By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

Apple Stuff

Later in the weekend a report in OS X Daily told us that there had been a silent update to the Combo version and this was clear from the checksum and build number that was changed, but only for some. Earlier MacNN had mentioned the withdrawal of the regular update and everyone was stuck with the 1.3GB Combo. I don't mind, but some are still on dialup connections.

Along with the update to 10.7, there was a Security Update 2012-1 for those still on Snow Leopard and that broke Rosetta. Needless to say several sources, including Mel Martin on TUAW reported on the problem.

We also heard over the weekend that as a non-surprise, the licence agreement for iBooks Author was changed as part of the 1.0.1 update and the comment about the export only to iBooks has been softened so users can export in other formats and they can be sold through other sites. Mind you, only Apple takes iBooks and the others will take ebooks, so it may have been OK, but just needed clarifying. Josh Lowensohn was one of those who commented on this as was Daniel Eran Dilger on AppleInsider and Megan Lavey-Heaton on TUAW.

A week or so after all the hasty comments on the NYTimes article that condemned Apple's practices in China, when Apple employs no one to manufacture goods there, a more measured look was written by Tom Kaneshige on Network World who looks at the hypocrisy surrounding the outraged reactions. He also examined the way Nike had dealt with this some years before, with what had been a far worse problem and points out that the Chinese think that Foxconn is not such a bad place to work after all, which he puts down to Apple and the efforts it has already been making. There was, he notes, little putting all this in the proper context in the article. We were sent to the item by MacDaily News

Last Friday evening I was clearing out a week's emails when I noticed a renewal notice from iTunes concerning the New Yorker. Usually, I just let this ride, but since first subscribing, I have hardly read any, so it may be more economical to buy issues as and when I want. This time I clicked on the link and iTunes appeared, with a panel asking me to enter my password. It opened at the New Yorker subscription panel and all I had to do was change a Yes to a No and click Done. Some of the hoops we have to jump through with other sites made that a real pleasure.

When we read the Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs, it was clear (if it had not already been) that here was an unusual and very complex man, with a lot of contradictions. People don't like that, but stuff happens. Katie Marsal reports on AppleInsider about the way Jobs had motivated the team developing the original iPhone. Bob Borchers was part of that team and says that the criteria were not touch screen, super-scrolling, internet device et al, but He wanted to create the first phone that people would fall in love with.

The apps were initially rejected by Steve Jobs, but later he changed his mind (proving that he could for one thing), and the App Store brought something much more to the Apple equation, leading eventually to the infrastructure that works on the iPad too. Josh Lowensohn reports that the long expected clear-out of App lookalikes is in hand and some are already out of the door.

I am afraid some people have the wrong idea about Steve Jobs and about good taste. There have been reports in a number of sources about an advertising campaign in Taiwan -- never a country that has overly worried about copyright and anything silly like that -- that uses a Steve Jobs lookalike wearing angel wings to sell a tablet computer. And not an iPad of course. Anna Leach on The Register is one of those with a report on this and her item links to the tasteless commercial. Awww, come on, this looks nothing like Jobs apart from the attempt at clothes copying. The ad is awful but I had to find it myself as the link on the Register did not work. This is the link, but don't waste your time.

I am not sure how many people use Numbers. I have it but prefer the quick and dirty Open Source method via Neo Office and find entering formulae (formulas to some of you), fairly straightforward. Topher Kessler has an article that gives a run through of how you do this in Numbers and it is quite thorough. Useful for some users to be sure.

Another odd little tip comes from Dieter Bohn on The Verge (among others) and concerns the split keyboard that is available on the iPad. I have it turned on, but have never seen it, even when trying to make it appear. I will look into that. For those who can make the split keyboard appearm the left side of the screen, starts QWERT, while the right side has YUIOP. However, on the left, there is also Y, and on the right also T. Every line of characters has these phantom keys, I guess if you type with your thumbs and mis-type: you may still be lucky.

Half and Half

Facebook was in the news last week with its IPO that made Zuckerberg a billionaire several times over, but kept him firmly in the chief position. No interfering board for him, eh? Facebook has some expansion plans and other changes coming, and one of these may be in the area of advertising, so they snapped up a former Apple and Levis exec, Rebecca Van Dyck, "to help it focus on consumer marketing" we are told by Josh Ong on AppleInsider.

Also hired away apparently was a current employee of Apple Simon Prakash, whom we are told by Josh Ong on AppleInsider was Senior Director of Product Integrity. Google has snapped him up for a secret project.

Other Matters

Oh ho. We had heard about some false certificates out of Malaysia that had been used in one signing authority last year, but did you know that Verisign (one of the more reliable) had also been attacked? No, nor did their management as the system attacks by hackers were kept from them we are told by Erika Morphy on eCommerce Times. The problem was finally disclosed in an SEC filing, but not till way after the time it had happened. There will certainly be some changes over at Verisign.

Hardly a surprise, really but a report by Sky News tells us of a gamer in an internet shop in Taiwan who had been dead in front of his computer for some 9 hours before someone realised. He had a heart problem and may have been playing for rather a long time, excluding the 9 hours that is.

One of my favourite programs, for what it can teach about engineering (and risk) is Myth Busters who have a rather interesting approach to the core items they demonstrate (or not). We are told by Jacob Sloan on Disinformation that the two stars of the show, have been stopped putting out an episode on RFID by pressure brought to bear on Discovery Channel by Visa, Mastercard, and Discover. The episode was to show, "just how 'trackable and hackable' the RFID chips were. Or not. So now we don't know if they do not work as advertised, or if there are major security problems, or if the whole thing is "silicon snake oil" (to use the title of Clifford Stoll's book). Watch the video. Savage is circumspect but it was clear that they were outgunned.

After Sony, Sharp and several other former darlings of the consumer electronics market, it seems that Panasonic is also predicting a massive loss or around $10.2 billion for the year the BBC reports: "The poor result is being put down to the strong yen, flooding in Thailand and acquisition costs." So Thailand takes the blame again.

Local Items

It seems that unlike Thailand, Singapore does not let too many things stand in the way of progress and there already-faster broadband speeds are about to have a boost, with some 19,000 commercial buildings and offices being linked through better cabling we are told by The Straits Times.

Well, what a surprise. A link on Facebook sent me to an item on Fast Company, by Nidhi Subbaraman who writes of the Akash tablet that we have mentioned once or twice in the dire expectation that it was to be these, or something along these lines, that the Thai government was to purchase for the doomed tablet program here, although they have now changed the specs and gone for something from China for around $100 (so far).

My negative thoughts are two-fold: once the Ministry of Education becomes involved, all hope is lost for a rapid, practical solution used in teaching; and, related to that, is not so much the lack of apps, but the lack of teacher expertise in using such media in a classroom.

Now we may add some more wrinkles as the government (I guess that might mean their ministry of education) is trying to take over the project from the two major partners: the university who came up with the idea, and the developer putting it into a real existence. And they want to add some more universities into the mix. Can you hear the sound of toes being trodden on; of borders being crossed? All is not well, as the engineers are "improving" on the design. [For a look at what engineers can do to improve on design, look up Kansas Skywalk on Google - Hyatt Regency.] The head of the original design team objects to changes made and insists that "If you drop it, it should not catch fire" which should be a reasonable expectation for any consumers (or their children).

Doctors in Singapore are now able to access patient records via the newly launched National Electronic Health Records system we are told by Salma Khalik on the Straits Times.

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.