Apple upgrades MacBook and MacBook Pros

As anticipated (and remember, it's "new release day" Tuesday in the US), Apple this morning revved its range of MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks.
All Apple laptops except the MacBook Air now ship standard with the latest Intel Penryn CPUs (offering lower power consumption), bigger hard drives, more memory and better built-to-order options. The new MacBook

Pro features a multi-touch

trackpad.

They also feature a full range of ports, unlike the Air, including 802.11n, Bluetooth, 2x USB and 1 x Firewire 400, while the Pro has 1 x Firewire 800 and ExpressCard 34 and full-size DVI as well. Disappointingly Apple still hasn't seen fit to add ExpressCard to the basic MacBook, which means MacBook owners' only option for mobile broadband is the annoying USB soap-on-a-rope modems, or a Bluetooth connection to their mobile phone (which is a distinctly third-grade option.)

As anticipated (and remember, it's "new release day" Tuesday in the US), Apple this morning revved its range of MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks.
All Apple laptops except the MacBook Air now ship standard with the latest Intel Penryn CPUs (offering lower power consumption), bigger hard drives, more memory and better built-to-order options.
They also feature a full range of ports, unlike the Air, including 802.11n, Bluetooth, 2x USB and 1 x Firewire 400, while the Pro has 1 x Firewire 800 and ExpressCard 34 and full-size DVI as well. Disappointingly Apple still hasn't seen fit to add ExpressCard to the basic MacBook, which means MacBook owners' only option for mobile broadband is the annoying USB soap-on-a-rope modems, or a Bluetooth connection to their mobile phone (which is a distinctly third-grade option.)

Five unexpected effects of a Blu-ray victory

Toshiba has officially thrown in the towel and HD DVD is, for all practical purposes, no more. For consumers, it looks great that the war is over, but here's five consequences of a Blu-ray victory that you might not have considered.

1. Region coding is still alive

While HD DVD had no regional restrictions, Blu-ray maintained the studio-friendly approach of coding titles so that they would only play in particular regions (albeit with a three-region approach rather than DVD's four, placing Australia alongside Europe rather than South America).
In practice, the vast majority of titles were released in region-free versions that would play anywhere, but that might very well change if HD DVD finally gets the flick. Region coding is a nuisance for buyers, and neither format could risk putting people off during a battle for market share. But if there's only one option -- and hence no chance of defecting to a rival -- what's the bet that it starts appearing more frequently?

2. Java gets embedded in yet another platform

One of the original points of contention between Blu-ray and HD DVD was the way in which interactive components would be coded. Blu-ray used a Java derivative called BD-J, while HD DVD favoured HDi, essentially a combination of ECMAScript and XML developed by the HD DVD consortium. Amongst developer types, there was consensus that Sun's approach was potentially more useful, working as it did with a relatively open standard supported by a wide range of tools.
For consumers, the picture is murkier, as there have been reports that not all BD-J features work on all players. The use of Java does mean that the specification can theoretically be upgraded if the hardware supports it, which offers an advantage to PlayStation3 users if nothing else.

3. Porn producers will have to work harder

It's widely assumed (though without much in the way of, ahem, hard evidence) that one of the reasons VHS beat Betamax was the widespread (ahem) availability of porn on the former format. In the HD format wars, the picture was (ahem) murkier. Online media fell over themselves last year to report that Sony had banned Blu-ray from being used for porn, but the truth was a little more prosaic.
While individual manufacturers are free to reproduce whatever titles they like, their contracts with specific movie studios might prohibit any X-rated material being reproduced on the premises. The main enforcer of such provisions is Disney, which is still haunted by the memory of a VHS version of The Rescuers which features a few frames of a topless woman inserted by a bored editor. Given the choice between replicating a few million copies of Toy Story or a much smaller run of Young Ripe Melons 13, most duplicators are going to opt for the former.

4. You still probably can't play CDs

One problem with both HD formats is that the rush to produce hi-def pictures wasn't always matched with attention to detail when it came to other formats. Thus, despite the fact that both rivals had discs the same size as audio CDs (and hence, in turn, DVDs), a surprising number of players couldn't actually play music from a CD.
Given that a $50 DVD from the dodgy store round the corner can manage that feat, it's a surprising omission. This is by no means something that affects all players, but it's definitely worth checking.

5. Sony has won a format war for once

A constant point of reference during the Blu-ray/HD DVD battle has been the similarities with the VHS/Betamax battles for home video cassette supremacy in the early 1980s. Sony lost that particular fight, and that helped create a perception that Sony-backed formats rarely succeed in the market. Various other media formats such as Memory Stick, MiniDisc, DAT and UMD rather reinforced that impression, although in truth none of those ever looked like serious contenders.
Unfortunately, Sony can't afford to gloat despite HD DVD's disappearance. While high-capacity Blu-ray discs might well be a useful storage medium, flash technologies are evolving so rapidly that it would be unwise to bet against them catching up in the near future. And as for movies themselves? Downloading still looks like a good option (if you don't have an Australian broadband cap).
Perhaps the salient lesson from the original video war is that no format lasts forever. In the 20-odd years since VHS vanquished Betamax, video tapes themselves have become largely archaic. The odds of Blu-ray even surviving 20 years seem just as slight.

GAME OVER:FORMAT WAR ENDS AS TOSHIBA DROPS HD DVD

At a board meeting today in Tokyo, Toshiba decided it would abandon the HD DVD format. A rival blue-laser optical disc technology to Blu-ray Disc, HD DVD was locked in a struggle with Blu-ray to become the next-generation heir to the booming $24 million DVD business (see our timeline of the format war). The format war stretched back to the year 2002, when backers of both formats unveiled their plans for blue-laser-based optical discs.
Toshiba's chief executive Atsutoshi Nishida, addressed assembled media in Tokyo after the board meeting during which the company pulled the plug on its HD DVD support. At the press conference, Nishida noted that the decision to pull out of the HD DVD market was a difficult one, "but when we thought about the trouble we would cause to consumers and our partners, we decided it was not right for us to keep going with such a small presence."
Existing HD DVD players will continue to have support, says Toshiba, although for how long was unclear. (Even more unclear: How long Universal Studios might keep up its support of those nifty interactive features) introduced last year.
Toshiba did not announce any plans to produce its own Blu-ray drives, although it's impossible to imagine that the consumer electronics company will completely abandon the market for movie disc players.
Some historical trivia: HD DVD was initially introduced in 2002 as the Advanced Optical Disc (AOD) format. Toshiba and NEC together proposed this technology to succeed DVD by way of the DVD Forum, an industry forum for governing the standards of the current red-laser DVD technology. For years, that the DVD Forum approved the technology was presented as a strength of the HD DVD format over Blu-ray. (And, in the end, as I expected, it was Toshiba's withdrawal from the market--and not any announcement from the DVD Forum or the HD DVd Promotion Group--that marked the end of the HD DVD format itself. That underscores just how Toshiba was single-handedly propping up the the HD DVD format; without Toshiba's support, the format cannot, and has no reason to, exist.)
By contrast, the companies behind Blu-ray opted from the get-go to bypass the DVD Forum. Instead, Blu-ray's backers formed their own governing body to oversee the developmenet and implementation of the standard--much like the DVD+RW Alliance had done with its non-DVD-Forum backed DVD+R/RW format before it. Blu-ray was initially developed by Sony and Pioneer, but the technology has been championed from the outset by large consortium of consumer electronics companies.
The thing about Blu-ray has been its clear support within the industry from the start. At the International Consumer Electronics Show in 2006, Blu-ray Disc Association head Andy Parsons noted, "The legions of engineers who have been working on this is just astounding. I’ve never seen anything like it. Companies that usually duke it out--competitors--are working together."
Parsons, himself based at Pioneer, went on to say, "It’s been fun to watch it all come together." At the time of these comments, Blu-ray's technical spec had just been finalized.
Now, with Toshiba's announcement, Blu-ray's path is complete. And I can add that this has been one wild ride to observe.

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is RTM

Almost exactly one year since the first release of Windows Vista to the market in 2007, Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) was released to manufacturing (RTM) today and will start being available to customers in March, starting with Microsoft Volume Licensing customers. The first available languages for download are English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese, and more will shortly follow

A Must for Mastering Windows Vista - Watch These Videos

I just finished watching the Windows Vista Training videos by Train Signal and I highly recommend this course, as you will learn much more than you will from books (which never seem to have enough detail!). Their learn by doing approach is excellent because it shows you the "ins and outs" of Vista instead of reading pages and pages of theory.

Daniel Petri, Petri IT Knowledge Base

Service Pack 1 is an important milestone for Microsoft because it aims to address many of the key issues that their customers have identified with Windows Vista over the last year. Although Microsoft claim that more than 100 million copies of Vista have been licensed so far, it has been clear that adaptation ratio of Windows Vista for corporate users has not been as high as Microsoft has initially expected, and by offering SP1 Microsoft hopes that many customers, waiting for the OS's first SP, will finally yield and begin to migrate their corporate workstations to Vista.
Microsoft claims that major issues with Vista, such as driver and compatibility and reliability problems have been addressed in Service Pack 1, allowing the Vista computers to perform better and more reliably. SP1 also includes changes focused on improving the performance of Windows Vista in areas that impact the customer experience the most. For instance, with SP1, copying or moving files around your PC, your home network or your corporate network should now be much faster - up to 50% faster in some scenarios. In addition, on many kinds of hardware, resuming a Windows Vista-based PC from sleep is faster on Service Pack 1.
Here's the timing for SP1 availability for current Windows Vista users:

• 
  In mid-March, Microsoft will release Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Update (in English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese) and to the download center on microsoft.com. Customers who visit Windows Update can choose to install Service Pack 1. If Windows Update determines that the system has one of the drivers that has been identified to be problematic, then Windows Update will not offer SP1. Since Microsoft assumes that some customers may want to update to SP1 anyhow, the download center will allow anyone who wants to install SP1 to do so.


• 
  In mid-April, Microsoft will begin delivering Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Vista customers who have chosen to have updates downloaded automatically. That said, any system that Windows Update determines has a driver known to not update successfully will not get SP1 automatically. As updates for these drivers become available, they will be installed automatically by Windows Update, which will unblock these systems from getting Service Pack 1. The result is that more and more systems will automatically get SP1, but only when we are confident they will have a good experience.


• 
  The remaining languages will RTM in April.

As always, feel free to explore my Windows Vista tips and tricks section, which grows weekly with new and exciting articles. I will report more about SP1 as I dive deeper into the changes and features it brings to Windows Vista.

Links:
Windows Vista Team Blog : Announcing the RTM of Windows Vista SP1/

Microsoft.com PressPass: Windows Server 2008 RTMs, Customers and Partners Adopting with Help of New Tools, Training

BREAKING: New iPhones can now be unlocked with software

Ever since Apple changed the Bootloader with the release of the iPhone with firmware version 1.1.2 (Just in case you don't know, the Bootloader is the code that runs before the operating system runs) want-to-be iPhone owners have had to shell out extra money for hardware unlock solutions like TurboSIM and StealthSIM. This morning however, a full unlock solution for brand new out of the box iPhones hit the web - and, as is normally the case, within a few hours another popped up too.
For those of you who don't speak 'Geek' that means you can now buy (or get a friend who is in the US to buy you) a brand new iPhone from Apple and use software to unlock the phone to a point where you can use any SIM card to make and receive calls. Before this breakthrough you needed to spend extra buying a third-party SIM card that 'tricked' the iPhone into thinking you actually were using an AT&T Sim card to make calls. With this release, owning a brand new iPhone just got a $100 cheaper.
So how do you do it? Well, thanks to the web there are many resources that will help you unlock your new iPhone, but the best and most complete site to refer to is here. iClarified will show you everything from unlocking a brand new iPhone, to upgrading your existing firmware to the latest version 1.1.3. Most solutions oniClarified are so advanced that you don't even need to use a computer to achieve the unlock - you simply the Installer application on the iPhone itself to run the unlock

For those of you who want a more complicated way of unlocking a new iPhone see here for a more manual unlock solution. This solution requires that you download a script that you run via a terminal command - a more complicated and potentially perilous route to take.
Now that our dollar is strong, and the iPhone can be easily hacked, there really isn't a better value phone on the market than the iPhone. And with the imminent release of the SDK (rumors place an event before the end of February) the value proposition that the iPhone offers is stronger than ever.

Dell to Stop Selling AMD Machines on Website

Computer maker Dell Inc. has stopped selling many computers with processors from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. on its Web site, although it will continue selling some through retailers. This decision is a setback for AMD, which managed to break Dell's exclusive supplier relationship with Intel Corp. in 2006. However, the computer maker was sure to make clear that they weren't abandoning AMD: "We regularly adjust our product offerings and how customers can purchase those products," said spokesman David Frink. "The majority of our consumer AMD-based systems are available through our retail partners and telephone sales...Dell is committed to the AMD product line as a long-term partner to provide flexibility and maximum choice for our customers."Dell.com will continue to offer desktop and notebook computers and servers with AMD processors for business customers, and a single consumer-oriented desktop model with an AMD processor, while Dell machines with AMD processors can still be had at retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Best Buy Co. Roger Kay, a technology analyst with Endpoint Technologies Associates, said the harm to AMD could be minimal if Dell sticks with AMD processors for machines sold through retailers. But, he said, AMD might be pressured into cutting prices on those chips. Intel declined to comment.