By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

Apple Stuff

The Event is expected on 23 October -- John Paczkowski on All Things Digital reports -- as the Moscone Center is booked on other days that week -- what that has to do with it is not clear, as there are plenty of other venues, including Cupertino itself.

By early Monday there were a number of rumours on product releases, especially a new iMac which has long been expected. Sam Oliver on AppleInsider has information suggesting that a new version of this is to be released and that it will be thinner than the current models. Maybe this will join the other rumoured releases of mini iPad, 13" MacBook Pro with Retina display and who knows what else. And to add to that iPad mini story, AppleInsider tells us that there may be 16 different models with prices ranging from €250 - €650. The 16 models would include wifi, cellular, and capacities ranging from 8 GB to 32 GB plus colours, black and white.

There was so much reported that was wrong with the new iPhone 5, like the unexciting design, the chips on the sides, the purple haze and the Maps (which was actually iOS 6), but who cares apart from the guys who write about it and try to outdo each other; or the Android and Samsung fans? Not Apple customers (I will have one as soon as I can of course) and Joseph Keller reports on iMore that the demand for the device is at an all time high. Remember that along with the record sales of 5 million units for the first weekend that some hacks reported as disappointing. It is the customers that drive things, not the hacks that clone stories from each other.

I like to report on new apps and new uses for the iPhone and iPad, particularly for education and medical applications. Steven Sande on TUAW reports on a joint development at Georgia Tech and Emory who have created the "Remotoscope" (the name could do with some development, methinks) which can be used by parents as an otoscope: for looking into ears. The parents can take a picture of a child's ear canal and doctors can monitor progress of infections without the need to attend the doctor's office.

It was nice to see Apple come clean and agree with the Swiss railway company about the clock-face used on the iPad. Not that they could not have done as everyone was watching this. There were several reports on this including one from Aaron Souppouris on The Verge. Needless to say, others are waiting in the wings.

One of those is an artist who supplied a picture for evaluation and was then told by Apple that they would not be using it; but they did and the image is fairly recognisable. At this stage it is not sure why this was used, or why she was not told, but she is now suing, Patently Apple report. OK, up to a point (as we imply in the Swiss Railways case), but this lady wants, "actual damages including defendant's profits." Profits?

Another report on this came from Mikey Campbell on AppleInsider who notes that the photographer is Swiss (like the railway), something I had missed in that other report. The photograph by Sabine Liewald is just gorgeous and looked so good on the Macs it was shown on.

While we are on legal matters, Patently Apple reports that a Texas company has a patent lawsuit against Apple for four patents they claim the iPad 3 and MacBook Pro infringe upon, concerning utilizing pulse-width modulation signals to drive light-emitting diodes. The report concedes that one of the patents does seem to have some legs, but whether the patent itself is too vague (it seems a bit wide to me) will be a decision made by the court.

A report by Michael Rose on TUAW tells us that an Apple replacement program for certain Seagate drives has been expanded and now covers iMacs manufactured as far back as October 2009. Great: what happens to those who have already had disk failures and replaced the disks? There was no Comments section, so I sent email.

I buy a fair number of apps from the iTunes store with occasional music purchases (see below) as well as items direct from the online Apple store, always using a locally issued Citibank credit card. The bills arrive by email usually a day or so after the transaction, and appear on the credit card bill at the end of the month, adjusted for currency differences. All well and good: what one would expect. Of late, Citibank has started sending me SMS notifications too, which are a useful security feature. However, I did notice this week a single transaction of $0.99 was shown as $1 on the SMS message. I have not been able to match the credit card statement with this yet, and a subsequent pair of transactions ($3.99 and $0.99) showed as $4.98 correctly. I will be monitoring this. A single one cent difference may not matter really, but over the course of a year it might add up; but factor in thousands of local users and that could be a significant bonus for whoever is charging that.

Half and Half

There have been some who were critical of Apple (and particularly Tin Cook) over the continued use of Samsung while the two companies were battling it out in the courts, but the quantities involved and the financial penalties in contracts may well have meant that Apple had to bide its time. Another report on this came from Katie Marsal on AppleInsider who suggests that orders could come by the end of next year.

Other Matters

I am not a fan of Samsung products, as if you hadn't guessed, so it was interesting to see a review of the Galaxy SIII Mini in a British newspaper. Unlike news organs here (and a couple in the US too), the reporters do not gush with enthusiasm over every new product and Alex Masters on The Independent is not at all convinced by this device, calling it "mutton dressed as lamb": an expression I have not heard in a while. This is not the Android you are looking for: "better off looking elsewhere" he writes.

We are not too sure what to make of Google sometimes. While they portray themselves as good guys, a closer examination suggests that some of their motivations may be less than altruistic; they also have unique ways of redefining the world and of adding up. I am not alone and Diane Bartz on Reuters reports that the FTC thinks there is a case for an antitrust investigation into the Mountain View company and its dominance of the search market to hurt its rivals which may have been illegal. They are also looking at Google's handling of valuable patents, which are determined to be essential to smartphones, which is something we have mentioned on more than one occasion here.

Nothing really to do with IT except from the point that FedEx and other companies like DHL carry and deliver most of the products we use. I was sent to a site called World's Strangest by a Tweet and read a story about the founding of FedEx (look for the arrow in the logo -- smart that) and the way that the CEO was down to the last $5000, but needed several times that amount to pay for aircraft fuel. He went to Las Vegas and payed Blackjack. He won and the company survived.

What I also liked was the original idea that was formed in an Economics class at Yale. Fred Smith got a "C" and the professor wrote, "The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible." I know professors who have limited vision like that too.

Local Items

I finished off my series on Terminal for new users this weekend with a look at Passwd and Purge and a note on the articles. I had intended to do one more (on "debug") but two articles last week, by Paul Horowitz on OS X Daily, and Topher Kessler on CNET made me realise there was no point reinventing the wheel. Actually, there was one more command that might be worth thinking about. . . .

I used to go to theatre, opera and concerts a lot when I was in the UK, but that fell off rather when I came to Thailand. The international flavour of culture has picked up in the last few years. S.P. Somtow has done a lot to widen the experience for consumers with self-written musicals and opera, as well as concerts. One series he is doing is as a result of a promise he made to Princess Galyani Vadhana (the King's late sister) concerning Mahler Symphonies. He is about to conduct the Siam Philharmonic performing Mahler 10 (on 5 November at the National Theater) and I bought my ticket over the weekend using Thai Ticketmajor.

This is a bit messy when registering and logging in: while there are English pages, all popups are in Thai; and I hate the extra 350 baht "insurance" that I could not opt out of (the 20 baht for ticket delivery is sensible). So I will be attending; partly as the venue is relatively easy to reach. As a note, Somtow also has an app (this guy is a polymath: books, music, Art) that can be downloaded from the iTunes store: Somtow and if you search on iTunes using his name, as well as the app there are a number of albums available.

I was also able to join some dots for myself in the iTunes store this weekend. For a number of years I have bemoaned the point that when I hear music I like in podcasts (for example) I cannot buy it here. Works by some artists are available via independent sites, but Amazon only sells books here and other sites also draw a line in the sand. I heard several tunes on a Radio One podcast I liked, so went searching. Only one artist, Facedown, had music available and I bought that right away. At last.

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.