Monday February 11, 2008

- Mac OS X 10.5.2 update available - Joe Le Boss - 22:48:00

It's confirmed, Cupertino reads HardMac! In fact, Apple has just put online the second update for Leopard, contradicting our news from this morning that the long-awaited update would come available at the end of the week...

The update (180 Mb) brings fixes and enhancements for many components, among them: Active Directory, AirPort, Back to my Mac, Dashboard, Dock, Desktop, iCal, iChat, iSync, Finder, Mail, Networking, Parental Controls, Printing, RAW Image, Safari, Login and Setup Assistant, System, Time Machine,…

More information on Apple's website.

[translation by xavier]

- Bluetooth via Wi-Fi - Lionel - 18:55:28

The Bluetooth standard has many advantages. It provides a reliable and secure connection between the two devices and facilitates easy data exchange.
However, in the age of Wi-Fi pre N, bluetooth suffers from poor performance -- voluminous data exchange will take a long time.
Things could soon change, with the Bluetooth protocol piggybacking Wi-Fi. The specifications of the "Alternate MAC / PHY" will be unveiled in 2009 and will, depending on requirements, automatically and transparently switch the protocol from bluetooth to Wi-Fi, which is on the same waveband.
This will be interesting because the bluetooth is much easier to configure for a point-to-point connection than Wi-Fi

[translation by jeremy]

- Intel Sued for Patent Infringement for Core 2 Duo CPUs - Lionel - 09:22:17

Source : http://warf.o

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) announced to have charged Intel Corporation with patent infringement of a University of Wisconsin-Madison invention that significantly improves the efficiency and speed of computer processing. It would include all Core 2 Duo CPUs, the desktop, notebook and Xeon CPU models.

The foundation complaints that Intel Core 2 Duo micro-architecture is infringing WARF's United States Patent No. 5,781,752, entitled "Table Based Data Speculation Circuit for Parallel Processing Computer" and patented in 1998. As summarized by Michael Falk, WARF general counsel: "the technology significantly enhances opportunities for instruction level parallelism in modern processors, thereby increasing their execution speed."

The WARF claims to have approached Intel several times to find an agreement and to settle the conflict and offer legal licensing opportunities for the technology, however, following the lack of response from Intel, the Foundation decided to bring the case to the court.

[translation by Linathael]

- Apple is interested in the video game market? - Lionel - 08:00:18

Source : Ars technica

If there is a sector where Mac and more generally Apple has lagged behind, it is that of gaming. Even though there have been some blockbusters on the Mac and a few games for the iPod, the action in this secor is on the PC and more and more on the consoles. One also recalls the attempt to break into this market 12 years ago with Pippin has been a failure. But partial resurrection of Newton with the iPhone seems to have given ideas to Apple who have filed for a trademark the following description:

Toys, games and playthings, namely, hand-held units for playing electronic games; hand-held units for playing video games; stand alone video game machines; electronic games other than those adapted for use with television receivers only; LCD game machines; electronic educational game machines; toys, namely battery-powered computer games.

All this resembles a console of the type Nintendo DS or possibly an extension of the Apple TV as a gaming machine, rumours of which had started to surface last year.
As shown by Nintendo with its DS and Wii, the most important aspect is not the power of the machine but the quality of the gaming experience. This last point is essential but it requires a deep knowledge and the complicity of the game publishers.
However, the bringing together of Apple and Electronics Arts has been difficult due to the poor quality of the mouse. Thus there is all to be gained in this field.

[translation by crispin]

- But where is this damn 10.5.2? - Lionel - 07:28:47

At the end of 2007 we learned that the 10.5.2 Leopard update would be released at MWSF on January 15, 2008.
Later we heard that it would be delayed, however 3 weeks later there is still nothing.
Even though this release schedule has fallen through, Apple has been busy releasing beta versions to the developers, initially fixing big problems, then minor problems and then increasingly smaller.
We appreciate that they want to hatch for us something as perfect as possible, however never has an update been awaited with so much impatience. We can not say that Leopard is actually an unstable or unusable system, but there are many people who hope that it will regulate some small nuisances or recurring concern.
Apple has the habit of releasing new machines on Tuesdays - or sometimes on Wednesdays; for new systems and updates Apple also has a preference: Fridays - or sometimes Thursdays. Thus we hope that 10.5.2 will finally arrive at the end of this week.

[translation by crispin]