By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

True Problems in Thailand

1. Since the wifi router arrived in my new condo and the True helpline lady talked me through the setup, the one thing that has not been working was wifi sync of iPhone and iPad. It used to work with my Airport router which I kept promising myself I would set up again; and it works at my office, even with the clunky wifi system we have there. But not at home. The devices appear in the iTunes sidebar, but whenever I clicked on Sync, a panel appeared telling me that it was looking for the iPhone or iPad, and then whichever one it was, disappeared from the display. USB cable sync was fine, but if you have been used to leaving the iPhone about the room and clicking on the sync button from time to time, the minor effort of finding the iPhone and the cable, linking them to the Mac and then syncing -- doesn't sound much does it? -- is an effort in comparison.

   And then early Saturday morning, with no changes to Mac, iTunes, iPhone or router, I must have caught the device by surprise as the wifi sync just happened. I hate stuff like that, especially as it hasn't worked since (again).

2. I had email from a reader who pointed me towards a problem reported on Thai Visa Forum that a lot of users are having with the TrueMove H and Cat 3G USB wireless cards. These cut after 3 hours: or 2 hours 59 minutes in one user's case. Looking through the comments, which include one from Woody in Phuket, the cause (despite the typical CAT response of "it must be something in your setup") appears to be a 3 hour limit at the server end. Indeed, the variety of plans and user configurations that are cited in the reader comments make it abundantly clear that the cut off originates from True's end.

   This is fairly easy to set up on any system. Indeed, if you were to examine the configuration file on your own router, there will be a box that allows this to be changed. As most of the True and CAT equipment -- and they are sharing much of this as True took over the Hutch operation -- comes from Huawei, they probably have some archaic maximum setting of 10800 (seconds in 3 hours) as the cut off. Either that, or someone in an office made the type of decision that often happens here, "Oh, they won't want to be online for anything longer than 3 hours". You should see my friend's marathon game-playing sessions. As a reminder, when the Internet first arrived here, one of the major people in charge of decisions at that time went on record as saying that all Thailand will ever need is a 9600bps connection to the outside world. Thailand, not individual users.

   The reasons are probably to save bandwidth at the company end, and to make sure the user is not using too much (in a plan that has data limits), but it is not very helpful when one is in the middle of a download or streaming a movie.

   I did use the True Spin (with 3G SIM) that I have when I first moved to this new apartment and there was a cut off, but I did not take a note of the time involved and just switched to the iPhone and its personal hotspot. When that went quiet, I switched back and the ADSL arrived a few days later.

   As the readers on the forum have found, the responses from the companies are not really helpful. The first thing in Thailand is to blame the user: after all, consumers know nothing; the second is to ignore the problem totally: the third is to ignore the problem and hope it goes away. It often does as users switch to another carrier.

   I have found that using the True 1686 number -- getting all account details and facts to hand first -- will often link me to a competent technical person who can talk me through a problem. It also needs a wider form of communication to the company (True -- a waste of time trying to deal with CAT) that escalates the problem and makes it visible to those higher up in the company. A problem here for many westerners is that once you pass the Flash-heavy intro pages on the True site, many of those that contain corporate information are in Thai only.

3. Not long after writing that, my True ADSL went off. I think it might have been on since Friday afternoon and I saw that the ADSL indicator was red: no signal. A restart of the device did the trick. And then another 8 hours later, right in the middle of things, off it went again. Turn off the router, wait for 30 seconds. Restart. What a game.

4. Another True problem came my way on Sunday afternoon, when a user from Phuket called (via Skype) and told me about problems with his iPhone which had been OK up until Saturday morning -- hmm, is there a pattern here -- but when he woke up then there was no signal. He made his way in from Rawai to the Central mall there and the True technician had it up and running in a couple of minutes. Suspicious in itself, don't you think? The guy told him to make sure caller ID was not off. Back home he went only to find that the phone would not work and found also that caller ID was off again. I made a few suggestions along the lines of a phone reset, checking the SIM card, demanding a new SIM and (on his way back to the store) stopping off at locations on the way to see where it was or was not working. My guess is that the antenna or signal has a problem where he is, although it might be the SIM card coming unseated.

The reader who sent me to the True 3G aircard problem also suggested Second Bar, a product from Andreas Hegenberg that allows a menubar on a second monitor. I have often cursed the lack of this when using a projector in class with a non-mirrored display and this would get round that problem. I also found an app to lock the keyboard when cleaning and wrote about that on Sunday morning.

Apple Stuff

A lot of sources carried an item on the ability of a Russian forensics cryptology company ElcomSoft to crack the passwords that had been used in iWork applications. Only Topher Kessler (as far as I saw) had enough of a careful look at the allegation to report on how valid any dangers to users were. What he tells us, and the developers confirmed, is that they had to use brute force dictionary hacking to find these passwords. Kessler comments that, therein lies the fault of many passwords that people use: they are too weak. If, for example, I use graham (or even GraHAm) as a password that could easily be cracked by a program of that nature that uses a dictionary. gR_aH?m is a little better, but not by much as the permutations may get round to this sooner or later. Better would be 4f85u34r]2"*iqvn which most people would not have a hope of remembering (write it down, lock the paper away). Most people are not interested of course and I remember the wailing of a new Mac user who complained that she did not want to keep entering a password every time she used the damn thing, so the Enter key was all she used: and even that needed using from time to time with OS X's checks.

We reported last week on the problem that the app, Path, had and the way the developers sort of got round it; and how contrite they were too. Matt Brian on The Next Web tells us that to avoid any of the same -- you see lessons can be learned -- Instagram (who avoided the flak that Path copped) has updated its app and as added a contacts list access prompt: users must authorise this if it is to be used.

With Apple under fire about its operations in China, which are actually carried out by an independent firm (Foxconn), I think that the real reason is to push Cupertino into announcing a dividend for the first time as many people cannot abide the idea of that huge pile of money sitting there apparently inactive. A very confident Geordy Wang on Seeking Alpha looks at the situation and the rising share prices -- almost $500 now -- and is sure that this is because smart money knows a dividend is coming. I am not smart, at least as far as money is concerned, and the idea of betting against Apple always strikes me as foolhardy. Wang is sure that at the next shareholders' meeting which is to be held late next week (23 Feb) a dividend will be announced. Wang praises the way Tim Cook operates rather than the common herd who have spread doubts about the fact that he is not Steve Jobs, and thinks he is smart enough to go for this as, he writes, "Cash on the books is a lot like inventory in a way. It will just sit there and depreciate in value if you don't deploy it" which presumes that it does just simply sit there and is not invested.

Also commenting on the same idea is Bryan Chaffin of the MacObserver who reports the ideas of analyst Shawn Wu on this and thinks that this is a good move by Apple. The figures as put forward in this item, do make a little more sense to me and would of course shut all these non-tech commentators up.

One thing I will predict: of there is no dividend announcement, look for an increase in apparently-unrelated articles critical of all aspects of Apple's management and operations.

As a related note on the supposed China problem, I looked last week at an article by Rene Ritchie on iMore in which he discusses "Apple linkbait and mainstream meltdowns". The ideas here pretty much coincide with some of those I had written in the Cassandra column and elsewhere. Late on Friday, iMore published a rebuttal argument of Ritchie's comments by "Georgia", who apparently always does write under that pseudonym. Well thought out, it still puts the blame at Apple's corporate feet by way of the idea that Apple really could and should do something.

Last week we reported that the white MacBook was no longer available for educational orders and that all Macs were aluminium (which should please Greenpeace). We looked at a report late Friday from Electronista which discusses what must be the Apple education replacement for the white Mac: a stripped down 13" MacBook Air. It keeps some of the low-end specs of the 11" device, but has the larger screen and costs $999 if they are bought in bulk.

The Next Web (Drew Olanoff) sent us to a spoof advertisement for a new iBalls product -- the product is not real -- allegedly the sort of thing that Apple might produce. Lucas Meppen-Negal on Scoopertino has the information on this along with the great spoof ad. As part of the faux press information, we are told that:

iBalls have an initial cost of $999 each and require a $59/month subscription. Both natural eyes must be removed prior to installation -- but if you have limited funds, you can start with just one iBall, then use the optional iPatch ($49) to cover the vacant socket.

This has an uncomfortable similarity to the article on retina implants that was carried by Forbes Magazine at the weekend (Alex Knapp).

While we are on Apple innovation, Patently Apple report on a new patent issued to Apple for Teleprompter tools for iMovie and Final Cut. We note that one of the diagrams bears a close resemblance to the iPad, which would make a good tool for this. I used it once to make a welcoming speech to a group of Japanese delegates to a conference on water treatment just as the floods were creeping up to the gates of the university. I had written the speech for the Deputy Dean, but with the roads and traffic, there was a chance she would not make it, so I quickly turned it into a Keynote presentation and did it myself. I did note then that I needed to be able to view the screen at eye level.

In a late note, we see on Electronista that there are reports on AppleTV (the black box thing) running dry. When this happens, it could be a prelude to a new or updated product.

And to end this section, we read on AppleInsider (and others) that Steve Jobs was awarded a posthumous Grammay award for "significant contributions, other than performance, to the field of recording". I guess iTunes might be called significant. Eddy Cue accepted the award on Jobs' behalf.

Half and half

On the same idea, what is wrong with the headline, "A Windows 8 tablet offers hope as potent iPad foe"? In my estimation the article by Brooke Crothers starts off on the wrong foot with the words, "Hope", and "foe", although potent also may need some adjustment. What many manufacturers (and pundits) are looking for is a sort of magic bullet: a new Holy Grail of tablet computing; when the battle (we will use their terminology: to hell with mixed metaphors) is over and won. Crothers is sure that Android is not going to do it, but there is always Microsoft -- hardly a knight in shining armour. But hope? Why would anyone need hope? It does or it doesn't.

In another wrong-footed item on CNET, Chris Matyszczyk asks, if Apple is so far ahead of the competition does it really need to put out an iPad 3? Apple will, because it can; and the alternative -- not creating an iPad 3 -- might be so negative in itself that there could be ongoing problems and criticism. Apple does not compare itself to the other companies, but does just what it thinks it needs to do. And if Cupertino thinks an iPad 3 (or 2S or 2X) is what is wanted, then that is what will be announced.

Both Crothers and Matyszczyk are asking the wrong questions.

There is a lot of reporting on patents that is coming thick and fast right now, especially concerning Samsung, Motorola and Apple, which is really about Google and Apple. One from Florian Mueller on Foss Patents stood out on Saturday concerning a motion that Apple has submitted in California concerning a license agreement that Motorola entered with Qualcomm. Mueller calls it an "antisuit lawsuit" and analyses the possible effects in a lengthy article which really is worthwhile reading through. It is pointless me summarising more as Mueller is so concise and his arguments so exact, that to attempt any reduction would just ruin it.

Other Matters

Bearing in mind the variance in signals that some users experience, the arrival of a spray on antenna might be some welcome news to some. Jamie Keene on The Verge reports that research company have come up with this interesting solution for weak signal areas which uses "thousands of nanocapacitors, which align themselves and act as a wireless antenna". As trees are a particular problem causing attenuation, as well as the concrete in buildings and carparks, this could be a quick and easy solution, especially in a situation where a short term network needs to be set up quickly. Reports that a tanker laden with the solution was headed for Phuket could not be confirmed.

Noting that (below) a number of public officials in Singapore have been arrested in an online vice ring down there, we also see that in the UK there have been more arrests in the ongoing investigation into phone hacking by newspapers. It started with the News of the World which was quickly shut down and we were told that is it: no more. All finished. But it is nowhere near finished with revelations suggesting that rather than an isolated few cases, the climate of collecting information using illegally hacked telephones was so widespread that it was considered the norm.

Not only are more newspapers owned by News Corporation involved, but his son may have committed perjury -- lying to the Leveson Inquiry, perhaps in the naive hope that it would all go away -- and other newspapers outside the group are probably involved. In the latest moves, David Stringer tells us on Huffington Post that five from the Sun were in custody as well as 39-year-old female employee at Britain's defense ministry, a 36-year-old male member of the armed forces and a 39-year-old serving police officer with Surrey Police. And Murdoch was so concerned, he hopped on a plane and went to London. Despite a denial a while back, I still think that the Corp will now seriously reconsider hiving off the UK operation while it still can. Commentators tell us Murdoch is totally in control of the organisation: well either he is or he isn't.

One of the most viewed videos this week on the internet is the father who shot his daughter's notebook computer with a revolver. It was on many sources, but I looked at the report by Matt Brian on The Next Web. Clearly the father is disturbed by his daughter and her contempt for all around her. Having fixed her computer the day before, he is doubly hurt by the deceit with which she posted a letter (which he reads out and comments on) that was not meant for his eyes. She posted it to the dog as well as her friends and the father read the dog's Facebook page. He is agitated (the father, not the dog) by her behaviour and needs some way to bring it all home to her, so decides to execute the notebook on which she had written (and posted) the letter. Rough justice sure, but this is one parent's solution and worth viewing, whatever one thinks of the action.

Local Items

In a press release, SingTel is reporting revenue growth as Singapore and Australia especially deliver strong performances, but a 10% decline in profits with acquisition costs and weaker contributions from India.

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.