By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

Apple Stuff

There was an update to OS X 10.8, Mountain Lion released to developers this week and we are told by AppleInsider that it is not compatible with the MacBook Pro model released in mid-2007. I have one of those. It still works. The main MacBook Pro I use is from mid-2010.

Another rumour concerning the new MacBook Pro (whenever it comes) from MacNN who report that this could have a faster SSD option.

What would the week be if Apple wasn't sued by someone? This time, Patently Apple tells us that Cupertino is to be sued for rotating windows on iOS devices (not on the Macs of course). The company doing the suing is another from Texas (is this a new industry down there?) called Rotatable Technologies. Of course.

Things are not totally clear on the case which involves Apple, book publishers and the DoJ. While earlier it seemed as if it were a business deal behind closed doors, the revelation of an email from Steve Jobs has some people thinking otherwise.

Related to this, Jeff Gamet on the MacObserver reports that a judge has declined to dismiss a case in which Apple was being sued for the pricing structures, and this is going to trial. Read the comments with this too. Another look at this was put online by MacNN where there is some more useful information.

We mentioned the movie that was being made by Sony not so long ago with Ashton Kutcher having been seen dressed as Steve Jobs, but now there is confirmation, by Rene Ritchie (as well as many other sources) that the well-known TV writer, Aaron Sorkin, will be writing the screenplay for the movie. Many see this as a real plus.

I thought it was a joke when I saw the idea earlier in the week, but apparently, AppleInsider reports, Steve Jobs really did want to build an iCar. With the rubbish that is out there it is not really a surprise. But that would have fundamentally changed Apple and perhaps not for the good.

Half and Half

The online ordering page only has the US States, so there appears to be no delivery outside of the US. I know that Value Systems have been an agent for Logitech products in the past, but I want this now, not in 6 months when some clerk thinks that as iPad sales have gone well, there may be a market for some accessories. I decided to try the Contact method.

Logitech are large enough to think that customers need to register in order that they can be helped, which is sure to drive away 50%. I persevered to be faced with a form that required three sets of serial or part numbers, but as the device only has one, I went back to the ordering page (now showing I was ordering 2) and copied the number leaving two boxes blank. No, no. . . . Must have all the boxes filled, and the operating system. It is a cover. It does not have an operating system. I changed the button to iOS and then had a panel that was directing me to FAQs. I clicked Send.

An automated reply arrived in minutes: OK, we do have a system; then a while later an email suggesting I contact the regional distributor in India. Line drawn. I do not need it that badly, so am not going to chase round the world with emails for a simple cover. I hadn't even thought about the keyboard. Maybe I will get the Apple one after all.

We read about handset sales this week in an item on Huffington Post by Tarmo Virki who reports on the figures that Gartner has released. With Samsung now number 1, Nokia has gone down to 2 and Apple, which only sells smartphones unlike those above it, at number 3.

But Samsung was hurt badly this week after a rumour on Digitimes (see below) suggested that Apple was going to pull its orders -- significant of course -- and move to the Japanese chip maker Elpida which is in some financial trouble. Apple being some sort of white knight here: maybe a purchase is on the horizon. This decision may also be a way to reform the market and make sure no one gets a lead: that is Tim Cook thinking I bet.

When the rumour appeared, Samsung shares dropped significantly (Reuters) and $10 billion was wiped off the value of the company. So cast your minds back to the Wednesday Cassandra and the comments of John Biggs on Tech Crunch, Harry McCracken on Technologizer and Phillip Elmer DeWitt on Fortune: all critical of the way that Digitimes rumours keep appearing and are sometimes found to be wrong. There has been no confirmation (nor denial) of the change in Apple ordering as yet. What if Digitimes was wrong?

Earlier in the week we wrote despairing about Kaspersky and its ongoing attempts to scare Mac and (now) iOS users into preparing for the awful day when our systems are going to be overwhelmed with malware. Only if you jailbreak so far. And on OS X -- ten years and zero viruses. Not bad. Then I read on The Register in an item by John Leyden, that the server that is used by Avira wrongly identified certain critical files on some PCs and even though there was no malware, the PCs were dead. The cure is as bad as the disease.

Other Matters

I had an email back within a couple of hours (some people are getting better at this) and RS told me that there were no problems their end, try again. Again, no connection but it looks as if the DNS servers here may be unable to identify the URL. As we write elsewhere, others have been experiencing similar problems this week as Thailand gets to grip with the unwelcome fact that it is connected to the world. I do notice that there is a serious latency problem: hit a URL and there is no instant reaction. Like count to 5. . . . and some.

On Friday morning first thing, I tried the email and clicked the button one more time. Instant access. CAT must have thrown the right switch during the night. I placed the order and should have my Raspberry Pi despatched in about 3 weeks.

Nice touch: some thieves robbed an internet café in Colombia and while there used the computers, but when they left, forgot to log out of a Facebook account, Chris Matyszczyk reports.

We had a look at the controversy concerning Facebook founder, Eduardo Saverin's move to Singapore and his renouncing of US citizenship which took place last September, not recently. I did not like the oily putdown I saw on Monday and added the point about this really being old news (but made more juicy by the approaching IPO). Now Saverin himself has had a chance to put his reasons and Steven Musil lets us see some of them when he tells us that Saverin was interviewed by the NYTimes (which seems to like articles on not paying taxes of late). The link to the interview is in the Musil article.

But they are not going to let him go: Politico reports that two senators are putting forward the Ex-patriot Act in a knee-jerk reaction to the renunciation last year and are going to propose taxing anyone (i.e. him) 30% for gains made after he has left. They also put forward the guff about the country that had protected him and nurtured, etc., etc.. Reading the report, the good Democratic senators have Eduardo in the cross-hairs and no one else.

Another knee-jerk senator also wants Saverin banned from the US, Dan Froomkin writes on Huffington Post. Gee, these Americans don't like to feel left out, do they: top dog or nothing? The law has existed for years but has never been enforced, perhaps now it will. And if it is, this will demonstrate to many that the US can be a welcoming player, but a real bad loser. I am glad to see that Charles Cooper writing on this agrees with the general points I make here and sees this for what it is, making the point that there is no evidence to suggest in any way that Saverin has broken the law. Let me also remind you that he has been in Singapore for a long time and that the decision concerning US citizenship was made not last week, but September last year.

Why didn't these senators, who are supposed to be part of the governing system, bring out these amendments and suggestions then? No publicity I guess: for them.

We mentioned the way that Facebook revised the number of shares to be made available earlier in the week, but another report later from Ingrid Lunden on TechCrunch tells us that it was re-revised to 421,233,615 shares of Class A common stock, adding 83,818,263 shares. She also mentions the loss of GM as advertiser and this readjustment may be part of that.

Taking up a point I made earlier in the week -- that is why I call the column, Cassandra -- Rip Empson on TechCrunch asks the question, "Facebook May Be Worth $100B, But What Are You Worth To Facebook?" Whatever happens after the IPO, the one thing that Facebook cannot do without is us: users. And we are a source of its income, whether by advertising or charging us for use of features.

A third article on TechCrunch -- this must be telling us something -- by Josh Constine, looks at the problems Facebook could, umm, face: Big Brother (governments); the next M. Zuckerberg; Ad revenue problems with the mobile web; and "losing its cool" which has already happened for some.

So when the IPO is released on Friday, will the price go up or down? With the excitement, probably up, at least for a while. And then? Reality may click in: one way or another.

Another company whose stock is beginning to rise is HP. The reason? According to Matt Burns on TechCrunch massive layoffs are expected to be announced next week, over 25,000 jobs is the lowest estimate. Nice move from Meg Whitman, former GOP candidate, that should hit the jobless stats nicely. The company will be "saved" again -- how about some proper management, like product lines -- and everyone will applaud. Except for at least 25,000 out of work people.

As a note, HP has just declared a dividend of 13.2 cents per share. Don't these two items of news contain a contradiction?

We had heard a lot of praise for the way Ron Johnson put together the Apple Stores and then how he was trying new things as CEO of JC Penney but he may have to change a bit more as the stock price has dropped quite a bit, Mikey Campbell tells us on AppleInsider. Johnson is aware but thinks he is on the right track.

I noticed earlier while typing this, that the application I use, TextWrangler, has an update available to 4.0.1. More people should use text editors rather than those unwieldy office suites.

Local Items

I had my own problems on Thursday, just before trying to order the Raspberry Pi online. I arrived home, turned on the wifi and went to get the Mac. When I woke it from sleep mode, the wifi icon flashed and flashed and flashed: unable to find a connection. All the lights were on, on the router and wifi boxes, so I looked at the iPhone which had a connection. That narrowed it down a bit (to the Mac), so I tried to turn wifi off. It showed as Off in the menu item, but the icon kept flashing and no other networks were listed: there are lots here. Trying to turn it on again, made no difference. Time for drastic steps.

I shut down some applications, but several just sat there doing nothing. The link was wifi: Mail, Safari, Twitter and others were all thinking they had to make connections, when this was impossible. I resorted to Force Quit for the reluctant ones and tried Restart again. Not a chance: wifi was still hogging the computer thinking it was on a mission to connect.

Once in a while, we have to resort to the brute force of the power button and this was my next step. But having made the computer stop things in the middle of trying, there would be some unfinished processes. At least it is worth restarting a second time. I went further and accessed the Repair partition, by holding down Command + R at startup. Nothing to be afraid of here: have a look. Better to do it when nothing is wrong so that you can see the tools available. I also noted that the wifi was showing a strong 4 arcs.

In the list, I selected Disk Utility. As this is on a separate partition from the usual working one, a repair is easy to effect. I was not surprised to see a couple of red lines in the text report and it repaired these minor problems easily. I quit Disk Utility and then restarted, getting back to work.

When I started Safari, the pages loaded, but no RSS feed numbers were shown to indicate the number of unread items. I quit Safari and restarted the app again which gave it the required nudge. But I still could not make that RS page load. That came back the next morning (above).

We see that the Thai Apple online store now displays its iPads as Wi-Fi + Cellular. We reported earlier in the week that while Australia and some other countries had this, in Thailand 4G was still shown. Not now.

Late News

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.