News for Friday, 28 September 2007

As planned, we took advantage of being at the Apple Expo to perform a live test. The goal was to evaluate the resistance of the glass plate sitting in front of the LCD panel of an iMac 24" Alu:

The glass plate turned out to be stronger than expected, and could resist to quite substantial shock despite its thickness.

However, it is NOT a "securite" type of glass, and when it broke, we obtained sharp glass pieces. Nevertheless, your iMac 24" will have to fall, or you'll have to intentionally hammer it to potentially have the glass plate to break in pieces like that.

In the last Leopard beta version, Apple modified the minimal hardware specification required to perform the installation. Its moves fro; a G4 800MHz to 867MHz-baed hardware. If this decision was taken to ensure an as smooth and responsive interface as possible, it also will kick many users out of Leopard loop for only 67MHz which at the end probably did not really change much (performance wise).
We think Apple should have added a warning message stating clearly that to deliver acceptable GUI, Leopard will work best on G4-based system with a CPU clock speed equals or greater than 800MHz.
Of course, it will probably be possible to hack the installer to change specification parameters, but why making things easy when it can be difficult...

After refreshing Apple Stores design and interface, Apple released huge numbers of updates dedicated to its software and hardware:

iWeb 2.0.2
This update to iWeb addresses issues with upgrading iWeb 1.x websites, and fixes some common publishing problems, and supports general compatibility issues.

iTunes 7.4.3 for Windows
iTunes 7.4.3 addresses issues with the initial setup of the iPod touch on some international versions of Windows.

Keynote 4.0.1
This update primarily addresses issues with builds and performance.

Pages 3.0.1
This update primarily addresses issues with change tracking and performance.

Numbers 1.0.1
This update primarily addresses issues with tables and performance.

Firmware Restoration CD 1.4
The Firmware Restoration CD is used to restore the firmware of an Intel-based Macintosh computer.

iMac EFI Firmware Update 1.2
This update improves the performance and reliability of Intel Core 2 Duo processors and fixes issues with Boot Camp for iMac computers.

Mac Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.2
This EFI Firmware Update fixes several fan behavior and Boot Camp issues on Mac Pro computers.

MacBook EFI Firmware Update 1.1
This update improves the performance and reliability of Intel Core 2 Duo processors and fixes issues with Boot Camp for MacBook computers.

MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.4
This update improves the performance and reliability of Intel Core 2 Duo processors and fixes issues with Boot Camp for MacBook Pro computers.

Xserve EFI Firmware Update 1.0
This update is recommended for all Xserve users and improves the performance and reliability of Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors.

They are all available from Mac OS X Software update panel or from Apple Support webpage

We received a report from Markus about an issue affecting the .Mac service in Europe for almost two months. Many users, independently from the European countries, are experiencing very slow upload/download speed from their .Mac accounts. In addition, it seems to be also independent from the local internet speed or ISP, as it affects users having ADSL2+ internet connection toping at 26Mb/s.
The main thread is in the Apple Discussions for .Mac Web Gallery, as the first users to detect the slow speed issue of .Mac were dealing with uploading/downloading photos: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1081404
Hereafter is the story from Markus, a .Mac user from day 1, who resigned from its .Mac subscription after seeing the problem not solved after weeks while Apple is aware of the problem:

Hello
I would like to bring to your attention that there is a rather big about slow speed of .Mac for European users only. Main thread is in the Apple Discussions for .Mac Web Gallery:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1081404
It is top ranked and Apple .Mac Moderator has responded with an official comment, which does not help.
There are about 290 comments and 7300 views.
Conclusion of the discussion is, that Apple is aware of the limitation, but currently investigating about costs removing it.

Markus did not give up, and contacted .Mac Support, hereafter is his message and Apple Support answer:

Dear .Mac Support,
Until today the situation has not been changed. Accessing any service
of .Mac from Europe is very slow. I have just talked to my friend,
who is living in Roseville, CA. He can access my gallery at full speed of his cable modem.
My account will expire in 10 days and I do not know what to do.
I cannot renew while the existing situation persists, but I also
think that all the .Mac services are great.
Please remove the speed limitation for the European connections.
Thanks a lot,
Markus
.Mac user from day 1

Answer from .Mac Support:

Dear Marcus,
I understand that it has been a few weeks now that you have reported this issue to us.
I am sorry for all the frustration this issue has caused and I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience.
We are still working toward a resolution for the issue you have reported. Apple would like to clarify that this current performance issue is not caused by Apple's bandwidth limitations, which are described in the following article:
.Mac data transfer limits: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303786
As of today, unfortunately I cannot give you any time frame for a resolution.
Be assure that I would love to give you good news but as this time, it is not possible.
Thank you for your patience as we continue to improve our services for all our customers.
Sincerely,
X [we masked his name]
.Mac Support Specialist
http://www.apple.com/support/dotmac
http://www.mac.com/learningcenter

Markus also investigated further and found out that in the US usually AT&T is Apples ISP for mac.com, while for all European connections it is Level3
using trace route.
According to Markus, most of the people on the thread http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1081404 have resigned since there was no improvement
for about a month.
We think it is important to bring this news up to better understand the issue and defined if it is truly independent of ISP. Apple should maybe think of physically localizing the hardware infrastructure serving European .Mac accounts in Europe if this is not already the case.
Please post your comments in the dedicated topic on our forum: http://forum.hardmac.com