News for Thursday, 11 February 2010

Apple offers finally an update correcting the problems about which we spoke very recently on Mac Pro 2009. Coming in at 1,64 MB and is available via the software update, it should avoid transforming these Mac Pro into radiators whenever one plays a little song.

France currently has only two Apple Stores, that at the Louvre and the other at Montpellier. One waits for spring the opening of the shop at the Opéra, but it will be far from being the only one. Mac4Ever tells us that Apple has started recruitment for a shop located at Nice, or rather on its outskirts, in the shopping mall Cap 3000 located at Saint Laurent in Var. A few days ago,  Macgénération told us that Apple had an eye on Lyon which will have 2 of them of which one will be in the district of La Part-Dieu.
To our knowledge, Apple always aimed to open 20 of these Apple shops in short-term in France (less than 2 years).

If you are hooked on Facebook, you will be happy to know that henceforth you will be able to converse with your contacts directly from iChat.

In effect, Facebook now supports the Jabber protocol which is also implemented in the software of Apple.
More:
http://www.facebook.com/sitetour/chat.php

After the first generation Aluminum bluetooth keyboards, it is now the turn of those released in 2009 to get their update. The fix to avoid seeing the battery lifetime melting away when they are not the only Bluetooth peripheral connected to the Mac.

Apple offers via the update system of the Apple TV the 3.0.2 version. however as they do not say what the changes are, it will be necessary to play the game of the 7 errors.

Google was already an internet provider for some airports and locations with free Wi-Fi hotspots, but so far this activity was more for its image than for a real business. Things might change following today's announcement. Google will offer internet access bi optical fiber to a limit set of US customers (from 50,000 to 500,000): 1 Gbits/s at a very competitive price.
This announcement demonstrates that Google does not plan to remain in a 100% virtual business model, and plans to bring some "solid" products, the Nexus or Android are 2 examples. Google will use its huge financial resources to support its future development. The offer should be available mid-2010 and might seriously compete with current US ISPs known for their often outdated infrastructure and networks.

The closer we get to the release date of the Intel Nehalem Hexa Core Xeon, the more we get information and details. This is really new series of Xeon CPU and is not intended to replace the current Quad Core Xeon. It should rather be considered as the "Extreme" or "Premium" model. Intel does not plan to drop the Quad Core Xeon CPUs and will offer both Quad and HExa Core Xeon units on its catalog, similarly to the Dual and Quad Core units in 2007-2008. 
Those new Hexa Core Xeon will only be available in limited amount. As we reported it earlier, the Core i7-980X will be the first model available in March. Clocked at 3.33 GHz, with 12 MB of cache and a TurboBoost mode to 3.6 GHz, it will support 12 threads. Its price: 999 USD.
For Q3 2010, its small brother the Core i7-970 will arrive, clocked at 3.2 GHz with a lower price tag. One will then have to wait for early 2011 for seeing the third models of this series of CPU to be unveiled. It should replace the i7-980X, with the same clock-speed but a lower price tag, potentially associated with a new higher-end model.
In such conditions, Apple will have to accommodate with Quad and Hexa Core Nehalem Xeon CPU models in order to offer clear and equilibrated Mac Pro models. If the new high-end Mac Pro model should be powered by two Hexa Core Xeon without changing much the current price. Other models should see their price modified and reduced, but it remains inclear how far Apple would cut price...

At the latest count, the DVD is very far from being supplanted by Blu-ray, since the Blu-ray progresses only very slowly.
There is however a field where Blu-ray has passed in front. This is that of the business generated by the decoding chips integrated into the readers. This, according to the manufacturers of these chips, exceeded half of their business in 2009. It should be said that this was easy. The chips of decoding DVD (MPEG 2), are today reduced to a very simple form and do not cost much. In the case of Blu-ray, these chips are very complex and need to be very powerful to decode the HD in H.264, MPEG 2 and VC1 and this makes them 8 times more expensive.
According to the estimates given, the growth of the sales of Blu-ray equipment should make that their chips account for the 3/4 of the business of these chipmakers. They will however continue to manufacture DVD chips for still a long time. Their volume of production should drop by 40% by 2013. During this time, the Blu-ray chips should see their cost dropping by 70%, however it will be necessary to wait much longer before one finds Blu-ray readers for a few tens of euros such as DVD readers today.

Yesterday, the first Macworld Expo opened in San Francisco without Apple. The absence of Apple is already largely felt, at least at the media level. Up to now, Macworld was an major event, it was entitled to practically any cover, except that of indifference.
In itself, the absence of Apple is already an enormous punishment for its organizer, IDG. It was more than difficult for them to convince exhibitors to come, and similarly convincing people to attend the conferences, especially since the entry ticket was nearly $1000.
The departure of Apple has not happened without argument between the two historical partners, and according to rumours Apple still has enormously resentment towards IDG. Certain people think that they have shifted deliberately the release of the new portables to one week later just so that this release does not serve as a boost for Macworld. Even though they are only rumours, another fact also points in this direction, the closing of the Apple Store yesterday.
As you probably noted, the closing of the online Apple store was exceptionally long yesterday. It closed at the usual hour shortly after 12:00 (Paris time), and it reopened much later, around 16:00 and all that just for an update of Aperture. We expected a mountain, instead we received a molehill.
There is really the impression that Apple delayed to the maximum the reopening of its store just to disturb the beginning of Macworld, the first sessions having begun a little time afterwards.
One could of course say that this was just due to chance, but our experience of Apple tells us that chance has no role in their decisions and releases are always more than prepared.
To go back to the Macworld Expo, we will know rather quickly if it is nevertheless a success and if there will be a 2011 edition of it. If it stops, it will be probably the end of Mac Community events, Apple focusing on the press at the time of Special Events, and the WWDC being orientated more and more towards the iPhone and soon, the iPad.

You can now follow the news from HardMac from your iPhone, without being necessarily constantly connected to data  network as the news cache can be set in the preferences of the app. You can easily switch from one news to the next one by sliding your finger on the news. You can also perform search with keywords on our archive. Thanks to the push notification you will be alerted when a news is published:

The "Live" menu button offers you the opportunity to follow Special Event or Keynote from your iPhone!

As several readers asked us how they could support us or contribute or if you like the MacBidouille/HardMac iPhone app, you can donate. It will be splitted between Apple, MacBidouille/HardMac and developers of the app (a nice way to motivate them for bringing new features and functions in future versions).

The goal was NOT to duplicate the website, so we decided to develop this application when we were sure we could include functions being complementary to the web site, bringing different functions (such as off-line news). We wanted to have a clear and simple application, easy to use, not difficult to setup. In the future we will continue to bring functions complementary to the website, we are already working on a new innovating feature, however, Apple did not give us the authorization to deploy it with the first version of the application, but we will continue to negotiate with Apple to find a way to bring it to you. 

Last but not least, we would like to thank the team from Intellicore for developing this application (Christian, Romain 1, Romain 2, Josef, Matthieu, Nicolas, Sébastien), and finally one of our server master Arthur for developing the back-end and necessary system on our servers.

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