By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

It was nice (sort of) to see the Bangkok Post using "Opening Gambit" on its website for an intro to an article on the South. I just checked: I first used this on 5 January 2011.

Apple Stuff

I have read several articles over the last few days, most of which have been wringing their metaphorical hands over the woeful state of Apple and its management. In the meantime, the stores are packed, the products are being snatched off the shelves by the customers and life goes on as normal, more or less.

What a lot of analysts are really complaining about is not the point that Apple shares hit all time highs and are now dropping is that they are not going past the $700 mark spoiling all their rash predictions. As the company has grown phenomenally since the 2007 iPhone launch with the iPads, MacBook Air, expansion of iOS and OS X installed bases, when almost all the rest of the industry is contracting, Apple has done fairly well. Commentators are too quick to see disaster when one slight problem occurs, such as the Maps app and have read far more into that than the situation warrants. Likewise, the first weekend of record iPhone 5 sales was somehow turned into another disaster because the record 5 million did not reach the lofty predictions that some -- who have been wrong over and over again -- suggested.

Along with the "woe is me" brigade there have been criticisms of the Apple management. When these guys turn the same magnifying glass on to Microsoft, HP, Nokia and others, then they will have earned some right to go for Apple. The drabness up at Redmond, headed by a chair-throwing, sweaty, foul-mouthed Ballmer, the sell-out at Nokia by a Ballmer proxy and the dictatorial regime at Samsung (see below on Samsung's FRAND rejection) are rarely criticised in the same way as Cook & Co.

RIM and HP went through the wringer a bit (only Jim Dalrymple consistently called RIM out) and the pundits still smile when CEOs announce job losses, lower income and no profits. Talking of which, on Tuesday it was announced that Google's Motorola is going to have more job losses than was first predicted. The report from MacDaily News has some suitable comments.

When Apple exceeds its own targets, that is a problem as the estimates from the analysts were not beaten. Most analysts have been wrong for the last few years on Apple figures -- more of these coming in a couple of weeks time -- and yet people still listen to what they say and act on the words they write.

Interesting then that a number of sites, like Dave Caolo on TUAW and Mikey Campbell on AppleInsider, report that Apple has been named as Number 2 Global Brand. Coca-Cola is first; Microsoft is 8.

I had a number of links from Seeking Alpha. This is an organ for advising investors and most of the time its writers produced balanced output, but even here this week some have fallen into the trap of seeing smoke and shouting fire. A reasonable comment from Mel Daris discusses the problems Apple may have in emerging markets especially with other manufacturers, including RIM. Despite the problems in the US, these devices are still popular here, although how the Chinese government will deal with secure messaging is a question worth considering.

However, like so many, Martin falls into the trap of equating market share with success: with the ecosystem Apple has from design, manufacture through to software and services, there are pieces missing from this equation. A careful analysis by Mohamed Abdirahman has a guarded confidence in the future for Apple but is wary of the limited product range and its refresh cycle while expressing some optimism for the rumored iPad mini and whatever the Apple iTV may be and also has some good expectations for the China Mobile deal: an awful lot of consumers there.

There have been several comments on Apple execs, starting with Tim Cook, focussing on Scott Forestall and with Bob Mansfield bringing up the rear. I have confidence in Cook as long as the analysts can get over the idea that Steve Jobs is dead and there is a new man at the helm. All the rubbish in the last week or so about Steve would not have done this or would not have done that are every bit as bad as comments from Jeffrey Archer, like gargoyle high above Westminster Abbey at the funeral of Princess Diana making pronouncements about what she would have liked or approved of: she was dead for heaven's sake and Archer had never really been privy to her inner thoughts. We have the same with those not in the know telling us about Steve who specifically chose Cook knowing exactly what time of a boss he would be.

That may not have got through to those like Forestall, sometimes referred to as min-Jobs and who is known to have a burning ambition. Maybe he thought he could do the job better than Cook. Machiavelli wrote, "Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others." It appears that there is now some infighting at Apple with certain VPs not attending meetings with Forestall unless Cook is there.

One of those is Bob Mansfield, who announced his retirement a while back, but the replacement nominated was so unpopular that Cook had to make an offer that Mansfield could hardly turn down: $2 million a month plus stock options. I first read this in a report from AppleInsider, and there were several others carrying this, including Josh Lowensohn. I would be happy with 2 million a year: and I mean baht, not $$$.

On Forestall, I have written a number of times that the problems with iOS are at his door. They are not at Cook's door as his style is to rely on his executive team. Maybe the executive team needs reining in here although Kate MacKenzie thinks it is not going to happen; she also comments on PixoBebo on the ludicrous idea that people (other than hit-whores) would move from iPhone to Android because of Maps alone, while in an earlier article makes some useful comments on Maps and its value as a news story and includes the lovely New Yorker cover that parodies Maps.

You can always guarantee two people will come out of the woodwork when Apple decisions are being discussed: Steve Wozniak and Rob Enderle. Enderle comes later, but Woz has a few minor suggestions (iTunes for Android) and thinks that lawsuits have been overdone -- Steve started down that street -- Mike Schramm reports on TUAW.

As well as users like me, sending in reports of problems on Apple Maps (for example the Bukkalo branch of Bangkok Bank is not in the middle of the river -- it is still there on the map) Joseph Keller reports on iMore that Apple retail employees have been asked to look at the map data for the area they are in and report any problems.

Along with all the furore about the iPhone, iOS 6 and Maps, there have been lots of rumours about a new iPad mini which has had as many lives as the AppleTV. Just after the iPhone 5 and around the time of the Quarterly financial report may work, but Dan Moren on MacWorld has some doubts. He accepts that Apple never does what everyone else expects or wants, something the pundits I mention above might digest. My original source for this was MacDaily News who also led me to this week's Enderle story. He was quoted as the Apple Expert in an item by Jennifer LeClaire reports on Sci-Tech Today which MacDaily News thinks is like "turning to Lindsay Lohan to calculate Mars rover landing coordinates.

And then this piece of fantasy from Enderle, "The killer apps are pretty much already on the Kindle and the Nexus 7, which is going to make it much tougher for Apple to break in": which I guess means he has missed the App Store. I asked Tim Cook (not really) who said in the recent Apple Event for the iPhone 5 that there are now 700,000 apps in the App Store with 250,000 tailored for the iPad.

However, the iPad mini is apparently on track for a release in October several sources report, such as Rene Ritchie on iMore who writes that the "7.85-inch -- non-Retina -- iPad mini has begun mass production in China". This rumour seems to have legs, especially when Katie Marsal on AppleInsider reports that headphone jacks for the device (why different?) have been spotted. If that report is right, then the new device has been designed from the ground up and is not simply borrowing parts from other iOS devices.

Another interesting rumour concerns something I have considered a possibility ever since Apple started designing its own chips for ioS devices as this means in-house configurations for the processors that no other developer can use, unlike AMD or Intel chips for the Macs right now. Go back a few years to the PowerPC and when it was announced that Apple was moving to Intel, it transpired that they had had OS X running on Intel processors for years, so the changeover was far less painful than many predicted (note, "predictions" again).

Now we hear from Neil Hughes on AppleInsider that there has been some deliberation of a move to in-house chips after the success of the A5 and A6 chips. Not imminent but being considered. That is not a surprise to me.

To add to this, Johnny Evans on ComputerWorld sees this as another step on the road to remove Samsung from the supply chain, which will cost that company dear. For this he cites the iPhone 5, the iPad mini and a recruitment plan that is aimed at the heart of chip design and manufacture and moving Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited into first place.

This is not Steve Jobs legacy, but Tim Cook, CEO.

Another unsurprising development (although details are new) is the idea of fingerprint identification as a security measure. Bio-metric systems have long been considered more secure than the password -- when people have them, that is and various ideas -- like voice, retina and even blood (See GATTACA) -- have been put forward. Fingerprints are unique and relatively easy to manage: I use a system at one place I work to log in and out, although the system loses a bit as the clock is set wrong. Jeff Gamet reports on The MacObserver that Apple has joined up with MicroLatch to develop such technology as part of a NFC solution and Jeff reminds us that Apple already picked up AuthenTec for US$365 million earlier this year.

A little more on the patent claim by Ameranth was in an item by Megan Lavey-Heaton on TUAW this week who does point out that as they really do own intellectual property and use it, this is more than just a patent troll on Apple's Passbook.

Some hints this week from Topher Kessler on the use of the Firmware pasword feature (and Windows connections): that may save your computer if it is lost, but it is a bit of a job for those who have antipathy to passwords.

If something goes wrong with the boot partition in Mountain Lion Topher explains that there is a neat way round resetting the password that requires some work in the terminal to create a Debug menu in Disk Utilities and then a bit more work later. This is worth bookmarking as this is never needed until it is needed. There is also information about earlier versions of OS X.

Having set it there is also a way to uncover it in the Admin account (needs the sudo command in Terminal) using Calculator of all things. It is not as straightforward as that sounds and Topher's outline of the process takes a fair amount of setting up and entering data to uncover this. But if someone has your Admin password, you are already dead in the water.

While we are on hints, Topher Kessler has another on how users can connect to Windows machines from OS X. I suppose someone might want to.

Anyone reading Cassandra or the other writings I put out will have the idea I am rather keen on the camera that the iPhone has. I also like my Nikon DSLR of course and carry it around all the time, but the iPhone is quicker on the draw and has all those awesome apps. Bonnie Cha on All Things Digital has an article on hints to get the best out of smartphone cameras -- not just the iPhone.

As above, I rather like photo apps, and when not one but two of my serious sources go for an app, it is worth me looking at it too, especially when it is free. Camera Awesome is mentioned by Lauren Goode on All Things Digital as a strong utility for the iPad and in its free state has some 36 filters with almost 300 more available (the lot for $10). Darrell Etherington on Tech Crunch looks at the app for the way it has transitioned from iPhone to iPad with the developer not originally intending it for the larger screen device: "The tipping point for McAskill [the developer], came when he went to a baseball game and saw the sheer number of people who were using iPads".

I have noticed that too. I was on a bridge over the river last week and while I had the Nikon, loads of people were recording their events with iPads; and their use is quite common in other parts of the city. It looks a bit awkward to me, but if it works. . . . Remember, the best camera is the one you have with you (Chase Jarvis).

A quick look at the app on the iPhone Tuesday evening suggests this is a star.

Every morning I check Software Update, which now works through the Mac App Store. This morning (Friday) I found a Supplemental Update (1.0) for OS X 10.8.2 addressing issues with Japanese characters; with Safari when Parental Controls are in use; and with startup problems for those with more than 64 GB of RAM (not too many of those, I would bet). The update does require a restart of the computer. There is also a similar update for OS X 10.7.5, Lion.

Half and Half

Other Matters

We had earlier commented on the falling fortunes of Zynga and its questionable stock market transactions. Market Currents on Seeking Alpha reports,

Zynga (ZNGA) has resumed trading following its Q3/2012 warning. Shares are down 16.5% to a new post-IPO low of $2.35, leaving the company with a market cap of less than $2B.

There was some more on this from Kim-Mai Cutler on Tech Crunch who also fills in some of the background, the problems and the possible future.

Nothing to do with computer technology directly, but to close, a link to Jim Dalrymple's site (The Loop) where there is a video of a Red Bull F1 car being driven through the Lincoln Tunnel (there and back) by David Coulthard.

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.