News for Thursday, 29 January 2009

If it is not our goal to criticize grammar and spelling, as we know that we are not perfect for those topics, one could expect much more from corporates and worldwide company as the cost of high quality translation and localization is negligible regarding the cost or R&D and marketing.
As reported by some members of our french forum, the new small manuel booklet coming with iLife 09 is simply loaded with typo and grammar mistakes, without mentioning that some sentences are king of ... non-sense.
If Apple needs some good english to french translators they should contact us, among our team, some members worked on localizing Apple TechNotes in the past... Come one Apple, this type of saving makes the entire product looks incomplete, or unbalanced...
We noticed it for French, but we would be happy to hear about similar poor localization works for other languages.

When looking at the new iPhone firmware 2.2.1, Macrumors spotted reference to a non-existing model (yet):

The model is entitled iPhone 2,1, which should imply rather important changes as the transition from the iPhone 1G to 3G was only translated at the model referencing from iPhone 1,1 to iPhone 1,2.
However, the firmware might be fully identical to all models, only the hardware might be improved... you can start speculating in our forum :)

The software Hardware monitor, certainly the monitoring tool par excellence for the Mac has just passed to version 4.6.
In addition to the support of the latest Apple portables and the correction of bugs, this software is increasingly more verbose with information.

As you can note on the screen capture, nothing is missed, not even the SMART status of the recent batteries which are equipped with this function and also their temperature.
It is also able to recover information on the connected peripherals, like the screens.
It is sold at a price of 8,33€ including all taxes in comparison to a version much less complete that is available free.

After modifying the contract and the name of the official Apple resellers from Apple Centers to Apple Premium Resellers, the distribution networks is literally exploding in many EU countries. In France, there is at least one APR opening every week. In most cases, this is a historical Apple Center, reorganizing its structure and opening several shops in the same city or region. This is linked to the new contract which give them additional margins proportionally to the number of physical selling points, which now have to be organized according to defined regulations and guidelines designed by Apple.
We have read the new contract, and there are many incentive policies defined by Apple to make APR thinking that they are now a special APR or a VIP APR. IT remains to be demonstrated on the long-term that such shops and larger APR networks are viable, even though the exposure of Apple products is growing and bundled with a positive image thanks to the Apple Store online and other large distributors having contracts with Apple, not all APR will survive.
In a near future, Apple will open several physical Apple Store in France (at least 2 in Paris in the coming months) as well as in other EU countries, and it has been shown in the past that APR being located close to an Apple Store are usually closing their doors rapidly due to an unbalanced competition. Following the development of US Apple Store, it is clear that APR might have a short half-life if Apple decides to open one of its physical stores in the same area. The area/radius/market covered by a single Apple Store is much larger than for an APR similarly located, without mentioning that often Apple attracts employees and skilled technicians from local APRs where the company plans to install a store… The relationship between Apple and APR will remain as usual as mixed love/hate story, I love you …NOT

One of the decision linked to AMD's reorganization is the creation of "The Foundry Company" including all CPU manufacturing activities. So, the new company will obtain all know-how, experience and patents from the previous AMD organization, including licenses from Intel obtained by AMD under the cover of anti-trust laws. And this is apparently a problem for Intel.
AMD considers that Intel is acting to block the creation of "The Foundry Company" by contesting the right for the new company to make use of those patents.
This is a quite complicated context, as AMD and The Foundry Company is the last step before Intel's monopoly for CPU manufacturing, but this is completely different regarding offers for engraving process. Indeed, with Intel and AMD, many other manufacturers in the world are able to offer engraving on-demand, such as TSMC, UMC or STMicroelectronics.
So, currently it seems that Intel would like to ensure that The Foundry Company will ONLY manufacture AMD CPU and will not diversify too much its activities for engraving on-demand, and potentially end-up producing components that could compete directly with other products from Intel (such as third-party chipset, etc.)

Once more Apple plays it a bit strange. The update " Nvidia Graphics Update 2009" has been withdrawn without a word of explanation a little more than 24 hours of being on line. They have also withdraw all documentation that referred to it, just as if it had never existed.
Let us wish that it be only because it had failed to regulate the problem encountered by many people with the DVI adapter dual link and not something more tedious.

After the announcement by Western Digital that presented its disk of 2 TB, it is now the turn of Samsung to market a disk of large capacity qeven though a little late.


Just as Western Digital, this disk uses platters of 500 GB (in this case 3), has 32 MB of cache, spins at 5400 rpm, consumes little power and has a data flows slightly higher than 100 MB/s.
We do not know when these disks will be marketed in France or EU, but their arrival should cause the price of these high capacity disks to tumble down.

According to Fudzilla Intel will launch its Xeon Nehalem at the end of March.
To recall, we eagerly awaits these new processors since they should bring a whiplash to the performances of these machines thanks to the return of Hyperthreading and also especially due to the new QPI bus with its management of 3 memory cards in parallel.
Apple should benefit from these new processors to update its Mac Pro that according to our information should have a significantly modified design. This is not a moment too soon since the design goes back to first Powermac G5. It would not be surprising if Apple also adds a graphic card to these machines that uses a mini connector displayport and also completes renewing its range of monitors.