company.
The problem for Mac users is that quality and reliability of Certified Apple Centers for repairing notebook are far to be equal over Europe.
Let's hope that the new revision of MacBook and MacBook Pro will be as problem-free as possible.

iPod sales in UK are among the top one in Europe, eventhough transferring music from a CD to Apple music players or any other similar devices is illegal by the law.
Of course this law is broken every year by millions Brits who only want to be able to listen to their music via a mobile digital music player.
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) is calling for a "private right to copy". In addition, IPPR deputy director Dr Ian Kearns said:

"When it comes to protecting the interests of copyright holders, the emphasis the music industry has put on tackling illegal distribution and not prosecuting for personal copying, is right. But it is not the music industry's job to decide what rights consumers have that is the job of government."

It is about time to stop the hypocrisies if we consider that more than half of British consumers are infringing copyright law by copying CDs onto their computers, iPods or other digital music players; according to an study conducted by the National Consumer Council.
It is nice to see UK aiming to move towards a more flexible, but also more realistic law concerning consumer rights for digital music. Amazingly, on the other side of the Channel, in France, law makers are going exactly in the opposite direction thanks to pressure from the music majors to restrict as much as possible the private copying rights...

The Apple Store is back online with the MacBook Core 2 Duo as suspected after yesterday's leak.
Prices remain almost unchanged, while the black model is overpriced to our point of view.
Phil Schiller claims new MacBook models will deliver 25% performance increase thanks to the new Core 2 Duo processor; but one should not forget that Apple has doubled the default amount of RAM (1GB vs. 512MB).
The shortest way to the Apple Store

Elgato has announced a digital terrestrial TV device, based on a USB key format: EyeTV Diversity.

This device includes 2 digital terrestrial TV turners able to work together in order to deliver an optimized and enhanced sensitivity.
Elgato being a German company, they even advertise that one can use it in a car speeding up to 160km/h on the motorway ;)
This device will also allow you to watch a TV show while recording simultaneously another one (you will need 2 antenna).
for additional information: http://www.elgato.com

Universal Music will launch on November 13th its online music store. To celebrate this event, the Major will propose a bundle based on a 1GB flash memory player and a 6 months subscription for 99€.

During this 6 months period, consumers will have the possibility to listen to the entire catalog (only 50,000 tracks). Then, one will have to pay a monthly fee of 9.99€ to have the right to listen to music…
Of course music tracks are loaded with Microsoft DRM, making this offer incompatible with Mac and Linux-based systems.
I think they do not understand the difference between listening to radio and owning its own music...

This will revive all possible speculations about... Core 2 Duo based MacBook?
Indeed the Apple Store is currently closed!