By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit

Higgs Boson

Apple Stuff

A little more realistically, at least for the time being, the iMac is also be rumoured to be having a makeover of some sort, and it is no surprise to see that supplies of the 27" version are drying up on 3rd party sites. AppleInsider reports that the Ivy Bridge update is expected real soon now noting that the iMac is popular for schools use and it is already July now. I take that to infer that we could be seeing new models by the end of the month, and how about that, as I mentioned on Wednesday, Apple has its third Quarter 2012 financial conference call report on 24 July. With Lion also expected this month -- some said 17 - 19 July, others 25 July, this could be a busy month end.

To add to the above, AppleBitch suggests that a new iWork update could be coming soon. As there are to be new iCloud features and proper synchronisation using this on the Mac and iOS devices (currently iCloud and iOS) this is sort of expected and could coincide with the shutdown of iWork.com -- at the end of July.

In the meantime, as if to contradict the ideas of some critics, that the iPad is not a device for content creation I was interested to see a lengthy review by Lukas Hemming of the iPad and some software that is available for making music. He of course looks a Garage Band. He has Korg, but only has the Moog synthesizer app as a brief mention and without a link. But, my word, he does have a whole lot more.

A rumour this week, as reported by Josh Ong on AppeInsider suggested that Apple is to have a minor update to the current iPad soon, with changes to the battery and the lens hole. I have not noticed any serious overheating on my iPad but this is one of the reasons for a change. This could also make the iPad thinner. The report notes that this is from DigiTimes and we should be wary of news from this source.

Having paid off Proview, the gates are opening bit by bit in China where some may be hoping for a quick kill. On Wednesday, I mentioned the Snow Leopard claim from a company that makes household products and opined that this is in a different field from Apple, so the chance of a trademark violation looked thin. However, Julie Kuehl adding to the story reports that "Xuebao touchscreen ad display" and "Xuebao mobile EPR software", are products, so this may have a little more strength to it, despite the modest $80,000 they want.

Then on Tuesday another, larger claim appeared in Shanghai over Siri, and this time the asking price is $60 million, Phil Muncaster reports on The Register, telling us that Zhizhen Network Technology claims it has a patent for "a type of instant messaging chat bot system" called Xiaoi Bot approved in China in early 2006. . . ."

There were some problems at the App Stores this week when apparently some corrupt binary files caused several newly updated apps to crash when their users tried them. The problem was not limited to iOS apps only and some in the Mac App Store were affected. Josh Ong on AppleInsider has a report on how the discovery was made and what may have triggered it and later saw that Jon Russell on TNW also has information about this including a list of apps affected. I looked at that list and only had two of them. I knew that Phoster was updated on the iPhone on Thursday morning, but that did not crash, while SMARTReporter told me it needed to be updated when I ran it: but I held off on that.

When I found an updated app to download on Thursday evening, when I tried to fetch it, a panel appeared telling me that there was a problem, so I would guess such downloads are blocked for the moment while the problem is sorted. The cause is believed to be something with the DRM (digital rights management) software and the way it is not affecting me, suggests it is somewhat localised, although certainly widespread.

Overnight in a report on Tech Crunch, Sarah Perez reports that Apple has now confirmed it is working on a fix and there is some advice for developers: "Stay tuned for updates."

With users increasingly concerned about malware, there was news this morning from Agen G. N. Schmitz on TidBits about an update to ClamXav, the useful program for making checks about such nasty things (and more). I do have this and saw that it is version 2.1.1 so the update to version 2.3.1 which is Mountain Lion-ready will be downloaded later. If you are still running OS X 10.4 Tiger, this is not for you. This is free software, but I strongly urge a donation for the excellent work that has been done to create and maintain this.

Fortunes change, we are brutally aware, and while Microsoft may have had a 56:1 advantage over Apple in the mid-1990s, by 2004, there had been a change. Of course, Steve was back, the new Macs were arriving and OS X had hit the streets. And portable computing became hot as well. The ratio fell below 20:1, Horace Dediu reports on ASYMCO with another example of his widely cited research. Now, if all the devices are factored in, the advantage is 2:1 and the once-mighty Microsoft has lost its edge. This is far more serious than just dropping sales figures as the core of Redmond's sales are its OS and Office: if sales of these fall -- the platforms cease to exist and it has nothing. I can live with that.

Half and Half

I wonder who will be the first to try and sue Apple for allowing this in the store?

Apple has said that this has been removed from the App Store, but not from the search database as entering "Find and Call" in the search window brought up the name automatically there. This took me to a page of apps. One of these is "Find N Call" which is not the app in question although seems to have a similar function. The developer (Facebook contact only) is going to have to do some PR work, or a rename, to recover from fallout here although it is a free app and was last updated a year ago.

On his RSS feed Jim Dalrymple writes, "I hate Malware. I wonder if Apple will change the way it does app reviews now that someone found a way to get through the walled garden?"

You win some, you lose some, and while Apple is having a bit of success against Samsung in the USA, trying to combat patent law in the UK is not so easy and Zack Whitacker reports that a judge there threw out four European patent claims: three were invalid and the other was not infringed. So there. Electronista also has a report on the same striking down of the litigation.

In another decision that has not gone Apple's way, Kelly Hodgkins on TUAW reports that a judge in the bankruptcy courts has allowed Kodak to offer its patents for sale -- these are worth a lot to the company and may help in restructuring if they can raise the cash by using them. Apple had objected as it was in dispute with Kodak over some of them: the digital camera technology was jointly-developed and Apple wants its rightful part of these.

There has been much comment on the way that Apple has brought about the ban on Samsung imports of the Galaxy Nexus, but the Judge made the decision, not Apple, and she must have thought the case valid to have taken that step. Rene Ritchie has some comments on this and the anger of Samsung fans. He says they are right to be angry with Apple which I disagree with for the reasons above: if the patents are abused (see below) there is redress.

He goes further and also suggests that their real anger should be directed at Google (I agree with that bit). He writes, "it's easy to cast Apple, Microsoft, Oracle et. al. as the bad guys. They're giant, nasty for-profit corporations, after all. And fair enough. . . . But so is Google." He adds -- and this is the crux -- "Google had systematically and recklessly displayed such indifference to the intellectual property of others -- -- from huge corporations to private citizens, as to border on contempt."

Of course, the companies could licence the technology as Apple does when it needs to (or gets caught out, or caught) and an example I thought of was the standard 3.5mm headphone jack which I think was developed by Sony for the Walkman. Almost everyone used that connector -- although Apple now has a smaller version -- and a licence is paid to the original developer. I could not find that with the search I did, but instead found something that perhaps illustrates this better, in a patent filing for a headphone jack assembly (like a dock) that Motorola came up with. The inventors are shown and below all of the separate patents that are used in the device, like Motorola itself, Sony, Sega, Sharp, Sony, Nokia and others.

With any of the patents, if they are to be used, it is easy enough to make a request to the patent holder. In some cases there will be refusal, especially if the technology involved is flagship stuff and gives the owner a major market advantage: of course a company wants to capitalize on that. But other technology, like that headphone jack, like processors for wifi and Bluetooth (themselves IEEE standards and universal) are critical to the use of all devices in the class and so can be used if a licence is granted and that will probably also require some reasonable licensing fee, which is one of the ways in which Motorola (Google) fell foul by trying to charge an outrageous fee for a FRAND patent. The patent system could work if there were more cooperation.

The judge who dismissed the recent Apple-Motorola litigation has been making some strong comments about the need for so many patents, Sam Oliver reports on AppleInsider, particularly in the mobile phone industry. Richard Posner is known to be outspoken and is often cited. He was also recently critical of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia for bringing politics into his court pronouncements, bringing the neutrality of the Supreme Court into question. I was in the US when Scalia was appointed by Reagan and many critics said then that this would happen.

An interesting comment regarding the above on Google and patents comes from Chris Martin on PC Advisor who reports that Nokia are asserting a patent against technology used in the Nexus relating to 802.11 Wi-Fi. After outlining the problem -- and bear in mind what I wrote above -- Nokia is quoted as saying. "Companies who are not yet licensed under our standard essential patents should simply approach us and sign up for a license." Let me write that comment again, "The patent system could work if there were more cooperation."

It is interesting to me that less than two weeks after the iTunes Store expanded its use in this region and allowed downloads of music, the recording companies in Japan are to allow the removal of DRM on digital downloads. Jeff Blagdon has some useful information on this decision to completely do away with DRM: "backed by Victor (JVC), Avex Group, Warner Japan, and others, while EMI Japan and Universal Music will be taking a more measured approach".

Other Matters

An interesting tale from Jean-Louis Gasée -- former Apple man and a rather good commentator these days. In an interview, Matt Brian reports, he says that he had advised Stephen Elop while back that, yes Symbian had to go, but that Android was the real next step, but instead he was so linked to Windows both personally and ideologically, that the advice was ignored. Also in the interview he was fairly critical of both Elop and the way the board at Nokia constantly failed to rein him in, leading to a public mess. There are some other juicy points in the article.

When the Nexus was announced recently Google was shouting from the rooftops that it had only taken 4 months for them and Asus to develop the 2-year old design (bear with me) and that the Taiwanese tablet was AMERICAN MADE, in an an obvious dig at Apple. Now we read in an item by Jeff Blagdon that iFixit has had its hands (belatedly) on the device and the strip down reveals some interesting non-American components. If only those who shout loudest would realise that these days any technological development requires some international cooperation: look what they did at CERN (and I wasn't going to mention that again).

I mentioned earlier in the week the first noises that Vanity fair was to run a rather damning article on Microsoft and Ballmer in the August edition. It has arrived and I had a look at the item by Kurt Eichenwald but this seems to be only a summary. More for subscribers I expect.

There were reports of Facebook doing nasty things to users; address books earlier in the week and I wondered then how this would play out. According to Bill Ray on The Register, Facebook have put their hands up to this: mea culpa. They admit that "A bug in the Facebook contacts API caused the mobile client to download and save the most recently added email address, rather than the account default," and it should be fixed by the time you read this.

Local Items

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.