Tuesday December 04, 2007

- Apple Inc. Sued for Patent Infringement... Again - Lionel - 21:06:22

Source : Yahoo

Klausner Technologies announced to have filed a patent lawsuit claiming that visual voicemail technology used by Apple, Inc. on the iPhone, is covered by some of its patents (U.S. Patents 5,572,576 and 5,283,818). The company even provided an estimate of the financial requirements to cover both current damages and future royalties: US$360 millions.
Already for the Newton, Apple took a license from Klausner Technologies, a 20 years old story... As usual in this type of conflict, the solution will be a check, and only the number of zeros will really matters

[translation by Linathael]

- iMac Vertical Line Issue: More and More Reports - Lionel - 21:04:49

It has been a long time we did not talk about the vertical line issues faced by many iMac owners. It mostly affects the last revision of iMac G5 but also iMac Core Duo, and even some iMac Core 2 Duo (20") as I personally experienced it. We keep receiving reports about this problem, and it does not seem to be sovled, nor Apple seems to be prompt to react.



The Mac website MacNN also commented on the unfair silence from Cupertino regarding this problem. A online petition is available from the following address: http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?maclines.
If the reason of this problem are not fully identified, in my case, changing the GPU solved the issue, and discussing about it with members from an Apple Center, they could confirm that it was a known problem, solved by exchanging some hardware part, something which could be expensive for Apple if the number of reports keeps increasing at this pace.
Apple should not act as they do not want to hear about this problem or recognize it, and stop defining the strategy only based on the number of reported cases, as with internet, couple of unsatisfied users might make much more noise than dozen of thousands of happy iPod users.



[translation by Linathael]

- Leopard: How to Use Printer Sharing with Different Versions of Mac OS X - Lionel - 15:35:07

Many users have recycled an old Mac as a printer server, but it does not necessarily runs Leopard or the latest version of Mac OS X, and subsequently Leopard does not find the shared printers managed by a Mac running Mac OS 10.2 or 10.3.

In a dedicated TechNote, Apple offers a solution to bring shared printers back. You will have to enter the following command line:

cupsctl BrowseProtocols='"cups dnssd"'

You can reinitialize the printing system via right-click (or Ctrl-click) on the field containing all printers in the Preference panel (Printers and Fax)



If it does not work as described by Apple, Macosxhints offers a second solution, rather straight forward with the following command line:

cupsctl BrowseProtocols=all

However, such command line might lead to some problems if you have an internal modem which can then be set as an exclusive fax.

[translation by Linathael]

- InfoWorld Gives Mac OS Leopard a Perfect 10 - Cheerful - 15:18:18

Source : InfoWorld

Ease-of-use, score 10/10 (Hasn't it always been for the Mac OS?) The perfect score goes on with the other categories --- Compatibility, Management, Features, Security and Value. And there you have it, an easy calculated total, 100% for Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard). Want the details? Read here.

The people knows best, after all, "Apple Sells Two Million Copies of Mac OS X Leopard in First Weekend". And as usual, if you have something to share, let's take it to the forum where we can have lively discussions.

- iPhone: Third-party Support for Mobile Tag - Lionel - 14:53:41

Already used in many countries such as Japan or Switzerland, Mobile or Visual Tag are a type of bar code allowing you to provide information to a terminal, it can be discount coupon, URL, train monthly subscription, coordinates, etc.
To use them, you simply need to take a picture and display them on your PDA or mobile phone in front of a dedicated reader.
If this function is not officially supported in the iPhone, the application iMatrix makes it now possible.




This application perfectly illustrate why it is important for iPhone owners as well as Apple to further open its iPhone application development kit to third-parties.


[translation by Linathael]