By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

Apple Stuff

Disappointed was Pixobebo who installed the update on two Macs and also reports much hanging about doing nothing, but is sad that the App Store installation does away with all those fun events when -- in our case -- Siam Discovery was taken over and a massive party atmosphere led up to the 6pm release time; or in the case of Leopard, 2 days later than the rest of the world. I will put up with the lack of socialising.

Once I had restarted a couple of times, I made a quick run through the new version of OS X and was generally happy with what I found, except for one major difference in Safari: the ability to read RSS feeds had been removed. I had not anticipated this nonsensical change and suddenly found myself with a browser and no information. I went to bed but my surprise -- and anger -- made sleep difficult. The first thing on Thursday morning, I wrote about this gutting of Safari which left me working feeling like I had one arm tied behind my back.

I did see that a number of articles were pleased with the new Safari, such as Nathan Ingram on The Verge, who is just delighted with it and completes his euphoric examination of the browser without a single mention of RSS feeds. Well there weren't any. MacDaily News did a good job of explaining what the new features were in Safari, but again missed the lack of RSS feed capability.

I did wonder if I had missed something, but was reassured late afternoon by an email from Vince Bloden of HKMacs who was in full agreement with me. A long-term reader from Holland who has been to Thailand a few times also agrees, but did point out that there was a feature in Mail to handle feeds. However, when we compared notes, the Feed reader facility has also been removed from Mail. It looks as if Apple has given up on this, although still put out RSS feeds themselves: only now no one can read them.

On Friday morning I saw an article by Chris Herbert on MacStories who also writes about the lack of RSS and like a site I saw yesterday mentions a way to put a button in Safari to download a feed link: but as he writes, this still needs another solution to read the feed and then the browser to read the article it links to. The more I think about this the dafter it all seems. I made a group on Facebook: let's see how far this goes.

I took Apple's hint when face with the blank screens in Safari and had a look in the Mac App Store where there were some 50 related applications: just what you need when you are in a hurry. I looked at a couple, then downloaded a free one called Monotony.

I was not too delighted with Apple as each feed needs to be added newly to this 3rd party reader; and then the feed displays appear using Growl but only for a few seconds. If I miss them it is almost impossible to get them back. The developer tells me in email that now Mountain Lion has been released, he will be able to add the app to the Notifications Center, which is similar to what we have on the iPhone. In the meantime, I was offered (and downloaded) a beta of the 1.1 update and that will use the Notifications Center. Indeed it does, and the beta app works pretty much as I wanted.

And that beautiful RSS screen-saver no longer works. There are no RSS feeds.

As ever, after an update to OS X there are going to be updates to apps. Using Software Update Thursday morning gave me another surprise as it took me into the Mac App Store (which was already open on the desktop) and there a number of downloads were shown as available:

• iPhoto 9.3.2
• iWork 9.2
• Aperture 3.3.2
• iMovie 9.0.7
• Voice Update (Fiona 2.0.0)

Clicking on the "More" text shows information about each. While reading, I had a reminder from the Notifications Center. Also when I pressed "Update" I was asked to connect to AC power, so a number of minor bits of tidying up have been incorporated here. These are the good parts.

Among some of the iOS updates on Thursday morning I saw . . .

• iTunes U
• Podcasts
• Keynote
• ColorStrokes
• Bamboo Paper
• Genius Scan
• AutoCAD WS

To help those who are time-challenged, Michael Steeber at Cult of Mac put together a 2-minute video of 30 Mountain Lion features. My link for this was from MacDaily News where the features are also listed in text form.

Another help article came from John Thompson who explains about syncing iOS devices with Mountain Lion using iCloud. Much of this was not new for me, although some users may not be familiar with all the features. There are also a couple of interesting ones due when iOS 6 arrives.

A full review (one of many) of Mountain Lion was produced by Jason Parker and there was also a lengthy review of the whole OS X release by Jason Snell on MacWorld, where there were also articles about some of the separate parts of the update. I found another later on The Verge by Nilay Patel.

With the release of the new version of OS X, there are some people who bought Macs recently who are entitled to a free upgrade. Jeff Gamet on The MacObserver tells readers how to go about registering for this. I would guess this is for US users and local customers may find things a little different. In some cases it might need a one-on-one conference call to straighten things out unless they have revised the process that was in place for Lion. Then, local users were unable to register as there was no local page, and the US page would not take a Thai address. It could be resolved, but took some work.

Apple needs to do some work apparently, MacNN reports, as the codes issued to some customers had them download OS X Server, which doesn't work without the Mountain Lion install anyway.

Earlier in the week, Apple released its Q3 figures and while there were upward movements of the sort that some companies would die for, the analysts were not happy because although the numbers exceeded Apple's estimates, they did not better the guesses that these Wall Street crystal ball gazers had wanted.

One who had a less than perfect record of pitching against Apple a couple of years back is Jim Cramer, but nowadays he is all for Cupertino and Bruno J. Navarro reports that Jim is still betting on Apple and recommends the stock as a "buy." Also on the same lines is Rush Limbaugh who gets it about right on what the media think about Apple's figures, MacDaily News reports. On TUAW, Richard Gaywood suggests like a number of analysts that while Apple beat its own estimates, the quarter was actually disappointing.

On the other hand, Pixobebo is having none of that and like me thinks the analysts "Screwed Apple's Good Results" . . . by ignoring Apple's numbers "and creat[ing] their own, using silly-assed methods like checking retail stores, trying to dig up numbers from suppliers, and pulling nonsense from their collective butts". What he (or she) said.

As part of the disappointment it is reported by Todd Bishop that Apple sold 1.3 million Apple TV boxes in the quarter, which is not bad for a hobby device. However, Bishop puts it a little more into context when he tells us that the figure is greater than the number of Microsoft Xbox 360s sold in the same period.

Despite the reported increases in the financial statement, and the promise of more to come, there was also a knock-on effect for Apple's suppliers, Naoko Fujimura reports for Bloomberg, with Samsung and Hon Hai both dipping.

Things have not fallen off a cliff just yet as it is reported by AppleInsider that the world's largest buyer of chips is still Apple and it is to spend $28 billion in 2012. The article has an interesting breakdown of the figures and what it means. A lot of devices methinks.

There was an interesting patent discovery this week, Neil Hughes on AppleInsider reports. It "details how a new iPhone model with a near-field communications chip could serve as the connected centerpiece of an automated digitally connected home." The article has full details including one of those patent-style drawings that went in with the application. It has a few recognisable devices, including a game controller. I didn't know Apple made game controllers.

Half and Half

There has been much on the patent disputes between Apple and others of late but an interesting revelation appeared this week in an item by John Paczkowski on All Things Digital, who reports that "Samsung not only deliberately copied certain characteristics of the iPhone and iPad, but was also explicitily [sic] warned away from doing so by various third parties, including Google." Google. Was the fox guarding the hen-house?

Actually, the article is well worth a read to see some of the things that Samsung has been up to. Google. . . Hard to credit that.

In related news, Amar Toor reports that Judge Paul Grewal has sanctioned Samsung for destroying evidence. This refers to emails that Apple might have found useful in court and that Samsung should have and could have saved, but there you are: self-preservation gets the better of some.

Other Matters

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.