AT&T sent a short SMS to its iPhone customers to announce free access to all its Wi-Fi hotspots. We do not really understand while they only did it now while they are struggling to offer decent data access over its 3G networks since weeks. Indeed, many iPhone users might get better transfer speed via Wi-Fi hotspots, decreasing the pressure on 3G networks. Let's bet than other carriers will soon follow in USA.
In a short
TechNote, Apple is providing information about multiple updates applied to MobileMe service in late-September. If it is interesting to know what has been changed and improved, it might have been better for MobileMe users to know about such updates a bit in advance to get critical information saved, or be prepared to face some problems with MobileMe service.
Nevertheless it is a right move in the right direction, and one should praise Apple for this, and Cupertino to remember that well informed customers can better accept problems than when they are left alone in the dark with a non-working service.
Summary
This article provides more detailed information about some recent improvements and the resolution of known issues that Apple delivered in the Late-September 2008 update to MobileMe services.
Apple is always working to improve MobileMe. Since MobileMe is primarily a server-side, or "cloud"-based, service, the MobileMe team can make improvements and push updates to MobileMe without any action being required of MobileMe customers. Since server-side updates are a bit more innocuous than a standard software update to Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows, it's easy not to notice that updates are occurring. Usually the only hint of these updates is that things just "work better".
To complement information we published
yesterday,
Arstechnica reviewed Photoshop CS4. While description of the interface and/or the changes when compared to CS3 might be useful for some users, other information affecting performance level might be even more critical:
- Open GL acceleration for redrawing windows is limited by both the VRAM available on the graphic card and the display resolution. Indeed, a MacBook Pro featuring a graphic card associated with 256 MB of VRAM and plugged to an external display with a resolution of 1920x1200 will only be able to get 7 windows with Open GL-based accelerated redrawing.
- Then the Mac 32-bits and PC 64-bits versions were compared. With small size file, around 50 MB, the Mac is slightly faster, however when dealing with much larger image file (here 900 MB), the PC version is 20% faster. This difference might be directly linked to the capacity of the 64-bit version to allocate more than 3 GB of RAM.
At the time of the announcements of the new iPod Nano, Apple officially offered it in two capacities, 8 and 16 GB. They ended up admitting that they had also manufactured models of 4 GB for specific markets, with a price tag a little lower.
However, they were quickly found in the Carrefour stores, and now (thank you Arnaud) also are sold in FNAC with the price of 129€.
As the difference with the model 8 GB is only 20€, it would seem that Apple has decided to mass produce them in order to propose a slightly better pricing compared to the competition.
Even though Sony seems to have problems producing large screens OLED, Samsung presented a prototype television equipped with this technology measuring a sizeable 40".
Its luminosity is 200cd/m2 with points being able to reach 600cd/m2. Its contrast is rather impressive with a ratio of 1.000.000:1. It is 8,9mm thick and of course supports full HD.
We do not know how long it will take to bring this television to the market and at what price.
On the other hand the near future should belong to the Laser television sets of which first specimens of very big size (65") are marketed around $7000; the smaller and more affordable models should follow.
