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A US Federal court ruled a decision that could define the status of online purchased music, and it could well create a problem for online music stores, while potentially push back some customers on the P2P network and revive illegal downloading.
The courts announced that buying music online would only grant the customer a license to use the music (tracks or album), but the customer will not own it. If this is a major difference for most customers, it is also a huge change for artists; as such sales are not covered by usual contracts dealing with CD/DVD or even online stores. Thanks to this decision Eminem successfully obtained 50% of revenues generated from such online sales, a real earthquake for Majors, maybe even stronger than the illegal P2P downloading they have been battling against for years... When it comes to give away a larger piece of their juicy cake, it is always more difficult to take a decision.

As with most new products, iFixit decided to disassemble the new iPod Shuffle.

Do not try to repeat this operation, they had to break the enclosure down to get access to components located inside, everything is small, fully integrated and glued together. Not sure if it will be easy to recycle as the battery it self is directly soldered to the PCB.

The world belongs to those who get up early, and Apple play with it. During the night in Europe, the Refurb Store has been updated, and one can still find some Mac mini 2010.

This model is now 120 Euro cheaper than the standard price. High-end Mac mini 2010 units are (were?) also available. We could also spot some 2 TB Time Capsule models.

Toshiba has revealed that they regard their SD SDHC cards as the fastest in the world. The SDHC UHS-I use top-of-the-range NAND memory and will be able to read the data at 95 MB/s and to write at 80 MB/s. to support these values, Toshiba did not hesitate to compare this range to entry line SSD. The mass production of these cards that will be available into 8 and 16 GB will start in November. Attention however, to run at these data flows, it will be necessary to have a card reader compatible with the standard SD 3.0 and of course it should be connected with something other than a USB plug.

So some thought that Apple has fought savagely against the jailbreak of iOS, however they are mistaken. Sony has just proved by issuing a minor corrective measure intended for its PS3, of which the only goal is to fill the fault which was exploited to free their console. Since they quickly will block connections to their servers to people who have not updated their console, this fault seems to have lived.
It will be interesting to see whether the hackers will find any others; it has taken years for this first.

Apple have released several software updates on both iOS and Mac OS X:

• MobileMe iDisk app version 1.2.1 for iOS
• Find My iPhone app version 1.0.1 for iOS
• Safari 5.0.2 (for Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6) and Safari 4.1.2 (for Mac OS X 10.4)
• iWeb 3.0.2 for Mac OS X

The Safari updates both fix a set of security issues.

GSMA the organiser of the Mobile World Congress, the biggest mobile phone trade show, and IDG the organiser of Macworld Expos announced that the first Macworld Mobile should be held as part of the 2011 MWC which will take place from 14 to 17 February 2011 in Barcelona.

This announcement is amusing in certain respects.  These two big organisations have each been given the cold shoulder by Apple.  The company effectively refuses to participate in MWC even though it is now a very high-profile mobile-phone maker, arguably the highest-profile maker.  As for IDG, they lost Apple's support for their very lucrative Macworld Expos which have been in decline since Apple turned their back on the shows.

In short, GSMA is going to gain a strong presence even if it is not officially connected with Apple, and IDG will have an opportunity to put on a profitable show again which won't be too difficult given the dominance of the Mobile World Congress.

Usually, memory manufacturers announce forthcoming shortages, resulting in an increase in purchases which is to their benefit.  Hence, when a manufacturer, especially a giant like Samsung, announces the opposite it gets the whole world's attention.

Samsung has announced that during the last quarter of 2010 it is in danger of having a significant over-supply of DRAM.  This is essentially linked to the unexpected slow-down in sales of desktop computers.  It's also provoked by the popularity of mobile devices, telephones and tablets which contain much less memory than a traditional computer.

In any case, if you'll be needing to fill up your computer with RAM in the near future, you should be able to find some good deals.

AMD continues to distill drop by drop information concerning the specifications of its future mobile chips " APU", containing two cores and a graphic part. They have announced the thermal dissipations of the first versions engraved in 40nm.

The Ontario model intended for Netbooks will have a TDP of 9W. More interesting given the portable range of Apple, the Zacate, intended for the compact ultra portables such as the MacBook Air will have a TDP of 18W. Even though it is of course necessary to wait to see the power of its cores, the graphic part appears more powerful than a 9400M, and if it shows that it can fight with Core 2 Duo, which would not be too surprising, then we would have a candidate of choice to give an update to this portable that Apple overlooked at the time of the last updates. A TDP of 18W, graphics chip included is perfect to stop this machine heating up and to ensure an interesting battery life.

Mac OX Hints has provided a way to fix the incompatibility between iTunes 10 and Automator.  This incompatibility is caused by the version number of the new iTunes being 10.0.  Here's a summary of how to do it:

1. Go to the folder /System/Library/Automator
2. Copy the Automator scripts pertaining to iTunes, such as "Import Audio File.action" or "Add Songs to Playlist.action", to your Desktop - don't modify the originals.
3. For each script, right click on it in the Finder and select Show Package Contents; look in the Contents folder and open the Info.plist file with a text editor.
4. Look for lines containing "4.6": delete them and the lines above which contain "Version"; save the file.
5. Launch Automator, import the scripts that you've modified and all should be fixed.

Apple will have to update Automator, which will surely happen as part of the forthcoming 10.6.5 system update, to remedy this problem in a more elegant manner.  But it's clearly a case of a forgotten bug.

Samsung has unveiled its new ARM processor, the Orion.  Here are the specifications:

• Dual-core Cortex A9 architecture (Apple's A4 is based on the single-core A8)
• 45nm low-power engraving process
• 1 GHz clock frequency
• 64 kB L1 cache + 1 MB L2 cache
• Onboard GPS functionality
• Support for 1080p video decoding
• Support for 3 displays and an HDMI interface.

Samsung are not discussing the power consumption of this processor, and it is difficult to compare it to the existing Cortex A8.  But knowing that Samsung is probably the manufacturer of Apple's A4, there's a chance that its successor (A5?) will be largely based on Orion.

At the end of last month  Tom's hardware.fr raised a hare that has since been confirmed by PCimpact. OCZ modified, without informing anyone, its Vertex 30 GB SSD, an entry line model that was to the taste of those eager to try this technology on a small budget.
They changed the type of flash memory used in this disc without modifying the reference of it, causing a very significant drop in the performance, especially in reading, passing from 135 to 75 MB/s.
The manufacturer pleads an error of timing that caused the marketing of the disc before Internet site was updated. It is difficult to believe so much they can be prompt to announce innovations not yet marketed on their site…
This business will crack their excellent reputation without any doubt, customers will henceforth question the performance of the products of this marque just when they are on the point of buying.

According to Digitimes, Intel might announced during its yearly developer forum (known as IDF) that will take place from September 13th to 15th the future support of USB 3.0 in its controllers. The first units to benefit from this new technology should be the ones to be launched with Sandy Bridge chips early 2011.
According to DigiTimes, Intel might have changed its mind on the USB 3.0, originally postponing its integration till mid or late 2011, to be catch up with AMD as the latest will soon integrate support for USB 3.0 in all its chipsets.

Thanks to Julien (of MacManiak) for having told us about this problem.

In order to ensure compatibility with iTunes and to allow music streaming in the iTunes app from a NAS server, most (if not all) of the manufacturers of these devices (Netgear, Synology, QNap, ...) use the open-source Firefly Media Server software.  In iTunes 10 playlists on the server are visible, but the actual media files are inaccessible.

Without warning anyone, Apple has broken compatibility with this open source software, depriving all owners of this type of device, and there are many, from having remote access to their centralised music store.  A thread about this topic on Apple Discussions iTunes 10 breaks Firefly Media Server / mt-daapd has been closed.  Some other discussions without real solutions are currently active on both the Netgear and Synology forums.

Currently, the only way to regain this functionality under OS X requires a reinstallation of iTunes 9 which is complicated, very complicated.

Let's hope that this is only an oversight or an unfortunate error on the part of Apple and that they will reverse their mistake.  Otherwise, it will be necessary to find another solution, FireFly being no longer under active development.

In its time, iChat brought a great innovation, allowing videoconferences among several people (up to 4). Skype just took one step further.

Their new beta is now available for Windows and allows videoconferences between up to 10 people. To be able to have that many people on a video chat, you will need quite an important bandwidth, but iChat is now far behind.

Everyday, we get more information about the new Radeon HD 6870, as their release date (normally in october) is coming. After a bench test, here is a picture.

It doesn't show much, except that the design is close to the current HD 5870. As a reminder, the stollen tests showed that the new 6870 will be about 40% faster than the 5870.

The first CPL 500 adaptors, announced earlier this year, should be available soon. As a reminder, they are little devices looking more or less like a big plug, which allow to transfer data trough electrical plug wires.
The new devices will be based on the IEEE P1901 standard with HomePlug AV2 as a commercial name. Even though that standard is still a draft, Netgear has already announced that their Powerline AV 500 series will be fully compatible with it. We are seeing exactly what happened with 802.11n devices which wee sold before the standard was officially set.
Devolo should also come out soon with CPL devices using the draft of that standard, which could reach one Gigabit/s. Of course, that speed is theoretical and impossible to reach because the device includes some correcting systems that slowdown the data transfer.

In some cases, Wi-Fi and CPL can complete each other well, for example to connect two Wi-Fi hotspots separated by a thick wall, or having high speed connection throughout an entire house. The important thing is to have one circuit connecting all the plugs.

Released couple for days ago, the new iTunes was not really celebrated by all Mac community. Several users do not really understand some choices made by Apple, both on the design and on the interface; without mentioning that iTunes 10 failed to be installed on my MacBook twice from the software update panel... I had to install it from scratch. Why the hell Apple moved the three-color button from its original horizontal position to a vertical one, turning it into a traffic light? Why did we loose all colors on icons? Is it supposed to introduce the new design of Mac OS X.7? So, we decided to collect some tricks aiming to give you back some iTunes 9 feeling in the iTunes 10:

• Do not like the vertical three-color buttons? Put them back horizontal with the following command to be entered in the Terminal: defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -1
• Damien Erambert offers a script to perform the same job if you are scarred of playing with the Terminal and command lines.
• He is also offering a package to install iTunes 9 icons back. It replaces the file iTunes.rsrc found in the folder "Resources" in the iTunes application package.
• While Steve Jobs announced that music was not on CD anymore, but on HD or SSD, which is true and I agree wit hit,  iTunes 10 gets a "ridiculous" blue disk which is not really meaning much. It could have been better to replace the disc by a stylish music note. It is up to you to change your icons, Apple even have a dedicated page explaining the procedure: Mac 101: Change your icons. We can also recommend for nice icons the following site: We Love Icons.

Most owners of iPhone 3G were disappointed when switching to iOS 4.0 as it did not bring much features while slowing down the interface and making sometimes the device unusable. Apple promised to be working on it and as illustrated by this video, the forthcoming iOS4.1 will be much faster on this model:

According to our informaiton, iOS 4.1 should be released on Wednesday. To avoid any problem we advise you to avoid rushing to Apple servers to download it as if the system gets overloaded you might end up with a locked iPhone.

After having flashed a PC Radeon HD 5870 with a hacked Mac ROM, we could not resist to try overclocking it. As there is no tool for performing a software-based overclock on Mac OS X, we had to boot on a Windows partition and use the software Radeon Bios Editor that perfectly worked with the Apple ROM EBC, making all modifications functional on Mac OS X. We decided to push the GPU from 850 MHz to 900 MHz, and the VRAM from 1,200 MHz to 1,300 MHz. Hereafter are the result before (left) and after (right) the overclock:

As you can see it, the gain is significant in high resolution, around 7.5%. If you decide to play with overclocking, pay attention to perform only slow and stepwise increase, especially with GDDR5 RAM as it contains an error-correction system that might limit overclocking effect due to the parallel increase of error to be fixed. Regarding the noise, the GeForce HD 5870 Vapor-X is silent in 2D usage, and can only be moderately noticed when using 3D applications. In summary, it is much less noisy than the Radeon HD 4870 in similar resolution settings.