News for Wednesday, 19 November 2008

The judgement has been given regarding the complaint by Psystar that accused Apple of violating the anti-monopoly laws by refusing to allow its operating system to be used except on its own machines.
In substance, the judge considered that Apple has not violated this law for several reasons:
- Apple is not alone on the market of the computers and operating systems.
- Mac OS X achieves tasks similar to other operating systems. Since Apple engaged in a strong advertising campaign, this can be regarded as proof that Apple does have competition, otherwise such campaigns whould be just a waste of money.
Psystar has now until December 8 to appeal, or to accept this verdict which they used as defence against the procedure set in motion by Apple for counterfeit with their clones.

Couple of days ago we were reporting about the future iMac revision and its hardware as Apple could drop the Intel mobile reference platform to use a desktop-oriented hardware. We were already mentioning the possibility of a desktop version of Core 2. Today, Digitimes brings new information to support our hypothesis by announcing that Apple, among other manufacturers, will use the new Intel desktop processor which should be unveiled in January.
It is the Core 2 Quad (4 cores) clocked at 2.33 and 2.86 GHz. Unlike previous Intel Quad Core desktop CPUs; those new models will only release 65W. So this is not so far from the 45 W released by the current high-end iMac powered by an overclocked Penryn dual core CPU. By adopting an Alu-based enclosure and improving the cooling system, Apple could easily install such desktop Quad Core CPU in the next iMac revision. In addition, RAM modules would then be standard DDR2/DDR3 DIMMs cheaper than the SO-DIMM units required by the Intel mobile architecture.
And to conclude, as by magic, this new CPU will be unveiled mid January by Intel, what a perfect timing with the Apple San Francisco MacWorld show...

New data and information related to the current legal actions launched in USA against Microsoft have been released. Current actions are targeting the broad usage of "Vista Capable" logo on hardware which were not able or powerful enough to run windows Aero rendering.
New data indicate that Microsoft might have agreed under pressures from Intel, OEM and PC manufacturers to decrease the minimal specifications required for Vista Aero in order to allow entry-level hardware to be certified "Vista Capable" whereas they would not let users run all features of vista. Among that information are email exchanges describing precisely those points as well as involving directly Steve Ballmer. Despite his original claims that he was not aware of this Vista over-certification of hardware models, it seems that Steve Ballmer knew about it and even asked some Microsoft employees and executives who were worried about such practices to calm down and keep it under cover.
Such data will most likely strongly affect Microsoft's Lawyers strategy and push them to offer financial compensation while having to pay a huge fee. At the end, Vista might well be the most expensive windows version ever developer and sold by Microsoft, if one considers its extremely short lifetime as Windows 7 is already predicted for mid 2009…

An online user at Arstechnica has just opened a new polemic related to the new Apple portables. The Mac user wanted to view a film bought from iTunes Store on his video projector connected on new MacBook via mini Displayport adapter to VGA. He had a bad surprise with error message below.

iTunes refused to launch the film, since the projector did not support the HDCP standard. By extrapolation, this implies that it will not be possible to use an external Apple monitor (except certainly the 24" LED) and all VGA peripherals to see, at least some, films distributed by iTunes.
But these things need to clarified. We believe that it is essential that Apple adopts this standard. One day it will be needed to support the Blu-ray reader. However in this case, in our opinion, the problem is elsewhere, in fact on iTunes.
Apple has not informed anybody of this constraint on some of its videos or maybe made it in such a discrete manner that nobody realised it. We consider that the choice to set up a protection HDCP on films intended to be seen on Mac (contrary to the Apple TV) is to a certain extent dishonest. One cannot force the adoption of this protection and at the same time continue to sell incompatible equipment. Rather oddly, it seems that these videos are prohibited to be read on MacBook Alu, but remain compatible with other machines completely deprived of HDCP such as the Mac Pro.
One can possibly accept this policy change, doubtless dictated by the major distributors, but Apple must imperatively inform its customers clearly of the new rules and to indicate which hardware can be used to view the videos in future and especially to withdraw from sale or to modify all incompatible products.
Definitely, Apple lately is putting its fans through severe tests…
PS: There exists a solution to circumvent this problem. Attention, we are not certain if it is legal given that it circumvents the technical measures of the protection (but here the goal is to ensure a broader compatibility where there is any doubt). It is via the use of HD Fury (no link, use Google). This is an adapter which contains on one side a connector supporting the HDCP, and on the other a VGA or composite outlet. Attention, since the input is HDMI, it will not support the 30" monitors. Moreover it is pricey, nearly $250 (and with a VGA outlet) and is intended to retrofit very expensive projectors.

Peter Smith, NBC Universal CEO, announced that the company will launch in a near future localized versions of Hulu in UK, Germany, France and Japan, four countries where the market for VOD is growing. The service is quite popular in US as it allows users to watch shows and series for free at the cost of multiple ads insertions into the program.
We will be curious to see what will be the success of such strategy in the specified European countries. Europeans usually do not like so much to have multiple ads inserted in the middle of a show, rather at the beginning and at the end, with maybe one ads in the middle. In addition, NBC might have to fight with local TV networks which are normally offering such US series locally months after they have been released in US. A good point for NBC, Hulu is Mac compatible.

During the recent Large Installation System Administration Conference (LISA '08), Jordan Hubbard, Apple's Director of Engineering of Unix Technologies, spoke about the evolution of Mac OS X from large servers to embedded platforms. But the most surprising information was the announcement of a more specific target date for the release of Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 (aka Snow Leopard): Q1 2009.
We are convinced that this information is true, and in addition it would allow apple to release its new OS month ahead of Microsoft Windows 7 expected to arrive mid 2009. With the improvement of multi-core management as well as the support for GPGPU, Snow Leopard should bring a real boost for the recently released multi-core-based Macs. AS Mac and PC are now based on a very similar hardware, users and customers will finally be able to evaluate the true power of Mac OS X and applications developed for it when comparing to the hardware resource draining Vista, or even the forth coming windows 7.

Spansion, the world's leading pure-play provider of slash memory solutions, announced to have filed two separate patent infringement complaints against Samsung with the International Trade Commission and in the U.S. District Court in Delaware.
Claims are quite extreme, as Spansion is seeking the exclusion from the U.S. market of over one hundred million mp3 players, cell phones, digital cameras and other consumer electronic devices branded or not by Samsung and containing Samsung's flash memory. In other words, it would affect all iPod and iPhone models, as well as all MacBook models using a SSD.
Apple will probably follow this story, and even push Samsung to find a financial agreement with Spansion to stop both legal actions. While christmas time is approaching it would be a disaster for Apple if one could not sell any iPod in USA...

According to Electronlibre.info, Orange would like to propose to iPhones owners access to their televisual services and bouquets, a good way to offer a service with strong added value.
But all not so simple, the right owners require Orange to protect their files with DRM, but Apple supports only their own.
So one needs to wait, Apple itself does not seem inclined to open to Orange its DRM FairPlay, they have always refused this to others. One also knows (and let's underline this point) that Apple really does not like the idea of unrolling the red carpet for its competitors, and in this case Orange is competing with the iTunes Store.