News for Monday, 26 January 2009

When the first iPod nano as released, many users were rapidly complaining about its tendency to be easily scratched, quickly turning a fashion device into a scratched piece of plastic playing music. Of course, it ended up in a class action in USA, and Apple proposed a compromise to end the legal procedure: 25 USD back to those who got a nano before the introduction of the soft slipcase, and 15 USD for all owners of the slipcased version.
If it might look impressive, one should remember that it is a negligible compared to he benefit generated by the iPod models, or to the potential financial fee if the legal action goes to its end.

As reported by Olaf, one of our readers, the number of countries with one or more carriers offering the iPhone keeps increasing. Telkomsel, the leading operator of cellular telecommunications services in Indonesia by market share seems to be preparing the launch of the iPhone and its association subscription plans to its customers. Indonesia is a rather important market, and Telkomsel owns already 46% of the market with 60.5 millions customers.
For more information, please visit: http://www.telkomsel.com/web/home

As reported by Intego in an alert, the Mac OS X Trojan originally found in iWork 09 has now been identified in an illegal copy of Photoshop CS4 circulating on the P2P networks. This is a new version of the original OSX.Trojan.iServices.A, so it has been named OSX.Trojan.iServices.B. It is found bundled with Adobe Photoshop CS4 and while the installer is clean, the Trojan horse is sitting in a crack application that serializes the application.

The Trojan, while not hiding in the installer, seems to have evolved as it will randomly changed its name after installation. The goal of the Trojan is always the same, use infected computer as basic task force to send DOS attack on defined servers. If you use software originating from reliable sources, you should not care about such problems, however, if you are testing /recovering applications (freeware, shareware or trial version) from P2P networks you might have to think twice and be aware of the potential dangers.

As you might have noticed it over the week-end, the site and the forum have been down or not easily accessible. The reason is that we are upgrading hardware and software on our servers in order to be ready to launch the new version of HardMac in couple of weeks. We apologize in advance for any problems that might arise during this procedure, and we will keep you inform about the launch of the new version of HardMac.

Hereafter is a report of Jean who successfully overclocked his MacBook with the latest NVidia system tools running on Windows.

The new NVIDIA System Tools 6.03 (previously known as ntune) allows you to overclock the now MacBook via BootCamp, and more precisely the GeForce 9400M. Without pushing the hardware too far, I reached 2.3 GHz for the CPU and 580 MHz for the GF 9400M chipset (from 470 MHz default).

With some 3D demanding games such as Simulator X or GTA IV, the computer can freeze if you overclock the GF 9400M to 580 MHz, however, bringing it down to 550 MHz fix this freezing problem. You can also leave the GF 9400M at 580 MHz, but bring the CPU down to 2.0 GHz. This freezing problem might be linked to the RAM usage/frequency/syncing.

If you want to try it yourself, you can get the NVidia tools at the following address: http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia_system_tools_6.03.html
As usual with overclocking, be careful, and do not forget that a mobile computer is usually a compromise between performances, heat release and battery lifetime. If the overclocking might be useful when you a directly connected to power, on a remote usage it will definitely affect battery lifetime, without mentioning the potential effect of components.

Thanks to Michael who sent us this screen capture indicating that his order for iLife 09 is now shipping :

For once, Apple is on time on its expected schedule. We are quite impatient to further test this new version, and evaluate how iPhoto and iMovie have been deeply revisited, as our team member moose already mentioned it at the last MWSF.

Everyone remembers the business of the back-dated stock options which shook Apple, and that cost some employees their positions and caused many worry with Steve Jobs who ended up coming out innocent of any charge.
RIM has just announced that they too have been involved in the same kind of business between 1996 and 2007. Before this came out, the employees concerned had to refund the millions of illegally acquired dollars while the company will have to pay a fine of 100 million Canadian dollars.
In exchange, the legal proceedings engaged by the Canadian stock exchange commission will be dropped.
It seems easier to come to end of these procedures in Canada than in the United States where the shareholders did everything they could to nail to the post the faulty leaders and to bring them to justice.

Seagate has put online new firmwares concerning other models of disks
- ST31500341AS
- ST31000333AS
- ST3640323AS
- ST3640623AS
- ST3320613AS
- ST3320813AS
- ST3160813AS
Attention, almost each disk has its own specific firmware while those having a firmware DC or LLC are not concerned with this update. The procedure is the same as for the other disks and can be carried out only on a PC or a Mac Intel where one can connect a disk to the internal SATA.
The update should be burned in ISO on a CD with disk utility and then one should start up on this CD by pressing the C key C and then following the written procedure. Do not worry, certain pauses of a few minutes are normal.
Do not forget to disconnect the other disks that are possibly connected to the machine.