News for Monday, 5 February 2007

Adium, the well-known and almost universal Instant Messenger (supports AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo...) is now available in version 1.0. In other words it is not a beta anymore: http://www.adiumx.com/
Skype is now available in version 2.5 for OS X. If the Skype for PC is already in version 3.0, at least the MAc version keeps evolving in parallel: http://www.skype.com/intl/fr/download/skype/macosx/

After 25 years of battling between Apple Computer (which has since become Apple Inc) and Apple Corp, it has finally come to an end. The two companies have managed to create a global agreement in which Apple Inc takes the sole rights to the fruit of contention. It's now Apple Corp who finds themselves in second place in usage of the mark.
Although the details of this agreement remain unknown, Apple Corp has without a doubt obtained substantial compensation in exchange for these considerable concessions. Nothing further should prevent Beatles albums and other derivatives (iPod Beatles ?) from being sold on the iTunes Store.

When looking at the MacBidouille visitor stats we noticed some things which we thought would interest everyone.


To start, you can see the operating system distribution of our visitors on the two images above. Mac OS X is now obliterating all the pre-Unix versions from Apple, which now account for a mere 0.5% of visitors. We've noticed over the last few months an increase of 5 to 6 percent in Windows users, who should be thought of as potential switchers.

As for browser distribution, Safari has lost a step to the gaining Firefox which has risen since the 2.0 release. Previously, Apple's software exceeded 60% of the "market share." It is probably time for Apple to have a in-depth review of their software.
But it should be noted that the same is occurring on Windows, where Explorer has been rather maligned.
Let us know if you are interested in hearing more on this subject, and if so, we will keep you regularly updated on these statistics.

Intel will offer a System-on-Chips, aka Soc, by the end of the year; its name: Tolopai. As a SoC, Tolopai integrates a Core-based architecture, all controllers (SATA, ICH, DDR2, Ethernet, etc.) into a single chips is designed for embedded system and industrial computer market, and is Intel's answer to its competitors: VIA C7 or AMD Geode.


Most interesting features of Tolopai are its large FSB capabilities (600 to 1200MHz) and its low power consumption (13 to 22W), beside its price as it is an all-in-one solution.
Thanks to a PCI-E bridge, up to 8x, one could integrate this SoC with a third-party GPU, providing enhanced graphical capabilities when compared with an integrated graphical unit (such as GMA950).
How could Apple make use of this Soc? One should immediately think about Apple TV revision 2, as performance is not the driving point, but rather power consumption and price, Intel Tolopai SoC might be the future hardware that will power Apple TV.

Dell is facing a serious class action lawsuit from investors and shareholders accusing the company of improper accounting in its longtime partnership with chipmaker Intel Corp., in other words, Dell could have received as much as 1 billion US$ per year in order to ensure "Intel Inside" exclusivity in Dell computer models.
Of course, it comes at the same time than Dell CEO resignation, as well as lower than expected financial results. In addition, as Dell adopted AMD CPU last year for powering some of its notebook and desktop models, this incentive agreement with Intel is for sure over, and will appear in future as one does not erase easily 250 millions US$ bonus from the quarter result.

While the Airport Extreme 802.11n base stations were supposed to be available only by Feb 28th, several readers have already reported to us that they have received a message from Apple announcing the shipment of their order.
In addition, a forum member mentioned that he could purchase an Airport Extreme 802.11n base station directly from London Apple Store, so its availability should be complete by the end of February.