By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

I spent the end of last and much of the weekend up in the area round Khaoyai National Park, not that we went in to the park itself. The resort we stayed at had a sort of Thai interpretation of a cowboy theme and I know there are large farms in the area that make good use of horses. While the establishment had wifi it was not all over and internet connections were slow with some intermittent signals. I managed a couple of uploads, but the big downloads that came at the end of the week were best saved till later.

Apple Stuff

There was still some filling in the gaps over the departure of Scott Forestall from Apple which is now being seen as confirmation that for all his quietness, Tim Cook really is an executive heavyweight. I have been saying that for months and have been irked by the moves -- many looking as if they come from the direction of Wall Street -- that sought to place him (and hence Apple) in a weakened postion: i.e. shares drop, sharp guys make a killing. Of course, there is also the possibility that the weak Tim stories were placed by internal sources who were reaching further than they would ever be able to grasp, and the executive reshuffle coincidentally dealt with that.

An interesting point came from Electronista who had the news that Forestall, was left out of iPhone design meetings held by Jonathan Ive. We were already aware of the acrimony there, but this was unexpected, and the source adds that this was even before the first-generation iPhone shipped. If that is the case, Steve Jobs would certainly have known, which makes it all the more interesting that Cook was designated as The Man.

As part of the reshuffle, Eddy Cue, who has been almost invisible in some ways although is known to be a master fixer, has come to the fore and Greg Sandoval provides a look at who he is and what he does. The list of achievements is impressive: a reliable man and a team player who is well able to act independently and decisively. I wish I knew more people like him.

It has been clear to me (and a few others of course) that some journalists, analysts and those who should know better, tend to put out a lot of real crap about Apple and, as in politics, it is the false ideas that often stick rather than the realities. Hits are more important than truth.

As soon as the iPhone 4S was released that was a "failure". But it wasn't. It was the same with the iPhone 5 (sold out) and the iPad (try and find one). The new iPad mini was seen immediately as a failure. Why doesn't someone tell the customers so that they stop buying these things? Maybe the customers have a better idea of what they want.

How about that iPad mini? Sold out in two hours at the NY Apple Store, Eric Slivka reports on MacRumours with apparently "more customers than turned out for the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4S." The article concluded, "A similar pattern was seen in online pre-orders, with the white models selling out in just 17 minutes and the black models taking a few days to run out of availability." Not bad for a failure. Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Fortune comments that, despite the turnout, he was reading headlines of disappointing crowds and suggests that some of these reports may have been premature. Or slanted.

A point made by MacDaily News in comments on "Yellow Journalism" and Apple, was that the first day only had the wifi models and that the LTE versions of the iPad mini were not coming for another month. The report calls out Bloomberg, Reuters and Agence France-Presse, but is positive on Wall Street Journal and Jessica E. Lessin.

One group apparently excited by this release is the physicians who, Neil Hughes reports on AppleInsider, see that the iPad mini is the perfect size for a lab coat. And I thought that doctors were happy carrying around clipboards and the like because it makes them look important.

I must admit to being a bit confused by the teardown of the latest iPad -- the bigger screen one -- which is described by Chris Foresman on Ars Technica as not really an iPad 4 but an iPad 3.5 with an image clearly showing the different connectors: itself proof of significant change. The opinion comes from iFixit who confirm that there are "just a few swapped parts" between the earlier and current device. Oh and there is also an upgraded camera. Oh, and the A6X processor. Oh and the mother board has some changes too.

My confusion is increased when also on Ars Technica, Andrew Cunningham looks at that A6X processor which has "twice the processing power, twice the performance". As I suspected, this processor has now been examined more closely by Chipworks (not AnandTech as I had expected) who show that it has four GPU cores, and a dual core CPU. Ah, no innovation. Hold that thought. . . .

There were several bleats from all manner of people when the iPhone 5 appeared and then when the iPad was updated, the iPad mini released, iMac and Mac mini updated and a Retina display MacBook Pro 13" added to the line up. And there were new iPods in there too somewhere. And Fusion Drive: that caught everyone by surprise and they are still pulling that apart (see below). As is often the case, the immediate shout is that Apple is dead, finished, no innovation. Most don't even bother to look at the Apple product presentations which are always available for download.

But as I wrote twice in the last month, and last year with the iPhone 4S, these people are only looking at the surface, just wait till these things are pulled apart, then come back and talk to me about innovation. And examining the devices leaves out the advances Apple has made in industrial processes (with one or two slip ups of course), which will lead to better products and increased profits way, way in the future sometime.

Of course no one listens, and by the time people like iFixit, Chipworks and AnandTech do look inside, the erroneous ideas that those like Trip Chowdhury (as reported by Zach Epstein on BGR) are already in circulation and eagerly taken up by the yellow journalism that is a sign of the times.

Fortunately, not everyone is convinced and there are some other analysts who take a longer, slower, deeper view. One of these is Ashraf Eassa on Seeking Alpha who comments on Apple "innovating very heavily on the engineering side, even if it isn't putting out a radically new form factor or device." What I said: under the surface. He advises users and investors not to buy into the hype about loss of innovation. And regarding that idea of investment, Mikey Campbell on AppleInsider reports that another teardown of the iPad mini suggests that gross profit margins on the device are 43%. It costs $188 to build the 16 GB version it is suggested and that sells for $329.

When the new iMac and Mac mini with the Fusion Drive options were announced, there was an amount of valid speculation concerning the details of the Fusion Drive's workings. Lee Hutchinson of Ars Technica who wrote about this feature then, now confirms that the ideas he had appear now to have been confirmed: "the technology uses Core Storage to bind together the physical hard disk drive and the physical solid state drive into a single volume".

There is a lot of tech detail on the page -- interesting for some -- and the idea that "the two physical devices (the HDD and the SSD) are grouped together into a single Logical Volume Group, which in turn contains a Logical Volume Family made up of a single Logical Volume." As I read that, it is two disks, but in a single unit and the OS sees it as one basically. There will be more on this as Ars Technica do a more detailed analysis.

We mentioned that the UK judge who said the Samsung Galaxy thing was not cool and so no one would confuse it with the iPad and then ordered Apple to run advertisements with the decision, was less than pleased with what Apple put out. He ordered them pulled and a new correct version deployed. This has now been done and there have been several reports in the last day or so about this, including one from Patently Apple that shows a shot from the Guardian and also comments that a Korean newspaper put out that Cook et al were at risk of jail sentences [actually gaol sentences, being the UK - it comes from the Anglo-Norman French gaole] if Apple did not comply.

While we are on Korea, there is a report carried in a number of sources, including Electronista that the government of the country that makes Samsung products is playing the nationalist card and demanding that Apple change Maps in iOS 6. As with a number of areas in the region, there is a series of islands that are disputed territories, so Apple used all the names the islands are known by. This has offended the Koreans. If every country were to do that, Apple (or other companies affected in similar ways) would never get any work done.

I cry foul here. If you do a search in Google Maps for "Liancourt Rocks" the territory appears with no alternative name. Do a search using the Korean name "Dokdo" and you get Liancourt Rocks. Alternatively, search using the Japanese name (the Japanese are not objecting to Apple's triple naming of the islands) and what do you get? Liancourt Rocks. Nationalism or hypocrisy, or both?

And if you want some more tortured logic, try Gavin Clarke on The Register who is trying to blame the lack of development on GNOME (Linux) on the arrival of Apple's touch interfaces. I am sure if Apple did not exist, the Register would be much happier.

Ist is Guy Fawkes Day in the UK where we celebrate an attempt by a group of people to blow up the head of state and lots of politicians.

Half and Half

A note on security for Android which Samsung uses for its devices, comes from Mohit Kumar on The Hacker News. He reports on the arrest by Japanese police of 5 five developers who created and embedded a virus into smartphone applications, with smartphones of about 90,000 users infected. Later they found that some 10 million pieces of personal information had been stolen.

Let's be specific here. Not all smartphones are affected and later in the article it is mentioned that these are Android devices. Remember Apple's walled garden?

Other Matters

Also with problems is Sharp, another once-great company (or at least pretty good) who are not able to keep up with things these days. It is still expected to post a profit and this is predicted to be better than fist thought, according to Electronista, but progress has required massive loans and high numbers of layoffs. This looks as if the company is ripe for takeover.

Microsoft are not doing as well as expected with Windows 8 although the CEO will doubtless put his own spin on the news as he does with everything else (I see no iPads). Bill Detwiler on Tech Republic reports that when the publication circulated its business clients, "73.7 percent of respondents say their organizations have no plans to deploy Windows 8, with 23.8 percent reporting that they will skip the OS altogether." It seems that many are still content to stick with XP and the new interface appears to be putting many off: not simply the interface but the training costs involved in bringing staff up to speed.

They might just as well make the leap to OS X as that will also give the integration with tablets and mobiles that many demand, as well as covering security aspects they are concerned about. My source for this item was MacDaily News.

Local Items

Good heavens, Thailand reached favoured nation status, although it was in secret so it doesn't really count. Mikey Campbell at AppleInsider notes that although not in that list that Phil Schiller displayed at the release of the iPad mini, the device is available at the Apple Online Store here. The report also has it spot on about the delay for orders of about a week, "most likely in reference to the National Telecommunications Commission, the Thai telecom regulations body." I did see the prices in a Tweet while I was away, but the 3 wifi models (16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB) are priced at 11,200 baht; 14,200 baht; and 17,200 baht.

I also had a look at the iPhone 5 pages on the Apple Store for Thailand, and these are actually a couple of thousand baht cheaper than I expected. Hmmm. . . .

That battery on the iPhone 4S is getting a little tired these days. Looking through I see there is a Lightning to 30-pin Adapter for another 1,090 baht. That would be useful.

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.