News for Monday, 2 April 2007

As we already reported it this morning, Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI, announced during a press conference that EMI Music launches DRM-free and superior sound quality downloads across its entire digital repertoire.
So the end user will have to choice between cheaper DRM-loaded music tracks and more expensive DRM-free music files featuring a higher sound quality. If the price per track will be higher, the price of the entire DRM-free album will remain unchanged. All EMI music videos will also be available on the iTunes Store DRM-free with no change in price
Prices:
with DRM: 0.99 Euro / title
DRM-free: 1.29 Euro / title
To update purchase contents to DRM-free: 0.30 Euro / title
DRM-free music files will be available in May, in audio AAC 256 kbps format.
Steve Jobs joined Eric Nicoli and confirmed that DRM-free music track is the way to go for the entire music industry.
As mentioned by Eric Nicoli:

EMI and iTunes are once again teaming up to move the digital music industry forward by giving music fans higher quality audio that is virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings, with no usage restrictions on the music they love from their favorite artists

Most professional or corporate office tables have those wire-dedicated holes usually located in corners. They are not always used and often rather ugly.
Belkin has found a way to use them to bring additional functions or peripheral access for users sitting at those tables.


Available for US$39.99, they can be used either to provide additional USB2 ports, thanks to a integrated USB hub, or to offer a dock for your iPod in order to reload its battery or listen to your music library.

Our Spanish friends from Entremaqueros have published an article describing the complete mod of a Powermac G4 Quicksilver. They modified everything, from the CPU overclocking thanks to "dip Switch" to the exchange of the cooling system. In July 2001 (only in French, as hardmac did not exist yet), we published an article explaining how to overclock this model, but Entremaqueros brought it to a the end.
Such hacking will not be possible on MacIntel, Intel has locked the multiplication factor of its CPU, and nobody has found a way to increase the frequency of the FSB on our MacIntel motherboards. If you want to dig into, we can tell you that the bus frequency information is hidden in the SMC.

Appletvhacks published videos and photos demonstrating that they have successfully installed OSX on an Apple TV thanks to a patched kernel.
To achieve it, one has to extract the HD, perform a backup, then install and modify OSX. Then the hacked Apple TV can then support a keyboard and a mouse, and one can install most applications and software, taking into account the poor CPU capabilities and the small amount of RAM installed.
Despite proving that the Apple TV is nothing but a small Mac running OS X, installing the OS X on such a device is mostly useless as the 256MB of RAM will force the HD to swap all the time; making the machine hardly usable and much less responsive than with its dedicated original system.
[update]: disclaimer: As the announcement was released on April 1st, we can not entirely exclude that this hacking is an "April Fool".

At 14h00 CET, Apple represented by Steve Jobs and EMI Executives will give press conference in London. If some websites pretend it could be the time chosen to introduce Beatles' songs catalog in iTunes store, our information points to another direction: Dropping DRM - Cutting price of music tracks on the iTS?
For sure, such a quick announcement for a potential major decision proves that it has been kept secret, and that it could once more rock the music world.

If the Apple Stock-Option situation seems to quiet down, the one involving Dell isn't. While the founder has taken back the driving seat a few weeks ago, he now finds himself in the middle of a financial crisis. The company has announced that they wouldn't be able to supply on time to the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) the information requested, following the discovery of embezzlements and of accounting modifications made on stock options attribution dates.
According to Dell those documents should be available on April 18th.