Wednesday April 02, 2008

- iPhone sales low in France ? [Upd]2x - Lionel - 21:29:41

According to PC Inpact , sales of iPhone in France will just exceed 100000 units.
If this figure is confirmed, it would be a very bad news for Orange, and also for Apple. Indeed, it would have sold only that 5000 per month in this case from the beginning of this year, which is a ridiculously low figure, in light of the forecast of the operator.
It only remains to hope that the iPhone 2 will do a better job of convincing the french.
[Update] According to our friends at Macg�n�ration Orange has just denied the information. The iPhone would greatly surpass 100000 units sold. Too bad they did not give a precise figure.
[Update 2] It's time for PCinpact to reconsider its announcement and be justified. We include:

... "we passed the 100000 mark today." That is what we have recorded from the mouth of the Orange direction to the assembly of journalists in the late morning. These remarks were transcribed in the afternoon to AFP with a change of size: "Orange has easily passed the mark" of 100000 iPhone sold. This "easily passed" was not said earlier when the issue of sales of the Apple phone was raised. So either we follow what we have heard personally, noted and recorded, or we report what we were told afterwards. In both cases Orange did not wish to give the exact figures for sales of iPhone. Again, we say "easily."

In short, the truth is somewhere in excess of 100000. Everything is then question of semantics and interpretation of the word easily.

[translation by jeremy]

- Lightroom 2 bèta - Lionel - 18:31:59

Adobe is offering a bèta download for Lightroom 2.0, Adobe's tool that competes with Aperture.
This new version brings many improvements, and even supports 64-bit architecture on OS X -it's the first time that Adobe uses OS X' 64-bit features.
You can test the bèta for free for 30 days, and existing Lightroom 1.x users can use it untill August 31, 2008. The beta can be used together with an exisiting Lightroom installation.
There's also still an 1.4 update in the pipeline, expected somewhere in April.
https://www.adobe.com/

[translation by xavier]

- Award-Winning TV Series Now Available on the iTunes Store in Germany - Cheerful - 18:27:21

Source : Apple

It is official. iTMS Germany is offering award-winning TV series. The large words splashed on Apple Germany reads "Ihre Lieblingsserien. Jetzt in iTunes" (i.e. Your favorites. Now in iTunes)

As noted in Apple's PR statement, the shows are also available in a couple of other countries, however, "video availability varies by country".

So, for those in Germany, do you have what your heart desires now? Share your thoughts in the forum.

MUNICH, Germany —April 2, 2008—Apple® today announced that hit television programming from Germany’s top networks, including ProSieben, Sat.1, ZDF Enterprises, Brainpool and US broadcasters ABC Studios and MTV Networks is now available from the iTunes® Store in Germany (www.itunes.de).

Television shows purchased and downloaded from the iTunes Store can be viewed on a Mac® or PC, iPod® nano with video, iPod classic, iPod touch, fifth generation iPod, iPhone™ or on a widescreen TV with Apple TV®. Television shows are priced at €1.99 and €2.49 per episode.

Television shows are available in the US, UK, Canada and Germany, and video availability varies by country.

- Dell to Lay Off 10% of its Employees - Lionel - 13:26:07

Source : Dell

Dell announced a plan to lay-off additional employees in the future years. With already 3200 jobs cut, the company expect to reduce its head count by 5600 in coming years.
The company reacts as usual when facing a crisis due to a reduction of market share as well as losing the leadership position for PC manufacturer to HP. If Dell was very competitive in the past thanks to its outsourced production lines in China, today all PC companies have similar contractors, and cost production for all manufacturers are now almost the same.
One will remember that four years ago, Michael Dell was stating that Apple was dead, and his company the only PC manufacturer to be able to look positively at the future with study growing market share.


[translation by Linathael]

- Xbox 360 To Adopt Blu-ray? - Lionel - 13:25:20

Source : Digitimes

Microsoft was supporting the wrong horse in the race between HD-DVD and BD, and shipped its Xbox 360 game station with a HD-DVD drive. When the HD-DVD threw the towel, Redmond's giant immediately denied to be working on moving the Xbox from HD-DVD to BD. However, some rumors indicate that such new models is indeed behind developed.
Lite-On is reported to be working on a internal BD drive which could fit in a Xbox 360 model that will hit the shelves for H2 2008. Once more Microsoft has made the wrong choice, and is one more time working on a solution to adapt its strategy to the winning wave instead of being able to surf on the wave they created.

[translation by Linathael]

- Intel and STMicroelectronics Join Venture: Numonyx - Eric - 13:24:56

Source : Digitimes

Intel and STMicroelectronics officially announced their joint venture company, aka Numonyx, a new semiconductor company that will be developing and manufacturing NOR/NAND flash memory as well as phase change memory (PCM) devices. The phase change memory is a new non-volatile memory technology that could replace flash-based memory in a near future. The PCM uses physical characteristics of chalcogenide glass, and its ability to switch between crystalline and amorphous state in response to heat. The consequent change in electrical resistivity defines the basis for data storage with this technology.
Numonyx will manufacture immediately RAM, NOR and NAND memory modules thanks to two Intel manufacturing plants managing 65 nm, and later this year, 45 nm engraving process. We might see a new price-based battle between flash-based memory manufacturers, as well as new mergers in a near future.

- Will the FireGL V7700 ever be ready for the Mac? - Cheerful - 10:52:24

Source : InformationWeek

At a price of US$1,099 the FireGL V7700 appears to be far more affordable compared to the current NVDIA workstation video card (Quadro FX 5600). Such an upgrade at the US AppleStore will cost you US$2,850. Apart from the price, another distinct difference is the amount of VRAM 512MB vs 1.5GB. Last but not least, there is the newly adopted DisplayPort as discussed earlier.

- A new class action on dithering - Lionel - 10:32:31

Despite the class action suit on the dithered MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops, Apple is facing a new suit, about dithered iMac screens.
This time, there's little chance that the suit will be settled as easily as the other suit, since there's a whole lot of lawyers behind it.
The facts are simple: Apple announces that all of their displays are capable of showing millions of colors. But in fact, they show only 262000 colors, and simulate more colors via the dithering technique.
A human eye will see more colors this way, even though they're not really there. And that's exactly the point of dispute. Is simulating those colors that aren't really there sufficient, or not?
For some people it'll be only detail, others will say it's swindling.
But, no matter what the outcome of this suit will be, it remains a fact that Apple should be more open about the components they're using. The only way to know which components you have, is to open up your Mac and see...

[translation by xavier]

- 7,5% of market share for OS X in March - Lionel - 07:30:57

Net Application has published its March 2008 figures for the market share for different OS.
These confirm the good form of Apple and Mac OSX that continues at 7.5% but that progress is slow since the start of the year.
The iPhone has a 0,15% share in a slow but constant progression month after month.
Even if the growth of Apple has slowed, they have gained 1% of market share over one year and almost 3% in two years.
Other figures allow Apple to view the future with serenity. Recent studies concluded that the sales of Mac would represent a little more than 20% of the US data-processing market.

[translation by crispin]

- OrthoConsult 3 a program for `orthopaedic surgeons - GuyG4 - 05:26:07

For this news, we are going to give the limelight to a newcomer to the macbidouille team , Charles, aka Rabbit on our forums, passionate about IT, about all things Mac and an … orthopedic surgeon:)

Before the effect of "gas factory" software professionals at the time, in 1998, Charles decided to embark on the design of a software package. The key words: Open and modularity.therefore File Maker Pro (at the time in 4 or 5) was chosen. Only to be used initially for updates, he thought he could share his knowledge and had in mind to share it amongst colleagues.
Browsing File Maker forum initiated a complete rewrite of the software by unifying its interface and adding a number of features.
OrthoConsult 3 is the culmination of this work.
It allows management of patients, their treatment, their orders, their images, the agenda for consultation, the operating room schedule and the consultations.
Some features: a statistics module with graphics (developed on the basis of FusionCharts for FileMaker), access to medical data banks on the internet, direct access to the edition of Yellow Pages for doctors and physiotherapists, a module for mailing , and so on.
After building a site around the software, a user forum was born. It is for those who need a helping hand, but also for users who have created their own data capture/storage models. They can share them, either free or on the "shareware" model.
Modularity for Charles was a priority, so the interface is customizable by the user, and if he wants to "put his hands in the sludge", he may even change the structure of the database to fit his needs .
For an overview: Here Finally, if you want to know even more: < A HREF = "http://orthoconsult.hometechmedia.com/" TARGET = "_blank"> A

This is obviously highly specialized software, which will only interest a minority of our readers, but since there are still a few doctors on the Mac, we thought that it was worthwhile to talk about it.

[translation by jeremy]