News for Monday, 24 September 2007

To celebrate the launch of its partnership with Apple, and especially targeting iPhone and iPod Touch owners, Starbucks will give away 50 million free digital songs to customers in all of its domestic coffee houses.
Starbucks stores will hand out about 1.5 million "Song of the Day" cards every day from October 2nd to November 7th giving customers the ability to download the song from Apple Inc.'s online iTunes Store.

Virgin announced its decision to close its Windows Media-based alternative to Apple's iTunes known as Virgin Digital
Virgin Digital customers will have till Friday September 28th to keep ordering from their favorite online music shop that will and finally shut down on Friday, October 19th.
Virgin does not provide any explanations, and simply shunt down its online store, following Sony Connect couple of weeks ago.
So, which current online music store will be the next one to die? Are we going to see a new monopoly which will by default attract authorities' attention, especially from the EU?

Tomorrow, Apple Expo Paris will open its doors, and the Macbidouille/Hardmac team will be happy to meet you at the "stand du Pommier" (Apple Tree Booth (E92)).
As last year, we will perform some live "bidouilles" from the booth. Here are the operation we plan to perform:
- Tuesday 16h00: installing a 802.11n card and changing the HD in a MacBook Core Duo.
- Thursday 16h00 (to be confirmed): testing the resistance of the glass plate sitting in front of a new iMac Alu 24".
- Friday 16h00: installing a 802.11n card and changing the HD in a MacBook Pro Core Duo.
If you can not attend, we should be able to offer a video capture of all operations in the near future.
As most Hardmac team members will not be physically available at the Apple Expo, do not hesitate to contact us directly via email (linathael at macbidouille dot com)

At a news conference, Sharp and Pioneer announced to have entered into a business and capital alliance agreement:

Taking such circumstances into consideration, Sharp and Pioneer have decided to enter into a business and capital alliance agreement to create new business and improve both companies' corporate value, by utilization of both companies' resources and through active cooperation, including efficient implementation of both companies' strengths and specializations, such as imaging and display technology, in which Sharp and Pioneer both specialize, and also Sharp's digital technology, communication technology and device technology, as well as Pioneer's optical disk technology, acoustic technology and car electronics technology

Based on the current agreement, Sharp will own 14.7% stake in Pioneer (US$357 million), while the latter will acquire 0.9% stake in Sharp (US$171 million). On the technology point of view, both companies will share their expertise for the markets mentioned above. Sharp will gain access to the huge patent library owned by Pioneer. Next generation DVD related products originating from this partnership will benefit from Pioneer's experience in optical disk technology and Sharp's expertise in blue-violet laser diode.

During the Intel Developer Forum, the CPU founder announced its project to enter SSD market, and one should expect Intel SSDs sometime in 2008.

As illustrated by the capture, those SSDs will use a SATA 3 interface, while consuming 4.5x less power than HD. In addition, Intel reports twice writing speed and access time 10 to 50 fold faster.
One should not be surprise to see Intel entering SSD market, especially considering its current joint venture with ST Microelectronics. Intel will arrive late on this emerging market, with Samsung and SanDisk being already there as the main players. However, Intel might develop its own Flash-to-SATA controller to optimize and bring the best from SSD to consumers. When Intel will launch first SSD, we can expect price of such solid state storage unit to drop, and maybe at the same time, could we expect Apple to launch the long-rumored subnotebook model which would be based on SSD and powered by Penryn ULV CPUs.

We'll pass this off to Yannick.

I was also a victim of the G5 liquid cooling problems.
This Saturday, I disassembled my machine and I made a small guide on my site.
Here is the relevant page: http://nysoyan.free.fr/Eaglefour/PowermacG5.html

Although it is in French, the page is very well documented and one can see what looks like the beginning of a premature death. Note: the page is very slow to load due to the many photos.

Last week, we spoke about Jean-François Taillard, who had discovered that the iTunes Store was distributing one of his arrangements without his permission and in a clearly illegal manner.
It took a little while for him to completely understand the legal complications of the matter, and we are now going to sum it up for you.
He signed an agreement for the distribution of the song with the Aurophon company in 1995 for a duration of 10 years. For obscure, and difficult to describe, reasons, Aurophon changed its legal form and became Cascade Meridien.
This company has given the rights to X5 Music who believes (obviously in good faith) that it is authorized to sell it on the iTunes Store.
In summary, Aurophon or Cascade Meridien has given the rights that is no longer has, this transfer being two times illegal since they should have asked for authorization from the artist, which they did not do, and also because the contract has expired.
We have here a contract which has created quite a stir since the publication of our previous news has lead to threats of defamation lawsuits.
While waiting for the resolution, this illegally sold song is still available on the iTunes Store.

MainStage is one of the new applications in the Logic Studio 1.0 software suite. Although it was released very recently, the very first software update is already available: 1.0.1

MainStage 1.0.1 contains several updates, including:
- Improves stability
- Addresses minor usability issues
- Adds options for saving parameter values when switching patches
- This software is recommended for all users of MainStage 1.0
For more information about this release, go to: Late Breaking News

The update is available via Software Update and totals 19.7 MB