The new Apple is no more a computer company, a new direction was taken by Steve Jobs when he renamed Apple Computer to Apple. It was not to mean that Apple will sell computers, smartphones, music players, tablets or whatever, the real meaning was Apple switched it’s focus from it hardware+software stack to the content itself.

Mac might be used to access Content, display them, play them, create them, wether it’s iOS Apps, Mac Apps, music, video or even books. iOS devices are meant to access Content, through this new giant distributor, Apple and it’s online store. PC could be used to access content too, with iTunes for PC.

We all see the emerging business-model where iOS devices are more and more present, the iPad being the brightest success of the industry, on a market that nobody seemed to understand until Apple unveiled it! But this market is not about selling tablet only, but an eco-system.

With the huge success of iTunes Store being the first music distributor, making money as no other dreamed of, beginning with the majors and then offering contracts to bands too, Apple was tempted to apply this business-model to the software world (for Mac and iOS devices), and was rewarded with a huge base of great software, a revolution in the software world as it was for the music.

Now, Apple turns it’s tentacular capacities to the books: the january 19 announcement of iBook and it’s tools is not targeted at education. you would be misleading to think about it as an education move. It’s clearly iTunes going to sell books, to sell books that everyone will be able to create on Mac and read on iOS devices or Mac, anywhere, to be sold by Apple online stores. Amazon killer?

Amazon signed some great authors last year, to by-pass the publishing industry, with great results. They have tablet readers, they sold online, but Amazon is not as ubiquious as Apple, lacking computer-based eco-system to create content, and willing to stay mainstream .

Apple wants YOU to write a book, publish it on iTunes Store by your own means, without a publisher, without any investment, they also want the biggest author to turn back their publishers and go independent, with 70% of each books in their pockets! If it’s not a big deal what could be?

Apple is investing in TV world massively, rumors says they are going to buy soccer rights, to be able to stream them on iOS devices and Mac (or PC), it’s still rumors, but after Music, Applications, Movies, Books, the next fronteer is the TV with live events, shows, sports, etc.

And definitively, Apple is going to be an incredible big media distributor, not a computer or smart device maker!

Being a copyrighted content producer why fight SOPA and PIPA?
There’s too many reasons to explain them all here, I suggest you follow the link ( http://americancensorship.org/ ).

One reason is that any form of censorship is bad, that censorship in hands of private corporate hands is worse, and censorship in hands of abusers is the worst things of all. And they have already have done that, abuse censorship systems that some web site offers to majors. They abused the system, and they will have huge power to shutdown any site for any reason, without having to justify themselves!

Another reason is that these law will offer the ability for any tradmarked brand or copyrighted content to shutdown any website, or even websites that links to these websites, at any time.

The direct impact of these laws
So if a commenter add a link to copyrighted content, your web site could be banned definitively.
If you have a link to regular content on another web site and for *ANY* reason the other web site present copyrighted content, changing it’s page, your own web site could be banned definitively.
Did we have to monitor link on each commenter? I think we should discard links, probably.
Did we have to monitor any page that we link to, just in case there’s copyrighted content on it? Or there may be changed to host copyrighted content? Impossible!

Many of the web sites we use each and everyday to dig information, and were we put links, such as the incredible Wikipedia ( http://wikipedia.org ) might be impacted by these laws, and I feel it’s dangerous for Free Speech, as well for Internet Business of any kind.

So, join the strike against SOPA and PIPA !

Ivy Bridge
A new generation of Mac will come with Ivy Bridge, that will mainly improve over Sandy Bridge, except for one point: HD4000 GPU!
The Ivy Bridge is the last evolution from the core micro architecture that appeared on the Core™2 CPU in 2006 (yes 5 years!), and in mono-threaded application, there are few progress, the most obvious is the Turbo-boost that speed-up the core up to 4Ghz depending on the CPU.

Sandy Bridge came with HD3000 & HD2000 GPU integrated to the CPU, that offered a performance-level similar to nVidia 320M with 2-monitor support. Ivy Bridge’s HD4000 will support easily 3 monitors with 4096×4096 resolution, and 2X performance increase: discrete GPU are less and less necessary!

Thunderbolt on PC
Thunderbolt on Mac as been a failure this year with only 2 peripherals available, 10 months after the launch!
Intel will launch at least 1 high-end motherboard for PC computers in 2012, but except if an OEM or big player (Dell or HP) have a full range of PC with Thunderbolt, it’s unlikely that this technology will emerge.
If it don’t get traction, peripherals will be sparse and too expensive, and if Thunderbolt succeed on PC, we may see many Thunderbolt peripherals without Mac OS X driver or support (exactly as ExpressCard or PCI-Express card for the same exact reasons!).

MacBook Pro & MacBook Air
Now that the MacBook Pro is as closed as possible, making hard to replace hard-drive or memory, having many incompatibilities with actual SATA 6Gbps SSD (cable is the culprit!), no more ExpressCard/34 port, you have to expand it using Thunderbolt peripherals if they finally go to market and if you can afford to pay 2X to 3X the price of USB3 peripherals!

Apple will probably discontinue MacBook Pro 13″, useless at this time with a 13″ MacBook Air that is lightweight, nearly as performing, less expensive and have a better screen! ouch!

MacBook Pro 17″ will probably loose it’s ExpressCard/34 port, that enable full use of USB3 or eSATA, 3 years after the MacBook Pro 15″

MacBook Air, lightweight powerful computer without discrete GPU will be the flagship of Apple, with a 15″ MacBook Air using Ivy Bridge and HD4000, that will perform as well as the Radeon 6490M of the last year MacBook Pro 15″, offering 1680×1050 resolution and GPU OpenCL support. Probably the most attractive MacBook Air for “Pros”

Mac Pro : sic transit gloria multi
Intel is not producing chipset with Thunderbolt, and don’t plan to. They don’t offer Thunderbolt PCI-Express expansion card, and announced they never will as Thunderbolt presentation. They don’t build motherboards with Thunderbolt, but plan to offer one motherboard on Q3’12 or Q4’12 with Thunderbolt.

Mac Pro have not been refreshed since 2 years, even 21.5″ iMac may be faster for some general tasks, and Apple is changing it’s “Pro” line of software to pro-sumer line (Final Cut Pro to Final Cut Pro X is the best example), also disregarding IT professional while discontinuing XServe line, replaced by Mac Mini Server or Mac Pro Server (lol).

It’s clear that the Mac Pro as we know it will disappear from the Mac line in 2012 or 2013 at best!

USB 3
Intel will natively support at least 4 USB3 port at full speed on it’s Ivy Bridge chipsets, and it’s pretty sure Apple will implement USB3 on 2012 Mac computers.

But as USB 2 implementation was often flawed, using USB 2 HUB inside our Mac even when the Intel chipset natively offered enough port to have them independent, USB 3 support will be very limited, and I expect to have only 1 USB 3 port on our 2012 Mac, probably using a PCI-Express 2.0 1x USB3 chip to cap the bandwidth at half the USB 3 speed! You bet?

Closing platform
From the Mac App Store rules, the USB 2 shared port, Thunderbolt-only policy of expansion, discontinuation of Pro lines, Lion over-simplification of the interface, Apple is trying to make their computer more mass-consumer friendly while abandoning the Pro from their root: a kind of “iPad-ification” of the  computer line…

We hope there will be many hackers and incredible developers that will continue to offer us the best for our Mac, even if we have to install them the old-way (no Mac App Store for them!), or even at some point jailbreak our Mac to expand it!

Happy new year 2012 to all!

Anobit deposed 95 patents, of which 21 where granted, on flash technologies, that are strategic for mobile devices, SSD-based computers, and SSD-based data center or servers. Anobit products are already present into Apple mobile line, including iPhone and iPad.

Apple bought Anobit this week for $500 million, probably planning to use their technologies into new mobile devices as well as Mac computers as a side-effect, but the main interest is into the patent wallet portfolio of the company and the ability to create a strong R&D center in Israel.

Apple didn’t reverse dividend since 1995, but Tim Cook is not Steve Jobs and may decide to give shareholder a strong signal. Apple has more than 86 billion dollars in cash, that is the stock-market value of Dell and HP together!

DxO Labs announced it’s new version of DxO Optics Pro for Mac, with improved performance and support of 5000 body-lens combinations. You could download a 30-day Free Trial, and there’s currently a discount price through December 24, 2011: DxO Standard Edition $99 (from $169) and DxO Elite Edition $199 (from $269).

If you are a photographer pro or amateur, at least give it a try, you might be surprised by the results!

Today Sonnet presented the Sonnet Echo, a Thunderbolt ExpressCard/34 adapter, enabling any owner of 13″ and 15″ MacBook Pro or MacBook Air to use ExpressCard/34 cards on their computers (also compatible with iMac & Mac Mini). This open to ability to have eSATA and USB 3.0 ports on our Mac, with up to 5GB/s bandwidth (more than 600MB/s) enough to connect USB 3 SSD or eSATA fast RAID Storage!

All that have a price, that is $235 without taxes, shipping and the mandatory USB 3 or eSATA ExpressCard/34. And as you see on the picture, it’s not the cute little adapter on the top (announced), but the big adapter on the bottom (delivered), mainly due to Intel Thunderbolt chips that dissipate too much heat and need a big aluminum box or a fan to stay cool (as in the Little Big Disk!). This is at least 3X the volume of the initial announcement mock-up!

With a tag price of 350$ (including taxes and shipment and USB3 or eSATA adapter) it’s a no-go for most of us, and it’s big size won’t be pratical to carry around in a bag pocket!

UPDATE: The Thunderbolt port output up to 10W to the peripheral but the Thunderbolt cable and the peripheral Intel Thunderbolt chip vast a majority of this power and thus with an USB 3 ExpressCard/34 you may not be able to drive auto-alimented 2.5″ SSD or hard-drive, and will need anoter cable to power them from an USB 2.0 port of your computer or a dedicated power source! sad!

Starting December 31, it will take effect on every new bare hard-drive bought from this date. So if you need a bare hard-drive, please consider buying it before December 31! Happy new year!!!

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