News for Wednesday, 13 June 2007

Couple of days after the introduction of the new MacBook Pro models featuring the powerful GeForce 8600M, NVidia announced its new high-end mobile GPU, aka GeForce 8700M.
What is new? Not much despite doubling the memory bus, meaning double 128-bit memory bus, and not 256-bit bus. The core frequency jumps from 475MHz (GF 8600M) to 625MHz, shaders clock increases from 950MHz to 1200MHz, while the memory frequency moves from 400MHz to 800MHz. The memory bandwidth does not really change 25.6GB/s vs. 22.4GB/s for the GF8600M.
The power consumption should be in line with the GPU frequency, so significantly increased compare to the GF 8600M, explaining maybe why Apple decided to go with the GF 8600M, even though Cupertino knew about the up-coming GF 8700M.

Our Swiss readers sent us an information published in the Swiss French newspaper la Tribune de Genève. Apple could acquire/rent a large space which was previously a cinema in an ideally located area in Geneva to install the first Swiss Apple Store. If nothing is announced yet, it could pave the way of Apple Store in Switzerland, as rumors of such store in Zurich have already been floating around for weeks.

As usual, the WWDC is the perfect place to unveil the Apple Design Awards. Winners have just been announced:
Best Mac OS X Leopard Application
Winner– Delicious Library 2.0 (alpha)
Runner-up – iBank 3.0a
Best Mac OS X User Experience
Winner– Coda 1.0
Runner-up – Sandvox 1.2
Best Mac OS X Developer Tool
Winner– CSSEdit 2.5
Runner-up – rooSwitch 1.1.8
Best Mac OS X Game
Winner – World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade 2.0
Runner-up – Wacky Mini Golf 1.01
Best Mac OS X Scientific Computing Solution
Winner – Papers 1.0
Runner-up – SingleCrystal 1.3
Dashboard Widget
Winner – BART Widget 1.0
Runner-up – PEMDAS 1.1
Best Mac OS X Student Product
Winner – Picturesque 1.0
Runner-up – Pathway 1.0
We particularly enjoy publishing results of such Awards as it is often the best way to discover top-notch applications, well written and designed.
You should go and visit all applications submitted to the awards in each categories. As a scientist I personally enjoyed using the trial version of Papers, while I discovered recently Coda and Picturesque.

Following earlier adoption in other large cities, Paris has launched a free Wi-Fi Hotspots project, primarily localized in buildings or center from the Parisian public administration. Wi-Fi connection will be opened in best cases from 7h00 till 23h00.
The list of the first free hotspots is available on Paris.fr (currently only available in French). Further opening will take place in June, then in September.
When visiting Paris and looking for a free Wi-Fi hotspot you might find one in some café, bars or restaurants, or even easier if you are a FON users.

According to Homemedia.fr (in French), Philips could launch a box aiming to compete directly to the Apple TV.

With a brushed metal design, the box features specification similar to the Apple TV, with a 40GB HD, Wi-Fi, HDMI and optical digital audio outputs, as well as an USB port.
Not much is known about the user interface, but Philips will probably provide as much compatibility as possible regarding supported with video formats, to make its box more attractive than the Apple TV, even though the look a is not really similar, especially considering the external power supply unit (not shown on those photos).
This device could be the only way to push Apple to quickly update its Apple TV by bringing full HD support as well as larger compatibility with video formats.

Users who asked to be informed about the release schedule of the iPhone, have received an email providing additional information regarding the device and the steps and procedures to follow in order to speed up its setting up. Future Owners are asked to register to the iTunes Store to create an account which will be needed later on to configure the iPhone.
We currently can think of 3 options requiring such registration to the iTunes Store:
- unlike the iPods, the iPhone will check the iTS when playing DRM-loaded AAC tracks
- one will be able to buy music tracks directly with the phone from the iTS via Wi-Fi or carrier network
- one will be able to retrieve recorded messages on the mail box as a audio files loaded on the iTS account.
We like the last hypothesis, but there might be other valid ones we did not think about.
Hereafter is part of the email: available from iPhone website .

iTunes Account
To set up your iPhone, you'll need an account with Apple's iTunes Store. If you already have an iTunes account, make sure you know your account name and password. If you don't have an account, you should set one up now to save time later. To set up an account, launch iTunes, select the iTunes Store, and click the Sign In button in the upper right corner of iTunes. Sign in and you're ready to go.

For sure Steve Jobs shad the IT world when announcing Safari 3 for Mac and PC with his famous "One more thing". If the announcement created a huge buzz, it might have a strong impact on Apple's image when considering reported experience with Safari 3.
Indeed, on Windows, Safari 3 is indeed fast, but particularly unstable, especially when installed on a non-US system. Many pages are not visible, even for some of the most popular websites.
On Mac, if we do not experience problems linked to the localization of the OS, Safari 3 is only available in English, something a bit weird for an Apple-branded application. Numerous used have reported problems with the Mac version too, including stability issue and data corruption... In some cases, this was linked to compatibility issues with other applications, but not always.
We can not believe that Apple's engineers did not test Safari 3 internally (at least US, Europe, Asia) to provide a better worldwide feedback concerning stability and compatibility issues. Maybe Apple being so paranoiac, to preserve its "coup", did not spread the application outside from its Californian labs? It looks like the decision to release the beta version of Safari 3 was taken without really taking into account opinions from developers; if so, then they are probably in trouble today for having not tested their application in some basic conditions.
Apple will have to work hard to turn back the negative opinion drawn within 24 hours in the PC world. A more advanced and stable version of Safari 3 could have been released and announced in September during the Apple Expo, and would have been the impact on the IT world, with more positive attentions for sure. For iTunes on PC, Apple was able to release a robust version, which with time became popular on Windows computers.
Of course Apple might have suffered from the user experience with some applications, announced as beta version but fully stable, and finalized (such as Google and its apps). Of course in the developer world, a beta version defined an on-going project with bugs and stability issue, with 6 security flaws already identified in Safari 3, Mac users should go back to the 2nd version, and Apple needs to spend more time on the third version before end users can adopt it.