News for Tuesday, 14 November 2006

On http://www.flx-tech.net, one can see numerous photos of the unpacking of a Microsoft Zune. Funny (or not), it was not possible to install Zune drivers, neither associated applications...

In addition it is also not really clear about the meaning of the photo displayed by the Zune installer, neither what are those girls/guys really doing...

Google, which seems unstopable, is now thinking of enabling free cell phone usage. Of course there will be a "price" to pay in exchange for it (a paradox you might say). It will be necessary to agree to undergo the torture of targeted advertisements, in a form in which the method is not yet known.
In France, there was a time when Bouygues Telecom offered free calls in exchange for audio ads interrupting the conversation.
We would like to point out that it is the consumers who yield to the ads and buy the advertised products which encourages this sort of advertising.

Macfixit reports that several MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo owners are experiencing display issues.

Display artifacts appear suddenly, and one needs to reboot the computer to get it fix...till next time it happens, as illustrated in this video:
Corruption.MP4
If you have experienced such problem, let us know by providing details in the dedicated topic in our forum as a Comment to this news (click "Comments" in the news title to directly jump to it)

Apple keeps on updating today... It is now X11's turn to be updated to version 1.1.3 (worth 49.7MB).
This update should fixes problems which arose with the previous 12-days old version.

This update addresses several issues in the X11 for Mac OS X package, enabling it to better handle:
- GLX stereo visuals
- offscreen rendering to GLX Pbuffers and Pixmaps
To tell X11 to take advantage of stereo visuals, enter:
$ defaults write com.apple.x11 enable_stereo -bool true
This update also addresses font issues present in X11 1.1.2, and is recommended for all users.
This installer guides you through the update process. To get started, click Continue.

Thanks to Olivier to report that the EFI firmware update for the Mac Pro fixes the issue when having the cursed configuration: Mac Pro + Radeon X1900XT/Apple Cinema 23"/Running Boot Camp.
So, the problem should also be solved for iMac24" owners willing to use Boot Camp.

One will conclude that Cupertino has decided to release all updates today. After improved RAW format support, Apple has released EFI Firmware Updates that are supposed to fix several Boot Camp, start up, and wake-from-sleep issues on Intel-based computers.
• Mac mini 1.1
• MacBook 1.0
• MacBook Pro 1.2
• iMac 1.1
• Mac Pro 1.1
The Firmware Restoration CD is now available in version 1.2 and can be downloaded here.

Let us know in our forum if this EFI firmware update solves the annoying issue faced by many iMac24" owners with Bootcamp installation
[update] According to first reports in our forum, the new firmware for iMac does not fix the current issue with some iMac24" owners unable to isntall Boot Camp. Please provide your experience: here

Cupertino has just released an update aiming to improve support of digital photo RAW format by Apple applications. This update is available for OS X 10.4 for both PPC and Intel-based Mac (1.4 and 2.4 MB respectively).

Mac OS X Tiger provides support for a variety of popular digital camera and image file formats. Applications such as Aperture, iPhoto and Preview utilize this support to work with digital camera RAW files. This update improves RAW file format compatibility for the following digital SLR cameras:
-Canon Digital Rebel XTi / 400D / Kiss X Digital
-Nikon D80
-Pentax *ist DS
Other issues addressed:
-Handling of large Canon RAW files (.CRW)
-DNG compatibility on Intel-based Macs
-Lines sometimes appearing in images exported from Aperture