By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

Apple Stuff

We will also know in a few hours how many of those rumours, screen shots, photos and other information were real. One concerns the nano-SIM card and we read in an item by Chris Welch on The Verge, that Vodafone has a stockpile of 500,000. That should be enough for this week. . . .

So far I have one link marked for a live feed from the event: Erica Sadun has the information on a page at TUAW.

I can now also add The MacObserver to the list of live feeds.

It is rumoured (how many times will I write that today?) that pre-orders for the iPhone will start on 12 September -- presumably immediately after the event -- and deliveries will be on from 21 September. The source for this is Bostinno, and I am not sure how a Boston source has an inside track on this information, but annual leave schedules (used by other sources) are a fair guide. Maybe they will be right. My source for this was MacDaily News. A later report, from Rene Ritchie on iMore suggests that pre-ordering will begin on 14 September, which sounds a little more realistic if the 21st is the date that the gates are thrown open.

The iPhone is eagerly awaited of course, although we may have a couple more months to twiddle our thumbs in this region (unless we are willing to pay outrageous Mahboonkrong prices). The device may be anticipated in more ways as along with the ambitious pundits (above) there are some that feel the number that will be sold could have an effect on US GDP, Brooke Crothers, using the opinions of several others taking this view as does Neil Hughes on AppleInsider.

A report by Mel Martin on TUAW tells us that it is expected that the new iPhone will be LTE compliant all around the world, "including the US, Europe and Asia" although with our knowledge of Thailand I don't know how they can make that statement.

And because of that the iPhone 5 is also eagerly awaited by Samsung who have the lawyers primed and they will be attempting to have the device banned right away if it uses LTE as they have a good collection of patents for this, Jeff Gamet on The MacObserver reports. He does add, as do a number of other commentators, that these patents are standards essential and should be licensed under fair terms (FRAND) which we think, from previous misuse of this by Samsung, they do not understand.

It is reported that T-mobile have four iPhone models listed, all marked X Electronista reports, suggesting that these will be 64 GB, 32 Gb, 16 GB and an 8 GB iPhone 4s.

We can always hope for other devices at an event like the one this week, and AppleInsider seem to think that a new iPod touch could be in line. They are not alone in this and a number of reports have suggested this over the last few weeks, but they have some interesting extra input here, including a 1,136-by-640-pixel display running an S5L8942X processor.

We did mention on Monday the way the PC market has slumped, yet Apple still has striking sales of its Macs, and Daniel Etherington on Tech Crunch adds to this with the suggestion that Apple is pretty much single-handedly driving the growth of worldwide PC sales to companies and government, although I am sure Thailand would be excluded from that statement: too many irons in Acer, Asus, Dell and other fires.

But now we are told by Aaron Lee and Joseph Tsai on Digitimes, that as well as the iPhone coming this week, we ought to be looking out for new iMacs and a new 13.3" MacBook Pro Retina display. This source has sometimes been wrong.

As well as these examples of hardware, it is also reported by AppleInsider that a new Apple Airport Extreme with the 801.11ac standard could be coming soon. Also on AppleInsider, Daniel Eran Dilger reports that a number of web apps are being enhanced for iCloud. He refers to Notes and Reminders as well as iCloud Mail and Calendar, but points out that iWork is still waiting in the wings.

I am reasonably certain that iOS 6 will not be coming until later in the month as it is designed for the iPhone 5 primarily, but Karen Haslam on MacWorld writes as if she expects it this week: later today.

There has been a lot of criticism of John Browett of late -- Apple's new head of retail -- with some really taking against him. Jim Tanous on the MacOberver parsed a single sentence of Browett's recent speech to the staff and suggest there are major implications to the idea that "I'm really looking forward to the results from Q1." Whether or not the inference here is that profit and not people is the new philosophy, I cannot tell from that, although his antecedents at Dixons might lead one to think this was so. Nonetheless, people will be watching carefully.

Another Apple employee who has been in the spotlight recently, but for different reasons, is Noreen Krall, Apple's chief litigation counsel, and there is a profile of her in an item by Katie Marsal on AppleInsider.

A week or so ago there were lots of reports of hackers releasing UDID numbers from iPhones with the claim that these came from an FBI notebook computer. Apple denied any involvement and it appears they are in the clear as Darrell Etherington on Tech Crunch tell us that a developer, BlueToad, had a look and confirmed they were the source, although it is not clear how.

I was pleased with the improvement in battery life with the OS X update to version 10.8.1 of Mountain Lion, but there is apparently a lot more to come according to reports, writes Mikey Campbell on AppleInsider with 85 minutes more expected.

A release of the Kindle application for the Mac, the Kindle 8 apparently has support for gestures, Kelly Hodgkins reports. I tried to start up the version I have, which shows as 1.9.1 and it died ever time. More investigation needed there methinks. Indeed, a later version is on the Mac App Store, and when I started to download (it is free) it recognised the earlier version and the point that I had not got it from the Mac App Store; which explains the lack of update. All done now.

We also read in an item by Federico Viticci on MacStories that Google has released an official YouTube app for the iPhone. With iOS 6 the embedded one is to disappear, so this is the replacement. This news was also reported by Killian Bell on Cult of Mac. A link in both articles opened the browser page for the app, but when I clicked on that nothing happened. A search in iTunes here also showed nothing. Apple, Thailand, late again?

Yup. I tried again Wednesday morning and the YouTube app is now available.

On Monday we looked at a rumour that students were being forced into internships at Foxconns factories. Dave Caolo on TUAW has a little more information on this including some denials by Foxconn.

Half and Half

There is a fairly damning article about South Korea and Chine this week by Michael Fitzpatrick on Fortune, who examines the culture of copying in that part of Asia, with special emphasis on the land of Samsung cloning and it appears that Apple is not the only company Samsung rips off. In one section, he writes, "Certain parties in Asia seem to revel in the chutzpah that is often accessory after the fake" and that rings a few bells here. Then he brings in an outside expert who suggests that "It might have something to do with South Korea's education system . . . . the cradle of cheating and bribery".

Now that part about cheating (for example plagiarism) rings a few bells here as at high schools students are taught to copy (reports are merely xeroxed or -- more likely now -- copied and pasted from the Internet). Once that is ingrained it takes some harsh lessons to force students to trust their own ideas and cite their sources. MY source for this article was MacDaily News.

On Daring Fireball, John Gruber has an interesting look at Jeff Bezos of Amazon whom he thinks is doing a lot of right things currently and near the end notes a quote from Om Malik that calls him the inheritor of Steve Jobs' crown. Gruber agrees "Not because Bezos has copied anything Jobs did, but because he has not."

Other Matters

A while back we reported news that HP was to cut some 27,000 jobs, but this week, Arik Hesseldahl reports on All Things Digital, the number has gone up to 29,000.

That Nokia smoke and mirrors video of the Lumia 920 will not go away and I bet Stephen Elop is furious about it. So much so that (Lance Whitney reports) the company announced an ethics probe. Heads will roll, but this is a bit like shutting the door after the horse has bolted: they could easily have put the word, "Simulation" over the top and that would have done it.

A note from a reader pointed me in the direction of EETimes which has a report by Peter Clark in the UK, suggesting that Sony will be making 300,000 versions of the Raspberry Pi at a factory in Wales

Local Items

I am not quite sure how one should interpret that in terms of intentions, or potential customers.

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.