Thursday September 13, 2007

- Orange Entered Exclusive Discussion to Acquire TEN - Lionel - 22:04:39

In a PR, Orange announced to have initiated exclusive discussion to acquire the french virtual mobile Ten Mobile. Ten is known in France for having built its offer around unlimited messaging and web surfing.
As spotted by one of our team member, it could well be the perfect way for Orange to acquire the resources and knowledge to develop the dedicated network required for the future iPhone customers and the corresponding services (such as unlimited surfing and download).
Ten current offers including unlimited web surfing and mail range from 9.99€ (no phone feature) to 59.99€ with 6 hours of mobile phone communication.

[translation by Linathael]

- New iPod nano Clones Already Available - Lionel - 21:50:25

Chinese counterfeiting industry is fast to copy and produce counterfeited Apple's products. Hereafter is a photo of a "new" model of digital music player from a chinese company located in Shenzhen:



Despite the click-wheel, and most likely the component as well as the materials used for the enclosure, this is a perfect clone of the recently released new iPod nano. It took them less than a week to get it out. This product should quickly appear in resellers' shelves in a near future as Apple did not really decide to fight such copies found in many European countries as well as in USA.


[translation by Linathael]

- Coming in Adium 1.2 - Eric - 16:06:33

The popular and multiformat instant messager Adium is being further developed to a new vesion 1.2 which should be released soon as indicated on the dedicated homepage.

Adium 1.2, our next major goal, is going to be a crazy awesome release. In the last two days we've finished the initial merges of our Google Summer of Code 2007 students' efforts; it'll be some time and effort before the development trunk of Adium is stable and close to a release with all these incoming changes, but it'll be well worth it. The Summer of Code was a huge success:

- Andy Monitzer made many improvements to libpurple's XMPP/Jabber support, benefiting both Adium, Pidgin, and Finch.
- Erich Kreutzer modernized, fixed, and expanded Adium's Bonjour support, implementing file transfer in the process.
- Erik Beereport worked on multi-user conferencing in Adium, making good strides toward a more full-featured, shiny group chat experience.
- Matt Handley greatly expanded Adium's applescript support; it will now be possible to control Adium easily via Applescript, paving the way to even more great user content and control customizability.
- Andre Cohen implemented snapping / detachable groups which let you detach groups from the contact list into free-floating windows

In addition, Adium 1.2 will utilize libpurple 2.2.0, which will bring a number of improvements, most notably the results of a Google Summer of Code project for Pidgin by Jeff Connelly which has added MyspaceIM support.

Join us in improving Adium! Read Contributing To Adium to learn how you can help :)

Our friends from www.opensourcemac.de offers also to download a compiled SVN version of Adium 1.2 for those brave enough to test it (Adium 1.2svn)

- Special Event in London on September 18th - Lionel - 15:20:34

Source : Macworld

Apple has sent invitation to a Special event taking place on September 18th at the Apple Store in regent Street. It will be most likely a UK-specific event, and from the title "Mum is not longer the word" one can expect this conference to be the official one to celebrate the launch of the iPhone in UK.



We can expect the launch of the iPhone in France (and Germany?) to take place during Apple Expo keynote at the end of September.


[translation by Linathael]

- Logic Studio 8 and Express Available In European Apple Stores - Lionel - 13:35:41

Apple updated the European Apple Stores to reflect yesterday's US and Canadian update with the introduction of Logic Studio 8:
- Logic Studio 8 is available at 479€ with an update price of 199€ (in stock)
- Logic Express 8 is available 199€ and the update for previous Express version will cost 99€ (shipping will start next)

[translation by Linathael]

- SSD: From 4GB to 416GB Storage Space - Lionel - 13:31:29

In a Press release BT Micro officially announced its new IDE Flash Solid State Disk packed in a 2.5"HD ATA-133 format with a storage capacity varying from 4G to 416GB! This new drive dedicated to mainstream enterprise, commercial, industrial and military storage should be available from Q1 2008. Its high reliability level required for such applications as well as the cost of SSD will not make this ultimate high-end storage unit available to all users as its price will probably reach another record.

[translation by Linathael]

- After Price Cut, iPhone Sales Triple! - Lionel - 13:27:41

Source : Dailytech

According to the last survey conducted by many analysts, the US$200 price cut applied on the Apple iPhone from September 4th seems to be driving iPhone sales into a frenzy. Some analysts estimate that Apple could have sell up to 136,000 iPhones between September 5th and September 9th. In other words, it represents as much as 27,000 iPhones a day for the 5 days following the price cut announcement.
If you consider that Apple might not prevent SIM unlocking application to be used on the iPhone, it could boost even further iPhone sales, and the first iPhone's Quarter sales will most likely be impressive.

[translation by Linathael]

- Buy a Mac and Get an iPod nano for Free - Lionel - 13:26:16

Apple launched its "back to school" offer in Europe too.
Students purchasing a Mac and an iPod will be eligible for a 130€ money-back coupon (the value of the iPod nano 4GB)
You will find details of the offer in the following webpage: Europe_Rebate_EN_A5_v3.pdf
PS: This offer is only valid if purchasing a Mac AND an iPod nano at the same time on the Apple Store Education


[translation by Linathael]