[Pre] Palm Pre Release Date for Germany

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October 13th will be the day many people have been waiting for. The official iPhone competitor by Palm will be released in Germany. The Pre will be exclusively available from O2 Germany.

According to their latest information the Palm Pre will also be available without subscription for about 480€ (=700US$). There is currently no information about upcoming special Palm Pre O2 tariffs.

In Great Britain and Ireland the Pre will be released on october 16th.

In contrast to T-Mobile’s german iPhone tariffs, O2 Germany is gonna allow VoIP applications like Sipgate or Skype (via german Heise.de News).

[Games] A Pseudonym for Bugs = Monopoly City Streets

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Monopoly – a game that almost everybody knows – has been revived and redesigned for the virtual sphere as “Monopoly City Streets” (MCS). As many other news services have already written thousands of pages about it, we’re not gonna repeat it here. To summarize: it seems this game is fun for many millions around the globe.

Sadly although the makers have already taken actions against issues and problems by upgrading hardware and by resetting the whole game to enable everybody to start anew, there are aswell technical as social issues unsolved all over.

I for example have today bought an 8 million street and built some little houses on it. See here how you can become the leader of the game with an 8 million street. And no, I was not cheating. I enjoyed playing with real competition until this happened:

monopolycalculationbuga
monopolycalculationbugb

[Show as slideshow]

So how often does this happen? I wrote an error report, but how many other people do that? The most logical consequence would have been to sell the street immediately to get the cash transferred for real…

[Muzaq] In Memoriam Stephen Biko

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32 years ago. On September 12th, 1977 Steve Biko was tortured to death in a Police Office. Steve Biko was a non-violent Anti-Apartheid activist. On his 1980 album “Melt”,  English musician Peter Gabriel dedicated this song to Biko:

[MacOS] Comprehensive Gigabyte Hardware Specification List

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With the advent of Snow Leopard many users have issues installing it onto PC based hardware. Well this is not very curious, since a PC is no Mac. Anyway as Gigabyte motherboards proved to be very close to the original Apple Intel specifications many people decided to buy those boards.

With the release of Snow Leopard DSDT patching seems to have become a must. Installation attempts will most likely fail without it. The intention of this list is to provide comprehensive information on the most used Gigabyte motherboards.

The original idea for this list was by a guy called ximekon (find original list here on InsanelyMac forums).

Model North- bridge South- bridge LAN Fire- Wire Audio BIOS Link Last Check
P35
P35-DS3L P35 ICH9 Gigabit -,- ALC888 F9 08/29/2009
P35-DS3 P35 ICH9 Gigabit -,- ALC889a F14 08/28/2009
P35-DS3R P35 ICH9 Gigabit -,- ALC889a F13 08/28/2009
EP35
EP35-DS3 P35 ICH9 RTL8111B -,- ALC889a F4 08/28/2009
EP35-DS3R P35 ICH9R RTL8111B -,- ALC889a F4 08/28/2009
EP35-DS3P P35 ICH9R Gigabit Yes ALC889a F6 08/28/2009
EP35-DS3L P35 ICH9 Gigabit -,- ALC888 F6 08/28/2009
EP35-DS4 P35 ICH9R RTL8111B -,- ALC889a F6 08/28/2009
EP45
EP45-DS3 P45 ICH10 2 x RTL8111C -,- ALC889a F9 08/28/2009
EP45-DS3R P45 ICH10R 2 x RTL8111C yes ALC889a F11c 08/28/2009
EP45-DS3P P45 ICH10R 2 x RTL8111C yes ALC889a F8 08/28/2009
EP45-DS3L P45 ICH10 RTL8111C -,- ALC888 F10 08/28/2009
EP45-DS3LR P45 ICH10R RTL8111C -,- ALC888 F2 08/28/2009
EP45-UD3 P45 ICH10 RTL8111C yes ALC889a F8 08/28/2009
EP45-UD3P P45 ICH10R RTL8111C yes ALC889a F9 08/28/2009
EP45-UD3L P45 ICH10 RTL8111C -,- ALC888 F5c 08/28/2009
EP45-UD3LR P45 ICH10R RTL8111C -,- ALC888 F5 08/28/2009
EP45-UD3R P45 ICH10R RTL8111C yes ALC889a F9 08/28/2009

you cant see this line, do you?

The Golden Gigabyte Model Rules

  • if last character of the model name is a “number” or a “P” (i.e. EP35-DS3 or EP45-DS3P etc.) it means ALC889a audio chipset
  • if last or penultimate character of the model name is an “L” (i.e. EP35-DS3L or EP45-DS3LR) it means ALC888 audio chipset
  • if last character of the model name is an “R” (i.e. P35-DS3R or EP45-UD3LR) it means SATA Raid controllers
  • The P35 or P45 strings in the beginning are fairly self explaining I suppose (P35 always with ICH9 and P45 always with ICH10)

Your Help is Wanted

Weather these rules nor the list above might be 100% accurate. It is only what I found on the net and summarized from the list above.

  • If you derived a DSDT.aml clean from a BIOS (like using Koalala’s DSDT patcher) and you fixed it for OSX86, you may post it in the comment’s section – don’t forget to tell how much RAM you had while compiling the DSDT.aml (Don’t add individual graphic or wi-fi strings. Just add onboard-devices like onboard-audio and onboard-ethernet.)
  • If your board is not on the list check Gigabyte’s pages and post the specifications in the comments section below.
  • If your board is listed but details above are wrong: please post it in the comments section below.
  • If you know the LAN chipset of the board and it is not listed precisely above (saying Gigabit) please post it in the comments section.

Please always crosscheck with the official Gigabyte specification page for your model (links to your model are included in the BIOS column) before adding a dsdt.aml or anything that could burn your BIOS.

[MacOS] Is EFI-X illegally using 3rd Party Program Code?

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About a year ago a company called ASEM released a device called EFI-X. This device has been claimed to be capable of booting several Microsoft Windows versions and Mac OS X Leopard.

Legal concerns

From the beginning there were question regarding the legal status of the device. But ASEM claimed the device is legal, although it circumvents Apple’s binary protection using Apple’s copyrighted secret operating system keys (OSK1 and OSK2).

Technical issues

Anyway EFI-X devices had some issues. Many forums reported about problems with Bonjour and sharing in general. In the meantime articles from the official EFI-X support forums have been suddenly disappeared. Customers reporting issues or solutions and workaround to severe bugs have been banned from EFI-X support forums – our own help article to recover almost lost data was removed aswell and one of our members has been officially banned from their forums (the reason was this article in october 2008).

Examining EFI-X in deep

Now some frustrated customers who are on the other hand technologically very familiar have examined the EFI-X device in deep. One of the main points AsereBln found: in contrast to what EFI-X is stating: “Our approach is entirely different, (..) all our code and development is our own only” – they seem to be using program code that has been developed by the OSX86 community though. They seem to be using “Disabler.kext“. Moreover another user (RezRov) found out the EFI-X Windows update software seems to be violating the LGPL as it incorporates a modified USB device library (libusb-win32).

Use of possibly unlicensed 3rd party program code, possibly illegal use of Apple security keys, and customer support below grade for a 170€ (250US$) commercial product that seems to be the summary about a year after product launch.

Lessons learnt

We suppose end users should be aware of this possible hassle. Only an original Apple Mac is really hassle free and 100% compatible to a Mac. But if you are technologically interested and have the time and motivation search the OSX86 communities for setups. The OSX86 forums are full of knowledge and willing to help. But remember a PC won’t ever be 100% compatible to a real Mac.

[MacOS] Snow Leopard 10A432 Seeded to Devs / Release in August?

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According to Mac4Ever (french) the Snow Leopard 10A432 version seems to be the Gold Master (GM) release, meaning this is the final release-to-manufactoring (RTM) version. Although latest rumors (german Golem.de) say Snow Leo might be released in late August, newest information tell release is in September.

[Pre] Merry Me again: Update Reunites Palm Pre with iTunes

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The “little Palm Apple battle” goes into its next round. A week ago Apple released iTunes 8.2.1. This update blocked Palm Pre users from synchronizing music and movies with iTunes. We reported about this update and the technical implications of the sync feature here.

Palm has now released a firmware update (webOS 1.1.0) for the Palm Pre. According to Palm’s blog entry this update contains the following features:

  • Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) (including remote wipe, PIN/password requirements, inactivity timeout, improved certificate handling and more)
  • support for emoticons in the messaging app
  • person reminders (“Next time you get a message or phone call from that person, a message pops up showing you a reminder to ask them about their vacation in Maui” ct. Palmblog)
  • and Palm webOS 1.1 re-enables Palm media sync with music, photos and videos with the current version of iTunes (8.2.1).

Got issues with the Update?

Our fellow Heise.de News (german only) recommend not to update your Palm Pre while it is connected to iTunes. In case you did that and your Palm Pre does not interact on USB anymore, do a hard reset with unplugging the battery.

[News] Apple Bar Palm Pre from Syncing with iTunes

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With the latest update of iTunes 8.2.1 Apple eventually blocks Palm Pre users from syncing with iTunes. It seems Palm knew very carefully how to emulate the iPod verification protocol of iTunes. How comes?

Some major Palm Guys are former major Apple Guys

One could ask Palm’s CEO Jon Rubinstein, or Palm’s SVP of Product Development Mike Bell, or Palm’s spokeswoman Lynn Fox. As all of these three guys are former Apple guys. Rubinstein was Apple’s architect of the iTunes-iPod concept, Mike Bell was the Vice President of the Mac Hardware Division, and Lynn Fox was Head of PR at Apple.

Anyway Apple now decided to fix this issue and bar Palm Pre users from using iTunes for syncing. But what looks like a simple update in the first place may be viewed as a strategic answer to Palm’s boldness to make the Pre pretend being an iPod for iTunes.

Some Technical Aspects

According to DVD Jon the iPod emulation was not too complicated. Palm needed to emulate

  • the USB interface so that it responds with Apple’s Vendor ID and an iPod Product ID
  • the structure of an iPod filesystem
  • some XML info about the iPod device using a custom Apple USB command

But the the root USB node (IOUSBDevice) still identified the emulated iPod as a Palm Pre (find more details here).

David vs. Goliath

Does Apple fear Palm here? It seems like Palm is putting Apple under some pressure here. The Palm Pre is widely considered as the only real iPhone competitor and allowing it to sync with iTunes would make it more favourable for users who don’t like the proprietory iPhone concept. On the other hand Apple’s step to block it from iTunes again makes the iPhone and iPods the only choice for iTunes users. Anyway it shows obviously that a little fight is going on between Apple and Palm. This topic is under hot discussion on the PreCentral site.

Palm’s spokeswoman Lynn Fox just responded to Apple’s step “Palm’s media sync works with iTunes 8.2. If Apple chooses to disable media sync in iTunes, it will be a direct blow to their users who will be deprived of a seamless synchronization experience. However, people will have options. They can stay with the iTunes version that works to sync their music on their Pre, they can transfer the music via USB, and there are other third-party applications we can consider.”

[News] Fravia is Dead

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This might not be the news for many of you. Some will already know, others will most likely not even know who Fravia was. Anyway, this news is sad. Fravia has been one of the most outstanding intellectual reverse engineering gurus since the middle of the 1990’s. He seems to be the only one who ever managed to get into direct contact to the mysterious +ORC (Old Red Cracker), who edited the main reverse engineering tutorials during that time.

Fravia anyhow passed away in May, after a long fight against cancer. He has become 56 years only. Our hearts will be with you. Rest in Peace, bro’. You won’t be forgotten.

fraviadead.png

[MacOS] Recommended Apps: MacTubes

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Abstract

Do you ever wanted to download some of the YouTube videos, simply to have them available when being on the road? Or say: you wanna archive them, because as we’ve seen in the past with several major media services: there will be a time when they don’t exist anymore.

But YouTube does not support downloading their videos anymore.

MacTubes’ Features

This is where MacTubes by mametunes comes into place. MacTubes is an open source project that is freely downloadable. Besides downloading MacTubes also supports just playing YouTube videos. You also can make custom playlists without having a YouTube account.

Tips and Tricks

MacTubes is straightforward, as most of those nice freeware Mac applications are.

The only hint we can give: don’t wonder if errors occur when trying to download HD videos. This is normal. Although YouTube may show that you are playing the video in HD quality, this is not true in all cases. You can see this quite obviously when comparing the video resolutions between the normal video and the HD video just with your eyes.

Links

» MacTubes Download…

Screenshot

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