By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

Apple Stuff

I would also add a quote from a Tweet that was sent to me from a local user: " I think those expecting the world will be disappointed."

It is a pretty safe bet that iOS 6 will be announced as it is on the much-photographed displays outside the location (Daniel Eran Dilger, AppleInsider). These displays also feature OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and iCloud. Related may be some new apps, and a new use of maps has been predicted, with the consequent banishing of Google (at least until they produce their own app). We are also expecting an announcement about a new iPhone. With the packed agenda, this could safely be left to another day and a special event. Hardware is also expected to be announced with several new Notebook and Desktop Macs predicted: some say four models are to be announced. Oh, and the Apple TV: maybe? Again, this ought to be a separate event.

The Keynote speech (Tim Cook, Phil Schiller?) is at 10am Cupertino Time which is around midnight here: past my bedtime. I wonder about Phil Schiller being the main presenter at WWDC this year, apart from the point that he has done it very well several times already. There has been a lot of writing about the Senior Vice President of Product Marketing over the weekend, especially concerning the misleading pubic face that he has.

Some think of him as a bit of a court jester to Steve Jobs but behind the scenes, as we read in an item from Rene Ritchie on iMore, he was one of the more important decision makers and with Tim Cook's ascendence, now becomes "Dr. No" often vetoing products that are just not suitable for the Apple universe. There are some interesting anecdotes in the article, not least concerning the Mini Me statuette in Schiller's office. This same sort of information, including a picture of Schiller really clowning is carried in an item on Bloomberg Businessweek by Peter Burrows and Adam Satariano who also comment on the way Schiller and others are being compared to Steve Jobs.

There are several live feeds for those who want to follow the announcements and CNET has a nice chart giving the times for locations round the world. So far, I have found these live feeds:

• The MacObserver;
• CNET
• The Verge
• MacStories

Time to examine the rumours in a little more detail. . . .

There are a number of commentators who are convinced that the Retina display is to be available on new Macs to be announced at WWDC. Brooke Crothers is one who is a little circumspect about this and suggests that the better displays will not be for all Macs. We should know this time tomorrow.

Despite the new Macs, Neil Hughes reports on AppleInsider that the 17" MacBook Pro is expected to be on its way out. He also brings in something mentioned by others: that there will be no MacBook Pro and all will be called MacBooks. Can you imagine how much engraving effort (energy costs) and ink that could save over the course of a year or two?

A report balancing some of the rumours about new MacBooks came from Neil Hughes on AppleInsider. This detailed and lengthy item is worth a look and we may expect a thinner MacBook with lots of juicy features under the hood.

As reinforcement for some of the rumours about Retina displays on certain new Macs, we are told by Apple Bitch and also by Matt Brian on NTW (as well as a number of other sources) that Retina-ready apps are beginning to appear on the Mac App Store. This was retracted later I saw in a Tweet from local tech writer Jon Russell who pointed me in the direction of an item by Drew Olanoff on TNW that had the (current) real news: not Retina display but HiDPi. Drew thinks this is a cover-up and the developer had jumped the gun.

There are likely to be several changes to iOS apps in the next few months an iPodNN reports that Apple is to assist developers with a new tool that will help them track use of their creations. Cupertino is well aware of the problems it had with location services last year and the difficulties with Path, and does not want Al Franken breathing down the corporate neck again, so there will be a balance forged here.

Another story concerns an app that is rumoured to be called, Organize, Mark Gurman on 9to5 Mac tells us in a WWDC roundup that carries many of the suggested releases that Apple will let us have on Monday. My original link for this was MacDaily News.

As part of the Apple TV rumour train, we read in an item by Jonathan S. Geller about an Apple TV SDK that will be introduced at WWDC, which will then lead to content developed by those interested. Geller is also one of those convinced about Retina display Macs. My original link for this was MacDaily News.

We carried some news about a dispute in Australia over the way Apple had advertised the new iPad as being 4G capable, even though the 4G there is not the same as the 4G in the US and the small print mentioned this. Not good enough says the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and Apple has agree to pay $2.25 million as a fine according to Dara Kerr, although it is not clear if that is US or AUS dollars. There were changes to the advertising displays and these are now advertised as WiFi and cellular with even the Thai online store having this update, albeit a few days later than others which is par for the course the way things trickle down here from Apple.

I was talking to a new Mac owner last week and one of the problems that he was finding was what I call my Rule 1: It ain't Windows. A suggestion I made was to try and learn key commands as, despite Apple having introduced the mouse to consumers with the first Mac in 1984, the use of keys is a far quicker way to get around the computer. I put online a three-part series on this back in December. This week, I saw on OS X Daily, not one but 14 suggestions by Paul Horowitz, as to how a user may work more effectively with some useful shortcuts.

I recently helped another colleague with a fairly old white polycarbonate MacBook G4 and wrote about this. I was also pleased to see that Low End Mac had picked it up and rather than simply copy, they had taken the time to read and write their own summary (with links of course). That is how it should be done, unlike the Vietnamese site that still thinks it is linking to images on my site (I changed the file names).

I like to include tips and suggestions when they come my way, or even when I find something new. Melissa Holt on The MacObserver reports on a way to open a folder's location using Terminal, for those not wary of the Unix interface. It requires a bit of setting up in Services but this may be useful for some power users. She adds too that dropping a folder onto the Terminal icon will give the location. That did not work for me, but dropping the folder icon onto an open Terminal window did.

Be careful however of spaces in the names: when I see "current Images" as a folder name, Terminal displays this as "/current\ images". Unix does not work the same way with the space and for similar reasons a browser like Safari will show a space using the code %20.

Another tip from OS X Daily concerns incremental brightness and volume adjustments that can be made on the Mac. With both we use the Option + Shift key along with the F key that controls the function.

There was some news a couple of weeks back abut Apple removing an app called Airfoil Speakers Touch from the app store. It was version 3 and while the previous versions had been OK, Rogue Amoeba apparently put something in the update that Apple did not like. Chris Welch on The verge examines the state of things and it seems as if there may be some coming together, although there is still some disagreement as to why the app was pulled and what is wrong.

A couple of weeks ago I looked at a bluetooth keyboard incorporated into a case for the iPad. There was bit of a bonus as this worked with the iPhone too, although not the Mac. Apart from the Apple Bluetooth keyboard, this was the only act in town: this town at any rate. This sub-set of accessories has had some interesting additions, although nothing has arrived here as yet. One that interests me is outlined in a report by Stephen Sande on TUAW: a Clambook. It is under development and will be able to connect to an iPhone and give a full screen plus keyboard display. However, it is intended mainly for the Android platform, with iPhone as a.n.other. That ought to change. I would want one of these if the problems are ironed out.

Already available, at least in some countries, is the Incase Origami Workstation. Rene Ritchie on iMore writes about the case that connects to an iPad but needs an Apple Bluetooth keyboard to be in one's collection already. I will pass on this one.

A note on other keyboard solutions for the iPad. While I was looking for something that I could try, I saw several reviews for a Logitech device which looked really good. Nothing here (of course) so I tried to contact Logitech. I get put off by layers of registration when all I want to do is ask a question, but nonetheless did this, only to have a reply that I should contact the distributor for the area who is in India. Into the trash with that one: laziness on the part of the company who are not interested enough in customers. Now I see that Logitech are having to reduce the workforce owing to reduced sales. Or increased stupidity? Ignore world markets at your peril.

Half and Half

We mentioned on Friday that the FTC had filed on behalf of Apple with the ITC concerning a possible ban of products sold in the US if Motorola were to have its way. Foss Patents later reported that Cisco and the Entertainment Software Industry joined the group pressuring against any ban.

The ongoing case concerning book publishers, Apple and the DoJ took a turn this week when Barnes & Noble rejected the proposal from the DoJ (who sound as if they are in full threat mode -- take this offer or we go to court) and claim that is is bad news for publishers and the public, Brid-Aine Parnell writes on The Register. It would be good news of course for Amazon and the DoJ is seen in some quarters as doing their dirty work. As a note, Kindle sales are falling quite dramatically.

One of my earliest photography apps was Camera + and I guess most that followed have to be compared to this as the developers got it about right almost straight out of the box. They followed this with a lovely desktop version which is now at version 2.0.5. While everyone knows about the Facebook grab of Instagram and other companies have also tried to buy in already developed apps, Camera+ is independent and expects to stay that way we read in an article by Rip Empson on Tech Crunch. After its 8 millionth download John Casasanta was interviewed and told of offers from Adobe, Google, Twitter as well as his vehement message for venture capitalists.

One of the things Cassantes mentioned when discussing VCs was the desire for control that can be applied that can suck the lifeblood out of a company. It was interesting to see some comments from a writer, Neal Stephenson who is one of the movers and shakers behind the oddly named Clang, a startup that is interested in developing software for sword-fighting games. He argues that the joystick interfacing is all wrong and they are working on new methods. Although there is a text, there are two videos, however the first has some less than perfect acting. Although it is to be a PC game I noticed Stephenson working on Mac. He asks for pledges (minimum $1) and in the second video explains -- just like John Casasanta -- why the VC route is not the way to go for some.

Other Matters

There was some more news on the problems with passwords that LinkedIn has experienced, with several million having been stolen. Edward Moyer reports on a posting that the company has made playing down the risk to users and explaining what they are doing to protect the members. There is a complete text of the posting on a blog, which I think might have been better also emailed.

And sometimes announcements are so weird that you know there has to be more to come. A well-known soundwave-editing company, BIAS, has announced it is just shutting up shop, but Electronista managed to track down an unconfirmed comment from someone who may have been the CEO, read, "please understand that we are not at liberty to discuss those reasons in detail since they concern matters of individual privacy. However, the conduct of certain employees resulted in disruptive interpersonal relationships which damaged morale and interfered with high functioning at a time when market pressures required that the company perform at an optimum level."

That must have been quite some affair.

I used to work for a company in London that would not allow any married couple to be employed fearing bias or relationship problems. I tend to agree having seen the way that relationships in the workplace put others -- just trying to do a job -- at a major disadvantage.

I rather like photography and while regretting the passing of the analog camera in some ways, I think digital advantages far outweigh the older technology in many ways. Not all. I was delighted to see information about an odd experiment as reported on Huffington Post about two artists (Luke Evans and Josh Lake) who swallowed strips of 35mm film (inside capsules) to see what was happening inside. When the films were retrieved and developed, the results gave some stunning images and some of these are to be shown in London this week.

For those who are still interested in analog film (the medium itself is increasingly hard to find), there are a number of places in Bangkok that still deal with it. In Siam Discovery there is a Lomo shop: dedicated to that older technology with loads of cameras on display and of course on sale. There are also old camera shops that still keep used examples. There is a dusty shop near me that has several old Nikon, Olympus and Canon (as well as some I do not know) in the window. I would like to go in and chat, although the last time I did look inside, the owner was on the phone and made no effort to end the call.

As a sport of counterpoint to the analog, a report by Matt Brian on TNW, tells us of Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) a Swiss newspaper that has printed its entire front page in binary code as a way to celebrate the move to full digital. I was able to download a large version of this using one of the links on the page and I hope to have this printed out for my students as I use an intro to binary while teaching English to some Engineering groups.

Local Items

I took a day away from the office on Friday and it was just my luck to have a phone call from DHL who had tried to deliver my Raspberry Pi computer, but no one was there. I guess the delivery guy went at lunchtime. I expect that this will be in my hands on Monday. Late on Friday I started searching for information specifics as I intend that this board will be handed over to some students so that they can come up with a solution as to how it might be used here. One of the pages I came across was the Raspberry Pi FAQ page which has some useful information.

Over the weekend I bought a cheap Kingston 4GB flash drive. When I put it in to the Mac for the first time, I had a shock as there was a file marked "autorun.inf" which some users may recognise as a possible virus marker. A look at other files showed that this was not malware as there was an uninstaller and a file called urDrive.exe all of which are useless to me. Into the trash with them.

Late News

Another link on MacDaily News tells us of a TV show for iOS devices called Watch with Mother. Not mentioned in the article or link is the point that the BBC may own that name as a trademark.

A leak of an apparent beta release of iOS 6 shows that although the 3Gs iPhone is to be supported, the first iPad is not (Allyson Kazmucha, iMore).

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.