By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

Apple Stuff

While there have been a number of reviews (we had one from Jason Snell on Wednesday's Cassandra) the two I had been waiting for were from Anand Tech and the iFixit teardown.

The report -- not a full review -- from Anand Tech has the usual excellent detailed analysis and comparisons with other machines in the same group. This is interesting in terms of the levels of black for example (important for graphics work) which has the new Mac not quite the best (Razer Blade) but pretty near. There are several good images in the report. The full analysis is reserved for later and that is going to be interesting.

As ever, iFixit acquired a new MacBook Pro with the Retina display and did a tear down within hours. There is good news and bad news. The good is in the design: I was in awe (up to a point) when I saw the new computer on the video as it was a clear statement of the thought that goes into a Mac's design. When I had the G5 Power Mac at my house a few years back on test for a couple of weeks, a friend commented on how well organised and tidy it was inside -- where users do not usually look -- compared to a PC which is (my Thai friend said) like spaghetti.

The MacBook Pro keeps up with that with a beautiful layout of the components: this almost a Jony Ives' trademark. iFixit breaks this down and we can see how each part is carefully matched with the rest. Beautiful as it is, iFixit hates the thing as there is almost nothing that can be replaced. It needs a special screwdriver just to remove the bottom.

It gets worse. RAM is not upgradable. Order at purchase (at Apple's prices) or go without. Going from the standard 8GB to 16GB will cost you 6,560 baht for both models of the retina display notebook. And upgrading the solid state drive is not an option for the 256 GB version.

The battery cannot be replaced by a user (in basic terms) and the display assembly is a one-piece unit that would need to be replaced in its entirety. iFixit were rather critical of the approach taken here. If there is something wrong it goes to the shop and the user will probably be given a refurb as happens with (say) a broken screen on an iPhone: don't fix, replace.

It makes it easier in manufacture to assemble a quality product, but computers do go wrong. With the way warranty work is carried out here the agent has to wait for a go-ahead from Apple which could take several days and many people cannot afford to be without their machines for that sort of time. iFixit concludes, "Despite its dismal repair score, there's much to be excited about here beyond the Retina display: new ports, an asymmetrical fan, and a Samsung flash memory SSD. Oh, and the screws are replaceable." They call it the least repairable laptop ever.

Some people are already not happy by the approach that Apple is taking here (and possibly for more hardware in the future) and are beginning to write about this as a real negative against Cupertino. I probably would not have this computer for the simple reason of cost, but the iFixit strip down revelations have me less interested in saving up and pushing my finances over the limit: I really can do without this (otherwise) desirable computer. A useful consideration of what has now been find has been written by Richard Gaywood on TUAW and he doesn't like this one bit. His argument is well thought out and will appeal to many buyers who are having doubts about this. It is negative towards Apple but in a properly balanced way without having to resort to ridicule or economy with the truth.

There are some who just should not be let loose in tech and this was brought to my attention this week with a number of important links (The Loop, Daring Fireball and others) to an article -- heavily rewritten by the time I saw it -- by Clint Boulton on Wall Street Journal who claimed that the Retina display would mean more bandwidth use. The reaction was swift and the article now begins with a correction, itself not much better. But what is interesting is the reaction of readers (up to 1079 comments Tuesday evening) who are highly critical of what he had written, mainly because it was wrong (turn off wifi on a Retina display iPad and see how much bandwidth it uses) but also because it used a single and unreliable source, and a reference to a previous telling by experts on the iPad was a link to his own item. Fancy the Wall Street Journal putting something like this out, but then Fortune had Rob Enderle a couple of weeks ago.

The Wall Street Journal used to have a solid name about it, but like the Times of London and a number of other titles all round the world, once the old ownership has gone, the new ownership (in both these cases News Corp) are no longer interested in integrity (other than their own), but in sales, in hits, in the idea that "tits and bums sell news", such as happened to the Daily Herald an interesting left wing broadsheet that was brought into the Murdoch fold, had the name changed to The Sun, went tabloid and took most of the rest of British journalism into the gutter with it.

Online journalism is something altogether different and it is really easy to get hits just by rewording the work of others, but sometimes the reworkers may have an agenda. Speak for Yourself is a quite popular and useful speech recognition app, but recently it was pulled from the App Store due to lawsuits pending, even though the developers deny that they have used patents wrongly. Allyson Kazmucha reports on iMore about this and gives some useful background on the app and the development of the lawsuit leading to the app being pulled (although it still works on the iPads it is installed on). The patent owners allege that over 100 patents are being infringed on and have requested that Apple remove the app while litigation is pending [my italics].

Now let's head over to a report on the same software and the same family that is by Anna Leach on The Register with the headline, "Apple silences mute kids' speech app in patent blowup" and sub-heading, "iThing maker plays judge, jury and executioner" which does not quite match with the facts as reported by Ms Kazmucha (above). Indeed, what is missing in Leach's attempt at garnering hits is the point that Apple was asked to pull the app by the patent holders. Instead we are told, ". . . Apple pulled the under-fire app from its online store earlier this month" although a little later the point that Apple was under some pressure is made in a quote from the developer, not by Leach.

If Apple did not remove the app from the store (not from the device, note) it could also be liable for any damages.

The MacBook Air also received a quite hefty makeover inside with some much beefier processing power from its Intel 22-nanometer Ivy Bridge processor with improved graphics handling (Phil Schiller mentioned "60 percent faster graphics" on more than one occasion). Brooke Crothers reports on the iFixit teardown that found a Core i5-3427U 1.8GHz chip and Intel's HD 4000 graphics as well as the asymmetrical fan that was highlighted in the new MacBook Pro. The MBA also has the new MAgSafe 2 connector.

Both the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air have the new asymmetrical fans that are a clever solution to noise. In the video I saw, Ives spoke about this and the Apple information (via Brooke Crothers) tells us that "In most fans, the blades are positioned symmetrically, which creates a single identifiable frequency. We positioned ours asymmetrically to spread the sound over a variety of frequencies, which makes it seem quieter". Fiendishly clever, eh?

As with many computers the MacBook Air had an update just after its release MacNN reports, as did the new MacBook Pro that improves graphics stability, SSD performance and external display support. The MBA update also improves flash drive performance.

To make the best of your software, the applications have to be updated and Frederic Lardinois reports on Tech Crunch that Google is to update Chrome, but he also mentions that Adobe and Autodesk (Photoshop and AutoCad) updates are in the pipeline, with Google already pushing out some updated code.

While Apple made a few announcements on Monday concerning the next update to OS X 10.8, Mountain Lion, and a couple of discoveries were made by the time of Cassandra on Wednesday, there is a whole list of new features coming. Michael Grothaus lists some of these in an item on TUAW with brief explanations and a link to a larger list from Apple.

One of my disappointments -- not that I have ever used it -- is the removal of the XGrid enabler (in Sharing preferences) from the list of features we know about so far in Mountain Lion, Electronista reports. As a lot of university projects and research uses this ad hoc networking tool to share computing resources and the Electronista article has a good description of how this would work. I hope that Apple decides to put it back in for the final release.

If a new version of OS X is coming (sometime next month) it might be a good idea to begin the cleanup processes. No matter what you may think about how your computer runs and your expertise, there is usually always something wrong under the surface and a new installation is just the right time to test the computer to it utmost, which is why after a new OS X or upgrade I look for the first uttering of "Apple this is the worst upgrade ever" which it may well have been for the particular user. If the computer is in good condition and the operating system properly maintained, problems will be few (if any). Seven Sande on TUAW has some suggestions along the lines of what we might do and tells of an ebook that Erica Sadun has produced ($4.99) in an article that outlines some things we should think about like disk usage, emptying the trash (and the trash of certain apps, like iPhoto or Aperture) and making adjustments to storage use.

Part of the backup process may also include the Address Book -- essential information for most of us -- and Paul Horowitz on OS X Daily details a couple of ways this can be done.

A side note here was reported this week by John von Radowitz on The Independent. As a coincidence the Mountain Lion (or Cougar) is making a real life comeback in the wild although this is probably nothing to do with Apple.

Along with the new features in OS X there is an equally large list of new goodies in iOS 6, although not all will be available for older iPhones; and we can kiss goodbye to the iPad 1 (iOS 5 will still work on that). Simon Sage on iMore has a list of features that will knock your socks off.

We should not forget that as well as the iPhone, iOS 6 will be coming to the iPad although with a slightly different feature set. Jane Zarobsky on Today's iPhone (a new source to me) has had a hands-on look and reports on what we should expect for the larger iOS device.

A lot of people with iPhones whom I know, use the Emoji icons when messaging. John Biggs reports on Tech Crunch that in iOS 6 Apple will be including some icons depicting gay and lesbian couples as well as a number of other new icons.

Over the last year or so, there have been many novel uses for the iPad -- by airlines, medical staff, in teaching, as a teleprompter -- but this week we read in an item by Steven Sande on TUAW about a police department that uses the iPad (and the iPhone) as a device to issue tickets. Data is entered directly onto the iOS device and printed (on a Zebra mobile printer) with the data being sent to a server. I somehow could not imagine such a solution here, when the usual answer may end up with no real ticket being issued, I am told.

A significant move this week from Time as the company has finally decided to allow its titles to be available in the iOS Newsstand Josh Ong reports on AppleInsider. Titles include People, Sports Illustrated, InStyle and Entertainment Weekly.

There have been many stories about the successes of the iPad in education -- almost as many as those concerning Thailand's tablet program for school kids which is having more setbacks this week. Jon Takiff on Philly dot com reports on a really succesful program at the Philadelphia Performing Arts Charter School where each child had an iPad at the start of the school year. I don't think the program in Thailand will have the same student reactions. My link for this story was from MacDaily News.

The Thunderbolt update that was reported to be causing crashes on some Macs has been pulled by Apple, MacNN reports. Unusual in the extreme, expect another update soon.

Half and Half

Reddit is a social news website which exists to have links to other content posted and the link is then voted up or down by the users. Well, that is the way it is supposed to work but as other sites have found, some people cheat. So Reddit has taken a brave step and banned several notable publications (including the Atlantic) from the postings Alex Wilhelm reports and he also explains why the site has taken this action. This may well hurt as the higher the listing means the more people visit the site that is linked: no listing, no visits from the direction of Reddit and probably lower revenue too.

Other Matters

I was also amused to see that an Australian online dealer in electronics has decided to "tax" those users who still use IE7 because the use of older technology costs the site owner money to make it look right in the older browser. Jeff Blagdon reports that there is no charge if potential buyers use other more up to date browsers. This is not really Microsoft's fault as it has encouraged the move to IE8, but those Windows users are reluctant to change what they know. I know some people are still on iE6, while you can still find some pages that claim that the site renders best in IE5.

Nokia has slimmed down just a bit more (a lot more really) with the announcement that another 10,000 jobs are to be axed, including a massive number of 3 executives, but despite claiming it is focussed on smartphones it is selling Vertu, but buying into a company called Scalado, "a Swedish imaging company that provides technology on more than 1 billion devices" Matt Brian reports on TNW. Can I smell patents in that deal?

Way to go Stephen Elop, your leadership since stepping up to the plate has been a lesson for us all and we are sure it is only a matter of time that the company will have shrunk enough to have to consider a merger with a large corporation (say Microsoft) as the only way to maintain the integrity of Nokia in the handset field.

As a note, on Tech Crunch Ingrid Lundgren reports on Thursday evening that Nokia stock is down by another 10% (get ready Redmond).

The UK is living up (or down) to its reputation as a real life Airstrip One with its phenomenal number of CCTV installations: in the small market town my parents live in, I was surrounded by them in the small central Market Square. But the government wants to go further and we were told a while back that email snooping was so necessary for the good of us all. After a huge outcry about this, the Tory government went into reverse gear, but now Nigel Morris reports for the Independent, the Minister responsible, Theresa May, is in full hand-wringing mode because "the moves are essential to keep pace with criminals using new forms of communication". Wait a minute, email isn't new. . . .

Apparently there are proposals "to give police and security services sweeping new powers to monitor phone, email and internet use." Rightly the protests focus on the idea that random trawling is a lazy way to find information and a proper focus on real criminals might produce more tangible results. It gets worse as -- perhaps as a way to reduce costs -- the government are to make the ISPs responsible for the monitoring. Justification: "unless the new powers are brought in almost a third of terrorist plots and paedophile rings will soon be beyond detection." Focus dears, focus. Not random fishing on 100% of the population to track fewer than 1% of such criminality.

The life of the man who was responsible as much as anyone else for the creation of the analytical computer, Alan Turing and who was later so shockingly treated by those whom he probably saved, is being shown in an exhibition in London. Matilda Battersby on the Independent has a look at Turing and what he did in an article that hs some interesting input by those who knew him

My Raspberry Pi arrived in time for WWDC and the start of semester: three days teaching and a speech welcoming a party from Seoul National University with some rather generous scholarships for our students. I did grab some time on Wednesday evening but failed to install Debian on the SD card I am using, probably because it is formatted for the Nikon camera. Not that there are any instructions about this, but I will try FAT 32 next as that seems more logical given the history of Linux.

Local Items

Late News

Facebook is to ask for phone numbers and pin numbers. Over the next few days, John Constine reports on Tech Crunch, Facebook will be putting some more details about security processes for retrieving an account if the password is lost and about scams. This will be on Facebook itself and not in an email. With the phone number, a new PIN could be sent quickly via SMS.

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.