News for Thursday, 10 July 2008

Tested as soon it was released, the firmware 2.0 was installed successfully on an Orange iPhone. The update was performed without problem as well as activation and transfer of original parameters and preferences.
The AppStore is fully functional, but we did not try it yet. It is perfectly integrated in the iPhone GUI, making it easy and very user friendly, once more Apple released a perfect user-experience. The free application "Remote" transforming your iPhone or iPod Touch into an Apple Remote will most likely be a hit.
LAst but not least, if you own a jail-breaked iPhone v1.0, or any SIM-unlocked iPhone, do not perform the firmware update immediately, wait couple of days for having some feedbacks from the web, we will provide them as soon as they become available.

Hereafter is the content of the Read Me file which will come with the iPhone firmwarev2.0:

iPhone 2.0 Software Update
This version of the software includes the following improvements and supersedes all previous versions.
• Third-party application support
• New App Store
• Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync support
- Push email
- Push contacts with Global Address List lookup
- Push calendars with meeting invites
- Passcode Policies
- Remote Wipe
- Autodiscovery (Exchange Server 2007)
• Cisco IPSec VPN support
• WPA/WPA2 Enterprise with 802.1x authentication
• Certificates and identities support
• Device configuration with Configuration Profiles
• MobileMe support
- Push email
- Push contacts
- Push calendars
- Bookmarks
• Mail, Contacts and Calendars enhancements
- Mass delete and move of messages
- Microsoft PowerPoint and iWork attachment viewing
- Blind carbon copy (bcc) support
- Easier POP/IMAP account setup
- Multiple calendars
- Display meeting invitees
- Contacts search
- Import SIM contacts
- New Mail, Contacts, Calendars settings
• Save images to photo library from Safari and Mail
• Scientific calculator in landscape mode
• Parental controls/restrictions
• New languages, dictionaries, keyboards and input methods
• Turn Wi-Fi back on while in Airplane Mode
• Tapping the status bar scrolls to top of page
• Sync Google contacts with iTunes
• Bug fixes
For feature descriptions and complete instructions, see the users guide for your iPhone at:
http://www.apple.com/support/manuals/iphone
For more information about iPhone, go to:
http://www.apple.com/iphone
To troubleshoot your iPhone, or to view additional support information go to:
http://www.apple.com/support/iphone
For information on the security content of this update, please visit this website:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222

the update for the iPhone 3G (version 1.2) is already available. If you want to play with it, here it is:
iPhone1,2_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw
Several of us have already push the installation of this update on a iPhone v1.0, and it seems to work just fine, but wait a bit more before trying it too.

With iTunes 7.7 now available, the AppStore is accessible and already open. You can directly access it from iTunes or from the following link.
The Mobile.me dedicated website is also up and running: me.com.
Everything seems to be working smoothly so far, the last piece of the puzzle remaining to be launched is the iPhone Firmware v2.0. This should not take long now.

Last Monday, O2 was allowing users to pre-order their iPhone 3G online. This initiative did not last more than couple of hours, as the dedicated website was quickly saturated and the stock of iPhone 3G run out. O2 made the story public, announcing to have faced peaks of up to 13000 pre-order requests per second on Monday morning. Despite having increased by 250 fold the capacity of their server for the pre-order website, it could not support the request rate so long.

In a recent interview, Joel Hagberg, Fujitsu business development VP, announced that the company has no short-term plans to create solid-state hard drives (SSDs) under its own brand name. To justify such statement, he went on and reviewed specification and performance of current SSDs models:
- most SSDs are very efficient for random access for reading data, but performance drops significantly when writing or reading large amounts of data in a row.
- power consumption would be reduced at best by 5%. Something similar to the value we recently reported (here)
- still limited writing cycle, some memory chips not allowing for than 10000 cycles.
If Joel Hagberg did not unveil any new or questionable points, he made it clear that while SSDs might indeed be a future solution for computer as a storage unit, the current technology states does not make it a true viable option. As the power consumption was the first marketing factor for SSD manufacturers, one will have to wait for more substantial power saving to really use these parameters as a main argument.
Fujitsu is also following another direction as Seagate decided to release its own SSD beginning of next year but at the same time is trying to slow-down SSD adoption by suing other SSD manufacturers for technology/patent infringement.

Animation movies are a business where requirements for powerful computer resources are huge, and remain a key factor. Dreamworks just announced that it will shift from AMD-based hardware to Intel models. According to sources, Larrabee might have been the decision-making factor. This future system for video display and 3D rendering looks very promising. However when looking at the specs, Larrabee is a (big) evolution of the original Pentium CPU, adapted to 64-bits instruction with its MMX core revisited towards a more modern and effective SSE version. Last but not least, while being originally engraved at 600 nm and clocked at couple of hundreds MHz, the CPU which will be the core of Larrabee will be obtained from 45-nm process and clocked at 2 GHz.

Couple of days ago, we reported that the defective NVidia mobile GPU should apparently not affect Apple hardware, as only the GF 8500M would be affected. Yesterday, an article published by The Inquirer reported that all, and not only selected production lots, of GeForce 8400 AND 8600 GPU graphic cards are affected by the heat-related failures due to an unidentified material used in GPU fabrication process. It would not only be restricted to the mobile version of those GPUs (8400M and 8600M), but although include the desktop version drived from the G84 and G86 cores. Despite NVidia's claims, that only HP products are affected one can expect other notebook and desktop models from Dell, ASUS PCs, as well as Apple, to be affected by this faulty chipset issue.
The Inquirer is accusing NVidia to know about the problem for well over a year and to not take any effective actions to fix it. For the time being, this remains only based on indirect sources, and it would be nice from NVidia to get a clear statement, and not hide the information as end users, mostly consumers would like to know if they have to expect their computer to turn dead over summer time…

After the outcry caused by the announced prices of the subscriptions accompanying the iPhone in Canada, Rogers tries to take again the upper hand by proposing an option making it possible to benefit from an additional 6 GB of download for "only" $CAN 30.
This offer may appear generous when one forgets that the basic tariff remains crippling, and that in many countries (France for one) the data download is unlimited (even though the download speed can fall quickly).
It is thus more a gesture of appeasement rather than anything else; the iPhone risks not to be a success in this country.

Apple again has filled the refurb Store. Here are the highlights:
- MacBook Core 2 Duo, all the generations, the first price being the model 1,83 GHz at 809€
- MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo. ditto for this machine where the present generation is proposed beside the preceding one, however less interesting due to more expensive price.
- iMac: 949€ for a 20" 2,4 GHz and 1199€ for a 24" 2,4 GHz.
- as usual, leave aside the Mac Pro Octo 3 GHz of the first generation. we now prefer to him the 2,8 Ghz with its easy overclocking.
@Le Refurb Store