By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

Apple Stuff

The advertising service that Apple hoped would take much revenue from Google, iAd, has had a number of setbacks in the last year or so, and it has not worked as Apple intended. There have been a couple of shake-ups and some heads have rolled. This may be continuing as, iPodNN reports, Mike Owen, senior manager of the iAd New York office, is resigning, making three departures in less than a year.

One of the little snippets out of WWDC concerning iOS 6 is that it will work with the national alerts program, Roger Cheng reports. That is of course one of the many US-centric features, but it would not be a stretch to make the links work with other governments' warning systems if those administrations were interested.

While I do not jailbreak my iPhones I am aware that lots do. AppleBitch had an item on Saturday about a way for those not in the Developer program to run the iOS 6 beta. It may be quite easy as a local teenager sent me some screen shots of iOS 6 that he had put on his phone by Friday morning.

There have been a number of articles about the new MacBook Pro with the retina display and we should start with the one by Stephen Dean as it is so nice to see the Register being objective and not taking cheap pot shots. Dean was fairly positive, especially about battery life and apart from a couple of small niggles is happy with this.

Last week Cassandra carried a link to the iFixit teardown of the new MacBook Pro and their less than happy comments concerning its repairability. I had to agree as the new design also means that even a simple swap of memory is not possible, so there is no upgrading a few months down the line. Unless you have the right screwdrivers, there is no way to get in anyway, and Apple doesn't sell them to everyone. On Sunday I was attracted to an article by Devin Coldewey on Tech Crunch who looked at the way things work and analyzes the way things are repaired. For example we do not repair a hard disk, we buy a new one. 50 years ago, we would repair the components of our (admittedly simpler) devices. But even then, as a kid I could replace a valve (pre-transistor) but no one was expected to repair this (or a light bulb come to that).

As devices have become more sophisticated, especially circuitry which has become miniaturized, their repair is better left to experts and Apple uses specialist suppliers for its components, so the new developments become less and less repairable. Coldewey has a good argument here and while I might take along an old Mac to the repair shop I know, would I want my Retina display MacBook Pro (if I had one) to be fixed in the same way: the components on the two mother boards are very different. He argues that hardware control is not the important factor here and replacement is the new way to go, but extends this to look at the real forms of control to stop us using the computers the way we want.

As an aside, Coldewey mentioned in his intro the Mechanical Turk which I was not aware of: a scam that purported to be a chess-playing automaton. As a quick way in, I read the lengthy Wikipedia item on this.

On Monday morning I also found an item by Matthew Panzarino on TNW makes a similar argument: the desirability of repair, but the inevitability of progress and technological evolution.

What would Apple be without rumours, and having got the 15" Retina display Mac out of the door, it is logical to expect a 13" version. AppleBitch reports on just such a rumour and the device is expected in October.

Another rumour concerns the iPhone and a patent that was filed by Apple recently concerning swappable parts on the device: with lenses being a top favourite here. While the patent-filing diagram in the article from iPodNN looks like an iPhone, this is not confirmed. One of the reasons I bought the olloclip lenses was that the unit just slides over the phone and is easily removed. These are now on sale in Siam Discovery.

Another patent concerns what are called radial style menus and this has been files in Korea, Patently Apple reports. According to the description it is an easier way to manage menus rather than the traditional pull down list. The diagrams make it more obvious, but as I read this the idea reminded me of the interesting menu system that was put together for Stephen Fry's app/book which I wrote about in May 2010 on the now-gone AMITIAE site:

myFry is an app that brings together a large number of essays by the British celebrity, Stephen Fry. Rather than a linear approach that normal books have, myFry uses a circular navigation tool so that readers may dip into the themes as the mood takes them. Fry's style may not suit everyone, but the developer here produced an interesting concept that other writers or groups might make use of as the iPad encourages that sort of pecking and sniffing as the mood takes us. It is a shame this was only released in iPhone size as this would work even better on the iPad.

One of the concerns about anyone using a mobile device is battery life and OS X Daily put me on to a useful battery reporting app called Carat. I installed this but as yet there are no reports as it takes a couple of days to build up a picture: encouraging. I may write about this myself later in the week.

We are used to Apple being sued for all manner of petty things, as well as some serious ones too. Electronista reports the tale of a man (a lawyer actually -- surprise) from Canada who is suing Apple up there because his 3-year old Time Capsule (Time Machine with wifi) failed and he lost data. Inside Time Capsule is a hard disk. Hard disks fail. If you have a single hard disk as your sole backup (I know many with no backup at all, but that is another story) then stuff happens and out of warranty, you are on your own. He did get some help, but the data was unretrievable. And then his iPhone failed (a connection here?).

Podcast News

I started looking for some new software that will prepare the RSS feed that is (for me) the hardest part of the process. I have the entry on iTunes; the microphone was rescued when the Navy came to get me out of the house (a pity about the soaked iPhone); GarageBand is all set up; and I certainly have enough information with the Cassandra columns. I will be looking at some software this weekend.

Then Saturday morning there was one of those lovely coincidences that prove to me that sometimes I am on the right track: lots of online articles about a new podcast app in iOS 6. This is not for making them, but for discovery. ANyone who has tried to find a new podcast in the current iTunes on the iPhone will empathise. It is not too bad if there is a podcast already subscribed to, although "More" can take a while and needs some juggling between windows. Finding and subscribing to new ones? No.

This is expected to change and a number of articles comment on this, for example:

• All Things Digital - Peter Kafka
• Drew Olanoff on TNW
• An iPodNN article

One of those I read carefully was the one by Drew Olanoff who makes a critical point about the name, "podcast" and wonders if it is not time to change this as, he writes, using the word needs it to be explained, so this is not as clear as should be.

As a test run, I put together a podcast of just over 20 minutes that is shown in the iTunes store, and can be subscribed to by using www.extensions.in.th/postpod/extensions.xml in the Advanced menu of iTunes, or you may link to the Podcast text page where the sound file should load automatically.

Half and Half

I ama recent convert to Dropbox as the useful integration of this with WriteRoom had me signing up right away. I can put files on the computer at home and they appear on the office iMac; or using WriteRoom I can have texts on all the Macs and the iOS devices. There are expected to be some changes and one of these, Aaron Souppouris reports, is that the Public folder will no longer be available for new users: instead they can provide a URL link for a downloadable file. Electronista also reports on an update to the Dropbox iOS app as well as other apps (Temple Run: Brave, iTunes Connect). I just realised that although I have it on the Mac, I do not have Dropbox for the iOS devices. We soon fixed that.

I love it when things improve so much they no longer work. As many are aware, Skype was bought by Microsoft (for a hefty price too) and it seems as if Redmond has begun to improve things. Not that I was notified that there was an update as I had in the past, but I knew one was available, so went looking. Sure, downloading now. Only a few minutes later it was ready to install. It used to be a "Quit Now" button, but this is changed. I pressed the button to let the process take place and both times I tried was informed that the upgrade could not take place as the file could not be over-written.

As this is a normal process for any upgrade I am locked into a frustrating loop. The application needs to run for the download process to occur, but it is unable to install the upgrade as it cannot over-write as the app is running. Does that make sense? Of course not. Instead of the convenience of the past, I had to visit the site, access the downloads page. Download the version offered then copy the unzipped file to the applications folder, but that would not work as a PLIST file was in use. I deleted the old version (now damaged because of what I had done), moved the new version to the Applications folder and entered the Admin password to gain authorisation. Thanks Microsoft, this used to be so easy.

Other Matters

Rumours appearing over the weekend suggest that Barnes & Noble may be involved and Peter Ha on Tech Crunch (among others) suggests that this could be a tablet with Xbox live streaming which seems to me to be shoehorning unlike media into the same device, rather than a holistic solution. We shall see.

Related (perhaps) is the news that Nokia's junk rating has now been confirmed by three rating agencies Standard & Poor, Fitch, and Moody. Mikey Campbell on AppleInsider reports that Nokia stock fell more than 18% last week after the news that a poor outlook is expected.

So if there was knowledge at Nokia last week that there was to be an announcement on Monday, why is the forecast dismal? Or was the announcement something cobbled together after the forecast and that Nokia is to be folded into Redmond? Scott Lowe on The Verge in an updated article suggests that this is to be about US availability of the 808 PureView: too little, too late?

More Microsoft news concerns a deal it has done with Yahoo! -- to buy most of its patents, Adi Robertson reports on The Verge. Some may remember that when Microsoft started sniffing around Yahoo! a year or two back, the anguish that resulted over an on-again-off-again sale of the company began a chain-reaction that resulted in the ouster of founder Jerry Yang. Subsequent CEOs have done no better. Now maybe Microsoft has what it was always after and the carcass of Yahoo! will be laid to rest, although Yahoo! is still stirring.

Some political input from Brendan Sasso on The Hill tells us that the US Commerce Department is to examine privacy issues related to mobile phones. There are discussions between consumer groups, advertisers and Web companies to develop voluntary industry codes of conduct to protect users' privacy and apps will be examined. This is rich: on the one hand, the government tries to protect privacy while on the other the FBI and DEA (along with Canada and the UK) are crying out for more ways to access users' transmissions.

We reported not so, long ago the sad news that HP was having to retrench and as part of this 27,000 staff had to go. Paul Kunert on the Register is reporting that it looks possible that HP may be about top hire 15,000 people in India. All very nice for those in the sub-continent but, while this is not being confirmed as yet by HP, it reeks of Janus-like corporate actions and in the light of political criticisms of Apple for not bringing jobs into the US, could be a PR disaster for Meg Ryan.

While things are changing (sort of) at RIM, although the movement is still tending in the downward direction, Don Reisinger reports that -- like many executives ousted or otherwise leaving companies with difficulties -- the two who built the company up and then were responsible for its decline still got golden parachutes to the tune of several million dollars each.

Local Items

That will be a novelty with the way FairPlay works: Grammy used to have a root-kit on their music CDs following the example of Sony. I found this when a friend said he had trouble putting the music on his Mac.

Users of iPhones in some parts of Singapore are able to report problems such as illegal parking or fire hazards to the town council using an app developed for the purpose and they can follow up using the app as well. More apps are coming, Janice Tai reports on the Straits Times.

Apart from the massive bandwidth that would be used here to report the number of such problems, the follow-up feature would also be a waste of time as the norm is for nothing to happen.

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.