By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

Apple Stuff

Along with the date, several sites this week, such as Nathan Ingram on The Verge, have alleged pictures and other information about the connector and motherboard. We mentioned on Monday the 8 - 16 pin connector and there are pictures of this along with a fair assessment of what all this may mean. Other images and some comments appeared in items by Jim Tanous on The MacObserver and Mikey Campbell on AppleInsider.

A report from Simson Garfinkel on Technology Review as detailed by MacDaily News tells us that there are now significant security features in Apple technologies including encryption that the law enforcement people hate so much for us to have: "The algorithm is so strong that no computer imaginable for the foreseeable future -- even a quantum computer -- would be able to crack a truly random 256-bit AES key. The National Security Agency has approved AES-256 for storing top-secret data."

The MacBook Pro with Retina display has a really high quality output and it takes a fair amount of power to use this to full advantage. Some apps might not be able to do the job to the optimum, so it is helpful for Jim Tanous of The MacObserver to comment on and link to a site that helps users find apps for the new computer.

But the Retina display is a devilish trap warns Brooke Crothers: once you go there you may never come back, which sounds more like heroin addiction than any tech problem. Sure your Dell looks drab after a few days with the Mac: it is drab, it always was drab but you never noticed before.

Over the last year or so, there have been lots of rumours about what an Apple TV could be, its price, who would make it, and other significant questions that manage to generate lots of hits for certain writers. On PC Mag, Tim Bajarin has a go and tells us that it is not going to be an actual television set, but the hobby AppleTV which has been going along quite nicely for a few years now, is to be the focus and this is really what these rumours have missed. I just do not know. Possible of course. My source for this was MacDaily News.

One of the analysts who most consistently reports on Apple TV and is wrong -- no not Rob Enderle -- is Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray. Dan Rayburn on Seeking Alpha has a savage look at Munster, his figures and his predictions. I agree with his conclusions on analysts: they are hardly worth a look, especially when it comes to Apple.

Last week we reported on a new type of screw that was allegedly being developed by Apple for the iPhone. I presumed this was another way to keep unauthorised repairers out and so it seemed to have a seed of possibility. Not so: it was a planted story and almost everyone picked it up. Daniel Eran Dilger explains on AppleInsider that Lukasz Lindell of the Sweedish Day4 blog seeded the false story just to see how quickly such a rumour would spread and how widely. The story has all the ingredients for a well-made spoof including shots of the screw and the idea that this could be possible. This is also why the scams online still find victims.

My congratulations to Lukasz Lindell for a well-thought-out and executed plant and a good teaching point from him too. Just because it is on the Internet. . . .

Several sites picked up on some statistics that appeared recently on the average ages of Apple product users. I had thought that with the numbers of my students now with these things, that the age averages would be going down, but apparently not, Jason Gilbert reports on Huffington Post, using figures from a survey carried out by YouGov. Us older folks are buying more and more, suggesting that as some guys get older they are not putting up with that PC crap any more; while there are a lot of older people who have had their first taste of technology with the iPad and their friends want one too. My own observations with the students and other young people I know suggest the HTC exec was not right, but that there are just more older people trying Apple and sticking.

Recently a NYTimes report went for the Apple retail operation and claimed that while Tim Cook earned millions (made billions for Apple too) the staff at the ground level saw little of this money. Now some are going to see even less as Mikey Campbell reports that worldwide Apple are laying off retail staff or in some locations cutting back on hours.

Perhaps related is the news from Tricia Duryee on All Things Digital, that American shoppers spent some $43.2 billion online in the second quarter this year. That is quite a market that is being tapped.

In the meantime, Kelly Hodgkins reports that a third Apple store in Beijing is to be opened, perhaps early next year.

We have seen PRODUCT (RED) options in the past from Apple, like the iPod nano and others. Now Rene Ritchie reports on iMore, Apple has a (PRODUCT) RED iPhone bumper. I wonder why this is coming out now if the new iPhone is to be released soon: will the old bumpers fit the new phones?

This is not yet available in Thailand. Although the online store has the (PRODUCT) RED iPod nano (8 GB and 16 GB) as well as iPad cases, the bumper is not yet here.

More evidence that a proper program using tablet computers comes in an item by Jim Dalrymple on The Loop who reports that children's math scores rose by 49% when they used iPads, adding to the earlier literacy improvements that were reported.

The BBC iPlayer has been updated we are told by Justin Rubio on The Verge who writes, "This particular update only affects the UK version of the app, although iMore expects that the improvements should hit the global version of iPlayer in the near future." Global, eh? This is another worldwide app which is not available here.

I try not to use Adobe Flash but once in a while, something I want to view insists. It is a little easier these days as it has its own panel in System Preferences and we can authorise automatic downloads which reduces the risks of malware and avoids that ghastly website. Sometimes, though, it really does not work well on a Mac. Topher Kessler has some useful suggestions as to what may be done with it (not the Trash). He also has an article on management of Finder aliases in OS X.

There may be tears in Android land tomorrow as Flash for Android will stop working T. C. Sottek reports on The Verge.

One of my all-time favourite games (after Transport Tycoon) is Sim City. I had it on my last PC, on my Palm, I had a later versions on the Mac and also on the iPhone. Now we are told by Jim Tanous on the MacOserver that the next version of this game for OS X will be out in February next year (Windows too). I The game will also have an interactive component.

On Tuesday, I added another to the articles on System Preferences that I am writing at the moment: Displays. I have the Dock to do next and that will complete A - D. When I first did this with 10.5 preferences, I had the idea of organising the whole like the old London Telephone Directories: A - D, F - K, L - R, and S - Z. It might still work.

Half and Half

As the second week opens, there was an attempt by Samsung to make some smoke and suggest that everything in question was really available before the iPhone and they brought in some exhibits that they say proves this we read in a helpful article from Bryan Bishop on The Verge. However, cross-examination revealed that some of this "prior art" was developed after it had been taken to Apple, not before as had been suggested. However, there could be doubts here.

While Apple has been successful in keeping some witnesses from testifying, Josh Lowensohn reports that there is a difficulty with Tim Williams who has some confidential information that both Apple and Intel want kept out of the public domain. The Judge let slip a classic comment when telling the attorneys to get together on this: "I want papers. I don't trust what any lawyer tells me in this courtroom. . . ."

A report on this by Ina Fried on All Things Digital, has some more background and an update on an expert witness who did testify on how Apple violates Samsung patents. The other expert witness, Tim Williams, is likely to testify as there was an agreement, but as to keeping him off the stand, Judge Koh (who is the hero in all of this with her firm approach) is reported to have said, "I was never going to grant that . . . That was (an) extreme and unwarranted sanction."

But the judge, Lucy Koh is getting a little tired of some of the antics of both sides, we hear from Foss Patents, especially over disagreements concerning final jury instructions, so has ordered the lawyers to "meet and confer in person . . . and file joint and disputed final jury instructions by Monday, August 13, 2012 at 8 a.m." At the time of me putting this together (a few hours after that deadline with the international time difference) there had been no further information on this. Another report on this comes from Mikey Campbell on AppleInsider.

However, Apple is not averse to licensing its patents, even to the perceived enemy. We read in a report by Jordan Golson on Mac Rumours that some iOS design patents were licensed to (gasp!) Microsoft, but there was a "no cloning" clause included in the agreement.

We should perhaps take another look at the Surface; and the clone-makers in Taiwan should also be a bit worried by this news. My source for this was MacDaily News. But also, Vlad Savov wonders if Nokia might also become collateral damage in the battle.

Another case ongoing concerns FRAND patents and Motorola's reluctance to licence these to Apple (and Microsoft) at Fair and Reasonable rates. Daniel Eran Dilger reports that the judge in the case decided that those who hold these patents "must uphold their commitments to offer licensing under "Fair, Reasonable and Nondiscriminatory" terms." In the item, Dilger links to the longer report from Florian Mueller of Foss Patents on this partial judgement. Later Mueller also Tweeted that hot on the heels of the decision in the Apple case, "Significance of Apple's FRAND win over Motorola . . Microsoft filed notices of decision with district and appeals court."

Other Matters

We mentioned recently that Apple with Microsoft as well as a consortium headed by Google had been bidding for Kodak patents. But they had not been bidding that much and the offers were a fraction of the price that had been expected. With bidding due to close on Monday, Don Reisinger reports that Kodak has extended the deadline in he hope that maybe someone will come up with something. Anyone, Anyone? . . . .

Local Items

Down in Singapore, Sam Byford reports on The Verge, there has been an advance in laser printing technology with a team from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research developing the highest ever resolution of around 10,000 dpi. Many pictures you might ordinarily see would be quite ok at 300 dpi with web resolutions being 72 dpi.

There is a link in the item to the original journal article in Nature which I have saved as a 15-page PDF file: text, images, references and all.

In Korea small transmitters have been developed which can be printed (using special technology) and these can transit information to a mobile phone when swiped, Zoe Kleinman reports on the BBC Tech site. While I favour QR codes on my business cards to save space and make it easy to enter the information directly with no typing, this technology would make an interesting addition when it becomes available at a cheap enough price.

In Malaysia, things do not seem all as beautiful and calm as the government would want people to believe. A lot of tensions are simmering under the surface and we did see some violence erupt in KL earlier this year. Like other governments, down there there is legislation appearing that would restrict online freedom of speech. So, like the US SOPA protests, many sites are being blacked out, Zack Whittacker reports. Some of us may remember the attempt that one government here had with censorship of news concerning protests in Bangkok. While the Nation ignored the censors, the Bangkok Post played it to the letter and printed much of the front page blank: white space where pictures had been cut. That said more than the pictures themselves.

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.