By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

Apple Stuff

A lot of sites, although not some of the local eagle-eyes, starting with Neowin -- the prime source -- had the information that one of their former staff members came across what purported to be a shell of the new iPhone 5 and there are some interesting pictures.

The question remains in my mind that if these shells are arriving in Bangkok now what will they have inside when the iPhone 5 is eventually released.

There is some technical information on the new iPhone available. Not from the Mahboonkrong Center but from ETrade Supply via Electronista. The dimensions of the new device are (supposedly) available as well as information concerning the new type of Gorilla Glass that will be used.

Not again. You can almost set your clock by these guys who every once in a while come out with an "Apple is doomed" article or (recently) "Now Steve Jobs has gone. . ." item predicting that a company that produces record figures quarter after quarter is soon going to disappear into some black hole. This week MacDaily News (and I am not going to link to the article itself as MDN does a good job here) reports what Sam Gustin has produced for Time Magazine. Predictable, lazy, fodder for those who do not know and think that this is the whole story.

Next please. . . .

Massive news round the web was that David Pogue lost his phone and got it back again. This has happened to lots of others and they also had their phones traced by way of Find my iPhone, but Pogue blogged and all the clone-press took it up. Mike Schramm on TUAW is suitably vinegary.

A little more newsworthy, and consequently missed by most of the clonerati, was the hacked password of Mat Honan who was formerly with Gizmodo. The password was changed and whoever did that ended up with access to his iCloud account and from there Gmail, Twitter and a lot more besides including wiping his iPhone, iPad and Mac, Michael Rose reports.

Sadly, he thought he had a strong password, but the criminals were able to break that. There are some speculative (and useful) suggestions as to how parts of the system may be separated: convenience is one thing, but when it leads to having devices wiped, how convenient is that?

It appears from a Twitter comment that the hack started via a phone call to Apple Support. But why would you trust anything like that with your data?
More non-surprises come with the news that Apple has increased its lead in the tablet market: you know with an 84% increase in sales that the Wall Street analysts thought was not enough. Steven Sande reports on the IDG statistics which show what most of us thought anyway. The reason: most consumers prefer the iPad. Shock!

Shock again. One of the concepts that came out of the Samsung-Apple patent spat is that despite what we were all led to believe, Steve Jobs was not against the 7" iPad after all, which suggests that a lot of us have been running up the wrong street for a while. I will say here that from what I have seen of the products from other companies, I am against a 7" device, at least in the current forms. But then look at tablet computers before the iPad (more on that and Phil Schiller's fears in the trial notes): who would have wanted one of those? The answer was, no one of course and sales were a bit north of nothing. The iPad, however? . . .

Rene Ritchie takes up the comments of Eddie Cue who had looked at the idea that the Galaxy Tab presented; and who reported to Steve Jobs on the possibilities of an Apple device, and one done properly. Rene also points out that Jobs said no one would want to see video on an iPod, Apple would never make a phone and no one wanted to read books. He also points out that Tim Cook loved the way Jobs had the capacity to change his mind.

Ah, books. There has been a case ongoing for a while in which the US government, by way of the Department of Justice is seeking to mete out a massive injustice by working for Amazon and its monopoly situation, by bringing the naughty book publishers and Apple to their knees (melodramatic I know) because the idea of collusion seems to be more abhorrent than monopoly. Well, that's how it looks to me.

Now the settlement that the DOJ forced on some of the publishers should be approved by a judge says the federal government as this will benefit consumers, David Glovin reports for Bloomberg. I am not sure how the slimy lawyers came up with that one, as Amazon is going to be the main beneficiary and I hope the judge brings that point into his consideration. Probably not, of course.

We made mention of the shifting of orders from Samsung in the last Cassandra column, but there is more on this from Daniel Eran Dilger on AppleInsider who reports that Sharp which is now part-owned by Foxconn, is the beneficiary to the tune of several million panels for the device.

With a lot of cash in the bank, Apple can afford to be in a buying mood even if things may not work out later. We read in a report by Mikey Campbell on AppleInsider that Cupertino is sniffing around Fancy, which may be a way into eCommerce but this is small beer compared to what Apple already does, so this is more a way in through social networking.

Although there is much news about patents this week, an extra Cassandra page this Monday focuses on the ongoing Apple v Samsung dispute: there are others, including a patent claim that Apple has against Kodak. At a Bankruptcy Court hearing, Apple lost and the judge ruled that it had been too late to assert the claims of ownership AppleInsider reports.

Mac Tech Comments

A further report on this appeared in an article by Chris Rawson who examines the battery problems some users are experiencing. Also in the article is a comment on the restored Save As function as it turns out that this could create nightmares as any changes are then saved in the new document and the original, which (surely) defeats the object of the feature and is just a renamed Duplicate that so many hated in Lion.

Not so lucky -- and I use the term loosely -- was the owner of a new Retina display MacBook Pro in Bangkok who failed to heed rule 1: It ain't Windows. I first heard about this when a Phuket user phoned me and asked if the new Mac owner had been in touch. My name had been put formward as someone who might be able to help.

He had not been able to get to grips with anything apparently which surprised me as the one I had used in a newly opened iStudio the day before was fine. He had been to an iStudio in the central area of Bangkok and what advice he had been given apparently only confused him all the more.

On Sunday, he had decided the computer should be returned: not working as advertised, although it sounds more like the owner not working as advertised. His wife was fed up with him storming about the house with expletives before and after the words, "Retina Mac" so she was the one who must be obeyed. I dare say I will hear more about this; not the least of which, I guess is whether the iStudio will take back a perfectly working Mac from a broken owner.

Also having a problem, although this was easily rectified, was a user in Singapore who contacted me via What'sApp on Friday with odd sounds coming from his computer. I knew what this was as I had gone through the same on mine after Mountain Lion was introduced. Notifications, I messaged back. Click on the icon, top right of the menubar.

Easy he commented. They are still going. Facebook messages? That was turned off too. A short while later the solution was discovered. He had downloaded an app that explained about these new sounds for notifications, and it was that that was making sounds. Well, it would, wouldn't it?

An application that I use regularly was not allowed to run by OS X because of the new sandboxing. I tried the latest upgrade to the application but that was the same. This is not available via the Mac App Store, nor is the developer on Apple's White List, so the program is treated as suspect and will not run.

This is all very well, but some of us go to some sites that may not have the resources (or the will) to bend to Apple's will. There is a way round in System Preferences in the Security & Privacy panel. In the General settings are three options for installed software: Mac App Store, which only allows those from the store to run; Mac app Store and identified developers, which is self-explanatory; and Anywhere.

There is a let-out of course. When the "Anywhere" option is selected, a panel appears with a warning -- this will reduce security -- but offering a solution: Control click on the application's icon and select Open. If you work in a user account like I do, this does need Admin privileges, but I entered the password and now the app opens and will for evermore.

Over the weekend I managed to create a rescue boot disk for OS X 10.8, Mountain Lion on a flash drive. I did this last year with Lion, and the process was pretty much the same although space limits meant I could not just install over the top, so re-partitioned the drive (about one minute) and did it that way. A reader in California, who reports that the grape harvest is about ready to come in, tells me he followed what I wrote and his rescue drive worked first time.

A rare problem occurred on Sunday some ten days after I had upgraded to Mountain Lion when in the middle of working the cursor stopped moving. Nothing particularly unusual as long as it starts moving again, but when MSN quit and I was unable to access any features via trackpad, keyboard or key commands. I waited. And waited, but nothing was happening and the clock was wrong by a couple of hours. So was the clock on the iPhone which tells me that the internet was a probable cause. I had to hit the power button and I hate that.

When the login panel appeared, I restarted one more time and then got back to work. All was saved and I hardly missed a beat, although I did notice one or two web pages did not reload properly. I am wary as the last time the cursor began to seize like that, the MacBook Pro ended up with a warranty-replacement hard disk. I will be keeping an eye on this.

Half and Half

Other Matters

Late News

Please see also: Cassandra Monday Review: Patent Wars - Interesting Revelations

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.