News for Tuesday, 29 July 2008

Time for rumors is now over as Microsoft officially announced that the successor of Vista, aka Windows 7, is expected to ship on January 2010.
For us Mac users, by that time, we will have Snow Leopard running for about one year on our Mac, and its successor should already be announced too. Apple will most likely unveil Mac OS X 10.7 or XI to be released at a similar date than Windows 7, just to compete with Redmond’s giant, while providing its growing base of Mac users with a new update renowned and awarded OS.

Apple released an update for its photograph-dedicated application, Aperture, now available as version 2.1.1. As usual, there are no real details on the changes:

This update supports general compatibility issues, improves overall stability, and addresses a number of other minor issues.
For more information, see Late-Breaking News in the Aperture Help menu.

Dedicated Apple Support webpage: here

It is no clear that NVidia does not plan to make public the real impact of its manufacturing problem affecting GeForce 8400M- and 8600M-based GS, GT and other Quadro FX models and leading to the death of the GPU due to an inappropriate heat management (see our previous news about it). To reduce the rate of dead in notebooks, NVidia is working with manufacturers to modify the settings of the GPU cooling system to launch fan at lower temperature.
Dell is the first one to have released online new bios for its notebook while providing details on both symptoms of a dying GPU as well as the list of affected graphic chips:

The issue is a weak die/packaging material set, which may fail with GPU temperature fluctuations. If your GPU fails, you may see intermittent symptoms during early stages of failure that include:
- Multiple images
- Random characters on the screen
- Lines on the screen
- No video

According to first comments from users having installed those firmware update, the fan cycles on more frequently, questioning seriously the impact on battery life despite Dell's statement that BIOS updates will not have any noticeable effect on battery life or overall system performance.
This firmware update does not change anything regarding the manufacturing defect of those GPUs, and if one will have to analyze in the future if Dell will cover GPU death when the warranty is over... For sure in most EU countries the fact of known GPU defect, will force them to replace the affected notebook free of charge with no time limit as such event will be consider as a hidden defect.
For us Mac users, it confirms that some MBP and iMac might be affected, and one will need to know how many production lots have been using such cursed GPU. One will have to see how Apple plan to fix the problem, as turning the affected MBP into a noisy notebook will of course not be acceptable neither reducing the battery life. In addition, Apple will have to cover this defect (and ask for financial compensation from NVidia as they most likely already did it) as extend warranty/exchange program for the affected MBP and iMac, as it was the case for the iMac G5 and earlier iBooks. Customers will not have to pay for NVidia's mistake, especially when one consider that Apple will received financial compensation from the GPU manufacturer.

Hereafter is the new Tablet-PC to be released by Toshiba

This small PC notebook features a 5.6" touchscreen, a 64 GB SSD, a GPS, and is powered by an Intel ATOM CPU. There is currently no availability date known, but it should be able to compete with the popular ultra portable PC models, for a price around 500 USD.
This device shows that components for a Tablet-Mac are available, and Apple could well be releasing it in the coming weeks.

For several years now, Google is the reference as internet search engine, and its success does not seem to find an end.
However, 3 former Google employees have developed a new search engine known as http://www.cuil.com/. It already claims 121617892992 indexed pages, more than enough for most of us. This new search engine is especially different in its way to present the results of the query. If it might look different and disturbing, over time it becomes quite handy.

As reported by Electronista, Verizon acknowledges the impact of the iPhone 3G on its financial result. In its conference call devoted to its latest quarterly results, the company announced that the new Apple iPhone 3G had only a small short-term impact. However, they forgot to mention that AT&T quickly run out of stock for the iPhone 3G, and the impact might be delay till the next quarter. They also report that the iPhone 3G had a beneficial impact too on their sales: more than 30% of phones sold are now smartphones.
For sure, if the shortage of iPhone is not quickly resolved those carriers having an exclusive partnership with Apple might not fully benefit immediately from the iPhone 3G positive effect.

Apple offers for the very first time a MacBook Air at the french Refurb Store for 1399€, all taxes included. It is the base model that runs at 1,6 GHz and features an 80GB PATA hard drive.
The Aluminum iMacs are still available as well. We recently bought the cheapest 20" which was absolutely brand new. The only flaw was a bit of dust stuck behind the glass plate. It took us just seconds to remove it by taking out the glass plate using kitchen suction pads (the ones used for sink unblockings).

@Le Refurb Store