News for Tuesday, 2 October 2007

The Apple Stores are closed down and being updated, the US Apple Store should also be down in a couple of minutes. We can expect new products, I would dream of Santa Rosa MacBook but it might well be the announcement of the availability date for Leopard.
If you want to be the first to know when the Apple store will be re-opened, you might have to refresh this page.
[update]
It seems that it was one of those technical update, probably linked to the recent refreshment of the Apple Store design and interface.

Some Mac users were expecting Leopard to be released during the Apple Expo, but it was impossible to test the future OS on any computer available at the event. Nevertheless, The Leopard should come out of the wood this month as announced earlier by Steve Jobs. Considering that the last built is stable and main bugs are fixed, the Golden Master version of Leopard should be announced soon, and the date of its availability known in the coming days (today?). A possible date could also be on Friday this week, as stated by one of our forum members; it will be October 5th, or 10.5.
It is about time as many switcher or Mac users are waiting for Leopard for purchasing their first Mac or changing their hardware.

To celebrate the opening of its show room "C42" on the Champs Elysées, Citroën, one of the French car manufacturers, was expecting to offer iPhone to VIPs invited to the opening party.
Attracted by this offer, many VIPs went to the opening event on September 27th, but only received the following flyer:

After investigating further, we learned that iPhones were indeed supposed to be distributed directly at the evening party, but due to the conflict between Apple and Orange, Citroën could not get the ordered stock on time, and had to quickly print the flyer. It indicates that the iPhone would not arrive in France before December!?

Joost the well known legal on line video sharing platform is now available in version beta 1.0. The user interface has been modified, and the application is now stable. You can also create an account without requiring an invitation.
You can download the beta 1.0 version here: http://www.joost.com/download/macosx/
Joost claims to already offer more than 15,000 TV shows over 250 channels.

With Mac OS X, we are used to simply clone our HDs (including application and documents), when changing our HD or migrating from one computer to another one. However, it does work for Windows partition created via Bootcamp.
The Freeware WinClone is able to perform this operation, for WinXP or Vista partitions.
Additional information: http://www.twocanoes.com/winclone/

In its latest Terms of Service (ADSL) that its clients must obligatorily accept, AT&T has added a unbelievable clause.
It authorises them to disconnect the service of clients who had the impertinence to openly criticise them, or more precisely "for conduct that AT&T believes [...] tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries."
Definitely, the stupidity seems unlimited, and those who had the idea for this clause would be better off finding a job in a dictatorship. They are clearly of the disposition to exercise their profession in that type of regime.
[update] It seems that most US ISPs and carriers have in their legal policies this type of clauses, which look crazy seen on that side of the Atlantic. In EU such clauses could simply not exist for such contract, probably because customer rights are better protected.

Intel will soon be discontinuing production of its oldest processors. So, the majority of Core Duos will be declared end of life in the coming months.
The Core 2 Duo T7300, 7400, 7200 and the other at a 667 MHz bus will also be discontinued in March 2008.
However, these processors are the only ones which can be installed in a Mac mini or an iMac that originally shipped with Core Duos. Indeed, the most recent 800 Mhz bus ones will be incompatible.
Note that this bad news hides a good one. Apple will soon be obliged to move the MacBooks and Mac mini Core 2 to Santa Rosa, as these machines also use processors at a 667 MHz bus.