News for Tuesday, 7 October 2008

Following our previous news, we have received several reports originating from different places all over the world from Mac Pro owners having contacted Apple Care as they wanted to get additional information about the weird smelling produced by their computer. According to those reports and our sources, it seems that Apple has internally communicated about this issue, clearly stating that it does NOT involve benzene. Hereafter is an example of such report, originating from Bill, a hardmac reader:

I own a 2007 Mac Pro .../... I just called AppleCare about it, to see what they had to say, and what could be done. I was put straight through to a manager rather than the regular support staff. Despite the fact that my AppleCare expired six months ago, they set me up a free cooling system replacement without question. Free repairs outside of warranty? Not the regular Apple approach, I assume. Or maybe I'm just being paranoid.
When I asked about the benzene issue, the manager said that the advice coming down from Apple's engineers was to tell customers that it's 'definitely not benzene', and not to worry about it. I asked the rep to email this info to me, but understandably (I guess) he wasn't prepared to do so - in fact, he joked that he'd probably already said too much. I asked him when Apple were likely to go public with such a statement, and he didn't know but assumed that they would soon.

If Apple did not indicate what was the reason of those chemical compounds released in the air when a Mac Pro was running, the spare part to be changed indicate that indeed the thermal paste might be the faulty component. Indeed, all reports indicate that owners of a affected Mac Pro will have the cooling system changed, independently of the warranty period. So if you purchased your computer on March or June 2007, no worries, Apple will take care of it.
So, if you have a stinky Mac Pro, you know what to do, and should be prepared to get your computer sent back for having its heatsink changed. This story proves that when forced to quickly investigate and react, Apple can indeed be responsive and take great care of its Mac users community. Let’s hope we can say that this story is now part of history.

Aurore got an iBook G4 12" for her son, however the notebook had a problem with the LCD display. She could not find spare parts, so she decided to turn the iBook into a Mac mini-lie:





The entire hardware of the iBook has been installed in a 5.25" enclosure initially designed to host a DVD burner. Everything is kept, including the SuperDrive. For those willing to improve further this mod, by up scaling the cooling system, one could overclock the CPU and the GPU.

According to Appleinsider the iPhone firmware 2.2 should feature several changes and bug fixes, and bring new options. Among them, one should mention the option to turn off the iPhone's text auto-correction will finally be integrated. Apple should maybe try to look to T9 to further improve text entering via the iPhone.
Among new features, the iPhone firmware 2.2 should bring Google Street View in the iPhone's Maps application, providing 360 degree panoramic views of major cities and their suburbs, as well as Japanese clip art Emoji icon support.

It has been a long time that Majors did not launch a new project or attack aiming to target iTunes Store leadership for online music store. Universal announced that it will offer its DRM-free catalog on the website Dada.net. Tracks will be available as pool of 15 songs for 10 USD, so 0.66 USD per track, 30% cheaper than on the iTunes Store! Yes, but... you will need to pay 10 USD per month as a monthly fee to be able to get the 15 songs from the catalog, so, if you do not purchase more than 15 songs, the price per track will be 1.33 USD, so 40% more expensive than on the iTunes Store!! Doing the math correctly and you will notice than you will need to purchase at least 3 pools of 15 songs each to get a price slightly cheaper than on the iTunes Store... In addition, if you do not purchase 1 pool during one month, you can not transfer the monthly fee of 15 USD... IS this new system a perfect tool invented to foul customers??
Universal and Sony catalogs are available on Dada.net as the website is a joint venture of both Majors.

Nick de Plume, the historical ThinkSecret Editor, noticed that over the past weeks and months, Apple seems to have changed its policies regarding rumors and the websites publishing them. If one remembers that Nick de Plume was sued by Apple for having revealed details about the forthcoming Mac mini, one will understand that he has background to provide such statement. During the summer, the Apple let Engadget to publish accurate Mac-related rumors and details, while Digg founder Kevin Rose posted "spy photo" of the forthcoming iPod nano on his blog...
For having dealt with Apple Legal in the past at several occasions, we can confirm it was "dangerous" to publish photos or details of forthcoming products. So why such changes? If Nick and other think that Apple finally understood it was counter-productive for the company, we think there is a simpler explanation too. For the iPods an iPhones, Apple is not producing those products for a niche market, but for the mass market, so it becomes very important to let information leaked out from Cupertino HQ, and if you can organize them in a way to give the taste and let the buzz being generated without paying 1 cents, it is perfect. In addition, mass market products involve a lot more of third-parties, and a lot more of person to know about forthcoming products, so it becomes more difficult to keep everything secret.
However, when Apple wants to maintain everything secret, it can also make it happen ,as demonstrated by the iPhone introduction. For computer and notebook models, the market share of Mac hardware increasing every months, it becomes quite obvious that we should get details of forthcoming products weeks before their introduction. However, organizing the release of information, does not mean that you will unveil everything, and if we know since weeks that on October 14th, new MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air will be released, we do not know so much more details.