By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

Apple Stuff

Don Reisinger writing on eWeek gives readers the Top 10 reasons why Tim Cook is a top-notch CEO, almost all of which have appeared here in some form or another -- probably while contradicting Enderle -- in the last few months. It actually seems to me that part of the reason many had for trying to sow doubt about Cook was their intent to talk the share price down: any senators interested in looking at this?

That mention of senators is well placed as following up his recent face to face with John Boehner, Cook has been a-wooing in Washington again recently. Dara Kerr mentions Cook and the Speaker earlier in the month, but adds that while there he also met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Nancy Pelosi was out in Afghanistan at the time. This sort of meeting is part of the new broom at Apple and should be reason number 11 for Cook being top-notch.

You have probably missed it now, but on Tuesday evening, Tim Cook was to talk at the D10 conference, starting 6pm Cupertino time which is 0800 here (Wednesday) so if I am quick, and you are quick, the link for a live blog is on the same page as the article by Josh Lowensohn. <---- CLICK HERE....

The conference appearance is not going to be streamed live so the blogging is the only source available. I expect certain parts (if not all) will be available by video later as they have been in other years.

News on the maps for iOS 6 this week with a leaked image all but confirming the arrival of 3D displays according to Jonathan S. Geller on BGR. My link for this was MacDaily News.

We are told by Katie Marsal on AppleInsider that the schedule for the WWDC in June is now available and that there is a WWDC App for the conference. It is available on the iTunes store here, but will need the specific ID for conference attendees to work. The keynote presentation will be on Monday 11 June at 10:00 Cupertino time. That will be late evening here, and is also the first day of the new semester where I work.

There were several reports this week, including one by Jeff Gamet on the MacObserver, that Apple is rejecting apps that use the Flattr system for making payments as it violates the terms. There are also rumours that Apple is to bring payment systems to iOS devices. Developers and Apple are in talks to try and resolve things.

Apple is so good that they should throw open the doors of the crystal prison and let everyone have free access to all parts of the hardware and software, says the Electronic Frontier Foundation as Apple users are under threat from a tyranny of excellence we are told by Bryan Chaffin on The MacObserver who argues strongly against this approach by the EFF who as he reminds us are usually a force for good but look as if they have backed themselves into a corner by (perhaps) misunderstanding something that Steve Wozniak said. This is like an electronic Greenpeace. Read Bryan's article for sure.

But surely, users have been tinkering with their Macs and iPhones since they came into being.

I am not sure if this is good news, or bad news. According to Katie Marsal on AppleInsider, demand for the upcoming MacBook Pro (which has not been announced yet) is so high that the suppliers cannot keep up. Let me read that again: a product that may be coming in a month or so, has such anticipated demand that the manufacturers cannot keep up. OK? This may actually refer to the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, but even so, people don't use Macs, isn't that right? Except that, "in January [Apple] reported total sales of 12.87 million notebook systems during calendar year 2011".

While I don't usually bother, there are some who need certain files encrypted. An example might be a developer working on a new project that could cause a major financial loss if the details fell into the hands of competitors. There are also those who are obsessively secretive and those whose image collections may need hiding from prying eyes (not me for sure, in case anyone was wondering). It is possible to compress the whole lot into a DMG file and use a password, and there are secure ZIP files too as well as PGP which is now owned by Symantec. They have a version of the PGP Viewer for the iPad too. This week Cody Fink, writing on MacStories detailed Espionage 3: an encryption program that he describes as "effortless" which is available on the Mac App Store too ($9.99).

I started Skype on Monday and version 5 was polite enough to let me know that in future, it will make all updates automatically for me. Not a chance, especially as Skype is now part of the Microsoft empire. I went to preferences and disabled that right away. That should be opt-in, not opt-out. It also wanted me to connect to Facebook: what and have everyone on there call me. Declined. I may go back to a real phone if they keep improving Skype. And who on earth is monicahairextensions? A missed call from someone I don't think I want to know.

Apple Stuff - Local Flavour

• Lightroom 4 Multiple platform Asia Pac English Retail - 5,800 baht
• Lightroom 4 Multiple platform Asia Pac English Upgrade - 3,700 baht

There was VAT of 7% on top of that with a total price of 10,165 baht (when he would only want one of the two). Delivery was 2 - 3 weeks.

As I said to him: online downloads work for me. More details about this and some additional comments are available in the article I wrote about buying Adobe Lightroom in Bangkok.

As a sort of contrast this week, I went into .Life (dot Life), an accessories shop in Siam Paragon run by Copperwired where I had bought a Bluetooth keyboard cover for the iPad as I wanted to ask about a stylus for the iPad. The same young man who served me before was immediately with me when I asked and walked me over to the right section. He indicated the two shelf sections where the styluses were and then backed away, leaving me to examine them at my leisure. Anyone who has simply tried to look at shirts (for example) in a Bangkok department store, will know how different this was. The nicely designed business card they have shows there is a presence on Facebook.

One of my colleagues at work has a G4 iBook: the white polycarbonate thing. I installed OS X for her last year and a few days ago she told me it had all gone dead and would not start. She was all ready to send it to the scrap heap but I have an aversion to that: if a computer is running, it can be used for some tasks, even if the OS version is out of date. I did suspect, however that the hard disk might be on its way out, but asked if she would let me have a look.

With a bit of luck (and there was something I cannot explain) I managed to get it all up and running again. You can read about how I went about in in the article I wrote about the repair of the iBook.

Half and Half

Other Matters

While we are on Facebook, I gave a groan when I checked the email on Tuesday morning and saw one of the familiar notifications from ECT News Network and the headline, "Facebook is a fraud". The writer is our sour old friend, Rob Enderle who is late to the party again and is singing the same old song. Tim Cook last month, Zuckerberg this month. Move along please, these are not the droids you want. Enderle uses information that has been on many other sources to fuel his "feelings", calling the IPO a "fraud" and as usual ends the article with a product: "what may be the best cellphone deal on the planet" although he talks that back a bit. The fraud may not be Facebook.

Sometimes I am just dumbfounded by the way certain companies think they are above the law. We were informed this week by Mary Jo Foley, that for certain products, an amendment to the EULA (end user licence agreement) that everyone clicks on but almost no one reads, by Microsoft now makes it impossible for the company to be sued in a class-action lawsuit. Not only can they do this, but the Supreme Court on one of its screw consumers days, also said that this is OK. Small claims only guys. Small minds.

Last time we mentioned the loss of an exec from RIM (see Late News) and the report that several thousand jobs were to go. We wrote 2,000 but some reports are now putting this far higher (e. g. Financial Post). And then on Monday I saw on an RSS feed that RIM's Chief Legal Officer was off and I thought: What, another one? Which is just how Chris Velazco on Tech Crunch started his report: "there goes another one." However, this departure had been planned for a while; it just happened at a lousy time. Is there anything left?

As a note, I saw that the Blackberry shop in Siam Paragon was just slightly busier than the Nokia shop on Tuesday which had two customers when I went by.

Also expecting to announce layoffs is Panasonic, Don Reisinger reports with some 50% of the staff at its HQ (3,500 people) likely to go.

It was good to see that the former CEO of Olympus settled with the company for unfair dismissal. He had asked for $60 million after a few days of arriving at the company he blew the whistle on the major frauds taking place there, but has settled for $10 million according to the BBC news report I watched. Ah, but everyone knows and there has been much face lost by the company: that is his satisfaction. And the fact that he was right.

Among the many anniversaries we read about on Huffington Post is news that 50 years ago saw the formation of the Rolling Stones. I discovered them a year later at my 13th birthday party when one of my friends brought the first album. Shock and awe. Shock and awe. I went out on the Monday and bought my own.

A few years ago I wrote a series of articles for the Post on the Echelon surveillance system that was put together by the US and some tame allies. I keep having to remind myself that these are still online: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

One of the points about this system and others is that it needs to search through millions of bytes of data every second, so cannot read everything. Instead, as has been the case since email was first used, keywords are used as criteria to flag messages and then examine further. Alex Wilhelm reports on The Next Web that a complete list of these words has now been put together and although a note allows anyone to copy/paste/use I will decline and provide a link.

It is quite a list including "police" -- heavens anyone might use that in a message (police, police, police, police, police, police, police) -- plume, so we must not write about feathers; virus, so malware discussion is out (PC owners only of course); sick -- that's sick, you are sick, I'm off sick today -- Metro so the French will be out of luck and so will owners of old British Leyland cars; subway, so no large sandwiches; as well as Black out, Brown out, Port, Dock, Bridge, Cancelled, Delays, Service disruption or Power lines, many of which I might use when talking about my Internet Service provider.

Talking of which. . . .

Local Items

True led by Mrs. Rungfa Kiatipoj, Director of Brand Management and Brands Communications and her team celebrated being named in 2 Awards of the Trusted Brand 2012; Platinum Award Winner in the category of Internet Operator and Gold Award Winner in the category of Phone Services (Fixed line/Mobile) from Reader's Digest (Thailand) at the Reader's Digest Asia Trusted Brands 2012 Award Ceremony at the Conrad Bangkok Hotel. [sic]

Achieving Trusted Brand status is genuine recognition of approval by consumers and Reader's Digest readers who name their most trusted brand in each of the product categories. The survey has been done among consumers and readers in 8 countries in Asia; Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, India, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, and the Philippines.

Whoever would have believed it? I suspect this was a survey limited to Readers Digest subscribers and they never asked me or anyone I know who certainly would not place True anywhere near the top of a trusted brands list. Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics?

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.