News for Friday, 6 July 2007

The war between BD and HD-DVD Alliances is also taking place on the market for standalone players. It also involves manufacturers, and prices have dramatically decreased the last two months and are now around US$500. But for such price, you will have to choose one format or the other, there is only one multi-format player currently on the market, a LG model available for 1500€.
The war might enter into a new phase following the last announcement from Samsung and its BD-UP5000 BD/HD-DVD multi-format player. The key factor is its price expected to top at 550€! However, it does not mean that performance will be lower as it will support 1080p format.
At such price, it should boost adoption of HD video players, and make consumers confident as they will purchase a multi-format model. If all manufacturers decided "not to decide" by releasing only dual format models, both Alliances might have to find another place to continue their war.

Apple released the iPod Reset Utility 1.0.2 available for download from the Apple Support webpage. It is only dedicated to iPod Shuffle owners.

About iPod Reset Utility 1.0.2 for Mac
Use iPod Reset Utility to restore the following iPod models back to their factory settings, when iTunes is unable to do so:
• iPod shuffle (1st Generation)
• iPod shuffle (2nd Generation)
The restore process completely erases all music and data on your iPod, and installs current iPod software on it.
For detailed information on this Update, please visit this website: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305204
Note: iPod Reset Utility is intended for use only with the iPod models listed above; other iPods are not supported. If you are not sure which iPod you have, see Apple Support article 61688: Identifying iPod models

The famous campaign launched by Apple and entitled: "I'm a PC. I'm a Mac" is a huge success and the concept has widely been used for ads promoting other consumer electronic devices (such as the Wii).
Parallels launch its advertising campaign entitled "PCs & Macs Coexist" which is also inspired by Apple's ads.
Hereafter is one of them:

Many other video are available from their blog:
http://parallelsvirtualization.blogspot.com/2007/07/coexist-with-parallels.html

Yes, of course we are talking about iPhone. According to waitingforiphone.com, citing an internal AT&T source, the virtual line of 1 million iPhone activated has been reached less than a week after the launch of the Apple -branded mobile phone.
According to other internal sources, the iPhone is out of stock, not only in AT&T shops, but also in Apple Stores. This is the biggest ever introduction success for Apple, and as for the iPod, one will now have to expect that Foxconn is going to be able to produce enough iPhones to support sales.