News for Tuesday, 6 February 2007

It might be the first time, or it is rare enough to be mentioned, Steve Jobs just published his thoughts about Music, and the on-going pressure on iTunes Store in some European countries.
To read the entire article: Thoughts on Music
As we already mentioned it in previous news dealing with DRM issues getting quite popular in Europe, consumer associations did not identify the right target: Music Majors.
As we wrote it 2 weeks ago:

Last but not least, consumer associations should NOT forget that all online music stores offer DRM-protected music tracks because Music Majors have asked for it... We doubt that Apple would have installed DRM on its own.

In the iPod/iTunes ecosystem, Apple makes money thanks to iPod sales and not really via the iTS.
To react in our forum: Here

The company PhatRat launched a legal action against Apple and Nike, claiming that the Sport Kit uses patented biometric technologies. Of course PhatRat is asking for financial compensation...
We are not legal experts, however another well-known company for its biometric technologies, Polar Electro, has been developing such systems for athletes and high level sport training, way before PhatRat.
In addition, Polar and Adidas have recently team-up to offer sport equipment (shirts as well as shoes) including polar technologies: adidas-polar
So, one should always respect intellectual properties, and if PhatRat is looking for financial compensations, they might better look around and be sure not to be burned later on by some unexpected fire back.

The last build of Parallels brings support for the iSight.

Thanks to Cédric for the screenshot.
The application now supports the integrated iSight (so not compatible with FireWire external iSight) when running Windows. If you do not use a BootCamp partition, you will have to get the Apple driver for iSight from the CD.

If 2006 was a nightmare for Sony concerning the massive recalls of batteries, 2007 does not imply it is over. Indeed, Fujitsu Siemens launched a new recall for notebook batteries. While there is not information concerning the expected number of batteries recalled, it will for sure not really help Sony to improve its image among consumer electronics developers.
Of course, the Taiwanese battery manufacturer Simplo reported record sales for 2006, owning now 25% of the market for notebook batteries. It might still increase if Sony does not react strongly and efficiently to stop and spot the issue.

Apple released a firmware update for the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT graphics cards in the Mac Pro:
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/geforce7300gtfirmwareupdate.html
As usual, Apple does not provide any additional information neither indicates if this upgrade fixes some on-going issues or bugs. However, the procedure includes the installation of an updater application installed in the /Applications/Utilities folder. It should make our life easier for flashing Mac firmware in Pc graphic cards.
Please let us know in the dedicated topic of our forum if you identified the issue or the bug fixed by this upgrade