News for Tuesday, 13 May 2008

Our Swiss friends from www.macprime.ch reports information published on Swisscom forum about the rumored launch of the iPhone in Switzerland, via a partnership between Apple and Swisscom.
The first expected shipment/availability should be around June 20th, and the price would then be:

-16 GB iPhone 659 CHFr/USD with the new Swisscom iPhone liberty subscription plan (24 months).
-32 GB iPhone 799 CHFr/USD with the new Swisscom iPhone liberty subscription plan (24 months).

The 16 GB model will only be available in Silver, whereas the 32 GB model can be either, silver, black or white!
Additional information about the subscription plan:

Swisscom iPhone liberty: 40 CHFr/USD per month
- 0.45 CHFr/USD per hour (Swisscom Mobile video/voice network)
- 0.45 CHFr/USD per minute when using other carrier's network
- 0.20 CHFr/USD per SMS
- 0.50 CHFr/USD per 1 MB

Of course some information are missing, and as for France, UK, Germany and USA, there is nothing known about options included in the Swisscom iPhone liberty subscription plan (stock of free SMS per month, flat-rate for download, etc.).
Those are interesting reports, however, it remains a rumor as nothing has been clearly announced, and Swisscom recently refused to confirm if it would be the swiss carrier for a future iPhone in Switzerland. However, if the the details in the subscription plan are correct, then it could mean that the iPhone might be considered in a near future as any other mobile: attractive subscription plan for offering to new customers a competitive price/performance package, and smaller discount for already Swisscom's customers. I might indicate that Apple had revised its iPhone business model to reach its goal of 10 millions iPhone shipped in 2008.

[update]:
Information collected on the web indicate that Marvell Technology and Broadcom could be the main supplier of key hardware chips for the forthcoming iPhone 3G model. It would include the WiFi function, but also a chips dedicated to the GPS function of the iPhone 3G (provided by Broadcom).

As expected, the Microsoft Mac BU just released an update for Mac Office 2008:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac... le lien est en bas à droite)
Quite heavy update as it weights 180 MB...
Another update dedicated to Mac Office 2004 is also available:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac...
In this case, it only weights 9 MB!

Here one of last the photograph of what was for a very long time the head office of Apple France.

Amusing to see how much this Apple badge now points to other things :)
From this morning, the seat of the company has been relocated to Place of Iena in Paris.

APPLE proposes today on Refurb store the 160 GB Apple TV for 267,04€ including all taxes.
Since they refuse to drop their price in France (contrary to the United States), this is a very good bargain, these Refurb models being less expensive than new products equipped with a disk of only 40 GB.
Le Refurb Store

Even though a page of Google is always as plain as it was at the beginning, behind it there is a material infrastructure difficult to imagine. They are hundreds of thousands of servers which run in order to find a web reference and to offer to us in some tenths of a second as the result of our research. The consumption of these machines is quite difficult to conceive.
In order to decrease this consumption, Google has placed order at Intel for a very great quantities of SSD disks which will start to be delivered very soon. Such an initiative will have, because of the enormous volumes concerned, a consequential impact on the market of flash memory; this is likely to start a price rise after many years of rapid fall.

If you need a iPhone in the next days, you will have to wait. It seems that there is no longer any available for sale in the United States, in England or even in France.
This shortage is difficult to explain given that the new models will only be announced in one month time. Already some speculate that version 2 of the iPhone will arrive in the next days, perhaps even this week.
And furthermore, that a Tablet Mac which will be announced at the WWDC.
Definitely, Apple has the knack to keep us guessing :)

The lastest iMacs have faster processors, a swifter memory bus, but they have especially the possibility of being equipped with Geforce 8800 GS (actually a 8800 M GTS), video card with the new performances for this range of Apple.
It is not officially possible to change the video card of a iMac, however one of the members of our forums, "loloternet" who is an Apple certified technician, succeeded in grafting such a card into an iMac of the preceding generation.
The thing is thus realizable. Alas, this card is in theory available only via 'after sales service' and an exchange requires the disassembling of the iMac, which is a delicate thing even for a professional.
Let us wish that in future Apple takes into account the modularity of the iMac to be able to change the hard disk, or, and why not, the video card (one can always dream).

Microsoft largely profited from its claims; Windows Vista would be most reliable of Windows, and even less prone to the attacks than Mac OS X.
A new study carried out by a security company (thus not truly independent) serves to blacken this reputation so difficult to acquire. Vista is more sensitive to Malwares than the old Windows 2000 and not much more secure than XP.
The experts in this study consider that the attacks targeting Vista will multiply as it gains market share and will become thus more interesting to attack.
We believe that, no operating system, containing hundreds of thousands of lines of code cannot state that it is unattackable. One wants to arrive at this perfection; however quite simply, it is not possible. One can only hope that the modularity of Mac OS X and its UNIX origins make it less vulnerable and at least easier to patch in the event of the discovery of a dangerous fault.