News for Thursday, 24 July 2008

For now, the only devices which include a multitouch trackpad are the MacBook Air and the last MacBook Pro. For example, this allows them to zoom on pictures. Stef from Montpellier has decided to put one on his MacBook.




In order to do so, he brought the electronic parts (specifically the trackpad) of a MacBook Pro to his MacBook. He send us a video proving that the system works like a charm.
Unfortunately, that kind of electronic component can't be bought alone easily. Thus, one of the options to get the component --- buying a whole MacBook Pro top case at an approved Apple Mac Repair Centre. The approximate cost - $240.
Well done for that true "bidouille" just the way we like them!

It is a question that is often posed to us: at what moment will Apple renew its product line; is it better to buy now or to wait? It should be said that all has been calm for a long time since the topic of interest in the Apple world has been the 3G iPhone and MobileMe.
However, it is now relatively straight forward to know that the machines will soon be renewed. It is enough to go to see what is in the Intel catalogue. Here thus a small summary by range:
- Mac Pro : Nothing envisaged from the manufacturer before the end the last quarter 2008. It will be certainly updated beginning 2009 and will integrate the Nehalem processors.
- MacBook Pro and iMac Although very different in their form, they are close with identical architectures. Intel has Centrino 2 for them. They can thus be updated at any moment. These changes will not be massive, at least with the frequency of processor, with a possible gain of 200 MHz. Note that they will inaugurate GDR 3.
- MacBook: Intel has delayed the chipsets centrino 2 equipped with integrated video. Thus there is nothing but to wait on this side; hopefully by the 'back-to-school' period but perhaps even into the month of October.
- Mini Mac: The thing is more delicate, it is the decision of Apple not to make them evolve at the rate of innovations of Intel; this being only political and not technique. Thus it is difficult to say when they will be entitled to an update
- MacBook Air It would not be surprising if Apple updates it soon, at least to propose it with SSD of larger capacity and also move towards the SATA interface. It could then gain a little in CPU frequency by adopting engraving in 45nm, which could also bring a gain in battery life.
Of course, we can make forecasts only on the internal structures of the machines. It is obvious that Apple soon will re-examine the design of these products, but nothing says that it will be the case as of this update. The beginning 2009 and the arrival of Nehalem can be a favourable moment for their introduction.
In the meantime, those which cannot wait any more can pass by the Refurb Store, these are always excellent and whose price their will make it possible to resell their machine with a smaller loss if they decide they want to upgrade quickly some time later.

Last week, we told you about an error message that we very often had on the new iPhone when it lost the 3G network and returned to the Edge network.
As if by magic, we have not seen these errors for a few days. The magic, in fact, seems that Orange is working on its networks to improve compatibility with the 3G iPhones, at least this is the opinion of certain members of the forum of the site iphonefr.com
These updates, about which we do not know the contents, should finish in a week. While waiting, Orange advises with all those having problems with the 3G, to force the telephone to run in 2,5G. The most pressing problems are the too frequent unhooking of the network and sometimes a total cut of the data channel or even of all the functions with the indication " Network unavailable".
SFR, last year, has also made updates on its equipment to make them compatible with the iPhone V1. They think that it is not necessary to do anything for the version 3G.

There is no need to go to the Mac sites to see that Windows Vista is not winning the plebiscite with votes from the public, and this in spite of the fantastic sales figures that Microsoft has announced.
The system has had bad press from the beginning, and in spite of the improvements that Microsoft has since brought about, the reputation of a disappointing system sticks to his skin.
The company has decided to put up 300 million dollars to change the image of its OS.
The campaign has started and proposes a list of 100 good reasons to install to Vista.
Microsoft will have to make miracles with this campaign, a study has recently shown that 60% of the computer managers in technology business do not have any project to migrate their computers to Vista, in spite of the improvements made by the SP1. Worse, 42% of these managers instead think of migrating to another system, Linux and especially to Mac OS X.

Last March Apple attracted the wrath of the PC world when they proposed to download Windows Safari during the update of iTunes. The outcry had been such that Apple had then separated the two in its software updates.
Alas, they have just reignited this issue in a way that is even more insidious.
The first time it was possible to remove installation of Safari, now Apple has gone even further and starts to installs with the update 7.7 of iTunes offered through a control panel of MobileMe.
There is certainly nothing serious bad with this, but nobody likes to see his hand being forced. If another company had acted in the same way, we would not have hesitated to denounce it.

Far from being extinguished, the polemics concerning the health of Steve Jobs continued to swell lately. The issue at stake is his life expectancy, but also his right to refuse to comment about this information.
All in all, one is now as certain as possible(as we told you) that he was indeed ill a few days before the WWDC and that things since are in order These leaks about his health, coming from close relatives, were obviously orchestrated to be erudite, which does not remove anything from their veracity.
The New York Times has learned that this year he had a new surgical intervention; a "confort" operation aiming at improving his capacity to digest food. Without digging too deep into the details, it is necessary to know that an operation aiming at eliminating cancer from the Pancreas deprives the patient of part of his digestive system, which makes a weight loss inevitable.
These macabre rumours will certainly end calming this frenzy, but it is somewhat astonishing that they resurface at the time when Apple announced exceptional results.

In order to promote XPress 8, Quark and the large developer of Xtensions modules propose that those buying version 7 of Xpress or Xtensions will then obtain version 8 free.
The acknowledged goal is to facilitate the transition for the customers without slowing down their production. More at the link below:
http://www.quarkalliance.com/buy_7_get_8.html