News for Thursday, 22 January 2009

A big premier, the Unibody Macbook make its appearance on Refurb!
The entry level model with 2 GHz is offered at 1029€ while the 2,4 GHz is 1299€, that is to say 170 and 200€ less than the new price, a reduction usual for machines still in the catalogue.
@ Le Refurb
Also note that the new model of the white MacBook is now on line on the Apple Store at the unchanged price of 949€. The presence of Firewire and its new mother board should ensure a good success for it.
@ Le MacBook sur l'Apple Store

Another bad news for IDG, which is currently trying to maintain/save the MWSF in 2010 even without the official support from Apple, iLounge decided to participate to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2010. The iLounge Pavilion, to be co-sponsored by Consumer Electronics Associations (CEA) and iLounge.com, will be located in the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) and will offer a special exhibition area for manufacturers and retailers of products and services related to the iPod and iPhone ecosystem. The 2010 International CES is scheduled for January 7-10, 2010, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Apple is expected to have stopped its sponsoring of the MWSF to relocate its efforts and is actively rumored to be present at the CES 2010. If you consider that both events are taking place more or less at the same time, if other major exhibitors decide to move from MWSF to CES, IDG will most likely have problems to maintain the MacWorld which will then end similarly as all the Mac-centric shows over the past years.

Apple released a new version of its security guidelines for Leopard. This document, worse 260 pages, is provided to help all Mac users to fully protect their computers. If you feel like having a look at it, you will find it at the following address: Leopard_Security_Config_2nd_Ed.pdf

According to a news posted by Bloomberg, Apple is now the subject of an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. One could have thought it is related to some illegal usage of stock options rights, but no. Regulators are trying to determine whether the company misled investors about the health of CEO Steve Jobs, due to two consecutive public announcements. The first positive one during a special event where Steve Jobs was clearly stating that rumors about his health were overestimated. The second announcement came around the MWSF when Steve Jobs wrote to Apple's employees to recently announce he would take a medical leave of absence till June.
Of course the SEC does not want details about Steve Jobs’ health, but rather evaluate if Steve made a rather positive announcement end of 2008 claiming a treatable hormonal imbalance while he already knew that it was more serious and would require him to partially suspend his activities as CEO of Apple.
It is a bit weird that rumors about his private life might have force him to react to avoid exposing it to the public place and now bring the SEC to investigate about it. One can criticize commission’s decision, and such behavior and excessive action by the SEC is seen by many analysts as a way for this authority to try to hide its recent major failure to detect Madoff's alleged fraud, even though it had received credible and specific complaints about the money manager for a least a decade...

While the world economy is facing its major crisis since 1929, Apple unveils insolent financial results for its last quarter. Apple Inc. surpassed analysts’ estimates for profit and sales, overcoming the worst U.S. holiday shopping season in at least four decades.

Apple(R) today announced financial results for its fiscal 2009 first quarter ended December 27, 2008. The Company posted record revenue of $10.17 billion and record net quarterly profit of $1.61 billion, or $1.78 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $9.6 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.58 billion, or $1.76 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 34.7 percent, equal to the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 46 percent of the quarter's revenue.....
Apple sold 2,524,000 Macintosh(R) computers during the quarter, representing nine percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold a record 22,727,000 iPods during the quarter, representing three percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone units sold were 4,363,000, representing 88 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter.
"Even in these economically challenging times, we are incredibly pleased to report our best quarterly revenue and earnings in Apple history -- surpassing $10 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time ever," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO.

If you consider that other major players on the computer market, such as Intel and Logitech, have respectively reported results 70 to 90% lower than expectation, Apple's results are simply outstanding. But beside figures, for the current quarter, Apple can not only rely on the new MBP 17" to maintain its sales and/or its growth. The company will need to release new product to maintain interest and sales based on innovative hardware. The pipeline is far from being empty as new iMac, Mac mini, Apple TV and Mac Pro are expected. I could even hypothesize that Apple postponed some product launches to better spread them over the forthcoming months to maintain a steady state of new product to be introduced.
PS: Steve was at the conference.

Seagate has updated online the new firmware updates. For the ST3500320AS, ST3500620AS, ST3500820AS, ST3750330AS, ST3750630AS, ST31000340AS, they have the firmware SD15, SD16, SD17, SD18 or SD19, it is necessary to download the following file:
http://support.seagate.com/firmware/MooseDT-SD1A-3D4D-16-32MB.ISO
Note that the first reports seem to show that all is well, and that the update is even able to recover the disks that were broken by the preceding update.
For the ST3640330AS and ST3640530AS there is no update, it is necessary to contact their customer support. Do NOT use the firmware above.
For the ST31500341AS, ST31000333AS, ST3640323AS, ST3640623AS, ST3320613AS, ST3320813AS and ST3160813AS the update is still in the course of validation.

Even if some thought the Plasma screens had died due to the superiority the LCD, the specifications of the latest screen from LG will make them change their mind.

The PQ60D has a refresh rate of 600Hz and a contrast of 1000000000:1 (a billion to one) that is quite simply incredible.
With such figures, one wonders which programs will be worthy to be watched on these screens that will come out in two sizes; 42 and 50" …
PS: Good news, it has 4 HDMI plugs to connect the multiple peripherals that use to this standard.