By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

Apple Stuff

Although he died several months ago, there is still an effect from the input Steve Jobs had on the computer industry. AppleInsider reports that for the August issue, Wired has a major story on the former Apple CEO and the effect he still has on tech leaders in terms of his management style.

With the OS X update due, if you are intending to install this (as I am) then it is a good idea to carry out some basic maintenance before the download. I would also suggest restarting the Mac a couple of times and if you do not have data backed up, you are asking for trouble. Use Time Machine or one of the proprietary backup applications, like LaCie's Silverkeeper (which is free), or at least copy the essential data to another disk or computer.

Tomorrow, Tuesday 24 July, at 2pm Cupertino time, which is 4 am Wednesday here and way past my bedtime, Apple are announcing their financial results for the 2012 Third Quarter and are providing online connections for those wishing to join a conference call. There is a phone-in number, a webcast and a rebroadcast. Information about the information is available from the Apple website.

There was a minor delay for users on Saturday when it was found that the iTunes store was not accepting any orders. It could be seen OK, and the apps were all accessible, until anyone tried to buy or update, Matt Brian reported on The Next Web. It was not just the US store either as readers were reporting the same in parts of Europe and Asia.

I checked the Thai store and had a look for something to download, settling on a tilt-shift app for video, called MiniatureCam for iPad. Sure enough that failed, but when I came back an hour or so later, the download worked. Matt speculated that the downtime may have been due to changes that Apple was introducing to compensate for the Russian hack that allowed free in-app purchases.

However, the perpetrator of the iTunes store hack has apparently ambitiously moved to the Mac App Store for his next trick, Josh Lowensohn reports. Also in the article is a quote that suggests more than 8 million free purchases were made using the iTunes hack. Even if those were only 99 cent in-app upgrades, that would be a lot more than I earn in a year.

In an update to the situation, at least as far as the iTunes store is concerned, Rene Ritchie reports that the fix that Apple has come up with for now is a temporary workaround, but that a full fix will appear when iOS 6 is released.
Over the weekend I had a look at that tilt-shift app for iOS that I had tried to buy when the iTunes store was broken. It turned out to be two apps: one for the iPhone and one for the iPad. This is called MiniatureCam and for $0.99 it produces some quite nice output.

News from Brooke Crothers that another AMD engineer has gone over to Cupertino. Another? John Bruno, who held positions such as senior ASIC design manager and, most recently, system architect joins Raja Koduri and Bob Drebin, both formerly AMD Chief Technical Officers.

I am usually quite wary of the Register, especially one or two of their writers who seem to have an axe to grind when it comes to Apple. Not that Apple is perfect, but sometimes slanted reporting may not give a true picture of how things are. The headlines don't help and whoever writes those must be part-time at the Bangkok Post too, or one of the UK tabloids: grab the reader with a headline, no matter how right it is.

On the other hand, some reporters there do get it about right. This weekend Matt Asay had a good look at the iCloud service and made comparisons with Google: the latter born in the cloud, Apple born in hardware. I must admit, once or twice, the cloud syncing has not worked properly, such as with addresses or calendars; and I often pull my hair out with PhotoStream on Aperture.

In a related item, Michael E. Cohen on TidBits also looks at the intermittent nature of iCloud (and as I write this, Messages is playing up for some) and mentions some of the problems he has experienced. I have noticed a couple of those too.

Half and Half

Coming down from a great height with a rapid response came Daniel Eran Dilger on Roughly Drafted, who was contemptuous of Google's new stance and reminded readers how hypocritical this was in the light of taking tech when they want it but defending their patents to the hilt. Words like "Shameful behavior", "egregiously hypocritical" and likening Google to communism with the "what's yours is mine" attitude, but "what's mine IS mine". I will not spoil this: Dilger at full throttle is lovely to read. This is highly recommended.

A briefer comment came from industry insider, Jim Dalrymple whose stance was sure: Google dirtbags. "Now that they've been caught, they are arguing that the features are standards and are not Apple's at all."

On a related note, the ITC dismissed the patent case that Kodak brought against Apple and RIM. The patent was on a technique for previewing still images before and after taking a picture Adi Robertson reports on The Verge.

While the British judge in the recent case between Apple and Samsung in London decided that not only could everyone see that of course the Samsung device was not as cool as the iPad, he added an insult by ordering Apple to announce this on its UK website for at least 6 months and take out advertisements in the newspapers to shout the obviousness from the rooftops. Apple was unimpressed -- a sort of stony silence came from the direction of Infinity Loop -- and appealed.

In the meantime Judge Lucy Koh is less easily fooled: she was the one who held up the two devices in the courtroom and asked the lawyers to indicate which was which. They couldn't. She seems to be certain which way the land will lie, so issued an injunction to stop the sale of the Samsung Galaxy thing and Samsung were upset. Understandable I suppose; or at least they have to make the pretence of being outraged. They appealed. Disallowed, Brid-Aine Parnell reports on the Register late Friday.

Other Matters

There were a couple of realignments in Application Land last week with Sparrow, a fairly popular email client, swallowed by Google and then late on Friday, Mike Schramm reported that Acrylic which makes apps for the Mac and for iOS, like Pulp and Wallet, has gone over to Facebook. Not the apps, the developer.

With all the ghastly stories from the US and UK about bankers and other company heads cheating, stealing, fixing and conspiring, then jumping off with golden parachutes, it was refreshing to read this week of the CEO of Lenovo, who had a bonus because his company made a profit, unlike some bankers whose massive bonuses are paid even when they make losses so great they damage the economy.

Instead of running off and buying a gold-plated Daimler or some massive yacht, he shared it with the workers, Aaron Souppouris reports: "Some 10,000 receptionists, production-line workers, and assistants received an average bonus of around $314 each". This is not much in the grand scheme of things, but in a Chinese company this has a major significance and the gesture has bought him much loyalty.

Talking of ghastly stories, several reports on Saturday and Sunday carried the news that Rupert Murdoch had resigned from News International. We might as well link to the BBC site as they carry the facts well enough and add that he has quit directorships at NI Group Ltd, NewsCorp Investments and Times Newspaper Holding. This does not mean he has given up work as this is all connected to the UK operations, where the whole Murdoch corporate philosophy there has been under scrutiny in several ways concerning the way news is gathered.

It began as a hacking scandal when the phones of murdered kids were discovered to have been hacked, but this was only the tip of the iceberg and revelations came out about connections to politicians, payments to police, hundreds if not thousands of phones hacked and a whole unsavoury underbelly of corruption. Heads have rolled. Heads will roll still. One hopes in a way that one is that of Rupert Murdoch whose protestations of innocence have not convinced too many people.

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.