News for Thursday, 30 November 2006

The title might sound weird to some of you, but for years, Apple has almost exclusively used Panasonic-branded burners in its notebook models (under the brand name Matshita). It is also well-known that such drives are not as good as other brands, with lower technical specification or poor media compatibility; and more important no firmware updates available. Last but not least for users, it is not possible to turn them into region-free mode.
Recently some MB Pro C2D owners have identified a new drive, confirming a potential major change in Apple's policies concerning notebook burners.
Physh has sent us the following screenshot:

The burner is a LG model; and the famous Dangerous Brothers are already working on a modified firmware to unlock its full features while making it region-free.

During the "IEEE Globecom 2006 Expo" Intel has announced that its future Centrino evolution for mobile architecture, a.k.a. Santa-Rosa, will be using drafted 802.11n WiFi protocol/chipset. This WiFi format is currently not finalized, the second draft is expected soon but it will for sure not be declared "Gold" before Santa-Rosa introduction in S1 2007.
The main problem in the near future might be the different drafted versions of 802.11n available from different manufacturers. As a consequence, users might have interoperability issues with 802.11n-branded devices.
If Intel decision to go forward without waiting for the finalized 802.11n version was criticized during this Expo by many other players in the field, one can also understand that the IEEE consortium might have speed up the process, as 802.11n project is around for months if not years.
Defining format is good for consumers and business, but it might not require necessarily years to simply make the transition between 802.11g to 802.11n.

Samsung has announced a 180g fuel cell prototype that can recharge a mobile phone battery in about 2 hours. This device is able to generate 2W from methanol as an energy source. A 10cc methanol cartridge will be enough to provide 2 recharge cycle while costing around US$1.00.
As we've previously reported, Samsung has been working hard on fuel cells for years targeting larger devices, such as PDAs or sub notebooks. If the system becomes fully reliable and economical, we can even imagine iPod-specific fuel cells.

JCJ

The first numbers are starting to appear concerning Zune sales, and they do not support the projections of success that MS expected. All analysts are unanimously concluding that Zune's start is lower than the lowest expectation.
When looking at Amazon's Top selling MP3 Player list history, the best position held by the Zune was on its introduction day (6th), while today, it stands 16th (yesterday 23rd).
One will, of course, find analysts predicting a slow growth for Zune market share, mostly competing with iPod 'killers' than with iPods themselves. One analyst is claiming that MS wants to use the same strategy as the Xbox... but he probably forgot to look at the numbers — the Xbox360 is not the success that MS expected it to be and they need to come up with a new version to be able to compete with the new Sony PS3.

JCJ