Friday February 08, 2008

- SIP telephony for the iPhone from Free - Lionel - 23:15:18

Free has launched a small bomb which will not make Orange happy at all.
On a dedicated page (http://sip.free.fr/)they offer SIP software that can be installed on a jailbroken (unlocked) iPhone. It allows the user to call for free or at a very low price as long as the device is connected to Wi - Fi.
For the moment, the software is reserved for the iPhone and Free. Soon it will be open for everyone and all SIP programs and also the iPod SIP Touch as long as you add the microphone developed by TouchMods.
[Update]
-- The install crashes currently. However, it is possible for insiders to install the application using SSH.
It can be downloaded at the following address: http://sip.free.fr/releases/Siphon.app.zip
-- The SIP preferences are not saved with the 1.1.3 firmware
-- The application fails if the SIP is incorrectly configured
-- It seems one has to use the hands-free to access the telephone.
In short, the very promising application that requires a lot of work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Session_Initiation_Protocol -- The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is an application-layer control (signaling) protocol for creating, modifying, and terminating sessions with one or more participants. It can be used to create two-party, multiparty, or multicast sessions that include Internet telephone calls, multimedia distribution, and multimedia conferences.

[translation by jeremy]

- Officially unlocked iPhones in France - the reality - andrew - 21:15:11

As France is currently the only country where Apple allows the iPhone to be sold without a contract and unlocked, I thought I would share my experience since purchasing an iPhone in November of last year.

Living in France and deciding I needed the unlimited data option, I opted to buy the iPhone with a contract, and then unlock it right away as I do travel on business to the UK quite often. First and foremost, Orange offer a 12 and 24 month contract - albeit for a few Euros more for 12 months (which is what I ended up going for). Incidentally, Orange recently introduced a business option for the iPhone which comes in at €339 and €29.90 per month for 24 months. The cost to unlock the iPhone came in at €100 as advertised.

The unlocking process involved a call to Orange customer services followed by a confirmation letter within 5 days. To summarise, Orange send the IMEI number of my iPhone to Apple which I assume is stored so that when my iPhone syncs with iTunes, it knows to "unlock" my phone. Typically, other phones only require an unlock code to be entered directly into the phone.

Once unlocked, I inserted my Three UK SIM card which promptly came back with an "invalid SIM" error. I immediately called Orange who assured me the phone should work with any SIM. You may recall that for a few weeks after the launch, there were reports that the French unlocked iPhones would be restricted to French SIM cards only. I phoned Apple in France to confirm this and they suggested this may be the case. To be honest, the lady who tried to help me just didn't know and suggested the reports on the Internet were probably true. Not giving up, I called Three and explained the problem I had. After some discussion, it was revealed that Three UK SIM cards will only work in 3G enabled phones - which explained the error on the iPhone. They advised this was intentional and they could not help me further. I subsequently cancelled my Three UK account and purchased an O2 Pay-As-You-Go SIM card. I popped this into my iPhone, and it registered correctly. At this point, the firmware was at 1.1.2 - and important to note that I could swap between SIM cards at will without an issue.

MacWorld came and went, along with firmware 1.1.3. I upgraded straight away and when I attempted to swap the Orange SIM for the UK SIM, no signal registered on the phone. Further investigation on the Internet revealed reports of officially unlocked phones no longer working with "foreign" SIM cards. I decided to sync it to iTunes and restore the firmware. I never got that far thankfully. As soon as iTunes picked up the fact that the SIM was different, it popped up a dialogue (in English) to say my phone was now unlocked. The iPhone worked fine from that point onward. I popped the Orange SIM back in and once again, no signal. Syncing the iPhone with iTunes fixed the problem, this time with the "unlocked" message appearing in French. For reasons only known to Apple, in 1.1.3 they decided to make the inter-operability of SIMs much more difficult and impractical. I therefore need to have access not only to my Mac, but also the Internet just to change my Orange SIM to the UK one. I am not happy about this and have complained to Apple France as it is my view that an unlocked phone is an unlocked phone. Once the process completes once, I should not have to keep "authorising" the phone every time I swap my SIM card.

As for unofficially unlocked phones, this is not an issue of course. One question yet to be answered is what happens when your 12 or 24 month contract expires? Do Apple then unlock your iPhone? Will it suffer from the same SIM changing issues as I have outlined above? For now, we don't know.

- Apple will not be at NAB - Lionel - 18:56:46

Last year, Apple had a big presence at the NAB Show, (National Association of Broadcasters) and they even gave a keynote. Two months before the opening NAB 2008, Apple has withdrawn to the irritation of the organizers, who already announced to have resold the released space.
According to Apple, there are better (and certainly less expensive) ways to meet their users, and they still hope to reduce their presence at many of these shows/expos this year. They cite the Apple Stores, that now have sufficient density in the United States, and also their Web site.
This decision, and the way in which it was taken, almost at the last moment, does not surprise us; this mode of operation is traditional for them.
It is even a speciality for them to let their presence grow with the organizers for the longest possible time, in order to build a false bond. They have already done this in the past with the MacWorld Expo in Boston and more recently with the Mac Expo in London.
Even if this NAB incidence is without consequence, the other expos are in danger. Of course, this worries us for the future of the Apple Expo in France, especially as it is certain that at least one Apple store will open in France this year (and almost certain that several more will open within a short time).
Alas for the fans of APPLE, who seem to worry so much about the reputation of the company; wth this new defection comes the confirmation of the reputation that Apple is certainly the worst partner than one can have in the world of technology. Apple takes whatever it wants and then leaves without a backward glance.

[translation by crispin]

- Say Hello to the First iPhone Clone: the HiPhone - Lionel - 12:27:24

Here comes the HiPhone, the first true iPhone clone, as one can not truly call it "counterfeit" as it has a different name.





Available for 239 USD, it features some function we might like to see added in the true iPhone:
- removable battery
- video recording
- support for 2 SIM cards
- play most of available video format
- support for USB mass storage

But beside its different name, it remains a counterfeited product.


[translation by Linathael]

- BBC: No iPlayer for the Mac - Lionel - 10:09:51

Source : BBC

The BBC has launched VOD (video-on-demand) services and offers a lot of programs in this way. Unfortunately, those are only available from a PC, the Mac has been set aside.
Good or bad news depending on your OS. They have announced that they will offer compatibility Mac OS X at the end of the year.
They have not forgotten the Mac, but it seems they are in no rush to provide the iPlayer for it.

Update from neil at mac.com:

The BBC iPlayer for Mac has been available for weeks, but streaming
only using Flash.

The download version due later this year.


[translation by jeremy]

- First Mac Pro's with 8800 GT have left the factories - Lionel - 09:59:05

During the night, the first Mac Pro's equipped with the Geforce 8800 GT left the Apple factories and are on the way to their delivery points.
We should therefore have much more news next week on this (graphics) card, which has itself received enormous attention.

[translation by jeremy]

- The Cell reaches 6 GHz - Lionel - 08:58:35

Source : CDR Info

The first Cell processors such as one finds in the PS3 were fabricated using 90 nm technology. IBM, Sony and Toshiba have started to fabricate Cell processors in 65 nm and have already started work with 45 nm. They have already succeeded in the laboratory of running chips at 6 GHz and are not far from marketing them in Blade servers.

The PS3 will also benefit with 45 nm technology. Its chip, running at 3,2 GHz will consume 38% less energy and consequently have much less heat to dissipate.

[translation by crispin]

- Another fault in Safari for the iPhone discovered - Lionel - 07:03:42

A new fault in Safari similar to the previous "TIFF" exploits has been discovered in the Safari browser of all firmwares.
It makes it possible to crash the application when executing a certain code.
At the moment it does not seem possible to do much else; however it may allow someone to jailbreak the iPhone as was possible with firmware 1.1.1.
But in that case, it would be the proof that one could exploit this fault and Apple would surely patch it quickly.

[translation by crispin]