By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

Apple Stuff

There has been much speculation that the new phone could have NFC (near field communications) and this was heightened a couple of weeks ago when a chip was spotted that might have been for this, although cold water was quickly poured over the idea. There is more cold water this week in a report by Sam Oliver on AppleInsider who writes that the chip everyone got excited about -- and there are new shots -- " show that there is no NFC chip located underneath the component". A shame that. So what is the mysterious square component?

A lot of reports on Thursday suggest that the "other" hardware might not include an Apple TV whatever that may consist of now. Months ago, there was much rumour about Apple-branded televisions, but nothing has come of that. The feeling now is that this is a better experience with the current AppleTV, but this week's reports, such as that from Dieter Bohn on The Verge, are saying that there are problems with content. As happened before the content owners are reluctant to give Apple so much control when experience suggests that with Apple taking over and taking its cut, the increased sales far offset any other qualms the music companies or movie owners had; but as yet, the cable guys are not able to see the light.

One of the reports that has been floating around for a while concerns the new cables for the iPhone 5 which are expected to be 16 pin (8 + 8) leaving all us folks with lots of adapters that work with displays and speakers, but not the new device. Fear not, Apple help is on the way. And only Apple help. Like other such changes, Josh Lownsohn reports that Apple owns the patents and Cupertino already has adapters ready but will not let anyone else make these, thus putting itself in the way of making millions.

Analyst Gene Munster suggests that sales of the iPhone 5 could be between 6 and 10 million in its first week, according to Lance Whitney. As Munster is often wrong -- perhaps more than he has been right according to some -- this may be one of those figures snatched out of thin air. Whatever: Apple is expected to sell lots.

There has been a lot of discussion on the Department of Justice case against Apple and some publishers, while many (like me) are aghast that the DoJ appears -- for whatever reason -- to be supporting the monopoly stance of Amazon and their control of book selling (and the pricing) without any regard for the logical fallacies here.

A lawyer in the US was well aware that the DoJ case is barking up the wrong tree, or to twist the metaphor a little further, not seeing the wood for the trees, so he filed an Amicus brief (friend of the Court). But the judge wasn't having any of it: too long. He had set a 5-page limit and the lawyer had 32 pages (and I thought I was verbose), or 6,250 words.

Undaunted, we are told by Bryan Chaffin on the MacObserver (with its nice new pages) that he condensed the lot down to 5 cartoon panels which are really concise and, as Mr Chaffin points out, if a picture is worth a thousand words, these 5 pages were almost the same as the full filing.

I tried not so long ago to switch my operations more to the iPad, hoping to leave the MacBook Pro at home. I sort of managed that part of the goal, but that has really been accomplished by use of Dropbox, WriteRoom, iCloud and Back to my Mac coupled with the return of my iMac at work. Henry McCracken made a conscious effort to make the move and one year later it is still his favourite computer.

His story is interesting and although he was advised strongly against it with some reminiscent of the way the iPhone was first examined, his is a success story. Part of the key may be a proper keyboard. I tried with a Bluetooth keyboard I picked up in Bangkok, but it was not accurate enough. I had earlier eschewed the Apple one because of size and weight. I may have been wrong.

And then you just look around -- I am in Bangkok and these things are everywhere, with people using them for surfing, for work, for photography (I am not sure on that one) and they don't give a fig for what the professionals think. I am voting with the users.

As I walk round where I work and also round Bangkok, it is also clear that there are far more Macs in regular use than a couple of years back. This is clear in the enterprise and John Paczkowski writes for All Things Digital how this is affecting how business is working. The pivotal points for me are the iPhone and the iPad. My source for this was MacDaily News who have a number of useful comments on this surge of use, with particular reference to IT professionals (I use that term loosely) who in my experience were the main reason Macs were not taken up so quickly. It is still the case to an extent: while the students and a lot of my colleagues get on with using their Macs, the IT guys shift uncomfortably in their seats and are clearly not keeping up to date: what are they being paid for?

One of the updates to my collection of applications this week was Analog, a neat photo editor that appeared last year and created a bit of a stir before release as the lettering made some think it might be software from Leica. Just before updating, I read an item by Steven Sande on TUAW who detailed the update and mentioned that as well as new filters, there was now the ability to work with Aperture and iPhoto as an external editor. This can be added in the preferences of the application. When I did this, the Photos menu in Aperture had a direct edit link to Analog which I could also do with the key commands Shift + Command + O -- it works too.

The other app that was updated with some minor improvements connected to QuickTime was iMovie which is now at version 9.0.8.

On Wednesday the press was full of an alleged allegation that lots of UDID codes had been hacked from the computer of an FBI agent and there was some speculation as to where these might have come from. The FBI came out fairly quickly and told the public this was nothing to do with them whatsoever, but they would say that anyway, wouldn't they? Apple is a different matter and Jeff Gamet reports on The MacObserver that Cupertino is likewise adamant that the codes did not come from them. While accepting at face value the two did not have anything to do with this, there is an interesting spin on this that links back to the Instapaper server that was seized last year. It may not be official FBI data, but someone there may have been moonlighting.

There is an unusual hint from OS X Daily this time that shows users how to reboot from the command line. From the looks of the use of the "sudo" command, this can only be done from an Admin account.

Half and Half

The fallout from the recent Apple v Samsung case may affect Samsung far deeper than just the $1 billion or so, and there are rumours that Apple is now seeking out other partners to manufacture components according to Jeffrey Wu of Focus Taiwan and companies with operating bases in Taiwan could benefit. If the shift is to be now, it may well be that Apple waited for the trial to end before making some moves, although there were perhaps exploratory examinations earlier.

Apple's request to move up the hearing for post-trial decisions has been denied, Mikey Campbell reports on AppleInsider.

There is a quote in Marlowe's Edward II (forgive me I was an Eng Lit major) about ambition: the idea being that when someone climbs so far up Fortune's wheel, there is no way to go but down. And also in Marlowe, Tumburlaine was called an over-reacher. How does this apply to IT?

With Apple rumoured to be reducing its orders, and a comment in a S. Korean newspaper last week that was negative towards Samsung and its fight with Apple, now we read in an item by Youkyung Lee on AP that the South Korean antitrust watchdog is probing Samsung looking at whether it has been abusing its dominant position in the wireless market to disadvantage Apple. When the home supporters stop cheering the team, things are not going well.

Other Matters

Quite easily, one would imagine as there was no pricing, no details of availability (Apple always has these ready for the off) and the camera demo was a fraud: PureView was a pure fake. T. C. Sottek on The Verge caught what few of the drooling press did. Looking at the video, instead of a boyfriend on a bike, the reflection in the shake-free version shows a white van and a cameraman. It just has to be seen to be believed and I guffawed when the clip was rolled back to show the real thing. Well caught indeed.

The article was updated and Nokia put their hands up to it right away (all credit to them I suppose) and the article includes a comment: that it was "never the company's intention to deceive anyone". They may update the clip to admit it is a "simulation". Too late methinks, the hounds are loose. The video itself was a lie.

But then another report by Youssef Sarhan on a site called Sefsar tells us that still images were faked too.

We also hear from Lance Whitney who quotes a Nokia exec on the lack of an SD card. It would have defiled it. Nice to see a handset maker other than Apple thinking about clean design.

I have commented on the way the authorities want to keep tabs on us all by way of monitoring internet use. But that backfired with Wikileaks and they are still trying to put that genii back in its various bottles.

There is also the widespread use of CCTV cameras: I was horrified when I went back to the small town in the UK that my parents live in and saw upwards of 2 dozen in the town centre area. But then sometimes they do catch miscreants, like the Ferrari driver at around 200 kph on Sukhumvit road at just after 5 am and the policeman he killed. And sometimes the law enforcers themselves are held to be liars by the very tools that they would want to use against the public.

A young man -- black of course, although I am sure this has nothing whatsoever to do with his treatment -- has been in prison on remand in Maryland (USA) for assaulting a policeman. Now, however, video has surfaced (did it not exist 4 months ago?) that clearly shows the kid walking away calmly and the policeman running up and striking him. America Live Wire has clips from a Fox news program that ran the video and the comments that the whole thing will be explained away in court. That should be good.

With the monitoring that the UK authorities in particular are pushing for, really as a front for the US. They want just about everything captured, but also want the ISPs to do it for them. The whole idea looks like an updated Echelon: a surveillance network set up by US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand a while back. There are several opponents to the idea of such monitoring and one is Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia who suggests that if this project ever gets off the ground, they will use encryption, "so that the local ISP would only be able to see that you are speaking to Wikipedia, not what you are reading", Jeff Blagdon reports on The Verge.

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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.