News for Friday, 4 May 2007

The National Consumer Agency of Denmark reported to have collected evidences demonstrating that the iBookG4 is suffering from a design defect leading to a sudden death shortly after the end of the one-year warranty. This decision might have important consequences for Apple and for numerous iBookG4 users all over the world. Only based on the EU consumer protection regulations, this decision from the Danish Consumer Agency might force Apple to repair for free all defective iBookG4 motherboards identified as defective.
For a complete information about this topic:

You can read the full press release at:
http://www.forbrug.dk/presse/nyheder/pressekit/ibookg4/ibook-g4-english/
The statement of claim can be read at:
http://www.forbrug.dk/presse/nyheder/pressekit/ibookg4/statement-of-claim-40317-1637-english/
The lab report can be downloaded at:
http://www.forbrug.dk/presse/nyheder/pressekit/ibookg4/lab-report/
Press photos at:
http://www.forbrug.dk/presse/nyheder/pressekit/ibookg4/pressefoto/

Last but not least, Apple seems to be aware of the problem even though it did not acknowledge it officially, and certified Apple Repair Centers are usually using tricks to press the broken soldered contact to restore power.
Please do not hesitate to report your experience in the dedicated topic of our forum: here

This is a good and unexpected news for the Mac community. Sun, the main contributor to Open Office.org, decided to allocate 2 of its engineers to help OpenOffice.org for porting the Suite to Aqua. Sun and Community developers will work together to speed up the Mac OS X port which was already near alpha version. It seems that Apple hardware becoming more popular than in the past, Sun decided it was worse investing time and energy in supporting native Mac OS X port of open Office.
For the interested people, a special IRC meeting will be organized on Friday 4th of May (see Mac port IRC meetings).

Pioneer just announced a Blu-ray Disc computer optical drive, known as BDC-2202. It is expected to be available next month in the USA for US$299.
Similarly to its small brother the DVD combo, the BD combo drive can read BD-ROM/BD-R/BD-RE (5x) and double layer BD-ROM/BD-R/BD-RE (2X). This drive combination gives users the ability to playback BD-based HD video contains while being able to burn DVD and CD.
Let's hope that apple will quickly add it as a BTO option for the Mac Pro as it is a good alternative for users not requiring a BD burner. However, it will really become useful when Apple will finally start supporting blue laser-based format.

One of our reader sent us photo illustrating the well known Li-Po battery swelling issue observed with some MacBook Pro 15" and 17". It will for sure mark a new record of "swelling".


Even if Apple claims such swelling are not dangerous, it remains impressive. The new firmware update should prevent such issue by slowing the battery charging process.

Aiming to compete with the iPod Shuffle, Creative just introduced the Zen Stone:

Like the Shuffle, it features 1GB storage space, no display and is available in different colors. It is larger than the iPod Shuffle (53.67 x 35.34 x 12.82 mm vs. 41.2 x 27.2 x 10.5 mm) and features 10 hours of continuous music playback vs. 12 hours for the Shuffle.
The main interest of this new digital music player is its price: US$39.99, so 50% cheaper than the Shuffle.
[update]
As mentioned by one of readers (who forgot to mention his/her email/name), unlike the Shuffle, the Zen Stone does NOT feature a clip, so you have to spend extra money of a system to carry it with you.

The BT Group is working on a project aiming to develop a notebook that can be controlled similarly to the Nintendo Wii's Wiimote. To reach such a goal, they simply installed accelerometer inside the notebook, then using dedicated software aiming to interpret movements and potentially assign future functions.
As Mac users it looks like a "déjà vu". Indeed, since 2005, Apple installed a similar system in all its notebook models, known as "Sudden motion sensor", originally used to park the HD head and save data in case of accidental falling. Of course, such technology, originally used by IBM, was pushed and further refined by many Mac users to be used for switching between views, users account, etc. by simply slightly slapping the notebook case (as reported previously).
The BT Group should maybe buy a MacBook o get everything already installed and ready to use; it seems they try to reinvent the wheel... let's hope that knowing this information they will propose us new functions for the "Sudden motion sensor".

Sony is going to introduce in July new notebook models known as the FZ and TZ series. Based on Intel Santa Rosa, and powered by Core 2 Duo Ultra Low Voltage U7500 clocked at 1.06GHz, the TZ models will be the new sub-notebook models from Sony and are announced to have up to 9 hours battery lifetime. To reach such a new limit, the TZ serie will use an 11.1" LED-backlighted LCD display while storage capacity will be limited to 80 to 100GB.
If such sub-notebook or ultra-portable is expected to become a popular model for a corporate market, its price remains currently unknown, but it will for sure be high.

A reader from xlr8yourmac failed to install a 200GB 2.5" Fujitsu HD in his MacBook due to the larger than expected thickness of the drive.
This is a good opportunity for us to remind you that there are 2 standard thicknesses for 2.5" HD. First, the main one with its 9.5mm used by most manufacturers, and the second one set at 12.5mm. HDs with such thickness could be installed in previous PowerBook, but not in MacBook, and such drive are also used by some PC manufacturers. So remember to check for the thickness of the 2.5" HD you want to install in your MB, as larger storage capacity can be achieved with 12.5mm 2.5" HD as one can stack an additional plate inside.
Last but not least, since Intel transition, all HDs in MacBook are using SATA format 2.5" HD 9.5mm.

According to EE Times Asia Apple and Samsung have been discussing about volume purchase of 4 GBits (512 MB) NAND chips. Cupertino could be interested to acquire up to 400-500 millions of such chips, representing a theoretical storage capacity of 190 to 240 PB!
Such a large amount of flash memory can not only be used in iPod nano, Shuffle or iPhone models, even if their respective storage capacity is doubled! So Apple has probably other plans for such chips, and it could be used as Robson modules for future notebook models, or even SSD drive; without forgetting a hypothetical flash memory-based iPod 6G (6' of such chips to reach 32GB storage space).
Last but not least, Samsung is not the only NAND chips manufacturer on the market, and Apple might be discussing similar deal with other major player in the field.