News for Wednesday, 26 March 2008

Unlimited music seems very popular if we are to believe certain rumors.
Sony BMG is studying the possibility of offering a subscription plan for complete access to its full music catalogue. It's presumed that this service would be open to iPod owners in order to reach a greater market, and consequently reach greater success.
This rumor comes at heels of another one dropped last week:
Apple is currently negotiating with the major record labels to offer unlimited access to music via the iTunes Music Store for all iPod owners. This feature would be offered in exchange for a cut of Apple's profits on each iPod sold for as long as the iPod was sold. Of course, the negotiations would be tightened to fix the price of this fee, which would undoubtedly be passed on to the price of the PMP.
This rumour would seem to be potentially deadly for online store eMusic, number two in several categories (behind the iTMS). The leaders of this site are afraid that such an agreement might put them under. It must be said that they would have no way to combat this type of partnership.
It remains exciting to watch whether Apple will succeed in imposing a worldwide global license and in France whether they will break any legitimacy to the fee on private copying levied on iPods.

Some Mac Pro have been shipped with SuperDrive Optiarc AD-7170A loaded with the firmware 1.NC.
This drive has (for once) more capabilities than those listed by Apple: it can burn DVD at 18x, while Apple only states 16x. It can also burn DVD+RW at 8x, DL DVD at 8x and CD at 48x.
It can also be turn into region-free mode directly in Mac OS X. The procedure is similar to the one we described in a previous article article/.
Hereafter are the details:
- Download Binflash in version 1.4.4 for OS X (Direct link and uncompress the archive to obtain a file entitled necflash
- Download from Liggy's and Dee's the region-free firmware for AD-71701.NC (Direct link).
- Create a new folder on the desktop and name it "NEC" for example. Place the necflash and the 1nc_rpc1.bin files inside.
- Then launch the terminal. Enter the command: cd add one space and drag and drop the NEC folder icon from the desktop to the terminal window, then press "enter"
- Save the original firmware by entering the following command line:
./necflash -dump oldfirm.bin A:
- We will then flash the firmware with the following command:
./necflash -flash 1nc_rpc1.bin A:
You will have to press enter of course, and validate your choice by pressing the "Y" key.
You will have to reboot your computer to make changes active, but as usual if something goes wrong we will not be responsible.

The French website Présence PC published a test illustrating the performance gain obtained from a SSD vs. HD in a MacBook Pro.
They simply replaced the 2.5" HD by a 32GB 2.5" SSD. As a consequence, booting time and launching applications was much faster, as well as file duplication; however, the storage space was limited to only 32GB...
Unfortunately, the impact of power consumption and saving battery working time was not analyzed in details. We are still waiting for Samsung or another manufacturer to send us a sample to perform such test (simply click on the author link).
Let's hope that 2.5" 128GB SSD will soon be both affordable and available.

In the words of Herve.

Apple seems troubled by the LOA (lease with the option to buy) introduced by Orange/France Telecom at the beginning of the year. They are incapable of supplying an approximate date of delivery for orders placed and accepted on February 15, 2008. The delivery will be specified in the next fortnight....

Initially, Apple has hidden behind the update of the MacBook to explain the delay. But this business has been going on too long for that to be an acceptable reason.
We wonder what it is that creates this problem with their partnership with Orange.

Intel announces two newcomers in the Penryn Xeon 4 core series.
The L5400 and L5410 run at 2.33 and 2.5 GHz with a 1333 MHz bus have the luxury of only dissipating 50 W.
The bus is a little slower than the Xeon used in the Mac Pro, however the lower thermal load will allow the fabrication of 4 core and even 8 core with a much more compact size. Why not use them in entry towers of a type that some of us have been dreaming about over the years?

Following the success of its Eee PC, Asus has decided to quickly evolve its Eee PC. Having announced models with larger screens, they have decided to market an Eee PC with a touch screen in the second trimester.
However, contary to the touch screen used in the iPod Touch and iPhone, this screen will use a resistive technology instead of capacitive. This technology is more adaptive to medium-sized screens.
The cost of such a screen will be about $10 extra.
Asus clearly follows a different direction than Apple, however it will also have its mark on the computer market.