Thursday June 26, 2008

- Subscriptions for iTunes by the end of the year? - Lionel - 23:28:41

According to Electronlibre.info, Apple is negotiating with the major music producers the possibility of proposing subscriptions for music downloads, such as other music download sites, but going even further.
The music thus acquired would be it without DRM and could thus be preserved definitively. If such an economic model were really set up, it would be need some limitation, probably on the monthly downloaded volume of music.
One could almost draw a proverb from it. Try chasing the global license out of the door, and it will return in through the window…

[translation by crispin]

- The price of the iPhone without a french Orange subscription - Lionel - 22:53:24

Source : MacGeneration

Macgénération has succeeded in finding the price of the iPhone sold without subscription by Orange (in France).
The 8 GB will be with 509€ and the 16GB 609€. To this price, it will still be necessary to add 100€ to desimlock them, which starts to make them very expensive!
Note that for those who live close to the frontier of Italy, it will be preferable to buy it there and save 40€ on the model 16 GB.

[translation by crispin]

- NTT Limits Upload Speed on its Fiber Network in Japan - Lionel - 09:07:46

In Japan, most ISP have deployed a fiber network to offer ultimate transfer speed of dozen of Mb/s for their customers, allowing in consequence massive data exchange between users. To save performance as well as prevent illegal data transfer (Can we really do it?), NTT decided to limit the upload to 30 GB per day. Of course such restriction will not affect normal users, but only a small percentage of users who took advantage of the performance level of a fiber network to exchange massive amount of data (legal or illegal). Such decision was of course quite heavily criticized in Japan.

[translation by Linathael]

- iPhone Firmware 2.0 to Be Declared Golden Master Tomorrow? - Lionel - 09:07:16

According to a source originating from the iPhone development team reported byGizmodo, the firmware 2.0 should be declare Golden Master tomorrow. Its protection levels have been raised up to prevent or at least delay hackers. The new Firmware should be available at the same time than the new iPhone 3G, so on July 11th.

[translation by Linathael]

- Sony Unveiled its New Mac mini / AppleTV Killer - Lionel - 09:06:44

Sony unveiled its last Media center model, known as VGX-TP1



Powered by a Core 2 Duo T8100, associated to 2 GB of RAM, and a dedicated GeForce 8400M GT, its 2 HDMI ports make this Media center a rather well equipped device.
Sony offers 2 models
- the entry-level sports a DVD player/burner as well as a 320 GB HD: its price 1400 USD.
- the higher-end model is equipped with a BD player/burner and a larger HD of 500 GB of storage space: premium price 1900 USD.
As usual with Sony, prices are rather high, but at least the hardware is powerful enough for facing all request and evolution; something missing on the Mac mini or the Apple TV (especially the dedicated GPU)...

[translation by Linathael]