News for Thursday, 30 October 2008

According to Engadget, the first MacBook Air of the new generation are in the course of delivery.
As with the rest of the portable range, these machines will integrate the NVidia Geforce 9400M chip and will thus ensure a 3D performance level that will completely surpass the old range.
On the other hand, we have fears abot the battery life of these machines. We found it already rather weak, and burdened with the impossibility of changing the battery. The new generation should have an even shorter battery life.

Microsoft offers an update for the Mac Office 2008 suite. Entitled update 12.1.4 it fixes a problem with Entourage:

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.4 Update
This update fixes a calendar issue in versions of Microsoft Entourage that were updated with the Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.3 Update. The issue prevents Exchange accounts in Entourage from sending meeting invitations and responses. This issue can occur when an Entourage identity is configured with more than one mail account. We strongly recommend that all Entourage users who installed Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.3 Update install this update.

For additional information and/or for downloading this update: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.mspx

In a press release dedicated to its financial results over the last quarter, Orange pointed the growth in 2008 of the data service-enable mobile phones, and especially the iPhone 3G. Over the last quarter, Orange shipped 216,000 iPhone 3G; in other words, around 18,000 units per week since its availability in France.
Those figures are much more impressive than those recorded by Orange with the first version of the iPhone.

Lloyd, well-known computer expert and photographer, made interesting (not to say disappointing) findings about Photoshop CS4. While the future is to benefit from the raw power computing standing unused in GPU, Lloyd discovered that when enabling Open GL drawing in CS4, supposed to speed rendering, it was actually slowing it down! So despite Adobe claiming that Open GL is faster and that users would benefit from it, Lloyd had to disable Open GL rendering option to get redraw performance level in his workflow at a similar level to the one experienced with the CS3.
But that’s not all, Lloyd noticed that despite all claims from Adobe arguing of CS4 ready to benefit from latest hardware multicore and programming technologies, opening and saving a file with Photoshop CS4 remain a single-threaded task. Of course, some users might not need to handle photo files around 1 GB as Lloyd did it, but Adobe should not forget that CS4 is primarily targeting Pro users, having Pro needs and Pro hardware.

The compression and other stuff (whatever it is) in PSD or TIF format is a killer: it takes 7-8 times longer to save a file than without compression. If your work is being held up by this factor, save as uncompressed TIF, and onto a striped RAID. The latter provides a speedup of 13 times!

Sometimes a table tells it all:

Last but not least, we have also noted that once launched for the first time CS4 will be loading/checking all your fonts, so the first launch might be a bit long to be completed.

Apple released a TechNote providing tips and tricks for easily migrating data from an older computer to the new MacBook or MacBook Pro. Apple might have forgotten that the new MacBook do NOT have Firewire, however Apple clearly indicate that the Firewire is the best solution for such migration:

Summary
FireWire connections are still the fastest way to migrate applications and data from an older computer to your new computer, however, these new models now offer the ability to perform a system migration over network connections. This gives you more choices and flexibility in migrating your applications and data.

So for new MacBook owners, the solution is to use the other procedures detailed in this TechNote: Network migration, Wireless migration or Starting your migration.

In order to compete with Asus and other Pc manufacturers releasing their entry-level mini-PC models, HP unveiled its mini 1000:

this series will be available in 2 different display size (10.2" and 8.9") both featuring he same pixel resolution of 1024x600, and a LED-based backlighting. Its hardware specification will not be its main marketing factor, but rather its aggressive price: 399.99 USD.
According to Steve's comments during the Q&A session following the last MacBook keynote, Apple is studying this mini notebook market attentively, but does not plan to offer any models yet, as current price are not compatible with the vision of Apple regarding specification, abilities and features of a potential MacBook mini.
One will have to wait for couple of months to conclude if Apple made the right decision in not entering the mini PC market.

Last September 20, Apple launched a vast recall of chargers for the iPhone (not distributed in France). Rather than to return it, Macmerc dissected it, and found the following.

The connectors are supposed solid in order to resist multiple insertions and deinsertions; however the pins are only held in by tiny pins which are kept in place with a spot of glue.
One now understands the urgency of this recall, even if Apple tried to minimize it by announcing that only a small number of adapters had suffered from its pins becoming detached. Very soon all would have had this problem, with a big risk of electrocution if the users had then tried to pull them out of the socket.
Never should such products have passed the quality controls and have been found on the market in boxes marked with an apple.