By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

Apple Stuff

An unusual staff change was reported by Jordan Kahn for 9to5 Mac when rumours concerning Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch were confirmed. He is to leave Adobe and join Apple under Bob Mansfield

As a demonstration of how people just do not know anything about Apple until the announcement is made, there are comments on an upcoming announcement that T-mobile will be making concerning its plans for a no-contract service. Now, first to bat is Jordan Kahn for 9to5 Mac who says that the 26 March event could include an announcement about the iPhone [My link for this was MacDaily News].

In the middle is Brian Bennett who reports on the event and manages to make no reference to Apple at all and instead brings in Samsung. Then AppleInsider, also reporting on the event and its potential tells us that its sources do not think there will be anything specific concerning Apple at the time. So there you have it.

We have spent a lot of time discussing the cash that Apple has and looked at the ways that various analsyts have been excited about this over the last couple of years. Now a report from Karl Baker and Adam Satariano on Bloomberg tells us that Apple is expected to raise its dividend by upwards of 50% to $16 billion. The proof here is contained in the average of estimates from 6 anaylsts, but there is no comment on methodology: tea leaves, chicken bones or other unknown methods may have been used. Apple will probably deal with the cash it has in its own way and in its own time so the input from these guys is just so much wasted typing (or dictation).

There is some good news for Apple with a report from Neil Hughes on AppleInsider who writes that the iMac supply problems that bedevilled the company last quarter are apparently over and that Mac sales are up 14%.

Also on Macs, there are reports that the MacBook Air could see a redesign in the coming months. Karl Johnson on the Three Guys and a Podcast site suggest, by a process of analysis that there is likely to be an update to the computer this year: sometime between March and June. They also comment on the renewal cycle for the MacBook Pro [My link for this was MacDaily News.]

Coincidentally, it is reported by Bridget O'Shea on Barrington Courier-Review, in Illinois, that the students at the high school there are likely to have 600 MacBook Air computers for the next academic year. [My link for this was MacDaily News.]

There were some difficulties for Apple in Australia a few months ago concerning the length of warranties, as there had been in some EU countries, notably Italy. Now Sam Oliver reports that Apple has increased the warranty to 2 years but adds that the staff have been told not to tell the customers. The law in Australia appears vague on warranty length, citing "reasonable" but most people think it should be 2 years. Apple may still be trying to sell AppleCare, however.

There was a bit more on the situation concerning warranties in Europe in an article by Jordan Kahn on 9to5 Mac this week. He writes that the EU Justice Commissioner, Viviane Reding, is complaining that Apple is still not informing customers of their rights and of having "warranty practices that go against consumer laws in many EU states. . . ."

We tend not to play the "What would Steve have done" card which many have done perhaps because they have little else to write about, but Dwight Silverman on Chron has a careful look at some of the output from Apple of late (advertisements, comments to the press) and concludes that there is a clear difference these days, with some of the contact with the world being somewhat ham-fisted [my link for this was MacDaily News.]

Putting this into some context is Don Melton who writes a rather salty conclusion in his article about media comments on Apple: "So much of what is written about Apple these days is just horseshit meant to draw flies." In the body of the text he writes something that I have written on a number of occasions, "many don't understand - even at a basic level - how Apple works."

Also looking at comments on this theme, is Kate MacKenzie on PixoBebeo who starts with an almost identical idea: Apple was doomed. She argues that just because the current thesis is Apple is doomed without Steve Jobs, nothing has changed as with Steve, the same critics were all over Apple all the time anyway. "Steve Jobs is gone and Tim Cook is running Apple and nothing has changed." Kate wrote that last September.

I often comment about the way the iPad has been integrated into certain professions: medicine and the airline industry are prime examples. This week I was alerted to a page that Apple has concerning a company that has local links: Bechtel. They do a lot of work for the petroleum industry here including pipeline construction.

The company has created several in-house apps for use in the field, especially with monitoring and reporting. An example of another app is "Concrete Monitor, [which] wirelessly communicates with embedded sensors to help improve concrete quality on the thousands of cubic feet of concrete poured every day on Bechtel job sites. The Apple page carries a lot more details of the use of the iPad by Bechtel and also includes a must-see video. One or two of the applications they use are stunning. As they say, a paradigm shifter that changes the way they work.

While we are on uses of iOS devices, there was a report this week from Maggie Fox on NBC about the way a Canadian doctor has devised a way to turn the iPhone into a microscope that can be used to test for worms. Not the worms in the garden but the parasites that people, especially children, pick up. Once detected, treatment can be started.

A while back there was a breach in security that allowed a hacker access to several thousand email addresses of iPad users from AT&T. Despite claiming he was nice to AT&T (remember Kevin Mitnick and Bell?) the courts sentenced him to 41 months in prison, plus some financial penalty and other stuff, Sam Oliver reports on AppleInsider. Less enthusiastic is Mike Masnick (perhaps he too remembers Mitnick) who writes an article about this titled, "Expose A Blatant Security Hole In AT&T's Servers, Get 3.5 Years In Jail" which is part of what Andrew Auernheimer claims he was doing. There are a number of references to others who are critical of the conviction and the sentencing.

On Monday I wrote about an attempt by CCTV (China) to paint Apple as the bad guys in a campaign that went awry when one of the paid posters left a comment on a message showing that this was all coordinated. Electronista has some more on this and we now read that the attack was on VolksWagen too. This is now "a public-relations nightmare for the celebrities, CCTV and Sina Weibo" and there is even more mistrust of state run media. The article also mentions that last year, CCTV "slammed McDonald's with damaging allegation that the fast food giant sold food that servers had dropped on the floor." Curioser and curioser (and before anyone calls me out on that it comes from Alice in Wonderland).

A couple of sites carried rumours this week that the popular messaging software for iOS (and other) devices may switch its current format to a dollar a year subscription. AppleInsider tells us that the current one-time fee is not monetizing the app sufficiently and they hope that a switch will generate more cash. They do this for other platforms, so there is some sense in this. I used to make use of this daily, but since the arrival of Line, that has dropped off considerably. It is expected that those already using the app - who bought it - will not have to change. It is still available at $0.99.

A hint on file organisation this time that came to me via MacDaily News. On a site called Amsys, Russell Harris writes about a way to organise the Applications folder. The files in the folder are usually organised alphabetically, but using the Finder toolbar or (as he suggests) the View menu, we can use the Arrange By option. It is not just by Categories as there are also options for date order, size, Date created, Date Modifies and others. This applies to all folders, not just apps although when I tried I did not enjoy what I found. Some searches (say, using the Date Modified option) could be done more quickly and, as I say, this trick can be used on all folders.

Another helpful article from Kirk McElhearn on MacWorld explains to users about Spaces in OS X and why users would benefit from using this feature. I agree: I use 7 spaces - like 7 different desktops - and assign certain tasks to each, for example 1 is the general work space, 2 is for graphics work, 3 is for iTunes and App Store with 4 as an iWork window (Keynote, Numbers and Pages). I also explained how these worked in my articles on System Preferences in OS X.

There is a wax effigy of Steve Jobs in the Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in Bangkok? And people were waiting to see it unveiled? This was a media event? Priorities, people, priorities.

I saw a photo. Yes, it looks like him. Done. And it is only going to be in town for 3 months. It is wax: make another; make several. Of course, I have seen the real one: Steve himself.

Other Matters

And as a late note, a couple of sites, including AppleInsider, are reporting that because of rumours abut an Apple iWatch, Samsung says it is working on a watch too. Several of the reports referred to a race with Apple, although no one really knows if Apple really is developing such a device. Maybe it was a double bluff to get Samsung to race ahead and be reduced to copying rumours.

I have been commenting on the release of the latest version of SimCity which has a lot of people upset because of its DRM and the way there is no standalone version (actually someone has now hacked this to show how futile the company's position is). By sheer coincidence - absolutely nothing whatsoever at all to do with the disastrous release of SimCity - Kim-Mai Cutler on TechCrunch tells us it has been announced that John Riccitiello the CEO of EA Games has stepped down. This is "over EA's poor financial performance this quarter" and there is no mention at all about SimCity. Ok, ok, yeah.

Despite the problems, however, Mike Williams on Games Industry reports that 1.1 million copies of the latest version of SimCity have been sold in its first two weeks.

While some chip manufacturing companies are going from strength to strength, others are not faring so well and Electronista reports that ST-Ericsson that is suffering as Nokia contracts, is to close with the loss of 1,600 jobs.

Also having problems, Don Reisinger reports, is Panasonic who seem to be about to dump the plasma screen business to save itself. It is a shame really as Panasonic makes some good products and the screens are highly thought of.

I let out a loud laugh when I read of the foot in mouth problems that a Conservative MP in the UK is facing. He saw that a press release from the Labour Party was accompanied by ads for dating Arab girls, Josh Layton reports on The Guardian. Only, just like a daft old Australian reader who persists in writing to me, he does not understand how Google Adsense works: based on the preferences of a web user. While there is no evidence (we are told) that the MP seems to favour such sites, one commentator suggested "Be careful before you question how appropriate an advert on a webpage is."

I was hauled over the coals for accepting "Hot-Chick-Mail_order-Bride" ads, when all I see when I click on my own pages is Bangkok driving courses, the iMac, Disk Aid, and software to convert videos for use on iPads. Not understanding how Adsense worked, over the next few weeks he concocted a scenario (I am sure this works perfectly in his own mind) in which I visited pole dancers and paid 1,000 baht a time. Once an idea has been planted in some minds it grows without need of water or light. I have kept all the emails for evidence (as advised), although they might be entertaining if posted here.

I have asked him not to write, but he has a need to demonstrate his superiority and better knowledge: two marks of a stalker. A sad person indeed.

On Monday, I reported comments on the Swatting that Brian Krebs had suffered when some hackers called the police and a SWAT team was sent to the house. There were some basic details on Monday, but now Krebs himself has dealt with the police, no doubt set some processes going, and has now written about the experience himself, in an article entitled, "The World Has No Room For Cowards". He includes probable causes and suggests some clues as to who might have been responsible. There are also some interesting links in the readers' comments. If we do not face the problem makers, then we lose.

Local Items

A Thai student was sued by John Wiley for buying cheap books abroad then reselling them in the US. Wiley "claimed this was copyright infringement, while the student, Sudap Kirtsaeng, argued that the first sale doctrine applied" Mike Masnick tells us on TechDirt and reports that the Supreme Court has backed Sudap, "saying that it is silly to interpret the first sale doctrine the way Wiley does, and that there is no evidence that such "geographical restrictions" make sense, or that Congress intended such a result." There is considerably more on the decision in Masnick's useful article. This is a highly useful site.

And good luck to two of my Thai students who are on their way today for a 2-month Internship at the University of North Texas in Denton.

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.