News for Thursday, 7 February 2008

In the United States, 3G is still undeveloped, in contrast to the 2.5G and Edge. For that reason, the absence of 3G in the iPhone did not represent an obstacle.
AT&T has announced that it wishes accelerate 3G's development during 2008. 80 new towns will be covered by the latest incarnation, HSUPA.
If HSUPA becomes the norm, we can not help thinking that they are preparing the ground for the next generation of iPhone, which can not simply ignore this standard.

Foreword: it would seems a rather delicate matter for a writer on a Mac site to speak about Windows without being accused of being a Troll - or to be without passion for not breaking out with a rash when given this task. However, it is impossible for a site that caters for fans, whether that is Apple or something else, to be unaware of competition - especially when it is as omnipresent as Microsoft.
We thus will cover the subject which follows, not with the maximum of objectivity, but at least with a minimum of subjectivity, and use facts to support our statements.
Microsoft has already sold more than 100 million licenses for Vista, this operating system (just like Leopard to a certain extent) has a lot of bad aspects due to its size, however of special concern is its ever present 'security alerts'.
In fact, many users are prudently returning to XP after an ill-fated incursion into the Vista world. The professionals are those that have the smallest urge to change system. Vista needs more powerful machines and complicates the task of network administration. In order to give them a push (euphemism for 'force') Microsoft has decided to stop the sale of OEM (the system preinstalled on new machines) XP from June 30 onward.
A petition has been setup online to delay the ending of OEM XP.
Since Microsoft and its users have long waited for SP1 of Vista (just like us with 10.5.2), certain constructors such as NEC propose to their professional clients turn key solutions to easily migrate from Vista back to XP.
Of course, all this is only a small problem for Microsoft, which has sufficient power to impose whatever it wants on all adversaries. However this lack of enthusiasm amplifies the return of Apple into the good grace of the public. The market share of Mac OSX (and of Linux) grows to the detriment of Windows. The movement is certainly very slow, but the difference is that each 1% of share of market lost by Microsoft boost substantially the number of OS X customers.
Without large improvements with Vista with SP1, and later with SP2, Apple has plenty of time to enjoy the sun. In effect, Windows 7, code name of next OS of Microsoft is planned (excluding delays) to be released at the beginning of the next decade.

SanDisk announced to have started producing new NAND Flash memory chips able to store 3 bits per cell while taking advantage of thinner engraving process at 43nm.
When used together, both technologies will allow SanDisk to double the storage capacity of their memory chips, while decreasing the price/unit. SanDisk plans to release 2GB chips for Q2 2008, while 4GB chips will be available later on.
Of course, SanDisk aims to use such chips for SSD, a juicy expanding market for flash memory manufacturers which have been suffering of low margin in 2007.
However, we do not know the performance level of such chips, as MLC memory able to store several bit/cell is usually slower than SLC memory only able to store a single bit/cell.

After LG and its GGW-H20L model, this is now Plextor to announce its first Blu-ray multiformat burner, aka PX-B300SA. This new optical drive is able to burn single or double layer BD media at 4x and 2x respectively, as well as DVD at 16x and CD at 40x.
As for LG's model, the PX-B300SA can read BD and HD-DVD media. This new optical drive should hit shelves later this month, but its price remains unknown. Such optical drive could be the perfect model to be installed in a Mac Pro in order to benefit from BD burning capacities well supported by Leopard, while waiting that Apple finally releases the software update required to play HD movies on our Mac.

With the development of the Web2.0, in other words online service such as YouTube or Dailymotion, as well as VOD or online Video Rental services, the internet bandwidth literally exploded. If one adds the effect of P2P (reported to drain about a third of the worldwide bandwidth), internet users keep increasing their bandwidth consumption.
However, if this could look like an unlimited resource, it starts to have a cost for ISP, especially when they have to use hardware infrastructure developed by competitors.
If in France and in general in Europe, the competition between ISP allows users to have access to full broadband internet at a very low price (triple play ADSL or ADSL2+ for less than 30 Euros/month), with transfer speed only defined by the distance between your computer and the central server, in other countries such services are simply not available yet. In USA, partially due to the size of the country and also to the investment required, broadband internet remains restricted to some dense area. AT&T is current still offering "broadband" subscription plan ranging from 768 Kbits/s, 1.5 or 3 Mbits/s... and associated to defined and rather expensive subscription plans. Recently, AT&T decided to significantly increase - around 5 USD/month - the price of most of its offers, in order to better stick to the real cost of broadband internet... This decision will affect millions of internet users in USA, but might also be required to improve aging American infrastructure, as the competition between different ISP does not really push them to make the investment required to bring true broadband ADSL/ADSL2+ to their customers.
In Europe, over the last few months, there is a "concentration effect" taking place among ISPs, with several of them throwing the towel and being acquired by larger ones at the EU level. Even though we have regulation and control authorities, the surviving ISP might be tempted to increase the price of their triple/quadruple-play offers in a near future as they have started investing in the next generation infrastructure by expanding their optical fiber network to bring them directly to customer's home (100Mbits/s and more).

In case you have an old iBook indigo G3 333 tucked away in a cupboard, Jean-louis has put a page online (in french) that shows how to overclock it. He succeeded without much difficulty to push it to 453 MHz. Such manipulations do not change much concerning the obsolescence of this machine; however it gives pleasure without taking much risk.
He has also put online an explication on how to install Tiger, even though there is no integrated DVD reader.
http://www.ianswer.fr/

When the iPhone was announced, Steve jobs had said that each employee of the company would be offered one. Of course it was necessary that that the iPhone is officially proposed in the country where the employees live.
Even though this was very quickly regulated in the United States, the employees of Apple France are still waiting, although the iPhone has been available for a few months now. Soon they will be made happy. The telephones are already in stock on their premises. They only await the start of the pro offers of Orange (which are now available on their site iphone.orange.fr) to enroll to a specific subscription.
It is necessary to recognise this disordered state: the employees of Apple promoting an device that they do not use themselves.