News for Monday, 15 September 2008

Since its victory over the HD-DVD, Blu-ray has tried to make a road, or at least cut a path, to the pockets of the consumers. But there are still some difficulties, the price of the readers is still very high, as well as the price of films being much higher than that of the DVD.
Sony has decided to play with the first factor and should soon lower the price of its Blu-ray reader, BDP-S350, by $100 to $299. This reduction is aimed at launching the market and could be effective as of the end of September. Difficult to say whether during this economic crisis period this initiative will be sufficient to kick-start this market, especially with films sold at close to 40€!

The return to university is a particularly important moment for computer makers, the students buying laptops en masse. This is the reason that the manufacturers of PCs announce, one after the other, their new range during August, as soon as the Centrino 2 was announced by Intel. There was no question for them of missing out on this period.
Apple is probably the only one to have missed making a mark, giving the impression that it is not interested in this market even though in the past it was always a strong contender.
There is now really the impression that the management of their strong growth is slipping over time. One can to support this theory by pointing out that they launched new iPod during the 'back-to-school' period whereas the summer is the best period for this type of purchase.
However not everything is black; Apple ceased making advertisements for products which will not be available one month later. When they announce a new product, it is already ready to leave the factories in sufficient quantity (except for the iPhone 3G) to satisfy the needs.
But the problem remains for the students who need to buy Mac for their return to university. They have the choice between paying for a machine which will quickly be outdated by a new better product, to go to the Refurb store which has less and less low priced portables, to buy a EEEPC or even sometimes to build Hackintosh based on a very cheap portable PC.
The least impatient will await, if they can, to October 14, which seems to be the deadline for the renewal of the portables. We have heard that it will be worth the wait, the new products having very many advantages compared to those currently proposed.

Apple is offering Mac OS X 10.5.5 via software update.

The 10.5.5 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac. .
For more details about the update : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2405?viewlocale=en_US .
For more details about the security update: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222?viewlocale=en_US .

The devteam iPhone just released the two new PwnageTool and QuickPwn tools compatible with the latest iPhone firmware 2.1. With those tools, one can jailbreak all iPhone, while PwnageTool can even SIM unlock all iPhone 1G.

Hereafter is the list of live demonstration to be carried out on our booth at the Apple Expo later this week. While the list might be changed, we should provide at least the following technical tricks and upgrades to our visitors and readers, as the video will be also available from our websites:

Thursday: world exclusive operation, switching the 120 GB HD from a new iPod Classic with the one from a MacBook Air.
Friday: Upgrade the HD of an Apple TV.
Saturday: We will try to fix an iBook having problem with its DC board.
All demonstration will be performed around 16h00 CET.

After two years with no real evolutions, the VideoLAN team just released a major updates for the popular video player VLC, now available in version 0.92.
The list of new features is available on their Wiki
However, users should know that this new version requires Mac OS X 10.4, and during the installation process it deletes the previous installed versions.
More information available from http://www.videolan.org/

Saturday, we spoke about an ultra-compact adapter intended for the iPod and iPhones. It is marketed in the United States since the release of the 3G iPhone.



To achieve this very compact volume, Apple dropped the system that allowed one to change the plug in order to make it compatible in any country. Instead the American format is welded to the casing.
For these reasons, it is probable that Apple will not issue it in versions adapted to other countries since each model would require a specific mould and a substantial production run for each specific country.